‘By all means: Detective Inspector Giles Proust. Make sure to mention, when you drop him a line, that you have a solid case based on two knackered cameras and the wild paranoia of a woman who’s just had a baby.’ The sergeant’s face is stony.
‘Shall I get on with taking Mrs Fancourt’s statement, then?’ Simon interrupts, before any more ill-will has a chance to seep into the air between us. He scowls at Sergeant Zailer. He is angry with her for ratcheting up the animosity. Her manner strikes him as unnecessarily nasty, but he cannot criticise her because she is his superior officer, which frustrates him. I wonder if Simon is really an ally, or if I am simply making it all up, putting into his head the thoughts I want to be there. I have had imaginary friends before.
‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this, with or without your help,’ says Vivienne. ‘My grandchildren are everything to me, Sergeant, do you understand that? I live for my family.’
This is true. Vivienne could have risen to the top of any profession she chose, but she was not interested in being prime minister, chief constable, QC. She once told me that mother and grandmother were the only titles she ever wanted. ‘If you have a career, you will, if you’re lucky, spend five days a week with people who admire and respect you,’ she said. ‘But if you make your family your life’s work, you get to spend all your time with people who admire, respect and love you. I can’t see that there’s any comparison. My mother never worked,’ she added. ‘I wouldn’t have liked it at all if she had.’
But a family is not a single entity with a single character. A family, Vivienne’s in particular, comprises different people, each with his or her own needs. Sometimes the many demands for trust and loyalty cannot be reconciled. Sometimes you have to choose: child or grandchild, husband or daughter, son or daughter-in-law.
Vivienne agrees that the damage to the photographs cannot be a coincidence, but I wonder if she has pursued her hunch to its logical conclusion. She has been too busy resenting Sergeant Zailer’s abandonment of us. How long before it occurs to her that, if it wasn’t an accident, that means someone sabotaged the pictures of Florence deliberately, someone who must have had both motive and opportunity? Somebody like David.
14
4/10/03, 3.15 pm
Simon sat in the waiting room at the Spilling Centre for Alternative Medicine. He’d spoken to a reflexologist, an acupuncturist, a Reiki healer, and now stared at the books in the glass-fronted wooden cabinet by the door. Nothing tempted him to cross the room and take a closer look. How to Heal Your Self. The Spiritual Road to Enlightenment. Simon didn’t want to be healed or enlightened by a battered paperback with yellowing pages. He didn’t subscribe to the view peddled by most of these alternative quacks, that spirituality was a fast track to happiness. He believed the opposite was true: spiritual people suffered more than most.
The centre occupied a battered white three-storey town-house in the pedestrianised part of Spilling, with peeling black paint around the windows. The only side of the building that was visible was covered in deep cracks and rust-coloured stains. Inside, there was evidence of money having been spent, money made from people’s maladies and inadequacies. The grey-green carpet was thick, so soft that Simon could feel the spring and bounce of its fibres through his shoes. The walls were ivory and the furniture minimalist: light wood, cream cushions. Somebody had had the thought of a harmonious soul firmly in mind.
Not Simon’s soul, that was for sure. It occurred to him that Alice’s clothes, whenever he had seen her, had followed roughly the same colour scheme: beiges, greeny-greys, creams. He was inside a building that was dressed like Alice. The thought made his chest feel heavy. Now that she was nowhere to be found, she had become all-pervasive. She was everywhere.
Embarrassing, but Simon felt lonely without her. How was that possible when he hardly knew her? He’d seen her a total of four times. It was his idea of her that had kept him company since he met her, not Alice herself. He should have reached out to her more. He’d wanted to, but feared he would have ended up having to push her away.
More than twenty-four hours had passed since David Fancourt had reported his wife and daughter missing. A case file had been opened, and Simon had spent the morning chasing CCTV footage. For the afternoon Charlie had assigned him the task of interviewing Alice’s colleagues. A ruse, to keep him away from The Elms and David Fancourt. He couldn’t say he blamed her. She was bound to think that one of the other Ds, someone who was less convinced of Fancourt’s unsavouriness, would stand a better chance of getting him to talk. All the same, Simon felt slighted, at a distance from the real action.
