“I went home and I told my father what that boy had said. I wanted him to laugh, to say it was ridiculous, what a horrible little boy… but he turned white.
“That same evening he and Cynthia called me downstairs out of my bedroom, sat me down in the sitting room and told me the truth.
“And everything I thought I knew crumbled away,” said Anna quietly. “Who thinks something like this has happened in their own family? I adored Cyn. I got on better with her than with my father, to tell you the truth. And then I found out that she wasn’t my mum at all, and they’d both lied—lied in fact, lied by omission.
“They told me my mother walked out of her GP’s practice one night and vanished. The last person to see her alive was the receptionist. She said she was off to the pub, which was five minutes up the road. Her best friend was waiting there. When my mother didn’t turn up, the friend, Oonagh Kennedy, who’d waited an hour, thought she must have forgotten. She called my parents’ house. My mother wasn’t there. My father called the practice, but it was closed. It got dark. My mother didn’t come home. My father called the police.
“They investigated for months and months. Nothing. No clues, no sightings—at least, that’s what my father and Cyn said, but I’ve since read things that contradict that.
“I asked Dad and Cyn where my mother’s parents were. They said they were dead. That turned out to be true. My grandfather died of a heart attack a couple of years after my mother disappeared and my grandmother died of a stroke a year later. My mother was an only child, so there were no other relatives I could meet or talk to about her.
“I asked for photographs. My father said he’d got rid of them all, but Cyn dug some out for me, a couple of weeks after I found out. She asked me not to tell my father she’d done it; to hide them. I did: I had a pajama case shaped like a rabbit and I kept my mother’s photographs in there for years.”
“Did your father and stepmother explain to you what might have happened to your mother?” Strike asked.
“Dennis Creed, you mean?” said Anna. “Yes, but they didn’t tell me details. They said there was a chance she’d been killed by a—by a bad man. They had to tell me that much, because of what the boy at school had said.
“It was an appalling idea, thinking she might have been killed by Creed—I found out his name soon enough, kids at school were happy to fill me in. I started having nightmares about her, headless. Sometimes she came into my bedroom at night. Sometimes I dreamed I found her head in my toy chest.
“I got really angry with my father and Cyn,” said Anna, twisting her fingers together. “Angry that they’d never told me, obviously, but I also started wondering what else they were hiding, whether they were involved in my mother disappearing, whether they’d wanted her out of the way, so they could marry. I went a bit off the rails, started playing truant… one weekend I took off and was brought home by the police. My father was livid. Of course, I look back, and after what had happened to my mother… obviously, me going missing, even for a few hours…
“I gave them hell, to tell you the truth,” said Anna shamefacedly. “But all credit to Cyn, she stuck by me. She never gave up. She and Dad had had kids together by then—I’ve got a younger brother and sister—and there was family therapy and holidays with bonding activities, all led by Cyn, because my father certainly didn’t want to do it. The subject of my mother just makes him angry and aggrieved. I remember him yelling at me, didn’t I realize how terrible it was for him to have it all dragged up again, how did I think he felt…
“When I was fifteen I tried to find my mother’s friend, Oonagh, the one she was supposed to be meeting the night she disappeared. They were Bunny Girls together,” said Anna, with a little smile, “but I didn’t know that at the time. I tracked Oonagh down in Wolverhampton, and she was quite emotional to hear from me. We had a couple of lovely phone calls. She told me things I really wanted to know, about my mother’s sense of humor, the perfume she wore—Rive Gauche, I went out and blew my birthday money on a bottle next day—how she was addicted to chocolate and was an obsessive Joni Mitchell fan. My mother came more alive to me when I was talking to Oonagh than through the photographs, or anything Dad or Cyn had told me.
“But my father found out I’d spoken to Oonagh and he was furious. He made me give him Oonagh’s number and called her and accused her of encouraging me to defy him, told her I was troubled, in therapy and what I didn’t need was people ‘stirring.’ He told me not to wear the Rive Gauche, either. He said he couldn’t stand the smell of it.
