Читать книгу King of the Badgers - Philip Hensher - Страница 24

The police car pulled away from the Hanmouth community centre. The photographers in the street pressed their lenses up against the window. Some were professional, working for the press. Others were using their little pocket digital cameras or even the cameras built into their mobile phones. Heidi and Micky sat as still as they could. In the front, Mr Calvin sat next to the driver, his brown pimpled attaché case on his lap. The police liaison officer was in the back with Heidi and Micky. She was supposed to be helping and comforting them. The police driver drove. He listened.

‘Thank God that’s over and done with,’ Heidi said. Her little voice was accented half by London, half by America, and by Devon not at all. It could hardly sound anything but bored. ‘I hate it when they stare at us. They’ve made their minds up and they won’t help us at all.’

‘Who’s they, Heidi?’ Mr Calvin said.

‘Those snobs,’ Heidi said. ‘Those snobs who live in Old Hanmouth. I cut their hair, half of them, and the other half I reckon they’re too much snobs to get their hair cut in Hanmouth or even in Barnstaple. I reckon they go to Bristol or to London. They know me but they don’t say hello. They stare like I’m in a zoo and they’ve paid their entrance ticket.’

‘Everyone’s very concerned and worried for China, Heidi,’ the police liaison officer said. ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t have come to find out what’s being done if they didn’t care very deeply about China’s disappearance.’

‘’Ass right,’ Micky said. ‘You want to think of that, girl.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Heidi said, as the police car slowed for the level crossing. An upright woman in a headscarf with a bounding Jack Russell on a lead peered into the back of the car and quickly looked away. Someone had breached good taste here. ‘They don’t care. They just want their face on the TV.’

‘Oi! Oi! Oi! Look at me, Mum! I’m on the TV! I’m famous! The more people,’ Mr Calvin said, ‘that get involved, the quicker we find China. I know some of them aren’t very nice, and they don’t really take the right attitude, but they are involved. The ones who don’t want to know—I expect the police will be asking themselves why these people are keeping themselves to themselves so much.’

Unnoticed, the driver felt his face harden into an expression of unbelief.

‘It would never have happened,’ Mr Calvin said, ‘if there’d been CCTV on Heidi’s street. But, of course, you put that to the police before something like this happens, and they give you a brush-off. “Not necessary, we do not consider that the above application if granted would represent a good use of current resources.” And then a little girl gets kidnapped and they’ve no idea at all.’

The train crossed; the barriers lifted and the car drove on. Silence fell.

‘You know the BBC are coming to interview you at home,’ Mr Calvin said. ‘They’ll be round about seven, they said.’

‘I know,’ Heidi said.

‘Am I all right like this?’ Micky said. ‘Should I put on my new shirt?’

‘You’re all right,’ Heidi said. ‘It doesn’t look good if you’re changing your clothes every five minutes. They’ll be showing this in conjunction with the footage from the press conference, I reckon.’

‘I don’t honestly think it matters all that much,’ the policewoman said.

‘Mr Calvin,’ Heidi said.

‘Yes, Heidi?’

‘I like your bag.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s unusual, what it’s made of, isn’t it?’

‘It’s ostrich skin, I think.’

‘I’ve never seen one like that before. I thought it was a design at first.’

‘No, that’s how ostrich skin looks. You mean the sort of puckers, the marks. That’s where the feathers were.’

‘Yeah. Where did you get it?’

‘Milan, I think. I got some gloves from the same place in ostrich skin. They’re to die for, fabulous, honey.’

‘Heidi,’ the policewoman said—she was not quite used to Mr Calvin’s outbreaks into voices just yet.

‘There on holiday,’ Micky asked.

‘No, on business,’ Mr Calvin said. ‘I shouldn’t have got it—it was far too expensive. I do love it, though.’

‘I didn’t know you were in business,’ Micky said. ‘I thought you did—’

‘What did you think he did, Micky?’ Heidi said grumpily.

‘I thought he did’ —Micky gestured around him at the inside of the car, its cramped quarters of need and disaster— ‘I thought he did this.’

‘Heidi,’ the policewoman started again. ‘I just want to explain to you and Micky what we’ve been doing today to find China. And what we’re going to do tomorrow.’

Heidi slumped against Micky resentfully. ‘I heard you’ve been asking after Hannah’s dad.’

‘Marcus,’ the policewoman said. ‘Yes, that’s right. We had to make an enquiry there.’

‘And Micky’s brothers, too, they said you’d been asking them where they’d been.’

‘Dominic and—’ she consulted her notes ‘—Vlad, is that right?’

‘Vlad’s not his brother,’ Heidi said.

‘That’s right,’ Micky said.

‘Vlad’s his sister’s boyfriend. Avril. He’s from Poland.’

‘Ukraine, he told us,’ the policewoman said. ‘You understand we have to ask everyone with some connection to China where they were, even if it’s just to eliminate them. I’m sure you can explain that to people if they feel we shouldn’t investigate them. I understand that if people are concerned and working hard on behalf of China, they may feel upset if we seem to be regarding them as suspects.’