He’d spoken to everyone apart from the emotional freedom therapist. Her name was Briony Morris. She was with a client, keeping Simon waiting. At least he’d heard of acupuncture and reflexology, and that degree of familiarity made them seem almost respectable. Emotional freedom therapy sounded unpromising. Its name made Simon scornful and impatient, even a little nervous. He had spent his life trying to keep his emotions under control. He wasn’t looking forward to meeting a woman whose life’s work was to encourage the opposite policy.
Alice’s office had yielded no clues as to her whereabouts, only a lot of books and leaflets about homeopathy, two flat black suitcases full of homeopathic remedies with peculiar names like ‘pulsatilla’ and ‘cimicifuga’, and a box full of empty brown glass bottles. In one of the desk drawers there was a Stanley Sidgwick Grammar School and Ladies’ College brochure with a glossy maroon cover, the school’s crest and motto in the centre. Simon didn’t understand the motto, which was in Latin. Perhaps it meant ‘if you haven’t got lots of cash, you’re fucked’. A yellow Post-it note was stuck to the front cover. Alice had written, ‘Find out about F – when name down? How long waiting list?’
Poor bloody Florence, Simon thought. Not even a month old and they’re already planning her fucking Classics degree at Oxford. The sight of Alice’s handwriting made him feel wobbly. He touched it with his index finger. Then he gritted his teeth and peeled off the post-it to reveal a colour photograph of three grinning children in turquoise uniforms – two girls and a boy – who were manifestly as well-fed as they were diligent.
In the next drawer down, Simon had found a framed photograph of Alice, David, Vivienne and, he assumed, Felix that looked as if it had been taken in the garden at The Elms. Vivienne was sitting on the grass with Felix on her lap, her arms around him, and David and Alice stood on either side of them. Vivienne and David were smiling, Felix and Alice were not. The river was behind them, and Alice was visibly pregnant.
The only other picture occupied a prime position on the desk. It had a large, wooden frame and was of a man and a woman in their fifties or sixties. They were both open-mouthed and smiling, as if they were joking with whoever was taking the picture. Alice’s late parents. Her mother had the same big, clear eyes. Again, Simon felt an oppressive tightening in his chest.
He’d seen Alice in person only a few days ago, and he hadn’t felt then the way he did today, as if there were some strange force blazing inside him, scorching him. What had changed, apart from her having disappeared?
He became aware that he was no longer alone in the waiting room. A tall woman with an athletic, wiry body and shoulder-length ginger hair stood beside him, staring down. She wore square, frameless glasses and a stretchy black dress. Something about the way she looked at him felt intrusive. ‘DC Waterhouse? I’m Briony Morris. Sorry I’ve been so long. Shall we talk in my office?’
As he followed her along the corridor and up two flights of stairs, she turned twice to check he was still behind her. She gave off an air of being in charge, like a teacher supervising children on a school trip. Too much self-esteem, thought Simon: the real curse of our age.
‘Here we are.’ Briony’s office was the only one on the attic floor. She opened the door and waved Simon in. ‘Have a seat on the sofa over there.’
The room smelled of a perfume that brought to mind fruit salad, mainly gra
pefruit. There were two large, framed pictures on the wall that Simon didn’t like – colourful, swirling collections of buildings, flowers, horses and apparently boneless people floating together in space. Most of their limbs pointed in the wrong direction.
Simon lowered himself awkwardly on to the sagging beige sofa, which offered little in the way of support or resistance. Each of the seat cushions was concave, designed to swallow whole anyone who landed on it. Briony sat at a desk identical to Alice’s, on a straight-backed wooden chair. She was several inches higher than Simon; he felt confined, claustrophobic.
‘So, you’re here about Alice and Florence. Paula told me.’ Paula was the reflexologist.
