Tall Oaks: A gripping missing child thriller with a devastating twist Page 5

  He sat down, pressed play.

  “Are you getting anywhere, Jim? Have you found anything at all?”

  “We’re doing all we can.”

  She didn’t have anywhere else to go, no one else she felt she could talk to. He wondered how much longer she could go on.

  He skipped ahead again.

  “He loves his father so much. I mean, I know boys and their fathers have a special bond, but you should’ve seen him when Michael stopped by. His face lit up. I never told him when Michael was coming though, in case he didn’t show.”

  “Did he see Harry much?”

  “No. Only if he needed something from the house. He’d usually stop by after Harry was asleep; he said he didn’t want to confuse him. But Harry always woke up. It was like he had some kind of sensor that told him when his father was in the house. He’d climb the stairs and walk into the living room, his hair sticking up and his eyes all squinted. He had these cute pajamas, with letters and numbers all over them. So he’d stagger into the room, his legs wobbly, and then he’d see Michael and break out the widest smile. Then he’d make him stay and read to him, even though Michael said he had to go, and made eyes at me to help him out.”

  “So he didn’t want to spend time with him, read to him, stick around until he fell asleep?”

  “I could smell her on him.”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever he was fucking. He smelled like her. Probably that whore from his office.”

  “Cindy Collins?”

  “I saw lipstick on his shirt once. Fucking cliché. He didn’t bother hiding it by then.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “He drifted from my life, Jim. He started working longer hours, staying in hotels, not coming home. There was no one time where he said that’s it, it’s over. We’d argue over the phone. He’d say he’d had enough, shit like that. I thought it was just a fight. Then he packed some bags when I was out with Harry. I came home and saw some of his clothes were gone. I thought it was a rough patch . . . that we’d work things out.”

  “Even though he was cheating?”

  “Yeah, even though he was cheating. I can imagine how that sounds, but what if you just know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That there’s nobody else out there for you; that you’ve found the only person that will ever make you happy. What do you do? You can be strong, kick them out, never be happy again. Or you can hold on, take the rough with the smooth. Because at least there’re some good times, some chance that one day he’ll see how nice you treat him and stop fucking around. He’ll love you. And then you get everything.”

  “So you’d do that to keep him? You’d put up with it, with how he treated you?”

  “Yes, I would. And I did. But it still wasn’t enough. He still left.”

  He stopped the tape and opened the blinds, watching the town slowly come to life.

  Abe climbed into the car, a broad smile on his face.

  Manny looked at him and frowned.

  “Well?” Abe said.

  “Well, what?”

  “Check it. You said get a new suit. I found this number in my father’s closet.”

  Abe straightened his lapels, fired his cuffs.

  “It’s the same as the old one.”

  “No. This one’s double-breasted. Gangster.”

  “It’s the same color.”

  “Wrong again, M.”

  “Well what color was the old one?”

  “Evening Barley. I told you.”

  Manny sighed. “What color’s this one?”

  “My dad says it’s biscotti.”

  “What the fuck is the difference? They’re both fucking tan.”

  Manny stepped on the gas, shaking his head as he did.

  “This one has a buttercream lining,” Abe said, opening the jacket.

  “Well, I think it’s nice,” Furat said, from the back seat.

  “I think it’s nice too,” Thalia said from beside her.

  Manny slowed at the lights.

  He glanced to his left, saw an old man staring back at him.

  The man was driving an Escape, same year as the duck-egg, but his was black.

  The old man smiled and motioned for Manny to open his window.

  Manny did and the old man leaned out. “You went with the duck-egg. She’s beautiful. I wanted her for myself, but the wife made me go for the black.”

  Manny fumed silently, then turned to Abe. “You see. This is what happens when you drive a fucking duck-egg blue Escape. Old men think it’s okay to start conversations with you, even if you’re a gangster wearing a three-piece and a fedora, and might very well have a Smith and Wesson tucked into your belt.”

  Manny heard the old man whistle his appreciation.

