Cages by David Mark (acx book reading TXT) 📕

little pub across the road. He only goes for a bit of company. Then it’s home via the convenience store, where he picks up whatever’s on offer, toddles off home, and drinks until the screaming in his head falls silent. He’d been about to crack open a bottle of Sailor Jerry rum when Neilsen turned up, fulfilling a promise to keep him informed of any developments. The last half hour has been gruelling for Neilsen, whose own father passed away a year ago. He feels his absence every day. None of the platitudes offered by friends or family have done anything to make him feel better. Yes, he did have a good innings. Yes, he did live a good life. Yes, he did stick around long enough to see his son become an impressive, respected adult. Neilsen takes no comfort in it. He just wishes that he were still alive. Wishes they could argue about football, or politics, or roll their eyes in unison at something said by Mum or some prick on the telly. He just wants him back. And yet he knows his own grief to be a measly thing when compared to the colossal great avalanche of sadness that consumes Bob Roberts.

‘I never thought she’d be there,’ says Bob, quietly. ‘Chappell’s, I mean. I know that place. I’d have felt it, or something, wouldn’t I? I drove past it four or five times a day for years – you think I wouldn’t feel the tug of her?’

Neilsen doesn’t reply. Bob has said the same thing half a dozen times already.

‘Somebody playing silly buggers, if you ask me,’ he says, scratching at the backs of his hands. They’re rough, with sunken knuckles: a tell-tale memento of a long-ago broken hand. Bob was a man’s man, before Bronwen went. Worked for the Yarborough estate: one of the handymen responsible for the general upkeep of the landowner’s huge portfolio of rental properties. He worked hard, liked a drink, and doted on the daughter who came along just as the older kids were preparing to fly the nest. She’d been a surprise to Bob. Hadn’t been to his wife, Jenny, who had decided several months previously that she didn’t know what to be if she weren’t a mother. Jenny has been dead nine years now. She never got to learn what happened to Bronwen. Bob has all but resigned himself to the same fate.

‘Silly buggers, Bob?’

He shrugs. Wipes his hand across his mouth. There’s a sound like paper tearing as his old skin rubs across his coarse stubble. It’s hard to see whether he’s still a big man: he’s wearing so many shirts and fleecy jackets that he could be stick-thin inside a Matryoshka doll of clothes.

‘People like the limelight, don’t they? Like to stick their noses in. He was probably reading about it in a magazine or he listened to one of them podcasts or something. Thought he would help, even though he had nowt to contribute. I remember that Wearside Jack character – sent tapes to the bloke chasing the Yorkshire Ripper and sent them off on a proper wild-goose chase. Cost a few more ladies their lives. It’ll be something like that.’

Neilsen wishes he were brave enough to ask Bob what he prays for. After all these years, there is still a part of him that believes his daughter is alive, and that somehow, she’ll come home. The alternative is that she was taken. That she was hurt. That she was killed, and dumped. And despite the not-knowing, the inability to properly grieve, Neilsen isn’t sure that he wants the search of Chappell’s Farm to lead anywhere. He’s learned to endure the feelings that eat away at him – doesn’t have the strength for the truth.

‘I met him today,’ says Neilsen, licking his lips. He looks away before he has to meet Bob’s eyes. Stares through the little window above the sink and watches a tall man with a little girl on his shoulders emerge from the pub and light a roll-up. Inhales, and holds it with such obvious pleasure that his feet seem to momentarily leave the ground. The girl on his shoulders slaps him on the forehead and they both start to giggle, happy in one another’s company. Neilsen isn’t sure if he’s watching good parenting or bad.

‘Met the guy who made the call?’ asks Bob. ‘The witness?’

Neilsen shakes his head. ‘Griffin Cox.’

They sit in silence for a moment. Bob stares at his hands as if reading a tiny manuscript scored into his old skin. Eventually, Neilsen stands and crosses to the counter, where a thin plastic bag does little to hide the bottles within. He removes the rum, and searches the cupboards until he finds two mugs that will just about serve as drinking vessels. On Bob’s, the tragic message: World’s Best Dad. He pours them both a measure, his own barely enough to wet his lips, then sits back down. Bob wraps his hands around the mug as if it were a hot chocolate and he had just been fished out of a frozen lake.

‘How does he look?’ asks Bob, after taking a deep swallow. ‘I can’t picture him properly. Only met him the once, and he weren’t much of a thing. That’s why I’ve never believed the conspiracy theorists, see? Bronwen wouldn’t have had her head turned by a bloke like that. He was a nothing sort of a bloke. And she was such a good girl.’

Neilsen nods. He doesn’t want to say too much in case it causes the old man more pain, but he fears that whatever happens next, Bob is in for fresh misery. He’s been drunk near-enough insensible ever since Neilsen told him they were digging in Chappell’s Farm based on fresh evidence that she had been deposited there shortly after she disappeared.

‘Tell me again,’ says Neilsen. ‘The presents. The letters. How was she when she received them? I mean, did she seem excited? Secretive? Unimpressed?’

Bob stares past him,