Serious Intent Read online

  ‘He can’t have not liked you if he never saw you,’ Tom had said, wondering who would not be proud of such a fine little chap. ‘Maybe he didn’t know you were on the way,’ he suggested.

  Mark hadn’t thought of that. It consoled him.

  ‘Maybe he’ll come and see Mum one day, and have a surprise,’ he remarked.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Tom, picking up his cards.

  5

  Mark’s mother, Susan Conway, arrived home at half-past nine. The house was silent, but a lamp burned in the living-room; it was operated by a timer, switching itself on automatically, so that Mark did not return to a dark house.

  Susan could hear the washing-machine churning away. Mark was a good boy, putting his dirty clothes in it. She thought quickly about what he had been wearing: was his sweat-shirt red? Would there be pink pants in the final result? It was too late now to alter that; they’d bleach, she decided. She tiptoed upstairs. His door was ajar; he always left it like that if she was out, and by the light from the landing she saw that he was fast asleep, smooth, round cheeks, long lashes like frills. Kermit’s world-weary face peered out above an arm. She crept away and went downstairs again. She was lucky that he had such an equable temperament. They managed well; it was easier since she had been promoted, and he was getting older. Her career had taken a slide when he was born.

  Before that, she was personal assistant to the manager of an independent London hotel. Earlier, she had worked in various offices improving her administrative skills until a love affair with a colleague ended when he married someone else. She took herself and her damaged heart away on a trip to India before looking for another position.

  She had met Mark’s father while he was at a conference in the hotel. She knew that he was married, but as their affair developed, he convinced her that it was only a matter of time before he parted from his wife; then they would marry. Their meetings were frequent, but they never lived together.

  Her illusions were shattered when one day his wife arrived at the hotel where he was attending a business lunch. Susan witnessed their meeting in the foyer. He was obviously startled, but he embraced his wife with warmth and walked off with her, both of them eagerly talking to one another. Their evident closeness was unmistakeable: or was it all an act?

  Susan never knew what had brought his wife to the hotel. Had she become suspicious and traced him there? Or was there some important family news she needed to impart? Time passed, and she did not hear from him. When she telephoned his office he would not speak to her, and his firm’s next meetings were not held at that hotel.

  She contemplated confronting him, demanding an explanation, making a scene. She knew where he lived and could have embarrassed him by challenging his marriage. Half intending to do so, she drove to the Kent village and saw his pleasant house, set in a large garden with a pony looking over a nearby gate. Various scenarios ran through her mind but she banished them all; there was such a thing as pride.

  Hers had been seriously wounded. She saw, now, that it, more than her heart, had been damaged, also, by her first rejection; he had never intended to leave his wife at all and once again she had been deceived.

  Susan’s career was a consolation, but soon she discovered that she was pregnant. She had been a little careless about taking the Pill, playing a sort of Russian roulette, reasoning that if it failed, he would have to marry her. In any case, she was thirty-three; time was passing and she had always wanted children. Otherwise, why get married? Now, hurt and bitter, she resolved not to tell him about the baby. She would exclude him from its life, bring it up single-handed. She could earn a good living for them both. There was no need to go cap in hand to him and thus give him some claim to the child.

  In those first, decisive weeks, she thought it would be easy, but time proved her wrong.

  At work, she said nothing about her pregnancy, planning to carry on as normal for as long as possible, then take maternity leave and return when she had arranged child care. She had barely begun investigating child minders and the possibility of shared nannies when problems began. She became quite unwell, her blood pressure fluctuated and rest was advised.

  She gave up her job but was able to find a part-time temporary post, lower down the hierarchical ladder, in a country hotel, part of a chain, where the manager was a friend of her former employer. It was close to Haverscot, and she moved there, to a rented flat, for the last weeks of her pregnancy.

  The financial loss was severe, but she had some savings, and her rent was far less than for her London flat. However, she had to stop work a month before Mark was born and she did not return until he was six months old, depending, meanwhile, on state benefit.