  “Your wife made you go for the black?” Manny said.

  “Yes, sir, said she felt the duck-egg would be harder for a man to drive. But you look wonderful in yours, especially with the hat and the suit. Just dandy.”

  Furat leaned forward and gripped Manny’s shoulder tightly. He could feel her willing him to keep his mouth shut.

  “Well, they do say that once you go black you never go back. Ask your wife about that.”

  Manny closed the window.

  Furat tried desperately not to laugh.

  As they pulled into a space on the wide, tree-lined Main Street, Manny shut the engine off and tried to ignore the sparkle of the paintwork as he walked round to get Thalia out.

  “M, some of the bandage is showing,” Abe said.

  Manny adjusted his hat until the thick, white bandage was hidden.

  “If the wind picks up and that hat blows off you’re going to look ridiculous,” Furat said.

  “One, it’s not windy today; I checked the weather report. And two, the hat’s so fucking tight that your father, plus all of his Al Qaeda brethren, couldn’t get the thing off, even if the fucking CIA undercover operative list was hidden inside.”

  They walked slowly up Main Street, the Don holding hands with his three-year-old sister; a sight that made Furat smile.

  Roger sat by the swimming pool and closed his eyes. It was hot again. Too hot for golf; too hot for tennis; too hot for anything at all.

  Henrietta was working in the Tearoom, which she ran with her sister, Alison. Though given the circumstances, Alison spent much of her time with Jess now.

  He thought of Jess often.

  Hen would be gone all day, which was why he’d felt confident enough to wear the trunks. He had ordered them online, though struggled with the sizing. He had an old pair, from his days as 100-meter, freestyle champion at Trinity College, and they were a medium, though a little baggy on the seat. So he had ordered a small. But they were so skimpy they bordered on indecent. Were he to wear them to the public pool he felt certain he would be arrested. All it would take was a strong kick of the leg, or an attempt to swim butterfly, and one of his testicles would break free and announce itself to the hordes of teenage girls that flocked there of a weekend.

  He breathed deeply. A sickly smell of coconut filled the air: tanning lotion, also surreptitiously ordered online. It wasn’t the kind that Hen bought, the kind that protected. He reached for the bottle. Tropical Heaven.

  He frowned at the label. Though far from convinced that the scientists at Tropical Heaven had indeed succeeded in unlocking the secrets of the sun, he’d slathered it on liberally.

  From his limited understanding it would basically turn his body into a solar panel.

  Just as he was beginning to drift, the scent of burning flesh, combined with that of the noise of the bolt on the side gate sliding across, woke him.

  He opened his eyes wide. Someone was coming in.

  He stood quickly, then launched himself into the pool.

  The water was cold.

  He sank deep and stayed under until his chest burned, staring back at the surface, hoping that the figures approaching might turn and leave again.

  When he
could hold his breath no longer, he surfaced, gasping for air and staring straight into the handsome face of Richard—real man, Richard—and two of his men.

  “Henrietta asked us to call round and finish painting the back of the house. You remember Chuck and Eddie?” Richard said.

  He did—he had trouble forgetting them. Eddie had the chiseled body of a Greek god, and so rarely wore a shirt, and Chuck had a tattoo on the back of his neck that read “made in the USA, 1980”, as if he were some kind of doll, produced for housewives that had tired of the far less virile models they had married.

  “I thought you were finished? It looks good enough to me,” he said, hoping to flatter them away. He smiled at Eddie, who looked away quickly.

  “It needs another coat. Otherwise, come winter, it’ll start to fade.”

  “Righty-ho.”

  Hen had told him that no one said “righty-ho” anymore, especially not in America. An ass. That’s what she’d called him. An ass. At that moment, in his tiny trunks and reeking of coconut, he could do little but agree. He was an ass.

  “If you don’t need me, I’ll just be relaxing in the pool,” he said, eyeing his towel.

  “Could you open the garage for us? The paint’s in there. And while we’re at it we’ll take a look at the termite problem,” Richard said, smirking.

