she pulled out a photograph of a lanky teenager in school uniform.
I frowned at her. ‘A recent one?’
She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘He hates having his photo taken. That’s the sixth form. He dropped out a few months after that.’
‘When did he move to Leeds?’
She scratched at the back of her neck again. ‘Five years ago. Hired a van, insisted on doing it all on his own.’
‘What will you do if we find him and he doesn’t want to see you?’ This was a standard question we’d agreed to ask everyone. We weren’t naive. Families often split for good reasons.
She squared back her shoulders. ‘I can live with that,’ she said. I caught a glimpse of an inner steeliness and I believed her. ‘I just need to know where he is, that he’s OK.’
I told her what we charged, and she nodded. Jo had included a blank contract in the file. I passed it to her and read upside down as she printed her name. Mrs Susan Wilkins. As she filled in her address details, she glanced up at me.
‘There’s another thing. You have to promise you won’t contact my husband.’
She stared at me with piercing blue eyes. I shrugged. No skin off my nose. ‘You’re the boss,’ I said.
‘He’s washed his hands of Jack. He’ll go berserk if he knows what I’m doing.’ She pushed the contract back to me, the still-damp ink glistening in the fluorescent overheads.
‘You haven’t put your mobile.’
‘I dropped it,’ she said. She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Silly of me. They’re replacing the screen. I’m staying at the Queens. Could we perhaps agree a time each day where I call you and you give me a progress report?’
‘OK.’ I handed her a business card with my mobile number, and she tucked it into her jacket pocket. I cleared my throat. ‘So, there’s just the matter of the fees.’
‘Yes.’ She opened her bag again and paid the deposit – two hundred pounds – in cash, counting out ten-pound notes from a brown envelope. No Stone Unturned, Leeds’s brand new missing persons’ bureau, had its first client.
And it promised to be a straightforward case – middle-class kid, starts college, smokes dope, forgets to ring his mother. We’d have this in the bag by the weekend, I remember thinking. I had no sense of what was in store for us. Now, as I sit here, trying to write this report and pick through the pieces of the last few days, it’s easy to see that the signs were all there, I just didn’t read them. We fit the pictures to the story we want to hear. And what I wanted to see was a middle-aged, middle-class woman, desperately seeking her son.
Mrs Wilkins didn’t stay for the cup of tea that Jo had made. She had to get going, she said. I fed Jo the details while our client nipped to the toilet and then we escorted her out of the offices and back onto the street, doling out promises like those lanky kids in town hand out club fliers.
‘This’ll be a piece of cake,’ I remember saying.
‘You’ll know as soon as we do.’
That last one from Jo as we made our way to the back street where we keep the van parked.
I turned to Mrs Wilkins. ‘Do you need a lift somewhere?’
‘I’m parked down there.’ She gestured towards the Royal Park pub, and I wondered what kind of car she drove. I hoped it hadn’t been nicked in the time she’d been in our office. She didn’t appear worried, but then she didn’t know these streets like I did. Royal Park is an area of Leeds that’s an uneasy mix of local scallies and the poorer students. It encourages a healthy, non-materialistic outlook among its residents. As Proudhon said, property is theft. Round here, anything worth nicking is nicked.
Mrs Wilkins’s parting comment was that she’d ring us first thing the next day. Saturday, 9 a.m., she said. The clock ticked, and my pulse raced alongside it. I couldn’t wait to crack our first case, Jo was desperate for a smoke, and Mrs Wilkins had less than twenty-five hours to live.
We jumped into the van. True, we could have walked. Burchett Grove is less than half a mile away; but getting Jo to do any kind of exercise is harder than getting a decent pint in the Hyde Park.
Burchett Grove sits at the top of a triangle of narrow streets that form Woodhouse – a mix of students and locals – mainly long-haired, cloth-capped hippies accompanied by dogs on pieces of string. There’s also the local pub, The Chemic, and, best of all, Nazams – the best curry house in Leeds.
We pulled up at the far end of the street, just before the scruffy rows of brick-built terraces meet The Ridge. The Ridge always scares the hell out of me – a long strip of woodland and ankle-deep mud that separates Woodhouse from Meanwood. Woodhouse is students and hippies, Meanwood is Leeds born and bred. The Ridge feels lawless, a no man’s land, a sea of used condoms, empty cans of Special Brew, and spent syringes – the Russian roulette of country walks. Most women I know have got at least one tale of being followed by some random pervert down there. I avoid it whenever I can, preferring to do four times the distance but stick to the roads and the streetlights.
The curtains weren’t drawn at number 16 but the house was in darkness. The last time I’d been here we’d smoked so much I’d got tunnel vision and had had to walk all the way home with one eye closed.
We marched up the small path, and Jo pounded on the door. A minute later a head appeared at one of the upper windows. I saw a flash of black hair.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ a voice called out.
We both stepped backwards. ‘Just calling,’ said Jo, her leather jacket and Afro more effective than a warrant. I held up a hand. It was obvious we belonged.
He opened the door a moment later. I had the idea we’d woken him up but I’m not sure why, because he was dressed, although his feet were bare, his toenails clean and square. I vaguely recognized him from around.
‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘thought you were the cops or something. What you hammering on the door like that for?’
‘Looking for Jack,’ I said. I tried to keep my tone steady. ‘Jack Wilkins.’
He shook his head. ‘Wrong house. Never heard of him.’ He moved to close the door, but Jo put the palm of her hand against it.
‘Don’t make this hard,’ she said, in a voice I didn’t recognize. ‘It really doesn’t need to be.’
‘Is he in?’ I asked.
The guy rested his arm on the doorframe, so that his T-shirt rose up and I caught a glimpse of black hair just beneath his belly button.
‘He doesn’t live here anymore.’
‘When did he leave?’
‘What’s it to you?’
I hesitated, uncertain whether
