A Place To Bury Strangers (Atticus Priest Book 2) Page 5

  “Good morning, Mr. Priest,” he said.

  “Please—it’s Atticus.”

  “Of course. Good morning, Atticus. Thank you for coming over.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “How can I help you this morning? You said you wanted to see Molly’s room?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “There might be something obvious that you’ve overlooked. It can be easy for parents to miss things that might be obvious to someone else.”

  “Wood for the trees?”

  “Exactly. I’ve been able to find people before by noticing little details that have been missed. And parents, I’ve found, tend to have a blind spot for those details.”

  “Well, you’d better come this way.”

  York led the way up a set of stone steps to a leaded, pillared entrance porch.

  “Sorry about the state of the house,” York said. “Money is tight at the moment. The last couple of harvests haven’t been kind.”

  “What do you grow?”

  “Rape and wheat. It’s not great this year, either. Did you see the fields on the way in? You could look at them and you wouldn’t be able to tell if the wheat was a crop—it’s so thin and patchy. The plants have got no roots. If we get a dry spell, they’ll just wither away.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “I’ve had the farm since 2000,” he said. “It was my father’s before. It’s a slog. Foot and mouth nearly wiped us out. The bank was a day or two from pulling the plug after that. I’ve been thinking about whether I ought to diversify. I was hoping to add glamping facilities. There’s an empty field at the back that’d be perfect for it. Molly was keen on the idea, before… well, before all this nonsense.” He pointed to the stairs. “Maybe when she gets back. Her room is up here.”

  Atticus climbed the stairs and turned right into the bedroom immediately off the landing. It was large, with an en suite bathroom that Atticus checked first. He opened the cabinet above the sink and took out two bottles that were labelled with prescriptions: one bottle was of Seroxat and the other was of Roaccutane.

  York was watching from the doorway. “The Roaccutane is for her acne.”

  “And Seroxat for depression?”

  “She’s a teenage girl. She has issues like any other teenage girl. The acne doesn’t help.”

  “Is she happy at college?”

  “As far as I know. No one there has said anything to me.”

  “And at home?”

  York shrugged, a rueful expression on his face. “Like I said, she’s a teenage girl. There are issues every now and again, but nothing that you wouldn’t expect.”

  “Do you have a good relationship with her?”

  “I’d always thought we did.”

  Atticus put both bottles back in the cabinet and closed the door. He went into the bedroom and looked around. There was a piano keyboard on a stand, a desk that was stacked with books next to a notebook and pen, and a football in the corner. There were three framed pictures on the windowsill. Atticus looked at them one at a time: the first was of a teenaged girl standing in front of Shakeaway in Salisbury; the second was of the same girl on an ice rink; the third was of the girl with two others of the same age. Atticus picked up the first frame, took out his phone and snapped a photograph of it.

  “None of her with her mother,” he said. “Why’s that?”

  “They didn’t really get on,” he said.

  “Where is she now?”

  “No idea,” he said. “We haven’t seen her since she left.”

  Atticus went to the desk and examined the things that had been left there.

  “Anything useful?” York asked.

  Atticus laced his fingers. “I see a well-rounded girl in her mid-teens, religious, bilingual, right-handed. She’s also careful with money.”

  “How do you get there from that?”

  “The well-roundedness from the fact that she has a keyboard that’s clearly well used, given the smudges of sebum from her fingers on the keys, together with the football. Proficiency at both music and sport is unusual in my experience. She has a copy of Les désastreuses aventures des orphelins Baudelaire, which, unless my knowledge of young adult fiction fails me, was A Series of Unfortunate Events in its English original—that she has the French edition over the English suggests that she’s a fluent speaker.”

  “She did a year in France,” York said.

  “The framed quote—‘Your beauty should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight’—is a Bible verse. 1 Peter 3, I think. Plus, of course, you’re religious—that’ll be influential.” Atticus gestured to the desk. “The pen is to the right of the notebook; therefore, she writes with that hand.”

  “Very good,” York said. “The money?”

  There was an iPhone box atop a stack of books. “Most people don’t keep the packaging for things like that. I suspect she sells them on whenever she upgrades, and she knows that having the original box will help get the best price.”

  “She does.”

  “And although I would say she likes to read, I suspect that she’s lost the habit recently.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Atticus picked up the empty iPhone box. “This hasn’t been moved for a while. There’s dust around it.”

  “I would’ve had the cleaner come in here and clean,” York said quickly, “but she prefers people to stay out.”

  “I’m not making judgements,” Atticus said with a smile.

  “Does any of this help you?”

  “It helps me to build up a picture. Can I ask you a couple of questions?”

  “Of course.”

  “Boyfriends other than the one you told me about?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “Close friends?”

  “Not really. She prefers to keep herself to herself—she’s always been like that. There are a handful of girls that she sometimes hangs round with—I’ve written down their addresses. There’s a list downstairs.”

  “Have you spoken to their parents?”

