Make Believe - [9]

‘Is that where they found him?’ Joe Breeley frowned. ‘Christ! When you’ve kids of your own, you…’ He shook his head. ‘No. No-one,’ he answered.

‘You’re not at work today?’ Janine said.

‘Bad back,’ he grimaced.

He’d looked fine bent over the car Janine thought. She glanced at Richard, sharing her scepticism and they waited it out.

Joe Breeley sighed, looked slightly shamefaced as he added, ‘Well, weather like we’ve been having. The rain – takes twice as long to do a job. And with John being ill… We’ll finish on time. Get paid by results.’ Then it seemed to dawn on him that no work would be happening at Kendal Avenue for some time to come, in the light of events. ‘Course… now…’ he faltered.

Mandy came back in and took Aidan from Breeley. The baby had drifted off and didn’t wake as she lifted him up and cuddled him.

‘Last Saturday,’ said Janine, ‘what time did you start work?’

‘Just after nine.’

‘And lunchtime was when?’ she said.

‘One-ish. Came back here,’ Breeley said.

‘And that afternoon?’ Janine said.

Joe Breeley gave a shrug. ‘We just did stuff in the house.’

Mandy gave a small laugh. ‘He’s that busy fixing other people’s houses, I’m always on at him to sort this place out.’

‘Was there ever any sign of intruders in the property, anything odd like that?’ Richard said.

‘No, nothing,’ Breeley said.

‘If you do think of anything that might help please get in touch,’ Richard said, ‘anything at all.’

Breeley nodded.

‘It’s awful,’ Mandy said again and hugged Aidan tighter as if she was anxious to keep him safe.

Chapter 5

Claire Wray felt numb, crushed by the dreadful news. It was as though she had been pulled frozen from the cold sea, no sensation anywhere beyond a gnawing dark ache in every muscle, deep in her bones.

Her mind stumbled around knocking into memories of Sammy: his birth over-shadowed by the theatrical antics of Clive’s ex Felicity who had claimed the spotlight with a cruelly timed suicide bid; their worries when they first realised Sammy couldn’t see properly and all the worst scenarios of blindness or worse plagued them until the tests had all come back and it was known to be simply short-sightedness; Sammy’s passion for tractors and diggers and steam-rollers; the slight lisp he had; the feel of his hand in hers.

Then her thoughts would trip over the grim facts, the drainage tunnel, a sewer, her baby in a sewer. Preposterous. Life wasn’t meant to go like this. Sammy was supposed to grow and thrive, become a schoolboy, a teenager, a man. All those futures.

She shuffled on the sofa, pressed Sammy’s fleece to her cheek. Who would do such a thing?

At the back of her skull she felt the tingle of unease, the mistrust that had been growing there ever since Sammy had gone. And Clive had come home.

Something about Clive’s manner, almost imperceptible but a taint of distance, of awkwardness, she could sense even in her distress and anguish. He was holding back. He was guarded.

At first she took it to be Clive’s way of masking his criticism of her, of hiding how he blamed her. She had lost sight of Sammy and Sammy had been taken. Her watch. Her fault.

Clive was a good man, she believed that, a kind man. He rarely raised his voice, she had never seen him lash out, couldn’t imagine him being violent. But perhaps he was a little too kind. Weak. Like the way he fell for Felicity’s stunts time and again, instead of accepting that he couldn’t be held responsible for her actions.

But as the days had gone on, interminable and tense, as they had waited for sightings, for leads, for fresh appeals, as Sammy’s disappearance fell from the news bulletins and front pages, Claire began to wonder whether Clive was- too hard to put into words, something so foul, so unnatural. He loved Sammy. He was walking that day, wasn’t he? If only he’d gone with a friend then she wouldn’t even be thinking like this. But he’d been alone, unaccounted for, if you like. And that reserve in him had not eased; if anything it had grown stronger. While Claire blabbed about everything she could, dredging up memories from the park, keen to colour in every last detail, Clive’s responses to the police and investigators was always vague, muted, minimal.

She didn’t like the way her mind was working. Perhaps it was a distraction, a defensive thing, if she was fretting over Clive it diverted her from facing the probable truth about Sammy. That he was dead. That he was never coming back. He would never need new shoes again. She would never hold him in her arms again.

Clive came in then. ‘I’m going up,’ he said quietly. ‘You want anything?’

She shook her head.

‘Sue said she’d sort out some shopping tomorrow, should be back here mid-morning.’

Like I care, Claire thought. Then felt uncharitable as tears burnt her eyes. Sue was only trying to support them and Clive was just passing on the message. ‘ OK,’ she said.

He made no move to touch her, to give her a goodnight kiss but turned and went. Just as well, really, she would only have rebuffed him. Her body language communicated what she’d not been able to articulate, that she mistrusted him.