‘I don’t give a shit about them,’ Heidi said. ‘But I don’t want you going near Marcus. He’s scum. I don’t want him turning up and saying he’s worried about China. He’s not been in touch for years. Ruth hasn’t heard from him for years, either. I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t want him any part of this.’

‘Heidi, you understand we have to pursue every possibility?’ the policewoman said. Heidi looked for a moment as if she were about to challenge this, but then just turned her sulky face to the window and watched the fields go by. ‘And then,’ the policewoman continued, ‘we’ve been making good progress on the door-to-door.’

‘Does that mean you’ve found some indication of who might be involved?’ Mr Calvin said.

‘No,’ the policewoman said. ‘It means that we’ve managed to cover a large part of the community and speak to a large proportion of those in the immediate—’

‘Well, that’s frankly not very—’

‘We’ve been concentrating,’ the policewoman went on in her stolid, uninterruptable way, ‘on known sex offenders in the county.’

‘Sex offenders,’ Calvin said.

‘People on the sex-offenders register, yes,’ the policewoman said.

‘In our area, these are,’ Heidi said. ‘Who are they, then?’

‘You know we can’t share that information,’ the policewoman said. ‘Not even with you. I don’t know that we’ve got any very strong leads through that inquiry, but we are still investigating three or four people of that cohort who couldn’t give a good account of themselves for that afternoon. They might have perfectly good reasons, or just have been on their own in peace. We’re still conducting door-to-door inquiries, as I said. That will go on for the next two or three days. There’s a search of land in the immediate area which we’re going to expand as the search goes on and’ —hurrying on rather— ‘we will be wanting to interview both of you and Ruth and the children again in the next few days. Nothing at all sinister, just that often when you talk over events for a second or third time, little details pop up that can be quite helpful to an investigation.’

‘I’ve told you everything I can think of,’ Heidi muttered, her hands clutching her arms. ‘More than once.’

‘Wasting time interviewing her and me,’ Micky said. ‘Should be out there locking up the sex offenders. I want to know who they are. I’ll go round there and beat it out of them. No one’s told us there were sex offenders on the estate. One of them’s taken China.’

‘Yes, well, Micky—’ the driver began, without turning round.

‘Don’t think about it too much,’ Calvin said. ‘The police know everything about everyone these days. They ought to be able to find China, with all the information they’ve got. Everything’s on computer files nowadays—who’s got a conviction for looking at dirty pictures of children, who’s changed their name, who’s not paid for their television licence, who buys what from the supermarket. What do you think loyalty cards are for? To keep an eye on you, and the police can use that information. If they’ve committed a crime, the police have got their DNA. If they’ve been taken in on suspicion, the police will have their DNA. If I had my way, everyone in the country would have their DNA on file. Then we’d know straight away who had committed a crime if they’d left just one hair at the scene. You can really leave the police in charge these days, Heidi.’

‘Police,’ Heidi said. ‘What have they done for us?’

‘I’m as impatient as you are,’ Calvin said. ‘But sometimes you’ve got to leave it to the professionals. And here we are.’

The car slowed as it turned into Heidi’s street. A bundle of photographers, television crews, idle observers and small boys, curious on bicycles, were waiting as if for visiting royalty. They all turned expectantly, made way for the car. Mr Calvin, with his lovely blond attaché case, and the policewoman got out. They shielded Heidi and Micky all the way to the front door. Through the front window, a BBC camera crew could be seen setting up. A short brilliant burst of floodlight illuminated the street from within. The two policewomen—the one at the door, the other from the car—nodded at each other. The door shut on the observers. Heidi went through to face her close-up.

‘That’s me done for the day,’ the policewoman said, sitting back in the front seat of the car. ‘Are we going back to the station now, then? I was hoping to get to Marks and Sparks before they close.’

‘There’s posh.’

‘I thought I could stretch to their fish bake, once in a while.’

‘I’ll take you back,’ the driver said placidly. ‘I’ve got better things to do than hang around here. “I like your bag,” ’ he quoted.

‘You never know what people are going to say,’ the policewoman said reproachfully. ‘In these situations.’

‘You know what people aren’t going to say,’ the driver said. ‘Or shouldn’t. Lovely bag. What a thing to say. I think she thought he might give it to her if she said she liked it.’

‘Tragic Heidi,’ the policewoman said. ‘It was a nice bag, though.’

‘Glad I’ve got something else to do now,’ the driver said. ‘I don’t think I could have stood much more of those two. And what’s his name—why are we driving him about?’

‘John Calvin,’ the policewoman said. ‘You don’t have to like any of them.’

‘Just as well,’ the driver said, slowing down for the Ruskin roundabout. ‘If I were Micky—’

‘I know what you’re going to say.’

‘If I were Micky,’ the driver continued regardless, ‘I wouldn’t go on about how the police ought to open up the sex-offenders register quite so much.’

‘Do you think she knows?’

‘About Micky? I wouldn’t have thought so. Micky doesn’t seem very clear about it himself.’

‘What was it again?’

‘Indecent exposure. Two twelve-year-old girls. Not very nice at all. Not for the first time, either. Four years ago.’

‘Well, we don’t have to like them,’ the policewoman said.

‘Just as well,’ the driver said, turning into the station car park.