  The hotel was not obliged to re-engage her because she had been only a temporary staff member, but a position was found for her as a wages clerk. No more senior opening was available at the time, and the manager was doubtful about her reliability, now that there was a baby to consider. If the child were ill, she would stay away, he reasoned. But by this time she had discovered a reliable child-minder with whom Mark was happy. Now her aim was to make good the lost months and climb back up the ladder. She was capable of reaching top management level, but she must be willing to go on courses and to consider moves to other hotels within the group.

  The Golden Accord, where she was working at present, was some distance away, but she was now an assistant manager. She had remained in Haverscot because it represented continuity for Mark and she had discovered Ivy; Mark was too old now for his original child-minder. There might be other moves, a manager’s post with a flat in the hotel, one day; it would be soon enough, then, to uproot Mark.

  Susan had had no lover since Mark’s birth. She trusted no one now and had lost all desire to marry. Her life was too busy to leave her time for a new affair, and one-night stands had never appealed to her. She had a son; the two of them were fine on their own and she owed no one anything.

  Susan had no family of her own. Her father had died when she was twelve, and her mother not long before Susan met Mark’s father. She had no brothers or sisters, and both her parents had been only children so there were no cousins. Mark lacked the advantages of uncles and grandparents, but he showed no sign of missing these attachments which many children had. His life was simple, uncluttered by complex step-relationships like those of Ivy’s son, Steve. Mark would sometimes talk about evenings spent with Steve. Susan had no idea that some of the videos they watched were viewed, not in Ivy’s house, but at The Willows. She liked to hear of games of chess and rummy, and she had seen the books Mark brought home – good, old-fashioned stories such as she had read herself. It surprised her that Ivy had this stock: she didn’t remember noticing shelves of books when she went to the house. Maybe they were Sharon’s. She’d asked Mark if Steve read much, and it seemed that he didn’t. He was very keen on cars, Mark said, and could tell you the engine capacity and acceleration rate of almost every make. Mark then proceeded to tell Susan how rapidly various cars reached speed from standstill.

  He was enthusiastic when he talked, his eyes shining, his thick straight hair falling over his brows. He did not look remotely like his father, about whom Susan, now, seldom thought. Her life was disciplined. At the hotel, she had learned to adopt a casual, friendly manner towards the men she worked with, or who were guests. The occasional come-on was warded off almost before it became one. Some of the staff thought she had a lover; she let them carry on with this assumption. It was a sort of protection.

  When a police officer rang her doorbell soon after she had come home that Sunday night, she was startled, opening the door to him on a chain, regarding him in the brightness of the security light outside the door. Behind him, she discerned the outline of a woman officer.

  They asked if they could come into the house.

  Susan was not unused to the police. They had to be called in at the hotel occasionally, when there were thefts or incidents of drunkenness, and they came as a matter of routine at other times.


  ‘What is it?’ she asked, admitting them.

  If Mark had not been safely upstairs, she would have feared that he had had an accident. But it was Mark about whom they were asking. Had she a son, Mark, who was a friend of Terry Gardner?

  Susan had heard Mark mention Terry.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Were they together today?’

  ‘They may have been, for some of the time,’ said Susan. ‘But Mark spent the day with the woman who looks after him when I’m at work.’ She must be careful; Ivy was no longer registered as a child-minder, and Susan did not want to get her into trouble.

  ‘You were working today?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where do you work?’

  She told them.

  ‘Is Mark at home now?’

  ‘Yes. He’s asleep upstairs,’ said Susan.

  ‘It could have been another boy who was seen with Terry in the park this afternoon,’ said the male officer. ‘He’s gone missing – Terry Gardner. He was seen alone around five-thirty so the boy with him earlier had left him by that time. Your son, Mark, had his lunch at the Gardners’ house today.’

  ‘Did he?’ Susan was surprised. She’d imagined him settling down to one of Ivy’s steak and kidney pies.

