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  Arnold nodded. It had long been an itching patch on the thin collective police skin that in the district there were several “firms” operating, and effectively slicing up the local crime between themselves.

  There was not the slightest point in feeling the collar of some felon for an act of mayhem witnessed by the entire clientele of a betting shop when within weeks the witnesses would have lost their memories and the accused could produce fifteen people willing to swear he was elsewhere rehearsing for a Methodist choir at the time.

  “Well, Carver walks with hobnailed boots, and all by himself,” said Lovegod. “And he walks where he wants.

  “And no arrests?” It offended Arnold’s tidy suburban soul that a man could flout both sides of the law and get away it.

  “None that stuck,” said Lovegod. “Personally I thought they had the wrong man anyway. Carver’s not a tea leaf. He’s just a very contrary human being who knows how to handle himself. He’s American by birth, I believe. Sounds it anyway. There are all kinds of tales about him. Or were. He was a Green Beret in Vietnam. He was a Para. He was in the French Foreign Legion. He was a mercenary in Africa. Never saw any evidence of any of them. He has no military record. Under the name Harry Carver, anyway. He carries a British passport, because I’ve seen it. Nothing to say that it’s the only one he’s got of course. He was fanatical about his home and his kid – if she was his – and the girl he lived with was the safest female around. Mess with her, and you got Harry on the front doorstep within minutes, asking questions with his feet.”

  “Feet?”

  “He has size tens, and they go through doors.”

  “You mean he kicks doors down?”

  “And people. On one occasion a garden shed. Feller didn’t know that if Harry Carver wants to come in, you either open the door or order new hinges. He’s uncontrollable, that’s trouble. And now he’s back here. Which is his girl friend?” Arnold was curious to see Carver and the girl he defended with such ferocity.

  “She’s dead. Overdosed last year on heroin, and left the kid to be put into care.”

  “So she’s in the Mcwhitty?” Pauline Mcwhitty House was the children’s home only a few streets away.

  Lovegod shook his head. “She’s one of the statistics on the sheet. Disappeared months ago. A no-show. And I don’t want to be the one to tell Harry Carver that we can’t find her. We can’t even tell him where to look.”

  He stole another look into the mirror behind the bar and reached for his drink at the same time.

  “No problem,” he said after a moment. “He’s gone again.”

  As he said it, Arnold felt a firm pressure against his shoulder. Unconsciously, he shifted away from it and was surprised to find it did not diminish. Rather, it became more intense. He moved again, and once again the pressure increased.

  “Hey!” Arnold was a big man and unused to being pushed aside.

  He was surprised and irritated to find that he had been so successfully jostled away from the bar. Successfully, because the jostler was now standing between him and Lovegod.

  “Excuse me.” The man was not particularly tall – certainly not as tall as Arnold – but he was broad in the shoulder. A solid, compact man with dark hair cut in a stiff thatch over a round face burned deep brown and green, still eyes.

  “Evening, Harry,” said Lovegod without enthusiasm.

  “Evening Lovegod. Do you have a moment?” The voice was pleasantly low and warm, but there was a rough edge not too far back. A voice with confidence and authority when it was needed. Arnold compared it with the voice of a police commissioner he had met recently.

  Sergeant Lovegod’s face was expressionless.

  “I’m in the office tomorrow, Harry. I don’t talk business in pubs. You know that.”

  It was the first Arnold had heard of it. Lovegod talked about anything, anywhere. His indiscretion was legend.

  “Bollocks.” The intruder said it without heat, but with total certainty. Lovegod accepted defeat with equal calm.

  “Don’t be rude to police officers, Harry. It never pays. What do you want? If it’s about Lynn, I don’t know anything. She died over a year ago. OD’d, I heard. It wasn’t my case. And if it’s about Irene, I can’t help either. She was taken into care and you’ll have to talk to Social Services about it.”

  Lovegod leaned round Carver and pulled Arnold into the conversation.