“So I never did meet Oonagh, and when I tried to reconnect with her in my twenties, I couldn’t find her. She might have passed away, for all I know.”
“I got into university, left home and started reading everything I could about Dennis Creed. The nightmares came back, but it didn’t get me any closer to finding out what really happened.
“Apparently the man in charge of the investigation into my mother’s disappearance, a detective inspector called Bill Talbot, always thought Creed took her. Talbot will be dead by now; he was coming up for retirement anyway.
“Then, a few years out of uni, I had the bright idea of starting a website,” said Anna. “My girlfriend at the time was tech-savvy. She helped me set it up. I was very naive,” she sighed. “I said who I was and begged for information about my mother.
“You can probably imagine what happened. All kinds of theories: psychics telling me where to dig, people telling me my father had obviously done it, others telling me I wasn’t really Margot’s daughter, that I was after money and publicity, and some really malicious messages as well, saying my mother had probably run off with a lover and worse. A couple of journalists got in touch, too. One of them ran an awful piece in the Daily Express about our family: they contacted my father and that was just about the final nail in the coffin for our relationship.
“It’s never really recovered,” said Anna bleakly. “When I told him I’m gay, he seemed to think I was only doing it to spite him. And Cyn’s gone over to his side a bit, these last few years. She always says, ‘I’ve got a loyalty to your dad, too, Anna.’ So,” said Anna, “that’s where we are.”
There was a brief silence.
“Dreadful for you,” said Robin.
“It is,” agreed Kim, placing her hand on Anna’s knee again, “and I’m wholly sympathetic to Anna’s desire for resolution, of course I am. But is it realistic,” she said, looking from Robin to Strike, “and I mean this with no offense to you two, to think that you’ll achieve what the police haven’t, after all this time?”
“Realistic?” said Strike. “No.”
Robin noticed Anna’s downward look and the sudden rush of tears into her large eyes. She felt desperately sorry for the older woman, but at the same time she respected Strike’s honesty, and it seemed to have impressed the skeptical Kim, too.
“Here’s the truth,” Strike said, tactfully looking at his notes until Anna had finished drying her eyes with the back of her hand. “I think we’d have a reasonable chance of getting hold of the old police file, because we’ve got decent contacts at the Met. We can sift right through the evidence again, revisit witnesses as far as that’s possible, basically make sure every stone’s been turned over twice.
“But it’s odds on that after all this time, we wouldn’t find any more than the police did, and we’d be facing two major obstacles.
“Firstly, zero forensic evidence. From what I understand, literally no trace of your mother was ever found, is that right? No items of clothing, bus pass—nothing.”
“True,” mumbled Anna.
“Secondly, as you’ve just pointed out, a lot of the people connected with her or who witnessed anything that night are likely to have died.”
“I know,” said Anna, and a tear trickled, sparkling, down her nose onto the Perspex table. Kim reached out and put an arm around her shoulders. “Maybe it’s turning forty,” said Anna, with a sob, “but I can’t stand the idea that I’ll g
o to my grave never knowing what happened.”
“I understand that,” said Strike, “but I don’t want to promise what I’m unlikely to be able to deliver.”
“Have there,” asked Robin, “been any new leads or developments over the years?”
Kim answered. She seemed a little shaken by Anna’s naked distress, and kept her arm around her shoulders.
“Not as far as we know, do we, Annie? But any information of that kind would probably have gone to Roy—Anna’s father. And he might not have told us.”
“He acts as though none of it ever happened; it’s how he copes,” said Anna, wiping her tears away. “He pretends my mother never existed—except for the inconvenient fact that if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here.
“Believe it or not,” she said, “it’s the possibility that she just went away of her own accord and never came back, never wanted to see how I was doing, or let us know where she was, that really haunts me. That’s the thing I can’t bear to contemplate. My grandmother on my father’s side, who I never loved—she was one of the meanest women I’ve ever met—took it upon herself to tell me that it had always been her private belief that my mother had simply run away. That she didn’t like being a wife and a mother. That hurt me more than I can tell you, the thought that my mother would let everyone go through the horror of wondering what had happened to her, and never check that her daughter was all right…
“Even if Dennis Creed killed her,” said Anna, “it would be terrible—awful—but it would be over. I could mourn rather than live with the possibility that she’s out there somewhere, living under a different name, not caring what happened to us all.”
