Well-Schooled in Murder - By Elizabeth George Page 0,2
are you coming with me to that school or planning to stand there with your hands on that woman's flipping crotch for the rest of the day?"
Kevin hurriedly removed his hands from the offending part of the sculpture's anatomy.
He wiped them down the sides of his work jeans, adding white abrasive cream to the dust and dirt already embedded along the seams.
"Hang on, Pats," he said. "Think for a minute."
"Think? Mattie's ill! He'll be wanting his mum."
"Will he, luv?"
Patsy worked on this thought, her lips pressed together as if in the hope of keeping further words at bay. Her spatulate fingers worried the clasp of her handbag, snapping it repeatedly open and shut. From what Kevin could see, the bag was empty. In her rush to be off, Patsy had thought nothing about putting inside a single belonging - a pound coin, a comb, a compact, anything.
He pulled a piece of old towelling from the pocket of his jeans and rubbed it along his sculpture fondly. "Think, Pats," he gentled her. "No boy wants Mum flying out to his school if he's got a bit of flu. He's liable to be a bit choked over that, isn't he? Red in the face with Mum hanging about like he needs his nappies changed and she's just the one to do it."
"Are you saying I just let it be?" Patsy shook her handbag at him to emphasise her words.
"Like I wasn't interested in my own boy's well-being?"
"Not let it be."
"Then what?"
Kevin folded his towelling into a small, neat square. "Let's think this out. What did San Sister tell you's exactly wrong with the boy?"
Patsy's eyes dropped. Kevin knew what that reaction implied. He laughed at her softly.
"They've a nurse right there on duty at the school and you've not rung her, Pats? Mattie'll have stubbed his toe and his mum'll go running out to West Sussex without a thought given to ringing up to see what's wrong with the boy first! What's to become of the likes of you, girl?"
Hot embarrassment was climbing its way up Patsy's neck and spreading onto her cheeks.
"I'll ring now," she managed to say with dignity and went to place the call from the kitchen phone.
Kevin heard her dialling. A moment later he heard her voice. A moment after that, he heard her drop the phone. She cried out once, a terrified keening that he recognised as his own name wailed in supplication. He flung his ragged towel to one side and flew into the cottage.
At first he thought his wife was having an attack of some sort. Her face was grey, and the fist at her lips suggested that a shrieking-out in pain was being withheld by an act of will. When she heard his footsteps and swung to face him, he saw that her eyes were wild.
"He's not there. Mattie's gone, Kevin. He wasn't in the San. He's not even at the school!"
Kevin struggled to comprehend the horror that those few words implied and found he could only repeat her own statement. "Mattie? Gone?"
She seemed frozen to the spot. "Since Friday noon."
Suddenly that immense stretch of time from Friday to Sunday became a breeding ground for the sort of unspeakable images every parent must confront when first acknowledging a beloved child's disappearance. Kidnapping, molestation, religious cults, white slavery, sadism, murder. Patsy shuddered, gagged. A faint sheen of perspiration appeared on her skin.
Seeing this, fearing she might faint or have a stroke or drop dead on the spot, Kevin grasped her shoulders to offer the only comfort he knew.
"We'll be off to the school, luv," he said urgently. "We'll see about our boy. I promise you that. We'll go at once."
"Mattie!" The name rose like a prayer.
Kevin told himself that prayers were unnecessary at the moment, that Matthew was only playing the truant, that his absence from the school had a reasonable explanation which they would laugh about together in the time to come. Yet even as he thought this, a vicious tremor shook Patsy's body. She said their son's name beseechingly once again. Against all reason, Kevin found himself hoping that a god somewhere was listening to his wife.
Thumbing through her contribution to their report one last time, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers decided that she was satisfi ed with the results of her weekend's labour. She clipped the fifteen tedious pages together, shoved her chair back from her desk, and went in search of her immediate superior, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley.