school photos 62

Detective Close drove to the house in an unmarked police car, a lime-coloured Cortina, and parked with the rear tyres clipping the kerb. His shiny black shoes clicked on the path and he stood straight-backed on the landing rattling the metallic door-knocker like a speedball.  Upstairs Daft Rab squared his face against the window, peering short-sightedly through the thick lenses of his NHS specs at the man below. His hair Brylcreemed and slicked as a cats by rain, collar on his mohair coat up, double-breasted lapels standing up like knives. The chunky Windsor knot in his drab blue tie slid down his neck and the top button of his regulation white shirt was undone.

    Jean hadn’t slept, would have given bone-tired a bad name, and rolled out of bed mealy-mouthed at the disturbance. She recognised the cluster beats on the front-door chapper that followed the familiar rhythm: police, police, police. At the bend of the hall, Caroline stepped out door of the girl’s room and got in her way.  Her elder sister didn’t have time to put in her teeth and covered her mouth with her hand as she spoke. ‘Who’s that at this time?’ she sniffed, her face sliding around. For the sake of decorum she yanked the cord on her quilted nylon nightgown, with floral patterns showing sunshine scenes from a tea-cosy, circumnavigating her waist and tied it. Jean snorted, shaking her head against such naivety, and continued down the hall. She clicked the sneck, turned the Yale and flung the door open.    

‘Mrs Connelly?’ He edged his way into the in-shot of the hall without being asked. ‘I’ve got some news,’ his voice was chipper, but was met with corner-to-corner silence, both women looking at him as if he’d shit on the bottom of his shoes.

Jean sucked through her teeth, looked him up and down, and sighed. ‘You best come in then. I’ll make us a cup of tea.’  She shuffled up the hall, Caroline and Detective Close following behind her. The boy’s room door squeaked open and John peeked his head out, before snapping shut again.

With her back against the sink, the kettle on the back ring and a fag in her mouth Jean began to feel more her old self. ‘Whit’s this big news then? She felt it was important not to plead, not to cry, she’d did all these things and they’d been no help. Pity wasn’t something the police seemed to have any time for.  The policeman stood at the kitchen door.

The kettle whistled on the back ring. ‘You better sit down.’ He strode into the kitchen, ducking under the arm of a jumper drifting like seaweed from the clothes-pulley above his head, dragged the chair from underneath the flaps of the kitchen table and spun it around to face Jean. Caroline ghosted in at his back and stood beside her sister.

The kettle began to clatter and shrill. Caroline lifted it from the back ring, sloping warm water into the teapot, swirling it around and flinging it into the sink. Jean sat down as her sister busied herself searching  the caddy out, finding a heaped spoonful of tea for each of them and one for the pot.

Detective Close dipped his hand into the side-pocket of his coat. With first finger and thumb he fished out the smell of Old Spice and a moleskin notebook with a slim red pencil wedged into the binding. He flicked it open, slapping through the pages, and licked his lips. The rattle of cups from the second shelf of the cupboard made him lose his place. He looked across at Caroline. ‘Milk, four sugars,’ he remarked.  Flattening out the page he was looking for, he said what he’d come to tell them. ‘It’s all a bit hush, hush, but we’ve found Alison’s anorak.’       

‘My God. My God.’ Jean rocked, holding hers elbows tight to her chest. She whispered, ‘is she dead?’

Caroline slopped a mug of tea down in front of her, forced her to meet her gaze and look across at it. ‘Drink it. For the shock.’ She’d put a good dash of brandy in it, from the bottom cupboard, a treacle like substance that had been hidden behind the soup pot.

One of Jean’s hands covered the other in her lap, trying to soothe it enough to lift the cup, but they swung up and down on the stalks of her arms like a skipping-rope at full tilt. Caroline’s cool hand found the back of her neck and held her head steady. She let her sip tea, bird-like, the cup pressed against her pale lips. She blinked with her eyes, her arms and legs trembling, to show that she’d enough.

‘We’ve not found a body,’ the Detective said.

Caroline glared at him so hard he studied his notebook and begun again. ‘We’ve not yet found Alison, just her anorak.’  Only then did he receive his prize of tea with four sugars.

‘Where was it?’ Caroline patted her sister on the shoulder.

‘It was in the cloakroom at her school.’ He seemed pleased with that, as if he’d discovered it himself.

‘Who found it?’

‘One of the teachers.’ He consulted his notebook. ‘A Miss Hone. All the children had gone home and she’s seen it sitting there, lying alone on its peg.’  

Jean stirred herself, sat up a little straighter, colour flooding back into her face. ‘When was that?’

He scratched at his chin. ‘A few days ago.’

‘And you didn’t think to tell me until now.’ Jean’s eyes glittered.

He gulped down some tea. ‘We had to establish it was her jacket. Forensics.’ He left that bit open. Science was always a trump card to play in any case.

‘It’s got her name on it.’ Jean spat out. ‘Alison Connelly, I sewed the name tag on myself. You dragged the canal. Dogs everywhere. Sniffing up and down closes and sniffing peoples’ arses and, for God sake, you never thought to check the school she went to?’

‘What does it tell us now?’ Caroline asked in a more placatory tone.

‘It tells us that morning,’ he weighed his words more carefully, his eyes shifting from one face to another, ‘she went to school as normal and somebody took her from St Stephen’s’.

‘But is she alive?’ Jean asked.

He couldn’t answer.