Chapter Nineteen: Friday
“Norman Evans, a farmer from Ludlow, discovered the body of a large cat that had been knocked down by a car close to Barnards Castle in Shropshire in February 1989. The animal was identified by local vet Gareth Thomas as an Asian Jungle Cat, and the stuffed body of the creature was later acquired by cryptozoologist Karl Shuker.”
“If he rings again tell him that I am out.” The secretary to whom James Leigh was attempting to communicate his instruction was already transforming into a rapidly disappearing wraith; an obscure, receding form, just visible through the bobbled glass window in the door of Leigh’s office. The person that James Leigh was talking about was Gavin Waterhouse, father of the still absent Robert. Gavin Waterhouse was a man with money; a man who was used to solving problems by throwing cash at them. He was not someone who had ever had to be particularly patient in his life - waiting is for poor people; money can normally jump you to the front of the queue. His lack of comprehension at the failure of the police to locate his missing offspring, and his financial impotence at being faced with a problem for which money was no easy solution, were being transferred into a succession of increasingly high-volume phone calls to Leigh, as officer in charge of the case. James’s exasperated request to his secretary was as a result of the third call that morning, and it was still only nine o’clock.
James Leigh sat back in his chair and sighed. It seemed as though everything was conspiring against him at the moment. First the Sherry case, and now this one: he would get a reputation for being unable to clear up, unless he could put this seemingly simple affair to bed fairly swiftly. And now the father had offered a reward. It was all he needed: a bunch of opportunist vigilantes ringing in with phony or speculative information on the off chance that it might lead to a big pay-day. Why couldn’t they just leave the investigating to the professionals? After all, it wasn’t as though they were not without a lead. There was the best friend to locate. What was his name? James drew his folder of notes towards him. Damien Finn. According to a neighbour, the Finn family had set off on holiday to the South of France on the very day that Robert had gone missing. Chances seemed strong that he had hooked up with them and just not told his parents what he was doing. With a father like Gavin, James did not blame the lad. Find the Finns, find the man. Simple. Ish.
The Finns had not left a forwarding address. The neighbour had thought that they usually rented a villa in Aix-en-Provence, but he hadn’t been absolutely sure of his facts. The local French police were checking, it was just a question of waiting, they would ring him as soon as they had any news. Of course, to be told to be patient was not the news that any anxious parent in the Waterhouses’ situation wants to hear, but in the meantime there was little else that the police could do. There had been the routine enquiries around friends and old school-mates: no one had seen Rob since Monday, most hadn’t been in touch with him for weeks, or in some cases months. One or two closer confidantes revealed that they thought that Rob had been acting slightly secretively for some time now, but Leigh put this down to a wannabe desire to enter into the conspiracy theory surrounding any disappearance: reality T.V. had a lot to answer for, people were no longer content to be passive viewers to an event - even a crime - they couldn’t be satisfied until they had an active role in the proceedings themselves. Regardless of youthful speculation, the overall picture that James was building up of the lost boy was of Mr. Average and, as any would-be runaway will know, average equates to invisible and is often the best disguise. It didn’t really matter, Leigh was confident that the answer to the puzzle lay in France; it was too much of a coincidence that the Finns should travel on the same day that Rob had vanished. Investigate the coincidences and the answer normally presented itself. It hadn’t worked with the Sherry case though. Despite having been officially reassigned, James Leigh could not help but indulge himself in a measure of mental exercise about the known facts of his previous case. There had been coincidences there too. Dave Sherry’s fingerprints being discovered at the Jones’s farmhouse, and then Jones’s name appearing on a slip of paper in a cash tin, discarded in the same cemetery where the convict’s dead father was buried. Leigh had been convinced that Jones knew more about the whereabouts of the runaway criminal than he was letting on, but perhaps it had been blinkered of him to allocate so many resources in order to follow up just one line of enquiry, which ultimately had not proved to be successful.
James Leigh looked anxiously at the quiet telephone. He hoped that he was not committing the same mistake again.
•••
Rob remembered where he had seen the man before, halfway through the stranger’s account of his life story. It had been the evening he had crept down to Janet’s barge and had spied on the inhabitants through the small porthole. The man looked slightly different now, slightly rougher and unshaven and his clothes were more weather-worn and dirty, but there was no doubt that the man who had taken it upon himself to join Rob living in the subterranean burrow was the same man that Rob had seen visit Janet’s father, and who he had presumed to be Janet’s uncle, even though she had never spoken of a relation. The resumption of the man’s story confirmed Rob’s identification.
“...and so I had nowhere else to go but here, no other family, no one else to help me. Besides, he owes me. Owes me big time, and he knows it.”
Rob had been allowed the luxury of having his gag left off, at least while his captor was present to close his mouth should it prove necessary. “Why?” he asked.
“You not been listening?” The man looked momentarily threatening towards Rob, before lapsing back into his monologue. Rob wasn’t exactly planning to be going anywhere; there was nothing better to do than listen.
“We’ve worked out a signal when I can visit the barge. Ron’s got this siren, sounds like a wild animal’s cry when it’s let off. A terrible caterwaul, it is.” The man laughed at the memory. “It’s loud enough so that I can hear it down here, and frightening enough that it should scare away any nosey-parkers. Doesn’t always work though. I had to scare away some bloody kids myself the other night, always hanging around the place at night they are.”
