LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Ah.’ I fingered the telephone wire. ‘You’ve been?’

      ‘The front door is boarded up.’

      ‘We’re having some work done.’

      ‘You’ve been burgled. Who by?’

      ‘Kids. It’s a crime-ridden area. It’s nothing—’

      ‘What did they take?’

      ‘Nothing. There’s nothing to take. We have a security system. Nothing of any value is left in the office.’

      ‘The place looked trashed.’

      ‘Just kids—’

      ‘This isn’t happening fast enough,’ she said.

      ‘Give us a chance.’ I know I sounded petulant. ‘We only started yesterday. We’re making progress,’ I said as I crossed my fingers behind my back. ‘These things don’t solve themselves overnight.’

      ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said.

      ‘Where’s here?’ I asked at the same time as Jo said: ‘We went down to the Queens.’

      A barely perceptible pause. ‘I had to move,’ she said. ‘I think …’ her voice trailed off and for a moment I suspected that she was holding her hand over the receiver and talking to someone else. When she returned to the phone call, she spoke slower. ‘I think someone’s following me. I’m frightened Jack’s involved in something, something bad.’

      ‘Who would—?’

      ‘I’ll give you a number. Got a pen?’

      Jo pulled one out of the front pocket of her dungarees, and I took down the number that Mrs Wilkins repeated twice.

      ‘Ring me on that, two o’clock. I’ve got to go.’

      The dial tone sounded before I had chance to say goodbye.

      ‘Did you buy that?’ I asked Jo.

      ‘What, that about her being his adopted mother?’

      ‘Step,’ I said. These distinctions have always mattered to me.

      ‘She sounded worried,’ said Jo. ‘Why’d you tell her Carly’s parents might be hiding Jack?’

      ‘She sounded stressed,’ I said, refusing to recognize Jo’s look of bewilderment. I glanced at the biro marks on my left forearm. ‘Why would anyone be following her?’

      ‘You made it sound like we’d produce her son in time for lunch.’

      ‘I had to tell her something.’

      ‘We’ve got more chance of finding Madeleine McCann.’

      ‘You don’t know that. His dad might know something.’

      I wasn’t convinced. All we were beginning to discover was how little we actually knew.

      The next thing was to see if I could get the number for Mr Wilkins. I knew this was going to get us into deep trouble with our own client, but I needed some facts confirmed.

      ‘Where’s the form?’

      The filing system, such as we’d had, had been three lever arch files that stood on top of the cupboard that housed the electricity metre. All those files had been torn apart and discarded in the middle of the room and then I’d bagged their ripped contents into bin liners as part of the tidy up process the night before. ‘Bollocks.’

      I prised open the knot of one of the bin bags, the one that crunched, and sifted through the papers in there, but I couldn’t find the form.

      ‘It’s not here.’ I upended the only other bin liners that contained paper. The rest were full of the remains of Jack’s stuff.

      Jo came over to help me search and we went wordlessly through the papers, now strewn all over the floor, one more time. And guess what? It wasn’t there. There wasn’t a single piece of it in evidence.

      ‘That’s weird. They wouldn’t take the form, would they?’

      ‘They might. Whoever burgled the office is looking for Jack. Maybe they’re on their way round to his dad’s house too.’

      ‘Give me your phone.’

      Jo passed it across, and I googled ‘Wilkins + Manchester’: 800,000 results. The first twenty or so pages were about Ray Wilkins, a defender for Manchester United. Apparently.

      ‘This is hopeless. We’ll have to go there.’

      ‘Where?’ said Jo.

      ‘Manchester.’

      ‘Why Manchester?’

      ‘Mrs Wilkins said she was from Manchester.’

      ‘Only we can’t believe a fucking word she tells us,’ said Jo.

      ‘Didn’t Carly say he was a car salesman?’ I added ‘cars’ to the search bar, which narrowed the results to a mere 65,000.

      I stared at what remained of Jack’s possessions, scattered on the floor. ‘The thing from Mancini – he’s a Man City fan.’

      ‘There’s people living in Japan that support Man City.’

      ‘You’re forgetting our clue.’ I pounced on the wallet.

      Jo stared at me. ‘We have a clue?’

      I opened it up and rang a finger through the various pockets. Nothing there. I rummaged through the papers on the floor. ‘Jesus, that’s gone as well.’

      Jo’s forehead scrunched. ‘His blood donor card?’

      ‘The membership card – remember? Here it is!’ I pounced on the small rectangular piece of cardboard among the debris. ‘Alderley Edge Cricket Club. Junior member.’

      ‘Junior member?’

      ‘It’s expired. But that’s where he’s from. Bet you.’

      ‘Alderley Edge? Was that where Beckham lived?’

      ‘Google it,’ I said, chucking her phone back at her.

      Jo tapped the screen. ‘“Alderley Edge”,’ she read. ‘“A village and civil parish in Cheshire – fourteen miles south of Manchester”.’

      ‘Carly said a village.’ We were on the right track, I could feel it.

      Jo frowned. ‘So we’re going to drive around Alderley Edge looking for Jack’s dad?’

      ‘He’s got a car dealership. He wants people to find him.’

      ‘You don’t know his business is in Alderley Edge.’

      ‘Any better ideas?’

      Jo pulled a face. ‘We should tidy this lot away again.’

      ‘Let’s just get there.’

      ‘Wild fecking goose chase.’

      ‘Worth a shot,’ I said.

      While Jo scooped the crap back into the bin liners, I paced the office, stopping only to scribble a few more questions on my notepad. Even if we didn’t find Jack’s dad, I wanted to see a bit of where Jack was from, get some of the background – and not just through the eyes of his stepmother. What does a stepmother know? Even assuming Susan Wilkins was who she said she was.

      One fact remained. Jack had done a runner and I suppose the thought was in my mind that he might have gone home. We reach for the past in times of trouble, it’s instinctive. The same way I still think about my mother anytime there’s a success or a failure. No matter she’s been dead four years. No matter that even when she was alive, she’d be too wrapped up in her own misery to take any notice of me, or my life. It’s in all our bones.

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