There was a brief silence, in which both Strike and Robin drank coffee, Anna sniffed, and Kim left the sofa area to tear off kitchen roll, which she handed to her wife.
A second ragdoll cat entered the room. She subjected the four humans to a supercilious glare before lying down and stretching in a patch of sunlight.
“That’s Lacey,” said Kim, while Anna mopped her face. “She doesn’t really like anyone, even us.”
Strike and Robin laughed politely again.
“How would this work?” asked Kim abruptly. “How d’you charge?”
“By the hour,” said Strike. “You’d get an itemized monthly bill. I can email you our rates,” he offered, “but I’d imagine you two will want to talk this over properly before coming to a decision.”
“Yes, definitely,” said Kim, but as she gave Strike her email address she looked with concern again at Anna, who was sitting with head bowed, still pressing kitchen roll to her eyes at regular intervals.
Strike’s stump protested at being asked to support his weight again so soon after sitting down, but there seemed little more to discuss, especially as Anna had regressed into a tearful silence. Slightly regretting the untouched plate of biscuits, the detective shook Anna’s cool hand.
“Thanks, anyway,” she said, and he had the feeling that he had disappointed her, that she’d hoped he would make her a promise of the truth, that he would swear upon his honor to do what everyone else had failed to do.
Kim showed them out of the house.
“We’ll call you later,” she said. “This afternoon. Will that be all right?”
“Great, we’ll wait to hear from you,” said Strike.
Robin glanced back as she and Strike headed down the sunlit garden steps toward the street, and caught Kim giving them a strange look, as though she’d found something in the pair of visitors that she hadn’t expected. Catching Robin’s eye, she smiled reflexively, and closed the blue door behind them.
7
Long they thus traueiled in friendly wise,
Through countreyes waste, and eke well edifyde…
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
As they headed out of Falmouth, Strike’s mood turned to cheerfulness, which Robin attributed mainly to the interest of a possible new case. She’d never yet known an intriguing problem to fail to engage his attention, no matter what might be happening in his private life.
She was partially right: Strike’s interest had certainly been piqued by Anna’s story, but he was mainly cheered by the prospect of keeping weight off his prosthesis for a few hours, and by the knowledge that every passing minute put further distance between himself and his sister. Opening the car window, allowing the familiar sea air to rush bracingly inside the old car, he lit a cigarette and, blowing smoke away from Robin, asked,
“Seen much of Morris while I’ve been away?”
“Saw him yesterday,” said Robin. “Paid him for his month’s expenses.”
“Ah, great, cheers,” said Strike, “I meant to remind you that needed doing. What d’you think of him? Barclay says he’s good at the job, except he talks too much in the car.”
“Yeah,” said Robin noncommittally, “he does like to talk.”
“Hutchins thinks he’s a bit smarmy,” said Strike, subtly probing.
He’d noticed the special tone Morris reserved for Robin. Hutchins had also reported that Morris had asked him what Robin’s relationship status was.
“Mm,” said Robin, “well, I haven’t really had enough contact with him to form an opinion.”
Given Strike’s current stress levels and the amount of work the agency was struggling to cover, she’d decided not to criticize his most recent hire. They needed an extra man. At least Morris was good at the job.
“Pat likes him,” she added, partly out of mischief, and was amused to see, out of the corner of her eye, Strike turn to look at her, scowling.
“That’s no bloody recommendation.”
“Unkind,” said Robin.
“You realize in a week’s time it’s going to be harder to sack her? Her probation period’s nearly up.”
“I don’t want to sack her,” said Robin. “I think she’s great.”
“Well, then, on your head be it if she causes trouble down the line.”
