‘What do you want us to do?’ said Harry, but he asked only because it was what was expected of him. He might as well have been reading from a script.

Hayley Conyer patted his hand. It was all that he could do not to yank it away at her touch.

‘Find us another girl,’ said Conyer. ‘And quickly.’

16

I got to the Preble Street Soup Kitchen just as the dinner service was coming to an end. A woman named Evadne Bryan-Perkins, who worked at the Portland Help Center, a mental health and community support facility on Congress, had directed me to the kitchen. Shaky had given me her name as a contact person, but she told me that she hadn’t seen him in a day or two, and suggested that he might drop by Preble Street for a bite to eat.

Preble Street served three meals per day not only to the city’s homeless, but to seniors and families who were struggling to get by on welfare. That added up to almost 500,000 meals per year, but the meals were just a starting point. By getting people in the door, the staff was in a position to help them with housing advice, employment and healthcare. At the very least, they could give them some clean, warm socks, and that meant a lot during winter in Maine.

One of the volunteers, a young woman named Karyn, told me that Shaky had been through earlier in the evening, but had finished his meal and headed back out almost immediately after. This was unusual for him, she said. He was more sociable than some, and he usually appreciated the company and warmth of the shelter.

‘He hasn’t been the same since his friend Jude died,’ she said. ‘They had a bond between them, and they looked out for each other. Shaky’s talked to us a little about it, but most of it he’s kept inside.’

‘Do you have any idea where he might have gone?’

Karyn called over another volunteer, this time a kid of about college age.

‘This is Stephen,’ she said. ‘He was one of the coordinators of this year’s homeless survey. He might be able to help you.’

She went back to cleaning tables, leaving me with Stephen. He was a tall young man. I pretty much had to lean back just to look him in the eye. He wasn’t as open as Karyn had been. He had his arms crossed as he spoke to me.

‘Can I ask why a private detective is looking for Shaky?’ he said.

‘He came to talk to me about Jude’s death. I think he set tumblers falling in my mind. If I’m to take it any further, then there are some questions that he might be able to help me answer. He’s in no trouble. I give you my word on that.’

I watched him consider what I’d told him before he decided that I wasn’t about to make Shaky’s existence any more difficult, and he loosened up enough to offer me coffee. Between the beer I’d had in Ruski’s, and the coffee in Rosie’s, I was carrying more liquid than a camel, but one of the first things I learned when I started out as a cop was always to accept if someone you were trying to talk with offered you a coffee or a soda. It made them relax, and if they were relaxed then they’d be more willing to help you.

‘Karyn mentioned something about a survey,’ I said, as we sipped coffee from plastic cups.

‘We’re required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to do a census of the homeless each year,’ said Stephen. ‘If we don’t know how many folk need help, then we can’t work out budgets, staffing, even how much food we’re likely to require over the months to come. But it’s also a chance to make contact with the ones who’ve avoided us so far, and try to bring them into the fold.’

I must have looked puzzled.

‘You’re wondering why anyone who’s hungry would pass up the chance of a hot meal, right?’ said Stephen.

‘I guess it doesn’t make much sense to me.’

‘Some people who take to the streets don’t want to be found,’ he said. ‘A lot of them have mental health issues, and if you’re a paranoid schizophrenic who believes that the government is trying to kill you, the last thing you’re going to want to do is turn up at a shelter where someone might start prying into your business. Then there are others who are just plain scared. Maybe they’ve gotten into a fight with someone in the past, and they know that there’s a knife out there looking to sink itself into them, or they’ve had a bad experience with the authorities and now prefer to keep their heads down. So, for one night of the year, we go out in force looking under bleachers and behind Dumpsters, and we try to reach out. I mean, we’re out there at other times of the year too, but the sustained focus of survey night, and the sheer weight of volunteers on the streets, means that we get a hell of a lot done in a few hours.’

‘So where does Shaky hang out?’

‘Shaky likes to come into the shelter, if there’s a mat available to sleep on. He hasn’t been in so much since Jude died, which means that he’s either set up camp somewhere off the interstate, probably around Back Cove Park, or he’s sleeping at the rear of one of the businesses on Danforth or Pleasant, where the cops can’t see him. That’s where I’d look.’

He toyed with his coffee cup. He wanted to say more. I didn’t hurry him.

‘Did you know Mr Jude?’ he eventually asked.

I’d never heard anyone call Jude ‘Mister’ before. He was always just Jude. It made me warm more to the kid.

‘A little,’ I said. ‘I’d sometimes put money his way if I needed someone to watch a car or an address for a while. He never let me down.’

‘He was a smart man, and a good one too,’ said Stephen. ‘I could never quite figure out how he’d ended up in the situation he was in. Some of the men and women here, I can see it. There’s a trajectory you can reconstruct. But not in Mr Jude’s case. The best I can tell, there was a weak bolt in the machinery, and when it broke, the whole mechanism ground to a halt.’

‘You’re not an engineering student by any chance, are you?’

He grinned for the first time. ‘Know a man by his metaphors.’

‘You sound as though you liked Jude,’ I said.

‘Uh-huh, I did. Even in the midst of his own troubles, he still had time for others. I tried to follow his lead by helping him in turn.’

‘You’re talking about his daughter?’

‘Yeah, Annie. I was kind of keeping an eye on her for him.’

‘Really?’

‘Because of my work with the shelter here, I was in a position to talk to others in the same business. I made an occasional call to the Tender House in Bangor, where Annie was staying, just so I could reassure Mr Jude that she was doing okay. When she disappeared, I—’

He stopped.

‘You felt responsible?’

He nodded, but didn’t speak.

‘Did Jude say anything to make you believe he felt the same way?’

‘No, never. It wasn’t in his nature. It didn’t help, though. It didn’t make me feel any less guilty.’

Stephen was clearly a good kid, but he had the egotism of youth. The world revolved around him, and consequently he believed he had the power to change how it worked. And, in the way of the young, he had made another’s pain about himself, even if he did so for what seemed like the best of reasons. Time and age would change him: if they didn’t, he wouldn’t be working in soup kitchens and shelters for much longer. His frustrations would get the better of him, and force him out. He’d blame others for it, but it would be his own fault.

I thanked him and left my cell phone number with him, just in case I couldn’t find Shaky, or he chose to come into the shelter for the night after all. Stephen promised to leave a note for the breakfast and lunch volunteers as well, so that if Shaky arrived to eat the next day they could let me know. I used the men’s room before I left, just to ensure that my bladder didn’t burst somewhere between the shelter and Back Cove. An old man was standing at one of the sinks, stripped to the waist. His white hair hung past his shoulders, and his body reminded me of the images I’d seen of Jude’s poor, scarred torso, like some medieval depiction of Christ after He’d been taken down from the cross.