‘Yes. They disappeared in the early hours of yesterday morning,’ said Simon. He’d told nobody he’d interviewed that the baby who disappeared from The Elms was not, according to Alice, her daughter. After her original allegation that her baby had been swapped, Simon had been strongly in favour of interviewing Alice’s friends and colleagues to find out whether they thought she was trustworthy, whether they knew of anything in her past that might shed light on her present baffling behaviour. But Charlie had insisted on cuffing it. ‘I’m not wasting any more resources on this,’ she’d said. ‘Alice Fancourt’s got a history of depression, she’s been on prozac, she’s just had a baby in about the most traumatic way possible. It’s a shame for her, I agree, but post-natal depression is not a police matter, Simon.’ When he’d looked doubtful, she’d said, ‘Okay, then, you tell me. Why would anyone want to swap one baby for another? What could possibly be the motive? I mean, people steal babies, yes, but that’s usually when they haven’t got one themselves and are desperate.’ Simon knew it would have been pointless to mention Mandy, the woman in the hospital that Alice had told him about, the one whose boyfriend had wanted to call their baby Chloe, after the daughter he already had. There was no proof of anything, as Charlie would have been quick to point out. And she’d have demanded to know when, precisely, Alice had told him all this.
Now, he heard himself tell Briony Morris that Alice and Florence had gone missing in the early hours of yesterday morning, and it sounded like a lie. Did that mean that, deep down, he believed Alice? Two people had disappeared, yet there was a prior, more fundamental mystery that remained unsolved.
Simon’s confidence in his own judgement had been badly shaken by what Charlie had told him last night. He’d always trusted his instincts; they let him down less frequently than other people did. Yet he’d been in serious trouble and hadn’t even known about it. What else might he have missed?
‘So, how can I help?’ said Briony Morris. ‘Do you want to know when I last saw Alice? I can tell you exactly. September the ninth. I think I saw her more recently than anyone else here.’
‘You did.’ Simon consulted his notebook. ‘No-one else has seen her since she started her maternity leave.’
‘I had a day off, and she came round. To my house, in Combingham. Yes, I live in hideous Combingham, for my sins!’ She looked embarrassed suddenly, as if she wished she hadn’t told him. Simon didn’t care where she lived. ‘But you try buying a decent sized house in Spilling or Silsford, or even Rawndesley these days, on a single woman’s salary. It’s bloody impossible. I’ve got a detached house with four double bedrooms in Combingham. Mind you, I’m probably surrounded on all sides by crack dens . . .’
‘What was the purpose of Alice’s visit?’ Simon cut through her nervous chattering. Perhaps Briony Morris wasn’t as self-assured as he had first thought.
‘You know what I do? Emotional freedom therapy?’
Simon nodded, feeling a sudden uncomfortable warmth beneath his skin.
‘Alice was a bit tense. She was due to go into hospital at nine the next morning to be induced. Do you know what that means? It’s when . . .’
‘I know what it means.’ Another interruption. Tough. ‘So she came to see you as a patient? At home?’
‘She wanted a session with me, yes. To boost her confidence. It was a sort of last minute thing. I mean, we’re friends as well, of course. Well, friendly, anyway. Alice doesn’t really have close friends.’ Briony leaned forward, tucking her hair behind her ear. ‘Look, you’re probably not allowed to tell me, but . . . do you have any leads yet, about Florence? I mean, she’s only two weeks old. I know it’s early days . . .’
‘It is,’ said Simon. He wondered why Alice hadn’t simply prescribed herself a homeopathic remedy if she was nervous about giving birth. A perk of the job, he’d have thought, being able to cure oneself relatively easily, and for no charge.
Eight years ago, Simon had been to see a homeopath. Not in Spilling; he’d made sure to pick a place in Rawndesley, at a safe remove from home and anyone his parents were likely to know. He’d heard a programme about homeopathy on Radio Four, heard people talking about how they had been cured of psychological hang-ups as well as physical conditions, and decided it might be good for him to do something so entirely out of character. A kind of escape from the confines of his usual self.
An hour in the hot-seat was all he’d been able to manage; he’d stormed out halfway through what his homeopath had called the introductory session. When it came to the crucial moment, Simon had been unable to tell the man – a kind, bearded ex-GP named Dennis – what the problem was. He talked about his subsidiary concerns easily enough: his inability to hold down a job, his fear that he was a disappointment to his mother, his anger about the amoral, vacuous state of the world, anger he hadn’t known he possessed until Dennis asked him that particular combination of questions.