“It won’t be on my head,” said Robin. “You’re not pinning Pat on me. Hiring her was a joint decision. You were the one who was sick of temps—”
“And you were the one who said ‘it might not be a bad idea to get a more traditional manager in’ and ‘we shouldn’t discount her because of her age’—”
“—I know what I said, and I stand by the age thing. We do need someone who understands a spreadsheet, who’s organized, but you were the one who—”
“—I didn’t want you accusing me of ageism.”
“—you were the one who offered her the job,” Robin finished firmly.
“Dunno what I was bloody thinking,” muttered Strike, flicking ash out of the window.
Patricia Chauncey was fifty-six and looked sixty-five. A thin woman with a deeply lined, monkeyish face and implausibly jet-black hair, she vaped continually in the office, but was to be seen drawing deeply on a Superking the moment her feet touched the pavement at the end of the day’s work. Pat’s voice was so deep and rasping that she was often mistaken for Strike on the phone. She sat at what once had been Robin’s desk in the outer office and had taken over the bulk of the agency’s phone-answering and administrative duties now that Robin had moved to full-time detection.
Strike and Pat’s relationship had been combative from the start, which puzzled Robin, who liked them both. Robin was used to Strike’s intermittent bouts of moodiness, and prone to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially when she suspected he was in pain, but Pat had no compunction about snapping “Would a ‘thanks’ kill you?” if Strike showed insufficient gratitude when she passed him his phone messages. She evidently felt none of the reverence some of their temps had displayed toward the now famous detective, one of whom had been sacked on the spot when Strike realized she was surreptitiously filming him on her mobile from the outer office. Indeed, the office manager’s demeanor suggested that she lived in daily expectation of finding out things to Strike’s discredit, and she’d displayed a certain satisfaction on he
aring that the dent in one of the filing cabinets was due to the fact that he’d once punched it.
On the other hand, the filing was up to date, the accounts were in order, all receipts were neatly docketed, the phone was answered promptly, messages were passed on accurately, they never ran out of teabags or milk, and Pat had never once arrived late, no matter the weather and irrespective of Tube delays.
It was true, too, that Pat liked Morris, who was the recipient of most of her rare smiles. Morris was always careful to pay Pat his full tribute of blue-eyed charm before turning his attention to Robin. Pat was already alert to the possibility of romance between her younger colleagues.
“He’s lovely-looking,” she’d told Robin just the previous week, after Morris had phoned in his location so that the temporarily unreachable Barclay could be told where to take over surveillance on their biggest case. “You’ve got to give him that.”
“I haven’t got to give him anything,” Robin had said, a little crossly.
It was bad enough having Ilsa badger her about Strike in her leisure time without Pat starting on Morris during her working hours.
“Quite right,” Pat had responded, unfazed. “Make him earn it.”
“Anyway,” said Strike, finishing his cigarette and crushing the stub out in the tin Robin kept for that purpose in the glove compartment, “you’ve wrapped up Tufty. Bloody good going.”
“Thanks,” Robin said. “But there’s going to be press. Bigamy’s always news.”
“Yeah,” said Strike. “Well, it’s going to be worse for him than us, but it’s worth trying to keep our name out of it if we can. I’ll have a word with Mrs.-Campion-in-Windsor. So that leaves us,” he counted the names on his thick fingers, “with Two-Times, Twinkletoes, Postcard and Shifty.”
It had become the agency’s habit to assign nicknames to their targets and clients, mainly to avoid letting real names slip in public or in emails. Two-Times was a previous client of the agency, who’d recently resurfaced after trying other private detectives and finding them unsatisfactory. Strike and Robin had previously investigated two of his girlfriends. At a superficial glance, he seemed most unlucky in love, a man whose partners, initially attracted by his fat bank balance, seemed incapable of fidelity. Over time, Strike and Robin had come to believe that he derived obscure emotional or sexual satisfaction from being cheated on, and that they were being paid to provide evidence that, far from upsetting him, gave him pleasure. Once confronted with photographic evidence of her perfidy, the girlfriend of the moment would be confronted, dismissed and another found, and the whole pattern repeated. This time round, he was dating a glamour model who thus far, to Two-Times’ poorly concealed disappointment, seemed to be faithful.
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