  “Yes. And they say they don’t know where she is.”

  “Any other reason why she might have left home?”

  York looked helpless. “I’ve been thinking about that ever since she left. I can’t think of anything—I wish I could, but there’s nothing.”

  “What about the drugs?”

  He looked a little awkward. “Just joints, I think, but who knows. It’s been a while since I smoked, but it’s not a smell that’s easy to mistake. She was doing it in the garden. You could smell it on her clothes.”

  “You said you spoke to her about it?”

  “The night before she ran away.”

  “You were angry?”

  “I tried to be rational about it. I was angry, of course, and worried, but it wouldn’t have helped if I’d lost my temper.”

  “So your finding her stash might have been the reason she ran?”

  “Might have been.”

  “Do you know where she got it?”

  He shook his head. “She wouldn’t say.”

  “But you can guess?”

  “It has to be the boy she’s been seeing.”

  Atticus took a final look around the room. There was a wastepaper bin in the corner that, judging by the detritus that had been allowed to gather inside it, had not been emptied for some time. Atticus turned it upside down and tipped the contents onto the floor.

  He picked up a tissue between thumb and forefinger and held it up. It was stained red.

  “Does she suffer from nosebleeds?” he asked.

  “Yes,” York said. “But only recently. The last couple of months.”

  Atticus picked through the rubbish, checking each item and then depositing it back into the bin. He found what he was looking for: a square of glossy paper torn from a magazine. The top third of the paper was folded down and t
he bottom third folded up, the left and right sides folded together to make a wrap. Atticus palmed the paper before York could see it, and finished cleaning up his mess.

  “Why are the nosebleeds relevant?” York said. “What are you looking for?”

  Atticus decided not to mention his suspicions now. He supposed that he might be wrong, although the evidence suggested that he was not. The mood swings and nosebleeds, all relatively recent, suggested that Molly might have graduated from weed to cocaine; the wrap confirmed it.

  Atticus made his way to the door.

  York closed the door and followed him onto the landing. “What’s next?”

  “I’m going to go back to Salisbury and ask around a little. Someone will know where she is.”

  “You’ll let me know if you need anything?”

  “Of course.”

  “And if you find her?”

  “I’ll call you straight away.”

  “Yes, please,” he said. “She’ll be annoyed. I’d like to be there.”

  “I understand, Mr. York. Thank you for showing me her room. I’ll call you as soon as I have any news.”

  11

  Atticus drove back to the city but, rather than parking his car in its usual place, he diverted to the Friary. The area of the city was to the east of Exeter Street and south of St. Ann’s Street and had, at various times, accommodated a pesthouse, a smallpox hospital, and, until the middle of the twentieth century, the local sewage treatment facility. The sewage works had been moved and houses built in the sixties and seventies; since then, the estate had gathered a not altogether unwarranted reputation as a place that attracted difficult families.

  He parked in Greyfriars Close and stepped outside. His dealer, Finn, sold from one of the three-storey blocks. Cars were crammed against the kerb on both sides of the road, and dog mess was smeared across the pavement. Atticus made his way to the entrance and pressed the buzzer. There was a pause, a hiss of static, and then a voice asked who it was.

  “Where’s Finn?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about, man.”

  Atticus swore and reached down to try the handle. He pushed the door, but it was locked. He raised his fist and slammed it against the wood panel. He heard the sound of raised voices from inside and someone clattering down the stairs. The door opened. There was a security chain, but it wasn’t fastened, and Atticus was able to peer through the gap at the confused woman with a pale, sweaty face who was standing on the other side.

  “Hello,” Atticus said. “I’m here to see Finn. I’m a friend of his. He’s probably on the top floor.”

  The woman stared at him, befuddled. “Finn’s not here,” she said, with no conviction whatsoever.

  “Excuse me,” Atticus said, and pushed the door open. The woman was slight and bounced out of the way as he shouldered his way through.

  “Hey! You can’t just barge in here.”

  Atticus knew the layout of the house from previous visits, both as a patron and as a police officer. His introduction to Finn had been to arrest him, but he had soon returned as a customer. There was a sitting room and kitchen on the ground floor, with a staircase that ascended to two bedrooms on the first floor. There were a further two bedrooms on the third floor and a small bathroom on an abbreviated fourth floor above that. The front door opened directly onto the sitting room. Mattresses had been placed over the floor, and Atticus counted four junkies laid out across them. The blinds were drawn, and the air was heavy with the sweet smell of heroin. Atticus stepped over and between them, made his way to the short corridor that connected the front room with the kitchen, and went up the stairs.

  He stepped over an emaciated cat that, for some reason, had decided this was an excellent place to sleep, and reached the first-floor landing. He picked a path through the stolen goods that had been swapped for drugs and climbed to the second floor.

  One of the bedrooms on this level had been turned into another shooting gallery. There was no furniture—Finn didn’t use the house for its intended purpose; instead, there were more mattresses. There was an en suite bathroom, but the two one-litre Coke bottles lined up against the wall, each of them filled with urine, suggested that visitors often preferred not to leave their repose when they needed to relieve themselves.