“I’ve heard it,” said Rob, referring to the siren, remembering how the noise had terrified both him and Janet.
“When?” The man exhibited all the paranoid suspicions of the habitually hunted; he reminded Rob of a wild fox, just keeping one step ahead of the tracking hounds, but always wary, always watchful, conscious that one moment of inattention could be its last; full of nervous energy.
Rob shook his head. He was feeling slightly nauseous; the combination of the continual throbbing of his bruised head and the overpowering stench of the muggy, airless burrow was making him feel sick and his mind muzzy, “I can’t recall,” he answered.
“I can’t recall,” The man mimicked Rob’s well-spoken tones. “No matter. Once he’s got his wife and his young girl out of the way, then I know it’s safe for me to show myself. I’d hoped to be long gone by now, but I'm still waiting for my papers.”
“Papers?” Rob was finding it increasingly hard to follow the rambling ebb and flow of his companion’s conversation.
“A new passport, driving license. Ron knows people. He has promised me a new identity. It’s what he owes me. It’s the least he owes me. It’s like I said, I want a new life. One that starts here, a clean slate, no past. Forty years, I’ve waited for this. He said he’d have the documents by now. But I can wait a while longer. Forty years, I’ve waited, another few days, it’s nothing to me.”
Rob had already heard all about the years of confinement, about the time when his captor was the prisoner, about the injustices that had led to his companion’s imprisonment. He had no opinion as to the truth of the story that he had been told. In other, less bizarre, circumstances, he thought that he would probably have believed unreservedly the man’s claim that he had been t
he victim of a miscarriage of justice, but given the fact that this was the same individual that was currently keeping him imprisoned in a hole in the earth, it was difficult not to be slightly suspicious. Rob suddenly became weary of listening to his fellow cave dweller’s woes; he had plenty enough problems of his own that he thought demanded an airing. “Why are you keeping me here?”
“I’ve got to.”
“What have I done?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry. It’s just that I can’t afford to have any police sniffing around here. Not until I’ve got my papers. Not until I’m away from here for good.”
Rob still looked blank, “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t remember, do you?”
“What?”
“The night you were beaten up.”
“I remember bits. Why did...”
“That wasn’t me. You didn’t think that was me that attacked you, did you?” The older man actually sounded offended that Rob could have thought ill of him. “You see how it is. This is the way it has been all my life. I try to do good and all that happens is that I end up taking the blame.”
Rob interrupted the self-pitying speech, “What do you mean?”
“I found you, that’s what. Saw it all happened. You walked into a trap. There were two guys, three if you count the one that was keeping lookout. You walked right up to them. I saw you coming, I thought you’d see them and turn and run, but you walked right up to them.”
“I thought they were someone else,” Rob explained.
“They gave you a proper pasting, then left you there, lying underneath that big tree. You weren’t moving a muscle. I was watching. I thought you must be dead.”
“What did you do?”
“I waited for them to clear off, they seemed pretty pleased with themselves, then went to see if you were still alive. I tell you, it would have been simpler for me if you had been brown bread.”
“How?”
“I was just gonna bury you then. Somewhere deep in the woods where you would never have been found. Had to think fast when I found that you were still breathing.”
“Why didn’t you just leave me there?”
“Use your head. What’s going to happen. You were lying in clear sight of the towpath. Chances were that no one would discover you that night, but it was a sure thing that you would have been discovered the next morning. Either that or you’d come around yourself, and what would have been the first thing you’d do?”
“I don’t know,” said Rob. He was still feeling dizzy.
“Course you do. You’d be off to the police station quick as a shot. I don’t know about you, but I recognized those blokes that did for you as barge folk, and you can bet your bottom dollar they’d be the first place the Old Bill would go calling. Well, that was the last thing I wanted, wasn’t it.”
“I guess so.”
“So I picked you up, bloody heavy you are too, and carried you here. Been hiding out here ever since I got out, and no one’s found me yet.” The man smiled broadly, showing a row of surprisingly bright, white teeth, in contrast to the darkness of his weather burnished complexion. “Had to rig up a few extra additions to my humble abode to make sure that you couldn’t go walkabout, and I’m sorry about the ropes.” He pointed to the ties that still bound Rob’s hands and feet, “But I couldn’t take the chance of you escaping. I know there’s not enough room to swing a cat in here, but it won’t be for long, and I’ll keep you fed and watered. And then as soon as I get my hands on those papers, I’ll call the cops. I’ll tell them exactly where you are. Ron’s promised me. He’ll have the papers by tomorrow. You’ll be free soon. Not like me, forty years. Do you know how that feels?”
Rob shook his head feebly. He felt exhausted. The kitten, which the man had brought to the burrow the day before, lay in a contented ball on the warm, earth floor, curled up, asleep, its quiet, rhythmic snores suddenly the only sound within the confined chamber. Rob sneezed loudly, sending a jolt of pain shooting up his damaged nose, and causing the small animal to stir slightly in its slumber. Bloody typical, as if he didn’t have enough problems: he was allergic to cats.