The Camel Trail Read online

  ‘Where are we going?’ Kevin asked.

  Frankie’s voice was calm, reserved. ‘Don’t ask questions. Just wake your friend and have your breakfast.’ He rubbed his forehead and inhaled deeply from his cigarette, turning and breathing smoke out in a cloud above Kevin’s bed.

  Kevin choked but tried to suppress it. ‘Mum’s given up,’ he said. ‘Since New Year.’

  ‘And don’t you ever start,’ Frankie said. ‘These things’ll kill you.’

  Kevin hoped they’d kill his dad this morning. He thought about asking how long they took to kill you, how many you needed to smoke a day before you died.

  He got out of bed and Martin was awake even as he reached out to shake him. Martin struggled into a half sitting position, leaned back against the thin pillow, and yawned. ‘What time’s it?’

  ‘Breakfast time,’ Frankie said. ‘Eat and get dressed. I’m going out for ten minutes and when I’m back I want you both up and ready to go.’ He strode across the room, picking up the door key and his jacket on his way. He left the room, closed the door and Kevin heard the scrape of the key in the lock from the outside.

  After a brief moment of silence, Martin said, ‘He’s not a good kidnapper, you know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He didn’t tie us up and gag us or anything. He just left us here to bang on the door and shout for help.’

  ‘I’m not shouting for help,’ Kevin whispered. ‘He could be on the other side of the door, waiting for us to bang on it.’ He lowered his voice even further. ‘He’s sneaky like that. Here, eat this. Can you walk today?’

  Martin slowly swung his legs out of the bed. ‘I guess so. But I’ll get tired again.’

  ‘You’ll be okay. I’ll help you like yesterday.’

  They ate their cereal bars in subdued discussions about where they might be going. Kevin said London, but they decided Frankie wouldn’t take them there. ‘Too dangerous,’ Martin said. ‘The police’ll probably be at his house waiting for him.’

  ‘I don’t even know where he lives,’ Kevin said. ‘Mum sold the house when we moved. Probably lives with Uncle Robert. He called my Gran a smelly whore once. I heard him.’ Almost as an afterthought, Kevin asked, ‘He’s not going to kill us, is he?’

  Martin shook his head. ‘Of course not. If he wanted to cut us into little pieces he’d have done it by now.’

  ‘Then why did he take us?’

  ‘He didn’t take us, he took you. I’m just along for the ride.’ Martin screwed up the wrapper from his breakfast, looked around for a wastepaper basket, then stuffed it under his pillow.

  ‘But why?’ Kevin asked.

  Martin shrugged. They sat on the sides of their beds, facing each other, knees almost touching. ‘I don’t know, kid,’ Martin said, like a grown-up talking to a child. ‘’Cause you’re his son? Maybe he wants you to live with him.’

  ‘He could have asked.’

  ‘Like you’d have said yes!’

  ‘Well,’ Kevin said, standing and going to the window, ‘he still shouldn’t have taken us like that.’ He breathed on the window and drew concentric circles in the condensation with a finger. After drawing five circles and reaching the perimeter of his misted breath, he pulled his sleeve down over his hand and obliterated the design.

  Martin laid back on his bed and stretched his legs out in front of him, trying to point his toes and push them out as far as they could go, which wasn’t very far at all, Kevin saw.

  ‘Want me to help you exercise?’ he asked.

  ‘—the two boys went missing yesterday morning,’ the news presenter said. ‘It is believed they are with the father of one of the boys, who was released from prison last week. More on our top story after this—’

  Frankie had walked down to the rank of phones to call Robert but stopped when he heard the TV. It was a small portable set rigged high up on the wall in the main concourse, opposite a few screwed-in-place seats. The reception wasn’t perfect but it was clear enough. At least they didn’t show any photos, he thought. He glanced around. A couple of men, lorry drivers by the look of it, sat in the chairs but appeared to pay little attention to the television. They were studying a road atlas.