  Chuck and Eddie laughed.

  Roger felt the humiliation as the three real men walked back out of the gate, still laughing.

  With little time to waste, he climbed out of the pool, ran to his lounger and started to unravel his towel, quickly discovering it was a hand towel.

  A very small hand towel.

  He glanced at the gate and saw them untying the ladder from the roof of their truck. He contemplated running for the house. It was a long way. He cursed the Americans, with their abundance of land. In London, had he wanted to put a pool in the garden of their mews house, he would have had to sacrifice the living room and most of the kitchen in the process.

  He wrapped the towel tightly around the front of his trunks and then waddled toward the house, just as the real men walked back through the gate.

  He caught his reflection in the glass doors and winced. From the front, he resembled a cheap hooker with a skirt so short that it barely covered the source of her income. And from the rear, unbeknownst to him, but clearly apparent to the real men as he passed them, his robust exit from the pool had caused the thin expanse of material to disappear into the crevice of his bottom.

  Richard turned to Eddie. “I thought the Brits were more reserved.”

  Eddie shook his head, dropped his paintbrush, then began to walk away. “I’m not working here again. Just get one of the other guys to come over.”

  “What’s up with you today?”

  Eddie shrugged.

  Richard glared at him.

  Eddie gestured in the direction of the house, clearly agitated. “I could nearly see his asshole.”

  “Oh shit, man, nice shirt,” Manny said, as Jerry stood to greet them.

  Max had given Jerry the shirt, then insisted he wear it. They were to begin printing T-shirts, and Max said that wearing the shirt would be the perfect way to advertise. It was a little tight, like most of his clothes, and Jerry felt very self-conscious wearing it.

  Though he didn’t really understand the writing—LADIES, THIS IS WHERE IT’S AT—or why the red arrow beneath pointed down to the ground, he was certain that it was a joke made at his expense. Max liked to play jokes on him; jokes that Jerry didn’t find all that funny if he was honest.

  “Hey, Jerry. Did you see NAP this month? That new Sony is something else. Did you see what it does in low light?”

  Abe was one of the few people Jerry knew that shared his love of photography.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it. I bet it’s heavy—nice heavy, not like the Minoltas.”

  “You should get Max to order one, replace that Hasselblad that got stolen. Any news on that yet?”

  Jerry shook his head.

  “Is Max still pissed about it? Did he get the insurance money yet?”

  Jerry shook his head again. “I mean, he’s still mad, but he hasn’t got the insurance money.”

  Jerry felt his cheeks begin to burn. His dad used to laugh when Jerry got nervous or embarrassed, used to say he looked like a beetroot.

  “You going to enter the competition this year? I’ve seen some of your work, Jerry, it’s awesome. You should get Max to put your photos up again.”

  “He likes the ones of the girls instead,” Jerry said, glancing up at the framed photos, most of models in various states of undress, all black and white, all masquerading as art.

  “Well, I think you’d have a good shot at winning. I mean, Dawit’s was good, but a bit . . . point and click.”

  Manny turned to Furat when the conversation moved on to the merits of last year’s winning picture. “It’s like listening to Barry White talk to the guy on that YouTube clip. You know, the one that’s had his nuts removed.”

  Furat nodded in agreement. “They should switch voices.”

  Manny walked over and interrupted them.

  “Thalia is here for her pictures. We got that voucher from the newspaper.”

  Jerry checked the diary then smiled nervously at Thalia.

  Thalia hid behind Furat’s leg.

  Max usually dealt with the kids. He had a trick to get them to smile.

  Jerry picked up the phone, dialed Max’s cell phone and listened. He glanced down at Thalia again, then up at Manny and the new girl. The new girl smiled at him. He looked away quickly. He prayed Max would answer, his heart sinking when he heard the voicemail.

  “Max isn’t answering. He always deals with the kids. I’ll try him again in a minute,” Jerry said, quietly.