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘No. I suppose he arranged it with Ivy – Mrs Burton,’ Susan said. ‘That would be quite in order, if he was invited.’ Ivy would not let him accept an inappropriate invitation.

  ‘The Gardners live near the church, at Merrifields,’ said the woman officer. ‘But you’d know that, seeing that the boys are friends.’

  Susan didn’t. All she knew about Terry was that Mark had mentioned him as being keen on football, and owning a small snooker table. She knew where Merrifields was, however; she and Mark, walking in the meadows above the river, had looked speculatively and with admiration at the large houses ranged along the ridge, and Mark had said that though they were grand and had big gardens, he liked their small house in Grasmere Street. Susan had bought it as soon as she was able to afford a mortgage; now it represented negative equity because of the fall in value, but they had no need of anything bigger – it suited them.

  ‘Could we speak to Mark, please, Mrs Conway?’ said the woman officer.

  ‘Oh, but he’s asleep. I told you. Must I wake him?’ Susan asked.

  ‘I’m afraid so. He may know where Terry’s gone,’ the woman officer replied.

  ‘I do hope nothing’s happened to him,’ said Susan, but what she really meant was, oh God, if someone’s hurt Terry, it could so easily have been Mark – the kind of thought she never allowed herself to entertain.

  A tousled Mark, gently roused and put into his red dressing-gown, was brought downstairs. He clutched Kermit under one arm. While they waited, the two police officers noticed the neat, well-kept room, the small sofa and single armchair covered in grey-blue leather, the sensible fawn carpet, the deeper blue curtains, a few framed flower prints on the walls, a bookcase holding a mixed collection of paperbacks and some hardback novels. There was no neglect here. Forming this thought, WPC Dixon heard the washing-machine start its spin-dry cycle with a noisy whir just like her own machine. Susan, coming home late, had, she assumed, put the wash on; clearly, she was no slouch.

  Mark, sleepy and bewildered, agreed that he had seen Terry that day, which the police already seemed to know. He did not mention lunch at Merrifields because his mother had not known that he was going there.

  ‘We played football in the park this afternoon,’ he said. This must be about the two motorists and the damage to their cars. They’d gone to the police, complaining, in spite of the old lady. ‘We left before it began to get dark,’ he added quickly. ‘As we’d been told.’

  ‘Separately?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mark, yawning. He wanted to go back to sleep but it was nice sitting on the sofa with his mother, who had lit the gas fire so that it was warm and cosy.

  ‘Terry was going straight home?’

  ‘Yes. His mum gets really cross if he’s out after dark,’ said Mark, who did not suffer from this problem with Ivy, as long as she knew he was at Tom’s.

  ‘And you came home too?’

  He had, but not at once, so to agree did not mean that he had lied.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mark. He was puzzled. Why weren’t they asking about the damaged cars? ‘That is, to Ivy’s, where I go when Mum’s on late,’ he amended. This part wasn’t true.

  ‘Terry didn’t get home, Mark,’ said WPC Dixon. ‘Do you know where he might have gone instead? Some other friend’s, perhaps?’

  Mark didn’t.

  The officers went away without discovering that Mark had been unaccounted for until nearly nine o’clock, and no one, except Tom Morton, knew that he had been at The Willows.

  Neither of the police officers who visited Susan lived in Haverscot, which came under the Radbury division of the local force and whose small police station was not manned at night. Several others, though, were from the area and one was the community officer who worked with the various schools. He knew many of the children well, and most of them by sight. His two colleagues lacked this advantage as they started on the hunt for Terry.

  He had been seen running off after the incident with the milk bottle, the white globe of the football he was clutching making him stand out, but he could have been any boy of eleven or twelve years old. When Greg Black came home, however, after spending the evening with his companions from the park, and saw the damaged window, he guessed at once who was responsible. His father, who had been visiting friends, had found Greg’s sister Mandy very upset after hearing the glass crash inwards. She and Greg had an older brother with some rough friends whom Mandy didn’t like. She thought it might have been one of them, but Greg had no hesitation in naming Terry as the likely miscreant. Who else would have been carrying a football through the streets, and was under-sized?