  There were others passing by, but thankfully no one stationary long enough to have heard the full news report. He took two more steps towards the phone bank, shuffling in his pocket for a few coins, but stopped in his tracks. He turned and hurried back to the room. Phone taps, that’s what he was thinking. Phone taps, and people listening into private conversations. He wasn’t sure if the busies could actually tap a phone or not, but these things in the movies always had some truth in them. He wasn’t going to risk it.

  As he took the stairs two at a time, he debated his next move. London was out, that was definite. He could probably take them up to Scotland. Maybe detour around Wales, just for the hell of it. But what was in Scotland? Mountains and the Highland fling. Rustic and out-of-the-way cottages to hole up in. But then what?

  For the first time since jumping in Robert’s car and leaving London in the early hours of yesterday, Frankie wondered just what in the hell he was doing.

  When he rattled the key in the door of their room, twisted it, entered—not stopping, not looking back until he was inside and the door was closed—the boys were sat on the edge of one bed, already wearing their coats, sitting so close together they could have been Siamese twins. He picked up the few small things he had brought into the room with him last night, threw Martin’s backpack over one shoulder, and asked him, ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fast?’ When Martin shrugged, Frankie opened the door again and said, ‘Let’s go. If you fall behind I’m going to leave your snotty nose behind. Kevin, on your feet.’ He pushed them out through the door, closed it, left the key in the lock, and hurried them along the corridor. ‘Damn it, son, can’t you go any faster?’

  ‘I told you yesterday, I’m not your—’

  Frankie pushed Martin hard, watched him lose his balance, arms flailing, but he regained it before toppling over. He gripped the boy’s coat at the neck and picked up his pace, marched them down the stairs and across the concourse. He didn’t slow down until they were clear of the building, the automatic doors swishing closed behind them on near-silent pneumatics.

  He let go of Martin’s coat, scanned the overnight car park, pointed and said, ‘This way.’ He let the boys follow behind him this time.

  At a ticket pay-point, he pushed his ticket in and had to feed a note in twice before it registered, spat out some change, and returned his ticket. When they got to the car, he opened the rear door and ushered the boys inside, then climbed in the front seat. At the exit barrier, he forced his ticket into the machine and waited for the barrier to rise. thank you, drive safely, the readout displayed. He was moving the car forward before the barrier had risen its full height.

  He didn’t have a clue where they were anymore. They were driving along a road that looked like all the other roads and Kevin’s sense of time had disappeared along with Padstow. In the front passenger seat, Frankie had laid out a road map and referred to it sporadically with quick glances, even though this road seemed endlessly straight and long.

  Beside him, Martin was moving his feet back and forward on the floor, exercising to some degree in the small space provided. His forehead was pressed against the window and it appeared he was blinking his eyes every time an electrical pylon whizzed by. When he sat up straight again, he said, ‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with…P.’

  Kevin stared at him a moment, confused, then turned and looked out his window, scanning their surroundings. ‘Pylon,’ he said. ‘Too easy.’

  ‘Wrong.’

  ‘Oh.’ He thought a bit more, sounding the letter in his mouth as he searched. ‘Puh…People?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Passengers.’

  ‘Wrong.’

  ‘Pansies,’ Frankie said from the driver’s seat.

  ‘Wh
at?’ Martin asked.

  ‘In that field we just passed. Pansies. The flower.’

  ‘They weren’t pansies,’ Martin said. ‘They come out in the spring.’ He turned back to Kevin, dismissing Frankie with a cold look. ‘Give up?’

  ‘Yes. No. Hang on.’ He stared out the window again. ‘Penguins,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the Antarctic. They don’t live in the Arctic. Okay, I give up.’

  ‘Paint,’ Martin said.

  In unison, disbelieving, both Kevin and Frankie cried, ‘Paint?’ Kevin added, ‘Where?’

  ‘On the road,’ Martin said. ‘The white lines.’ He laughed. ‘You lose. My turn again.’

  Frankie promptly turned the radio on, scanned through a couple of channels, and sang along loudly to a Lady Gaga song. Playtime was over. Kevin and Martin looked at each other, a nonverbal conversation passing between them. They both settled back in their seats and Kevin resumed his stare through the window.