  “This is Harry Carver,” he said. “Carver: Jim Arnold.”

  Carver ran his eye over Arnold, and the policeman felt his hackles rise. It was a calculating, measuring stare. Cattle approaching the abattoir might get just the same kind of once-over from the man with the pole axe. Arnold unconsciously eased a little way from the bar to give himself room to move and took his weight on the balls of his feet.

  “He working on the disappearing kids, too?” There was an American growl under the quiet voice, but only curiosity in the look.

  “He is.” Lovegod ignored the rebellious stare from the barman who was collecting glasses. The bell had been rung long since, and the pub was emptying slowly. Somewhere along the bar in the snug, a man with a whining voice was demanding time to finish his drink. Arnold noted with a professionally approving ear that he was not being allowed it.

  The publican bustled into the bar, reaching for the glasses which Theo had failed to reach.

  “Can I have your glasses now gentlemen, please? It’s well after time,” he said loudly. Then: “Oh, it’s you, Mr Lovegod. Are you going to be much longer?”

  Lovegod picked up his nearly full glass and drained it.

  “Closing here. We’ll go on to Penny’s,” he said flatly. “Come on, Jimmy.”

  Arnold opened his mouth to protest and noticed the expression in Lovegod’s eye. He closed it again, quickly, and followed Lovegod and Carver into the night.

  It was only a short walk to Penny’s, a drinking club in nearby Montague Street patronised by police and local villains alike, and none of the men spoke until they were in the tiny, brick-floored bar which was by unspoken common consent patronised by policemen alone.

  There were two men from the local station taking their evening break and a lonely and very drunk visiting Sergeant from the Midlands sent to London to give evidence in a case which was stretching over the weekend. He sat, propped in the corner, waiting for the bar to close and for somebody to send him back to his hotel in a taxi.

  “Policemen look after their own,” Penny had promised him with a roguish smile. He was a tall, willowy man of indeterminate age and sex, who profited greatly from both police and criminals and was careful never to side with one or the other. His barmaids were of legendary beauty and totally safe from Penny, which they appreciated.

  Penny also knew that there was not the slightest chance of one of the local lads seeing their visitor home. He had spent the earlier, more sober part of the evening telling them how the name of the Met stank in his home area and ill-advisedly made himself locally very unpopular.

  Lovegod perched on a stool at the far end of the bar from the local men, both of whom he knew well, and thereby told them he was here on business and not to be disturbed. They read the signs without batting an eyelid, and turned their backs.

  “What can you tell me about Lynn?” Carver started the questions even as he paid for the drinks. He had listened unmoved when Lovegod ordered doubles in a club which already served nothing else, and produced from his pocket a roll of notes which would have made a generous down payment on a tower block.

  Lovegod added ice to his drink and swigged.

  “Nothing,” he said, belching lightly. “What did they tell you at the nick?”

  “Damn all,” said Carver. “That’s why I came looking for you.”

  Lovegod peered at him as though there was a mist in the cellar bar. “Why should I know anything about it?”

  “Because nothing happens in this goddamn city you don’t know about,” said Carver. “I need
to find out what happened. And I need to find Irene.”

  Lovegod nodded heavily.

  “All right. Fair question, anyway. I don’t KNOW anything about Lynn, but you can’t help hearing things.”

  Carver unfastened his zip jacket. He was wearing navy trousers, a denim shirt and rawhide moccasins on his feet. The jacket was light weight velvet soft suede and lined with patterned silk. At his feet as he talked was a bulky, tightly-packed hold all with an airline tag round the handle. All of it, including the cowhide belt with the big buckle, looked new and expensive.

  He reached inside the jacket and took out a folded magazine, a packet of cheroots and a Zippo lighter.

  Leaving the magazine on the bar, he took out a cheroot, offered the packet to Arnold who shook his head silently, and then lit one himself.

  “Tell,” he said briefly.

