take the weight from his stomach but was still able to look through the patio doors. Not that he could see much at this time of night, just outlines and shadows, the bushes and treetops. It did not matter. He filled in the detail from memory. The sun shone and the garden bloomed, the yelps of children splashing in the pool, his wife in cutoff jeans with limbs brown from the sun. He could smell that paddling pool.
Closing his eyes he let the images play. And slowly another memory sidled into the frame, of a popping cap and the glorious hiss, a bottle cold in his hand and then between his lips, the bitter taste into his mouth.
Twenty years ago mortality had been a distant destination for Boer. Twenty years that passed with no thought for time. Now his mortality loomed, an ever-shifting shadow flowing through his blood and reaching out from within, carnivorous and uncaring. Just like that. One day worrying if that strain would ever heal, the next searching for flexibility in the meaning of terminal .
He had not thought fifty-three any age to wave goodbye despite knowing better people that had died younger. He was not being singled out, this was just how it was. The six-month countdown had been two years ago. Now at fifty-five he was living on unexpected time. Time explained by the white-coated with talk of secondary and primary causes, the malign forces in his blood suffocating those spreading within. A body almost too ill to be ill.
Francis Boer was not a man who believed in hope by divine fingers, but he did believe in hope itself. His life had been his career and his career had been crime, or at least tracking those who committed crime. Along the way it had cost him his marriage and contact with all but one of his three children. As an eager constable he had believed he could make a difference, a belief diminished through time and the endless cycle of human flaws and desires. Too many were the innocent faces that filled his thoughts. Boer’s hope was built on a need to claim redemption for one more. Not to suffer the frustration of a system that relied on bodies to find the guilty, but to save an innocent. Then he would be done. A life for a life. A sentimental hope, he knew, and selfish, a hope almost used up at that.
He took another drink of the water, imagining that bitter taste, laying his head back on the leather and closing his eyes, revelling in the silence and his good memories. Holding the bad ones away. Somewhere between unconsciousness and the sound of playing children he heard the ringing. He eased himself slowly forward and reached across to the table, flicking open his phone. ‘Boer.’
‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, but everyone else is out, I wouldn’t have rung otherwise.’
He swapped the phone between hands, pressing it against his good ear. ‘What’s the problem, Sergeant?’
‘Missing child, sir, report came in a couple hours ago from the father. Then we had a male walk into the station, believes his wife witnessed a child abduction.’
Boer picked up his keys. ‘You’ve called Helen?’
‘Yes, sir, DS Ferreira is on her way.’
‘You still have the man there?’
‘He’s waiting for you in one of the offices, sir.’
‘Excellent, Sergeant, I’ll be there shortly.’
Detective Inspector Boer closed the phone, pulled on his jacket and checked the time, ten past eight. He’d been home for less than an hour.
FOURTEEN
Sarah realised her phone was missing when she climbed into her car. She spent frantic seconds rummaging through her bag and in desperation emptied its contents on the seat. The two pickpockets had not left empty handed after all. Now her dilemma was what to do next?
She considered running back into the services for a pay as you go phone, but her problem was time. Simon in his Rover could only go west but the next junction was not far. So she stayed in her car and scooped everything into her bag as the Rover rolled past. She followed behind, for just fifty