  When the song was over—Kevin liked Lady Gaga, but he was willing to revise that in light of Frankie’s similar music tastes—Frankie turned the volume down and patted the passenger seat. ‘Come and sit up front, Kev.’

  Kevin flattened his lips against each other and said nothing. He was fine where he was, thank you very much.

  ‘Kevin.’ It was a command.

  Trying to keep the worried expression out of his face as he looked at Martin, Kevin unbuckled his seatbelt and struggled through the gap between the two front seats. Once he was settled, he buckled up and Frankie dropped the road map on his lap.

  ‘You always like sitting up front, right?’ Frankie asked.

  Kevin did not respond. He raised his hands to the heating vents on the dash to warm them.

  Some things you just can’t win, but by heck he’d win this one, Frankie thought. If the stupid bitch hadn’t run off in the first place, none of this would have happened. It was all her fault, disappearing like that without a word, fleeing in the middle of the night with a bus ticket to God knew where, a suitcase under one arm, their boy under the other. He looked at Kevin, who was staring straight ahead through the windscreen. He hadn’t answered his question, but Frankie let it pass. This time.

  Their life together felt like it had been in another time, some bygone era of yesteryear, and—a man can admit his mistakes—maybe he drank too much and didn’t spend an awful lot of time with the boy, but all that was about to change. He wondered if Kevin liked golf. Not that he did, but you had to please the little ones some times.

  The first time he was told Sarah had disappeared was three months into his stint inside. Robert came with their mother, who wasn’t looking as dog-tired and dying then as she currently did. Initially, conversation ranged from prison food to football, but when their mother took a toilet break, Robert plunged in with, ‘She’s gone, mate. Took the kid and fucked off into nowhere.’

  ‘What do you mean she’s gone?’ Frankie had asked.

  ‘The house is up for sale and she’s vanished.’

  ‘That’s my house!’

  ‘Not officially. You know her name was on the mortgage,’ Robert said. His eyes had squinted as though expecting an outburst from Frankie. And Frankie would have given him one, too, if their mother hadn’t returned and the screw wasn’t breathing down his neck from behind. ‘Mum doesn’t know yet,’ Robert had whispered as she approached the table, and they said no more about it.

  It turned out the bitch had put the house on the market and didn’t wait around for a sale. According to Robert, who managed to get inside the house one day, most of her stuff was still there, the furniture, some crockery, even some dirty laundry. A couple of drawers were empty and her wardrobe had been whittled, and the majority of Kevin’s things were gone, but other than enough to fill a taxi, she left everything behind. Robert had taken a few items from the house to keep for Frankie. A photo album, not that he wanted reminders of what the bitch looked like; the carriage clock that his mother had given him for Christmas a few years before; some of his old clothes; and his car keys—the bitch had left his car in the driveway. He got Robert to sell it, anyway, while he was still inside, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, she left it, practically with a sign on it saying Steal me.

  The grey sky above them opened its floodgates and within minutes the road was a river in the making and Frankie had the wipers on at full speed. ‘Look at that, boys,’ he said. ‘It’s just bouncing back up off the road.’

  Neither Kevin nor Martin said a word.

  Frankie was getting tired of these silences. He reached out to tousle Kevin’s hair, like he used to when he was younger, and frowned when Kevin shied away from his hand. ‘I’m not going to hit you,’ Frankie said.

  Kevin stared at him form the corner of his eyes, as though too afraid to face him.

  Frankie reached again, stretched, and messed up Kevin’s hair. ‘There,’ he said. ‘You used to like it when I did that.’

  Mumbling, Kevin said, ‘Things change.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The press conference was scheduled for ten o’clock and Sarah, Tessa, Graeme and Alan were at the police station thirty minutes beforehand for a briefing. Sergeant Williams, who had spoken with them yesterday, had introduced a man in a suit whose name escaped Sarah as soon as she heard it. He was currently going through some details about the format of the conference. She stopped listening after he said they’d read a statement and probably won’t take many questions. ‘Any questions the press do have can be answered by the sergeant,’ the man had said.