  Lovegod dabbed his cigarette inefficiently out in the ashtray and shook another out of the pack. The butt smoldered poisonously, and Arnold, out of reach by a good two feet, stared at it resentfully.

  Carver reached over and stubbed the burning end out with his thumb. When his skin came in contact with the glowing coal, his face did not waver by a single muscle.

  “How much do you know already?” Lovegod watched through a leery eye as Carver blew the hot ash off the end of his cheroot. It missed his suede jacket by a hair.

  “I’ve been away for two years ... working,” Carver told him. “I was out of touch, and I didn’t even know Lynn was on the stuff until I came back yesterday. There was a guy I don’t know in bed with a girl in my flat, and they told me she was dead and Irene had been taken away. I went to the nick and the day man told me the night man had some information for me. So I came back this evening, and they told me you were the man to talk to about Irene. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

  “I’m surprised anybody was willing to tell you where I was,” said Lovegod. “I put the word out that I didn’t want to be found. Usually that’s enough.”

  Usually that was a guarantee of anonymity. When Sergeant Lovegod didn’t want to be found, the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police was unable to penetrate the wall of silence. Cistercian Mothers Superior were alleged to have sought Lovegod’s advice on setting up rules of silence.

  “Nobody was willing to tell where you were,” said Carver mildly. “I had a hell of a job persuading them.”

  Lovegod groaned. “Oh, shit!” he said despairingly.

  “Did Lynn have a habit?” Carver’s methods of investigation were as direct as his physical approach, Arnold thought. Go straight for the throat.

  Lovegod shrugged. “You’d know better than I would. Did she?”

  “Not when I was around. But it can be very quick,” said Carver. “Did you see anything of her while I was away?”

  “A little, but only now and then. She had some kind of a job which kept them. She was lonely and worried and Irene was being a bit of a problem, I gathered. Didn’t know where you were and that upset both of them. You should have written.”

  “I couldn’t. Anybody seem close to her? Did she talk to anybody I could talk to?”

  “That’s all you want to do – talk?” Lovegod was sceptical. Carver ignored his tone of voice.

  “Nothing will bring her back. We were heading for a split anyway. But whatever I can find out might help to find Irene. She was only a little girl, and she’ll be expecting someone to come for her.”

  Lovegod repeated his trick with the cigarette and Carver repeated his with the thumb.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” said Arnold. Carver turned a cool green eye on him.

  “Yeah. I do it for fun,” he said laconically. Arnold felt his face heat up and his temper shortened in proportion.

  Carver picked up the Zippo from the counter and ignited it.

  Then he put his right thumb into the flame and they watched while it turned, throwing out little sparks as fragments of loose skin burned.

  “It’s a trick,” said Carver. “I spent two years with a guy and he taught me a lot of tricks like that. No, it doesn’t hurt, or I wouldn’t do it. Okay?”

  Arnold nodded, and bought more drinks to cover his irritation.

  “Your wife was found at home by your daughter, dead on the floor by her bed,” he told Carver. “She had taken an overdose of heroin and smothered. Apparently she knew she’d overdone it and was trying to get to the phone to call for help. But she never made it.”

  Carver looked amazed.

  “I’ve been in England two days and nobody has told as many facts all strung together as that,” he said. “Keep talking, man.”

  “She had absorbed a massive dose, and there were the remains of a plastic envelope and a used plastic syringe lying by the bedside table. So far as the investigating officer could make out, she prepared her shot, took it and lay on the bed to wait for it to take effect. By the time she realised she had taken too much, it was too late. She was already having trouble breathing, and within minutes she must have died when her respiratory system failed. Apart from the dose, she was in good health, though a bit run down and she was too thin, of course. They never eat. Irene knew exactly what to do. She phoned for an ambulance and tried to give her mother mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She couldn’t know, but it was pointless. She couldn’t have started breathing again even on purpose. The heroin would have prevented her.”

  Carver nodded. He was showing no signs of great emotion, and Arnold guessed he was more interested in the girl.

