Jo came back into the main room to report that the tea bags had been nicked, which added insult to injury. She turned her attention to bagging up Jack’s clothes. The furniture that was beyond repair, the green felt table from the back room and the office chairs, I smashed up into smaller pieces before collecting up the sticks of wood and building a small bonfire in the backyard. I swore as I worked that whoever had done this wasn’t going to get away with it.
The upstairs tenants returned from a night’s clubbing not long after two. They were wasted, but that made them so sympathetic I nearly cried. They kept hugging us, pupils wide as jammy dodgers, and one of them went up to their flat and returned with tea bags, milk and two new mugs. I swept the remains of our old crockery into the bin.
We all knew what it was like to be burgled, living in Leeds 6: LS6. No one even mentioned calling the police. We hadn’t got round to sorting out insurance, so there seemed little point in trying to get a crime reference number.
‘We should ring a locksmith,’ I said. ‘Oh, shit. They’ve nicked my phone.’
‘Lee.’ Jo put her hands on her hips.
‘It’s not my fault,’ I said. ‘I’m the victim of a crime.’
‘It’s twenty quid a month we pay for that phone. For the next two years.’
‘Lend me yours.’
‘No.’
‘Fine, I’ll use the landline.’
Jo held up the broken body of the telephone.
I was saved by one of the ravers. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got an old one my mam gave me,’ he said, and he scampered off, this time coming back with a white plastic phone with a built-in answer-machine.
‘Thanks,’ I said, fighting back the tears again. Any act of kindness was bringing me to my knees. I tried to get a grip by calling an emergency locksmith. He promised to be there within the hour.
After a while the upstairs lot left, promising to help us redecorate in the morning. I knew they’d be lucky to have come back to earth by then, but I said thanks anyway. They trotted off back to their upstairs flat, not seeming unduly concerned. Burglaries happen all the time in LS6.
But I knew better. This wasn’t a burglary. This was a warning.
We got the office as straight as we could and then went home. I didn’t sleep at all and by the time I heard Jo’s alarm clock go off on Saturday morning, I’d made a full set of notes, including a timeline that started with Jack’s Christmas visit to his parents, and ended with our burglary.
‘He must have started seeing Carly just before he stopped contacting his parents. And that’s another thing that doesn’t add up.’
‘Morning,’ said Jo, coming into the front room in her Snoopy pyjamas.
‘Mrs Wilkins said she hadn’t heard from him for three months, but he only disappeared a week ago.’
‘Tea?’
‘Why didn’t he contact his mother in all that time before?’
Jo yawned and stretched her arms. ‘We’re sticking with the theory she is his mother?’
‘Stepmother. If his real mum died when he was 5, it stands to reason his dad’s going to remarry. No man’s going to stay on his own all that time, not with a young kid to look after.’
Jo moved her head from side to side like she was trying to find the balance on a set of scales. ‘OK.’
‘So why didn’t he contact them in all that time?’
‘’Cause he had a new girlfriend? Too busy shagging to ring?’
‘I hate that word.’ I pulled on my Docs and tied the laces. ‘A new girlfriend doesn’t explain three months of not ringing. I’m thinking his drug-taking’s getting out of control.’
‘Did you get any sleep?’ asked Jo.
I knew there was a piece of the jigsaw we were missing. I couldn’t get the thought to properly form in my head. I had a list of questions – like why had Jack told Carly he loved her the night before he disappeared? Why had he left the cash behind? And why had he posted the smack to the squat and not the dealers it belonged to? If he owed them cash, why hadn’t he just paid them out of the money he’d left behind? And why hadn’t he taken his clothes? Or got in touch with Carly?
Next to each question I’d written as many possible answers as I could think of. They ranged from ‘because he didn’t know’ to ‘because he’s dead’. The money was the most puzzling thing of all, and I couldn’t help thinking that if I could find the answer to that, I’d be a whole heap closer to discovering what had happened. The only thing that made any sense was that either Jack had been taken away, against his will, or he didn’t know the cash was there. Perhaps the dealers had kidnapped him. But then who would pay up?
Jack’s letter, plus the fact that there hadn’t been a ransom demand, at least not one we knew about, suggested he hadn’t been kidnapped, so I was working on the second theory. Jack didn’t know the money was there. Which, of course, begged the questions: who would hide twenty-four grand in someone else’s socks? And why? One thing was certain, Brownie knew something.
‘Hello?’ said Jo. ‘Tea?’
We needed to go back to the beginning, and to me the beginning spells the nuclear. We’d met Jack’s mother, or at least someone who claimed to be his mother. Stood to reason we now needed to meet his dad. See what light he could shed. Was Jack’s mother dead? Was Mrs Wilkins really a stepmother? And if she was, what kind of stepmother? The kind her stepson confided in? I hoped so, for his sake. Because I know better than anyone, if you’ve lost your mother, and your dad’s an arse, you need someone on your side.
Mrs Wilkins said Jack’s dad had washed his hands of his son. I already knew what I thought of Mr Wilkins. ‘We’re going to speak to his dad,’ I said to Jo.
‘Thought you promised we wouldn’t?’
‘That was when Mrs Wilkins promised me she was his mother. And that she was staying at the Queens.’
‘Fair enough.’ I noticed Jo’s pyjama buttons were done up wrong. ‘How?’
‘She wrote down the address on the client contact form.’
‘Like that’s going to be right. Face it, Lee. Everything she’s told us has been a lie.’
‘I’ll google him.’
‘What? Mr Wilkins, Manchester?’
I pushed her in the direction of the door. ‘Get dressed. We need to get to the offices. She’s supposed to ring at nine. If she can’t get through on my mobile, she’ll ring the landline.’
Jo disappeared into the hall and came back a few moments later with a wooden rounders bat that she kept in the understairs cupboard. Not that she’d ever play rounders, but she’d read somewhere that if you beat up a burglar with something that you could reasonably be expected to have in the house, you wouldn’t get arrested. Fortunately, we’d never been called upon to test this theory. She swung it lightly, like she was warming up. ‘What about the dickheads that broke in last night?’
‘We’ll deal with them later.’
The offices were depressing but I didn’t intend to hang around too long. It was almost nine by the time I got there. Jo detoured via Bobats to buy padlocks and more bin liners.