  The fact that she was going to be on television, probably even nationally, did not occur to her, and when they did finally sit down in front of a flock of reporters and a bank of microphones, she stared at the big TV cameras, registering only the black lenses, dark glassy eyes that appeared to be staring at her, accusing her.

  Cameras flashed.

  On her immediate left, ever comforting, was Alan, dressed in a pale blue shirt and navy tie, clean shaven and upright. Beside him sat Sergeant Williams in full uniform. On her right was Tessa, who clung to Graeme’s hand like it provided sustenance, and at the end of the table was the suited man who now stood and introduced himself to the gathered press as Chief Superintendent Danny Spelling, Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.

  He introduced the seated party members, labelling Alan as a family friend and physical therapist, pulled up a pair of photos—Kevin and Martin looking angelic—on the big screen behind him, and continued, ‘Both MISPERS are assumed to have been abducted by Francis Anthony Catchpole, father of Kevin Catchpole. He was released from HM Prison Wandsworth on the eleventh of January, this year—just last week. This information has not yet been confirmed, but until Mr Catchpole comes forward and clears his name, we’re working to the assumption of his involvement.’

  He clicked a buzzer in his hand and Frankie’s police mug-shot replaced the boys’ pictures. He looked a mess, his hair dishevelled, a stain on one shoulder of his T-shirt, darker grey against pale in the black and white shot: her blood, she assumed, from the night he raped and beat her.

  ‘Mr Catchpole is believed to have disappeared from London on Saturday night.’ He clicked his buzzer again and brought back the pictures of Kevin and Martin. ‘Both boys are nine years old,’ he said. ‘Kevin has fair hair, blue eyes, 135cm, slim build. Martin has brown hair, blue eyes, and is 131cm, with a similar build to Kevin.’ He paused, glanced at Graeme and Tessa, and added, ‘Martin suffers from a degenerative disorder known as Duchenne muscular dystrophy. For a brief description of this condition, I’ll let Alan fill you in.’

  He sat and Alan appeared not to have heard the reference to his name. Danny Spelling said, ‘Alan?’

  Alan cleared his throat, half stood, then sat back in his chair. He cleared his throat again and said, ‘That’s right. Duchenne muscular dystrophy. It’s a degenerative disease that affects the voluntary mus
cles, caused by an absence of dystrophin in the body. Dystrophin is a protein that helps keep muscles in a fit and working fashion. It’s an X-linked recessive disorder, which means it’s passed from mother to son, though the mother won’t normally show any signs of being a carrier.’

  He outlined the symptoms and the hope for a possible cure, and his voice wavered a little when he mentioned the mortality rate. ‘Research is getting better and more avenues are opening up all the time, but DMD sufferers are not expected to survive beyond their late twenties, very early thirties in exceptional cases.’

  Sarah looked at Tessa, who was staring at her hand clasped in Graeme’s with intense fascination, and if it weren’t for the solitary tear that slipped down her cheek, Sarah would have thought she hadn’t been listening.

  It broke her heart. All their lives, Tessa and Graeme had been waiting for Martin to reach the end of his short lifespan, hoping against all hope that he might live that extra year, walk that extra mile. Maybe hoping for a cure before it got too late. And now, thanks to Sarah, they had just that little bit more to worry about.

  ‘Martin can walk at the minute,’ Alan said, ‘but he tires easily and should have a wheelchair available when needed. And without his daily medication regime, he will likely wear himself out even quicker.’

  When Alan finished his introduction to muscular dystrophy and the rate at which Martin’s health would be declining, Danny Spelling stood, spoke for a minute or two, and then gave way to Sarah. The paper on which her statement was typed shivered in her hands. She began to read but found it much too difficult to annunciate the words before her. On her third attempt to read from the paper, she gave up and sat the paper down. She took a few seconds to compose herself and said, ‘We just want our sons back, that’s all.’ The press were silent. ‘If Frankie has them, we just want them back.’ She looked directly at one of the news cameras in front of her. ‘Kevin, honey, you know I love you. If you’re watching this, Mummy loves you. Please, if anyone sees our children, call the police.’ She slammed her fist on the table. ‘Frankie, you bastard, give me back my son.’