night after I’d first seen the boy. She was back from honeymoon.
‘Hi Heidi. I was so thrilled to get your message,’ she wrote. ‘I don’t think we reach out enough to our sister-company colleagues over here in retail! Regarding your Wine City query, I’m afraid I don’t remember much of the visit itself and certainly nothing about counterfeit alcohol. My schedule is mega hectic; sometimes I can visit eight shops in a single day!’
Any excitement I’d felt dissolved. I wasn’t too disappointed. I’d always known my contacting her had been a long shot.
‘Anyways, if they are selling bootleg products they won’t be for much longer,’ she continued. ‘Word on the grapevine is that the Wine City has been taken over by Costcutter. As I hear it, the shopfitters are due to go in there any day now. Best wishes, Sharon Walsh (Mrs).’
Trying not to panic, I called Martin.
‘You must have read my mind,’ he said, answering on the first ring. ‘I was about to phone you.’
‘You were?’
‘A couple of officers went out to that shop yesterday.’
My centre of gravity seemed to tilt.
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing. The place was closed up.’ His voice was flat, matter of fact. ‘They asked around. Seemed the bloke –’ He stopped, and I heard the notebook rasp of a page being turned. ‘This Keith Veitch. He moved on just over a week ago.’
I felt sick.
‘Did you look into him? Keith?’
‘We did.’ The detective answered brightly, as if he’d just secured the correct answer on a quiz. ‘He’s not on the sex-offenders’ register and he doesn’t have a record. Not so much as a parking ticket.’
This failed to reassure me.
‘Don’t you think it’s suspicious he just upped and left? Can’t you try and find where he went?’
‘Actually, it’s neither suspicious nor sudden. We talked to the estate agent and it seemed the guy had the leasehold on the market for a while. It was all planned and above-board. Normal, in other words.’
‘What about the school the boy went to?’ I was starting to feel desperate. ‘Did you check with them?’
‘Yes, but we didn’t have much joy. The officers went to see the head teacher this morning.’ Again he stopped, apparently consulting his notes. ‘Mikey, the boy you saw, gave notice to the school last week. It seems like he and his mum have left town too. Most likely with Keith.’
‘Did the school have any paperwork on them?’
‘You’ve seen the area. Kids in that school come and go all the time. The local authority has one goal: to get people to put and then keep their kids in education. They never push families to produce birth certificates or that kind of thing.’
‘What did they know about the family?’
‘Mikey’s mum did pick-ups on occasion and there was an older sister, too. But it was usually his uncle. His mum stacks shelves at the Aldi, does a lot of shift work. There was also another brother, Jake, but he was in the senior school.’ He lowered his voice and I realised I was being handled. ‘The mum worked and the uncle helped with childcare.’
Slipping my hand inside my bag, I felt around until my fingers came across the smooth, heavy weight of Lauren’s compass. I worried the disc around my palm and tried to steady my thoughts.
‘What about neighbouring businesses? Keith was friends with a guy who runs the greasy spoon a few doors down.’ I hadn’t included the various meetings with Tommy in my original statement. ‘He might know where they’ve gone.’
‘We canvassed the nearby area. Everyone said the same thing. Keith had been trying to offload the shop for some time. Mikey was his nephew. Keith babysat him after school. They would see his mum come and go. End of story.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry, Heidi. I know you think you saw some kind of resemblance, but everything checks out.’
I released Lauren’s compass back into the depths of my bag.
‘It must unsettle you, the fact he’s gone, but hopefully we’ve managed to put your mind at rest.’
We said goodbye and I sat staring at my desk, struggling to absorb everything Martin had said. Behind me, the swing-doors creak-swooshed. It was Nick.
‘Oh,’ he said, when he clocked me. ‘You’re already here.’
Wearing a sky-blue shirt tucked into his trousers, he’d cinched his waist with a black leather belt. After pouring coffee into his personalised mug, he came over to where I sat, his fingers obscuring the ‘N’.
‘I worked up a couple of extra pie charts over the weekend,’ he said,