  “I’m not going home again, Jerry, just because that lazy prick hasn’t bothered showing up. Can’t you just do it?” Manny said, pulling at his collar again, trying to stretch it, if only for long enough to allow him a proper breath.

  “Max taught me how to do the portraits once, but that was six years ago.”

  “She’s a kid. How hard can it be?”

  Jerry led them reluctantly through to the small back room they used as a studio.

  The floor was polished white. Max made him clean it every day—he liked it to gleam. The walls were white too, and there was a box full of props that they sometimes used.

  Jerry didn’t ever do the portraits. Max said he wasn’t a people person so was better off sticking to the technical stuff. That and he might frighten the kids, him being so big and them being so small.

  Jerry picked up a tiny, wicker basket and asked the little girl to get into it.

  “Jesus, Jerry. That’s for newborn babies. She’s three.”

  Jerry placed the basket back into the box, his face burning bright as he felt their eyes on him. He hated people looking at him. Even nice people like Abe. In his experience they didn’t stay nice. He’d thought the school kids were nice. They’d come in, smiled at him, and then asked him lots of questions about photography. He’d thought they were interested, but really they just wanted to hear him speak, so that they could laugh at him. They’d come into the store in big groups, boys and girls, only ever when Max wasn’t there. The boys would stare, point and laugh so hard that they turned red too. The girls didn’t laugh; they’d just stare, and sometimes whisper. He could always make out what they were saying though, always something about his weight.

  He tried desperately to diet. His mother said it was genetic, that he shouldn’t fight it, but Jerry knew that all the food she cooked didn’t help. Food that she piled high on his plate, food that she said would make him feel better. And it did, when he’d come home from school in tears, the chocolate brownies had made him smile again.

  For a time Jerry had been doing better, skipping lunch, losing weight. He even tried jogging, after dark, so his mother wouldn’t see. He’d lost thirty pounds. But then she’d gotten sick, and he’d needed the
brownies again, the pies, the cakes, all of it.

  After some not-so-subtle cajoling from her brother, Thalia climbed up onto the small armchair and stared down the lens of the camera.

  “Big smile, Thal,” Manny said.

  Thalia sat perfectly still, stone-faced.

  Abe grinned at her and poked his tongue out. Thalia glared back.

  “Please, Thalia? We’ll take you for ice cream after,” Furat said.

  Thalia shook her head.

  They all turned to Jerry.

  Jerry knew that Max blew on the kids and they smiled back at him, but he didn’t know if that was just the babies, or if it worked for the older kids too. Something about the breeze on their faces made them smile.

  He took a deep breath and blew. Hard.

  Thalia drew back and put her hand up to stop the onslaught.

  “What the fuck, Jerry? She’s not going to smile with you blowing your dragon breath all over her,” Manny said.

  Manny crouched beside Thalia, who appeared to be on the verge of tears.

  Jerry drew an even deeper breath. He sucked the air deep down into his stomach and then blew with all of his might.

  Manny took the brunt in his left ear.

  “Shit, Jerry,” Manny said, doubling over, a hand to his ear. “I think you’ve damaged the drum.”

  Manny looked up and caught Furat frowning at him. He raised his hands and took a step back.

  Jerry crouched low, which wasn’t all that easy, raised the camera and peered through the lens. The little girl stared back at him, and then began to cry.

  “What’s the matter, Thal? He’s not going to blow on you again,” Manny said.

  Thalia pointed at the wall behind Jerry, at the line of framed photographs showing the most photogenic of children.

  “It’s Harry,” she said.

  Jerry turned, following her gaze, and then felt the sweat creep down his spine when he saw Harry Monroe’s angelic face smiling back at them.

  7

  Gradual Retreat

  Jess sat across the cluttered desk from Jim: a weekly ritual that both were growing to hate, though neither would soon let go of it. Three months had passed since Harry had been taken; three long, dark and agonizing months; months that ran together into the kind of nightmare from which Jess wondered if she’d ever wake.