  ‘Kid was cheeky in the park. I told him off,’ he said.

  What if Terry gave his version of the episode? Greg would deny it, say Terry was inventing it to cover up his own misdeeds. It would be Greg’s word against his, and Greg backed himself. Besides, the kid would only get a caution. It would give him a fright and teach him a lesson.

  An officer went round to Merrifields, hot on the heels of one who had been there taking details because Terry had failed to come home that night.

  It was easy, now, to see why he had not returned. He’d done something stupid and was afraid of trouble. At least he was not likely to have been abducted, and he might be found quite soon. The police took an optimistic line with the distraught mother and reassured Richard that, when found, Terry would get off fairly lightly over the broken window.

  ‘If he is the boy who did it,’ said the constable who had called to question Terry.

  ‘Bit of a coincidence if he didn’t,’ Richard said.

  He had been annoyed, rather than anxious, at Terry’s disobedience. The boy had been told to come back before dark, but he might have gone to visit a friend. Thinking he might be at Mark’s house, Richard had looked up Conway in the telephone book; there were several listed, some with Haverscot addresses. Hadn’t Mark said he lived in Grasmere Street? There was an entry, S.J. Conway, at number 38.

  He had rung the number, but there was no reply. This implied that the boys were still together. Perhaps they were with the woman who looked after Mark. Yes, that was it, and she’d send Terry home. Meanwhile, his mother had not missed him. She had got up during the afternoon and was in her studio. A Joan Baez tape was playing. Richard left her undisturbed. To have her in a hysterical state of anxiety would not bring Terry home. Very likely he would soon return.

  Justin, at least, was back, virtuously doing homework in his room.

  Richard had decided to go to Evensong. He did this sometimes, because it was peaceful in the church and he enjoyed singing hymns and psalms. He left a note in the kitchen stating wher
e he was going, exchanged his waxed jacket for a raincoat, and set off.

  In church, he sat in the same row of chairs as a grim-looking elderly woman with a maroon felt hat set vertically across her forehead; small boot-button eyes gave him a quick inspection. Richard left some empty seats between them. During the first hymn, he heard her sing: her voice was pure and low, beautiful in tone. She, for her part, noticed his confident baritone. As they sang Amen and resumed their seats, preparing to lean forward in a devout posture, they exchanged glances. Marigold Darwin almost smiled; Richard did.

  After the service, he had not gone straight home, deciding to take the longer route around the town, thinking he might meet Terry. In fact, he was postponing having to confront whatever situation had arisen in his absence. He was sure the two boys were still together and suspected no more trouble than their simple disobedience.

  Meanwhile, Verity had come downstairs, found him out and Terry missing, and Justin with no knowledge of where Terry was.

  Verity was angry because Richard was not there and she needed an audience for an emotional scene. Now she had two triggers: his desertion, and Terry’s absence.

  She asked Justin if he knew where Terry was. He was not the target of her wrath and her manner was still controlled, her voice calm, but Justin saw the gleam in her eye and knew trouble loomed.

  ‘Guess he’s still with that little kid. It’s early, Mum. I wouldn’t worry,’ he said. He’d finished his homework and wanted to watch a video a friend had lent him. If Mum started to carry on, he would be thwarted.

  ‘Richard’s gone out,’ she said, adding, ‘to church,’ in a tone appropriate for a destination of utter depravity.

  ‘Well?’ Justin saw no harm in church as long as he was not expected to attend.

  ‘When Terry’s missing,’ Verity said.

  ‘He’s not missing. He’s just late,’ said Justin. ‘Cool down, Mum.’ He remembered Richard telling the small boys to be home before dark, but did not mention this to his mother. She’d blow a fuse anyway when Cat returned, and another when Terry turned up. ‘What’s for supper?’ he decided to ask, and provoked a tirade about how could he think of food when his brother might be lying murdered in a ditch.