  “She really was on the stuff? She had tracks and all?”

  Arnold nodded. “Sorry, yes. Her arm looked like an AA book.”

  “When was this exactly?”

  Lovegod chipped in: “Late January, last year. Seventeen months ago, nearly.”

  “And what happened to Irene?”

  “Normal procedure would be to call for the Children’s officer to come along and take care of her, if there were no immediate relatives she could go to.”

  “She wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the flat?”

  Lovegod shook his head. “Not a fourteen year old. Not by herself. Anyway, she’d never have been able to pay the rent. Even the social services wouldn’t have helped her there. No, it was the Council for her.”

  Carver sucked in a long breath through his teeth. He noticed that his cheroot had gone out, and re-lit it. Arnold was faintly surprised that he did not ignite his thumb as well.

  “So she’d have been taken into care ... in January?”

  “Yes, straight away. Nowhere else for her to go.”

  “And the furniture?

  “Some of it went with the flat. The rest would be scrapped or sold and the money taken by the social services, I suppose. Never been into it.”

  “So, Irene went into care in January last year?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No chance the council could have taken her on holiday to France?”

  “None at all,” said Lovegod, surprised. “That lot are lucky to get an outing to Southend with the taxi drivers. Council funds to fancy holidays in continental resorts.”

  Carver picked the magazine up off the counter and turned a few pages carefully. Arnold saw that it was a brightly coloured holiday travel magazine.

  “And she disappeared ... when?”

  “Well, that would be at the end of last year sometime. She’s been in the council care about nine or ten months. Then one day – nothing.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What we always do. Searched. Asked questions. Published her picture.”

  “And?”

  Lovegod punched his cigarette out in short savage stabs.

  “Nothing. Not a whimper. She went in the middle of the night. Packed her own bag. Let herself out of the home. She had a little money, but not much and she simply vanished.”

  “That unusual?”

  “Not as unusual as I’d like,” said Arnold viciously. This count
ry’s going to win the prize for child abduction and...”

  “Abuse,” said Carver harshly. “Yeah, I know. What do you think has happened to Irene?”

  Lovegod shook his head. “What can I say to you? Kids are disappearing all over at the moment, and it’s impossible to say what is happening to them.”

  He looked warningly at Arnold, but the tall policeman’s caution had been eroded by a hard working week and a long drinking bout.

  “They’re dead, Mr Carver, or they are on the street,” he said softly. “They get taken away or they run away. The boys become rent boys. A lot of the girls start out looking for a job and then find themselves sleeping rough. About that time it occurs to them – or more likely somebody else points it out to them – that they are sitting on a fortune. You don’t have to have many cold, wet nights with some stinking meths drinker pawing you over in a pile of fruit boxes before flogging your bum becomes quite a relief. Truth to tell it’s a wonder more of them don’t do it quicker.”

  The words fell into a silence as palpable as cold treacle.

  Carver opened the magazine, and put it back on the bar.

  “Well, that’s honest,” he said in a dangerously calm voice.

  “But it doesn’t explain this.”

  The magazine was called Holiday Choice, and it was open at an article about France. “A LAND OF GOOD FOOD, GOOD WINES AND GOOD COMPANY”, said the heading spread across a page of pictures.

  In the centre of the page was a huge photograph of a Disneyland city, its walls thick with conical roofed towers and its streets filled with gaily dressed people.

  “Carcassonne: La Cité,” said the caption. “History alive in the sun.”

  Below that was a picture of a family eating at a restaurant on the pavement. Bottles and glasses crowded the centre of the table, and a waiter was serving food to a grey haired man – presumably the father – whose face was partly obscured by the tray.

  Beside him a girl turned excited blue eyes towards the camera.

  She was a golden blonde with a lovely, oval face.

  “I checked with the magazine. The picture was one of a set ordered to go with the article. It was taken a couple of months back,” said Carver quietly.