The Secrets by Jane Adams

Author:Jane Adams [Adams, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books crime fiction
Published: 2019-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Tuesday late evening

It was the moment Mike had been both seeking and dreading.

‘We’ve got the boy’s parents,’ Price told him, his voice cracking up slightly over the bad phone line.

‘You sure?’ Mike demanded.

‘Well,’ Price conceded, ‘there’s still the formal ID. Jaques wants you there. But they know about the sweatshirt. About the label being cut out and the green stitching on the neck, and he went missing at the right time for it to be him.’

‘Shit!’ Mike whispered. ‘OK, OK. What time’s the ID?’

‘Soon as you can make it there, guv. They’ve driven down. He’d hitched all the way from Birmingham, guv. Daft kid. He used to come on holiday round here. I suppose he thought it was always going to be like that, like some long holiday.’

Mike could hear the tension in Price’s voice even over the line.

‘Half an hour,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’ He paused for a moment, then asked, ‘Do we have a name?’

‘Ryan.’ Price told him. ‘Ryan Sanderson. Fourteen years old. Just fourteen fucking years old.’

* * *

Price stood next to Mr arid Mrs Sanderson. Mike faced them across the body of their son.

Ryan lay in the little chapel close to the mortuary, swathed to the chin in a white sheet, his head was covered with another, leaving only his face and a curl or two of sandy hair visible.

‘You’re certain that this is your son?’ Mike asked gently. But the woman’s stricken face and soft moaning and the man’s sudden pallor told him all he needed to know.

‘Come on, love,’ Price said. ‘We’ll get you some tea.’ He began, gently, to coax them from the room, his arm slipping around the woman’s shoulders.

Mike stood a moment longer looking down at the boy’s pale face. White even against the whiter sheets.

‘You got any kids?’

Mike looked up. Mr Sanderson had paused in the doorway and was staring at Mike with a mixture of anger and resentment in his eyes.

‘Have you got any kids?’ he asked again. "Cause if you have then you’ll know about it. Know it isn’t always easy. You know. They get out of hand now and then and . . . you know . . .’ He paused, wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand, then straightening himself deliberately. ‘He was never a bad kid, though. Not really. Not a bad kid.’

Mike stared back at him. I lost my son too, he wanted to say. I know what you’re going through.

But he couldn’t ever say that. Not to this man. Not to his wife. Not to anyone in circumstances like these.

He sighed deeply and then moved around the body to stand with the other man close to the door.

‘Your wife needs you now,’ was the best he could manage.

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