  Finn, an Irishman who had migrated to London to work as a builder before finding his way south to Salisbury, was sitting with his back against the wall. A small camping stove was on the floor, and a man Atticus had not seen before was cooking up in its flame. Atticus looked at the clear fluid that was bubbling inside the spoon and the clean syringe, still packed in plastic, that would be used to deliver the hit. Once upon a time he might have been tempted to indulge, but he had done his best to put those days behind him. Still, he thought, it would not serve him to stay any longer than he had to. Temptation was a tricky thing, and he didn’t mean to give it a chance to persuade him to partake.

  “Hey,” Finn said in a thick brogue. His accent was always more pronounced the higher he was. “I wasn’t expecting you. You here to get some?”

  “No,” Atticus said. “Not for me.”

  “You sure? It’s good.”

  “I’m sure it is, and I’m sure I don’t want any.”

  “So how can I help you?” He nodded down at the spoon and the flame. “I’m busy.”

  Atticus reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. He opened it, picked out two twenties and held them up.

  “Couple of questions.”

  Finn’s eyes narrowed. Suspicion was a dealer’s default setting, and Finn had lasted as long as he had because he was particularly careful. He knew very well that Atticus had been a police officer before he had set up his new business, and that informing on others to the Old Bill was a sure way to land yourself in trouble.

  “That’s not me. You know not to ask me about my work. I’m not a grass.”

  “No one’s saying you are. You’re not going to grass anyone up. And it won’t take long.” He held the notes up and rubbed them together. “Come on. Just hear me out.”

  Finn looked at him, his eyes still narrow. “What?”

  Atticus took out his phone and navigated to his photo album. He found the picture of Molly York that he had taken in her bedroom and held the phone out so that Finn could see it.

  “Do you know who this is?”

  Finn stared at the screen. Atticus watched his face carefully and saw how his right eyebrow kinked up almost imperceptibly. Atticus had known Finn for long enough to be able to identify one of his tells.

  “I don’t know, man. Maybe. Might’ve seen her around.”

  Atticus reached out and gave him one of the twenties. “Her name is Molly York. She likes to smoke, and she recently started to do cocaine. I need to find her. If she doesn’t get it from you, you can give me an idea where she does get it.”

  Finn looked meaningfully at the second twenty. Atticus gave it to him.

  “Molly,” he said. “Yeah. She’s been here before. Used to buy off me, maybe six weeks ago. Like you say—weed. She used to come in with this guy.”

  “Name?”

  Finn scrunched up his face as he tried to remember. “Jordan, I think. Jordan Lamb. He’s only just got out of Winchester for dealing. Thinks he’s a big shot, but thick as two short planks. The two of them came in together, maybe six weeks ago. They bought a bag and lit up downstairs. There was another guy here, long-standing customer of mine; he said that Jordan had grassed a couple of his mates up to the police in exchange for favourable treatment. Jordan didn’t take well to that, and it got violent. I had to tell Jordan he had to go. Haven’t seen either of them since.”

  “So where would they have gone if they didn’t come here?”

  “The last I heard, he was getting it straight from London.”

  “He was going to London to get it?”

  “No, man, the dealers are down here. County Lines. There’s a gang from East London—Hackney, Bethnal Green, I don’t know. Th
ey’ve got connections in the city now. You know how it works.”

  Atticus did know: gangs in London sent dealers to provincial towns and cities on account of the fact that there was more demand and less competition than they would see at home. The locals were also less used to the violence and intimidation that were a stock-in-trade in the capital.

  “And Jordan is caught up with them?”

  “I heard they cuckooed his flat.”

  Atticus started to feel a little more uneasy on Molly’s behalf. If Molly had fallen in with a crowd like that, then getting her back might be more difficult than he had anticipated.

  “Anything else?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Where’s Jordan’s flat?”

  “I don’t know. He never told me.”

  “You sure?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Atticus nodded and stood.

  Finn reached out and took Atticus by the ankle. “How’s the dog?”

  “Very good.”

  “You don’t mind having him?”

  “He’s excellent company.”

  “I was thinking,” Finn said, eyeing him. “Maybe you want to have him for good? I can’t offer you money to take him off my hands, but I could let you have a bag of very excellent weed.”

  “You don’t have to pay me.”

  “That’s a weight off my mind,” he said. He reached into his pocket and took out a clear plastic baggie that was full of a fibrous, greeny-brown material. He handed it to Atticus. “Seriously, take it. You’re doing me a favour.”

  Atticus took the bag, gave it an appreciative squeeze between thumb and forefinger, and slipped it into his pocket.

  “If you insist.”

  12

  Mack spoke to Professor Fyfe and updated him on what they had discovered at the graveyard that morning. He said that he would do his best to expedite the matching of the bone with the remains and that he would let her know when it was done.