Charlie puts a hand on her arm. “Stop apologizing, Mum. It’s OK.”
I open my backpack and lay out the other contents of the dresser on the table between us, one by one. The scarf. The wallet. The glasses. The old mobile phone. The single key, two rings looped through the key ring. The dusty little collection looks incongruous in this homely café with its net curtains and doilies on the tables. Maxine doesn’t say it, but I know she’s hoping to recognize some of these things, hoping the dogcollar wasn’t a one-off. Because if there is more here that belonged to her husband, more clues, then perhaps she will be one step closer to finding out what happened to him.
One step closer to the truth.
“I don’t know if we’ll find an answer,” I say, putting the backpack down on the floor. “But maybe it means we can ask the police questions about your husband again.”
I try to imagine the thread that might connect the Hopkins family to Adrian Parish. They had lived in different parts of the county and presumably moved in different circles. Could the two men have worked together, or had something else in common? Adrian Parish would be in his fifties now, decades younger than Eric Hopkins. Maybe there had been a professional connection through work. Combining their names in a Google search last night hadn’t generated anything useful—but it was more than twenty years ago, when the internet was nothing like it was today.
Maxine’s eyes flick from one object to the next and back again, a hand covering her mouth as if she’s frightened of crying out. After a long moment she reaches out tentatively and begins to pick up each item in turn, starting with the wallet. Holding it gingerly, almost reverently, as if concerned that it might fall to pieces. Studying it from all angles, lifting her glasses to her forehead so she can peer close up.
None of us speak. Charlie rests a protective hand on her back while she goes from one item to the next. He catches my eye for a moment and the message is the same as when we first sat down:This better not be a joke. I give him a tight smile and turn back to Maxine as she lays the wallet down on the table and picks up the glasses with their cracked lens. The only other sounds in thecafé are the low background hum of a radio somewhere in the kitchen, the occasionalchinkof crockery, the soft murmur of conversation at another table.
Finally, Maxine lays the last item back on the table with a trembling hand.
There are tears streaming down her face. Charlie hands her a napkin.
“What is it, Mum?” he says. “Did some of this stuff belong to Dad as well? Do you recognize it?”
She tries to speak but at first it comes out in a choking sob.
Instead, she shakes her head.
“I hoped I would,” she says through her tears. “I prayed that I would. But I don’t remember any of this. Not a single thing.”
27
Charlie puts an arm around his mother’s shoulders.
“It’s OK, Mum. It’s all right. It was worth a try.”
Maxine is still shaking her head. She picks up the key again, turns it over, puts it back down. A heavy tear falls from her chin onto the grooved wooden table.
“I thought…” She sniffs. “If all this stuff, all these things were his, it mightmeansomething, you know? That he’d gone somewhere, or lived somewhere else after he left me—he’d got tired of me and wanted a clean break, a fresh start or whatever. We had something special, the two of us, but there was always a tiny part of me that hoped hehadleft, that he’d got bored of me and wanted to start a new life. Because it was easier to imagine than the alternative.”
My sympathy for her is tempered by a powerful sense of anticlimax, of discovering more questions without answers. The slumping sensation of another dead end, that all my efforts so far have been for nothing. But I’ve never liked to admit defeat and it makes me even more determined to help her—and her son.
Charlie pats her arm and gently suggests she drink some of her coffee. She gives him a watery smile and takes a sip of the latte, the cup clasped tightly in both hands.
To me, he says: “The collar you found, that belonged to Woody? What if the police could, like, analyze it for forensic evidence or something? Might be a clue to finding my dad.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” I say. “Tried speaking to a detective this morning, but she wasn’t very interested.”
I describe my call with DC Rubin, an overworked detective with too many cases and not enough time.
Maxine snorts, puts her coffee cup down with a clatter.
“You want to know the police theory at the time, about why Woody was found without a collar?” She cuffs another tear angrily away. “Their brilliant theory was that Adrian had deliberately taken it off because he wanted someone else to take Woody in—that they’d see him wandering without a collar, without an owner, and assume he was a stray in need of a new home. Which is an absolute load of crap. It was then and it still is now.”
It’s the most animated she’s been since she arrived, a hint of the fire that still smoldered even though she had lost her husband all those years ago. I study her for a moment over my coffee cup, only the low chatter of other customers and the whirr of the coffee machine to fill the silence.
“So there was never a criminal investigation?”
“Adrian was only ever classified as a missing person, which made a massive difference in terms of how much attention he got. The police never elevated it to anything higher, more urgent—and this was before Facebook and all the rest so I didn’t have many options to get the word out.” She glances at her son with a sad smile. “And I was pregnant, of course, then looking after a little one, which made it all the more difficult to keep badgering the police.”
“I’m sure you did all you could,” I say. “Just sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
Charlie has been studying the old Motorola while we’ve been talking, turning it over in his hand. He holds it up to me now, as if to ask my permission.
