right. The almond eyes, the squashed-tip nose. All the Salvatore kids had them, gift of the racial mix of their parents.
"Dad's Filipino. Mum's black. A crackhead." Silver looked up quickly as he said this last, as if he'd suddenly realised he might have given offence.
"I sorted that." Nkata took the picture back. He asked about the cooking that Jared was supposedly learning.
Silver knew nothing about this and declared it the product of either Navina Cryer's wishful thinking or Jared Salvatore's outright prevaricating. All he knew was that Jared had been turned over to Youth Offenders, where a social worker had tried-and obviously failed-to make something of him.
"Youth Offenders over here," Nkata said, "could they've arranged some training for the boy? D'they get jobs for kids?"
"When pigs fly," Silver said. "Our Jared frying fish in your local Little Chef? Don't know I'd've eaten a meal that bloke put on a plate if I was starving." Silver took a staple remover from the top of his desk and used it to dig some grime from beneath his thumbnail as he concluded, "Here's the real truth about scum like the Salvatores, Sergeant. Most of them end up where they're heading all along, and it was going to be no different for Jared, which was something Navina Cryer couldn't accept. Felipe's locked up already; Matteo's in remand. Jared was third in line of the kids, so he was next in line for the nick. Do-gooders over at Youth Offenders might've done their best to stop that from happening, but they had everything set against it from the start."
"Everything being...?" Nkata inquired.
Silver eyed him over the staple remover and flicked the detritus from beneath his thumbnail onto the floor. "No offence meant, but you're the exception, man. You're not the rule. And I expect you had some advantages along the way. But there're times when people don't add up to much, and this is one of those times. You start out bad, you end up worse. That's just how it is."
Not if someone takes an interest, was what Nkata wanted to reply. Nothing was written in stone.
But he said nothing. He had the information he'd come for. He had no greater understanding of why Jared Salvatore's disappearance had gone largely unremarked by the police, but he needed no greater understanding. As Constable Silver himself had put it: That's just how it was.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN SHE GOT BACK TO CHALK FARM AT THE END OF the day, Barbara Havers was feeling almost jaunty. Not only had the interview with Charlie Burov-aka Blinker-seemed like a moment of actual progress, but being out of the incident room and engaged in the human end of the investigation in Lynley's company made her feel as though regaining her rank was not a pipe dream after all. She was, in fact, blithely humming "It's So Easy" when she hiked homeward from the spot she'd found to park the Mini. Even when rain began to fall and was driven into her face by the wind, she was not bothered. She merely stepped up her pace-and the tempo of her tune-and hurried towards Eton Villas.
She glanced quickly at the ground-floor flat when she went up the drive. Lights were on inside Azhar's digs, and through the French windows she could see Hadiyyah sitting at a table with her head bent over an open notebook.
Homework, Barbara thought. Hadiyyah was a dutiful pupil. She stood for a moment and watched the little girl. As she did so, Azhar came into the room and walked by the table. Hadiyyah looked up and followed him longingly with her gaze. He didn't acknowledge her, and she didn't speak, merely ducking her head again to her work.
Barbara felt a sharp twinge at the sight of this, struck by an unexpected anger whose source she didn't want to examine. She went along the path to her bungalow. Inside, she flipped on the lights, tossed her shoulder bag on the table, and dug out a tin of All Day Breakfast, which she dumped unceremoniously into a pan. She popped bread into the toaster and from the fridge took a Stella Artois, making a mental note to cut back on the drinking since this was yet another night when she was not supposed to be imbibing at all. But she felt like celebrating the interview with Blinker.
As her meal was doing what it could to prepare itself without her participation, she went as usual for the television remote, which again as usual