But when their conversation strayed on to the subject of women and relationships, Simon got up and headed for the door without a word of explanation. He regretted that now – his rudeness, not his departure. Dennis seemed like a good bloke. He’d been a bit too good at getting things out of Simon, who was afraid that if he stayed, he’d talk. He couldn’t imagine what his life would be like once someone else knew.
‘You say Alice doesn’t have any close friends?’
‘Don’t get me wrong, she’s very friendly,’ Briony went on. ‘We all like her, I certainly do. And I’m sure everyone else does. Haven’t they said so?’ She spoke frenetically, like someone on speed. But what did Simon know? Perhaps all emotionally free people talked like this.
‘Yes,’ he said. Harmless, to share this information. All Alice’s colleagues had said she was lovely, kind, considerate, sensitive. Sane, too, was the unanimous verdict.
‘But she didn’t have time for proper friendships. She was so caught up in family stuff. We invited her to social things, you know – drinks out, meals, birthday parties, but she could never come. Every minute of her spare time seemed to be taken up with ridiculous . . .’ Briony stopped and covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t really stick my oar in.’
‘You should. Without oars stuck in, we’re unlikely to find Alice and the baby. Anything you can tell us might help.’
‘Surely no-one would harm a two-week-old baby.’ Briony frowned. ‘I mean, obviously I know there are people who would, I’m not naive. But, I mean, most people . . .’
Simon talked over her, desperate to stop the frantic flow of words. ‘Every minute of Alice’s spare time seemed to be taken up with . . . what?’
‘Well. . .’ Briony rubbed her collarbone with the fingers of her left hand, leaving pink marks on her pale skin. ‘Okay, well, I might as well tell you, then. It was her mother-in-law.’ She exhaled, relieved to have spoken the unspeakable.
‘Vivienne Fancourt.’
‘Yes, that old bat. I can’t stand the woman. She was always popping in here, to tell Alice some stupid trivial thing that could easily have waited till Alice got home, some pointless crap – sorry! – when Alice was busy working. And if ever Alice had arranged a night out with any of us, she’d end up cancelling because Vivienne had reminded her that they were going here or there, or Vivienne had arranged a surprise do, or Vivienne had got t
ickets for this show or that in London. It drove me mad. And Alice seemed to worship the old witch. You know what Alice is like, so tolerant and patient and kind. I think she was looking for a surrogate mother, with her own parents dead, but Jesus Christ on a bicycle! Sorry, you’re not a Christian, are you? I’d rather belong to the bloody Plymouth Brethren than to Vivienne Fancourt – you’d get more freedom, that’s for sure.’
‘So Alice and Vivienne were close?’ Simon tried not to be offended by the Christian remark.
‘I don’t know if that’s the word for it. Alice was in awe of Vivienne. When she first came to work here, she quoted her almost non-stop. Vivienne had a saying or a rule for just about everything. It was a bit like a religion, actually. I think Alice liked the certainty it provided.’
‘What sort of rules?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Yes, I do. Never buy a carpet that isn’t a hundred per cent wool, that was one of them. Alice told me when I was buying my house. Oh, and never own a white car. Two important mottos for life, I’m sure you’ll agree,’ said Briony sarcastically.
‘Why not? A white car, I mean?’
‘Lord only knows,’ Briony said wearily. ‘Thankfully the quoting died down after a while, otherwise I think we’d have had to strangle her. What are – if you don’t mind my asking – what are the chances of Florence and Alice being found safe and sound?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ said Simon. ‘My best is better than most people’s. That’s all I can say.’
Briony smiled, seemed to relax a little. ‘And is your worst worse? Or also better?’
A therapist question if ever Simon had heard one. He was damned if he was going to answer, or even think about it. ‘Would you have liked to have a closer friendship with Alice?’ he asked, wondering whether Briony’s jealousy could have affected her view of the situation. Did she resent Vivienne’s influence because she wanted to dominate Alice herself? Perhaps Alice had had plenty of time on her hands, but had used Vivienne as an excuse. She too might have found Briony’s company exhausting.
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