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Chapters (93)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Chapter 1
  5. Part One
  6. Chapter 1
  7. Chapter 2
  8. Chapter 3
  9. Chapter 4
  10. Chapter 5
  11. Chapter 6
  12. Chapter 7
  13. Chapter 8
  14. Chapter 9
  15. Chapter 10
  16. Part Two
  17. Chapter 1
  18. Chapter 2
  19. Chapter 3
  20. Chapter 4
  21. Chapter 5
  22. Chapter 6
  23. Chapter 7
  24. Chapter 8
  25. Chapter 9
  26. Chapter 10
  27. Chapter 11
  28. Chapter 12
  29. Part Three
  30. Chapter 1
  31. Chapter 2
  32. Chapter 3
  33. Chapter 4
  34. Chapter 5
  35. Chapter 6
  36. Chapter 7
  37. Part Four
  38. Chapter 1
  39. Chapter 2
  40. Chapter 3
  41. Chapter 4
  42. Chapter 5
  43. Chapter 6
  44. Chapter 7
  45. Chapter 8
  46. Chapter 9
  47. Part Five
  48. Chapter 1
  49. Chapter 2
  50. Chapter 3
  51. Chapter 4
  52. Chapter 5
  53. Chapter 6
  54. Chapter 7
  55. Chapter 8
  56. Chapter 9
  57. Chapter 10
  58. Chapter 11
  59. Part Six
  60. Chapter 1
  61. Chapter 2
  62. Chapter 3
  63. Chapter 4
  64. Chapter 5
  65. Chapter 6
  66. Chapter 7
  67. Part Seven
  68. Chapter 1
  69. Chapter 2
  70. Chapter 3
  71. Chapter 4
  72. Chapter 5
  73. Chapter 6
  74. Chapter 7
  75. Chapter 8
  76. Chapter 9
  77. Chapter 10
  78. Chapter 11
  79. Part Eight
  80. Chapter 1
  81. Chapter 2
  82. Chapter 3
  83. Chapter 4
  84. Chapter 5
  85. Chapter 6
  86. Chapter 7
  87. Chapter 8
  88. Chapter 9
  89. Epilogue
  90. Acknowledgments
  91. Reading Group Guide
  92. About the Author
  93. Copyright

And then, the day before New Year’s Eve, came the news that a boy had disappeared. Not in the local press this time, but in The Times, and on TV, on Nationwide and the nine o’clock news. At four fifteen or thereabouts, a teenage boy had disappeared on his way home from White City, barely half a mile away.

No one had seen anything suspicious. No one knew where the boy might have gone. Last seen at a corner shop, where Mill Lane turns into Parkside Road, he’d stopped to buy a bottle of Fanta, and then had apparently disappeared from the face of the planet—

The boy was Charlie Nutter. And he had last been seen less than a hundred yards away from Harry’s house on Parkside Road, just over from the clay pits.

Part Four

PART FOUR

Fama volat.

—VERGIL

Chapter 1

1

December 1981

So that was Christmas, Mousey. Old films; Queen’s Speech; dinner in front of the TV. It’s okay, unless you’re used to a higher level of excitement. And then there’s the way you have to pretend that you’re having a brilliant time; opening presents; reading cards; pretending they’re just what you wanted. The new bike on the front porch that you have to pretend is such a surprise. The money from your grandparents in a reused envelope, with a card that looks as if it came from a secondhand shop in the fifties. And then there’s the turkey, dried to a crisp, and the pudding, and the mince pies; and the carol service in the Church, with the red-haired Mulberry girl wearing a long white nightgown and singing “Little Donkey.”

I’ve not seen Poodle or Goldie much. Poodle’s had some trouble at home. Doesn’t surprise me, really. He never could keep a secret. Anyway, his Condition now seems to be public knowledge, thanks to his mother. Seems she found some of Poodle’s drawings, hidden inside a schoolbook. It didn’t take long to get him to confess, and then it was just a matter of time.