Free Finding Davey by Jonathan Gash Page B

stalling speed. A single day over age, you’ve no hope of adopting.”
    They eventually heard of a lawyer in another state, an expert in adoption. There were medical centres specialising in orphans who, once they’d recovered from accident or mental trauma, were adoptable.
    You had to go through registered doctors licensed to practice.
    “All above board, Officer. My husband doesn’t do dishonest.”
    “You met the lawyer?”
    “No. We had a name. I gave it to your people.”
    He already knew it but pressed her. It checked. “Did you take it further, Mrs Baines?”
    “No. My husband worried they might be false. We tried other agencies. We got their names from state attorney people, but gave up. You can’t keep on for ever.”
    He said there was nothing wrong with giving up, and left. Blank. The walk to the car was downhill. He felt better.
    That afternoon he slogged through lists of medical centres, clinics, medical A and E units with different radii from where the kid had gone missing. Trouble was, the Charleston kid was one of many.
    Long shot. Sam was right.
    Still, ignore the enormous stack of pending reports and he’d nothing urgent on, so he compiled a grid map for kidabductions. Like, he thought dejectedly, nobody thought of that before. He marked them with colours to indicate time lapses.
    He had a few days left.

Chapter Thirteen
    Bray asked Mr Winsarls for permission to go over some past Gilson Mather sales records. The owner’s jocularity covered his awkwardness.
    “Mr Charleston, do exactly what you want in Gilson Mather! You’ve had your own keys for ten years.”
    “Thank you, Mr Winsarls.”
    He began only when Tracy and Karen had left. The last of the craftsmen called so-long, Harry Diggins shouting up that he was locking up, Mr Charleston. The place quietened. Bray started excavating sales ledgers. Three centuries of craftsmanship, after all, documents crammed in higgledy-piggledy, none computerised except for the last three years, and those uncertain. He finally found it, realised with a shock how fast time was passing. He’d guessed that a Thomas Sheraton was sold four years previously. It was nearer six.
    Meticulously he copied down details. After Mr Winsarls called his goodnights, Bray picked up the phone. Mr Leonard Ireland answered fourth ring and immediately started an apology for not having read some tract but promised he’d do it soon, soon.
    “No, Mr Ireland,” Bray put in when he could. “I’m from Gilson Mather, furniture makers.” Into the pause, a little desperate, he said, “I made your table. Turned stump feet, as Mr Sheraton’s.”
    The long pause gave Bray a gripe. Was this a terrible mistake?
    Then, “You made my table?”
    “Yes.” Bray felt his palms go clammy. “I’m sorry to trouble you at home, Mr Ireland.” This was the hard bit. Go round the houses, a retired publisher like Ireland would probably hang up, think he was a nutter.
    “I’m calling to ask advice. You,” he rushed on, “being a publisher.”
    Ireland barked a gravelly laugh. “Don’t tell me, Mr Charleston. You’ve written a Jane Eyre lookalike and it’s brilliant?”
    Bray was taken aback.
    “No, Mr Ireland. I wouldn’t presume. You are the only person I’ve ever…” But Bray hadn’t ever known the man. The furniture order had come through some Charing Cross publishing house. Special delivery, and that was that. He ended lamely, “I can pay an interview fee.”
    “A fee? Highly original, Mr Charleston! Tell you what. Eightish, I go for a pint. You’re in Spitalfields?”
    They arranged to meet.

    The White Hart in Drury Lane was crowded. Bray was greeted by the whiskered portly man standing among the mob by the saloon bar door.
    “This is the pub where Ben Jonson and his mates met up when Shakespeare died,” Mr Ireland said without preamble. “They sat over there. One actor said that Shakespeare never crossed out a single line. And BenJonson cracked:
I wish he’d crossed