Little Face

by Sophie Hannah

  18

  6/10/03, 9.05 am

  Simon had a problem with Colin Sellers. It was well-known among the Ds that Sellers, despite being married to Stacey and having two young kids, had been having an affair with a woman called Suki for three years. It was a stage name. Her real name was Suzannah Kitson. Sellers seemed intent on sharing every detail about his mistress with his colleagues, which is how Simon knew that Suki was a singer, in local restaurants, sometimes on cruise ships. She was only twenty-three and still lived with her parents. Sellers was always in a bad mood when she was cruising, as he called it.

  Simon knew nothing about what it would feel like to be married, to go to bed and wake up with the same person day after day, year after year. Perhaps one would get bored. He could see that falling in love with somebody else might be a hazard. Harder to endure was the way Sellers boasted about what he did with Suki to anyone who would listen. ‘Not a word to the dragon,’ he’d say at the end of each lewd anecdote, knowing that his colleagues sometimes met his wife at parties.

  Perhaps he didn’t care if Stacey found out. Simon saw no evidence of love, guilt, anguish – any deep emotion at all. Once he had asked Charlie, ‘Do you think Sellers is in love with his mistress?’

  She’d hooted with laughter. ‘His mistress? What century are you living in?’

  ‘What would you call her?’

  ‘I don’t know. His bit on the side? His sexual associate? No, I don’t think he loves her. I think he fancies her, and she’s a singer, so a bit glam, and Sellers is just the sort to need a trophy girlfriend. I bet he’s got a tiny knob. And whatever any woman tells you, size does matter!’

  As he listened to Sellers telling Proust about the work he and Chris Gibbs had done so far on the Alice and Florence Fancourt case, Simon tried not to wonder about the size of the man’s penis. Surely if Charlie was right, Sellers would not have had the nerve to talk about his organ to the extent that he did. ‘I’ve just had a visit from Captain Hardon’ he would say, whenever an attractive woman crossed his path.

  This morning he was on his best behaviour, under Proust’s meticulous eye. The inspector listened attentively, taking the occasional sip from his ‘World’s Greatest Grandad’ mug. Sellers spoke in the sober tone of a man who had taken a vow of chastity and joined the temperance society. The Snowman effect: more powerful than a hundred cold showers.

  ‘The CCTV footage has given us nothing. Same with the search of The Elms. We’ve been through Alice Fancourt’s address book, mostly old friends from London. We’ve spoken to all of them and none of them could tell us a thing. Nothing from her mobile phone, either, or the home computer, or her computer at work. No leads at all. And so far no luck with finding David Fancourt’s father, but we’re working on it. He can’t have just disappeared.’

  Proust blinked and frowned as Sellers raced through his report. The inspector distrusted people who spoke too quickly. Because Sellers’ speech wasn’t slow and deliberate, Proust feared his work was slapdash. In fact, Sellers was a reasonably thorough if not particularly dynamic detective. He just didn’t have the patience to describe every painstaking step he took in an investigation, preferring instead to offer his conclusions. Simon knew that Charlie often had to show Proust Sellers’ pocket book, to prove that no corners had been cut.

  Simon tried hard to concentrate on the team meeting, on Proust’s stern face, on the sickly colours of the walls and carpet in the CID room, on his own shoes – on anything apart from the large photograph of Alice that was pinned to the board in front of him. It was no use. Even when he wasn’t looking at the photograph he could see it in his mind. Alice’s hair was up in a ponytail and she was laughing at the camera, her head tilted slightly to one side. Simon thought she was an object of great beauty. Well, not an object, not in that way. And it wasn’t her looks, not really. It was the way her character shone out of her eyes. Her soul.

  He blushed, shamed by his thoughts. Sometimes he felt as if he were carrying Alice’s consciousness around with him. He was afraid that if she reappeared, he’d discover he was wrong about so much. He feared he was getting too used to her being absent, making absence part of her character, in his mind. It was fucked up, he knew. He had to find her, before it got worse. Him; nobody else. If Sellers managed to track her down, if a lead coming from an interview conducted by Gibbs turned out to be the decisive one, Simon didn’t know if he would be able to handle it. He had to be the one.

  ‘DC Waterhouse?’ Proust’s chiselled tone interrupted his thoughts. ‘Anything to add?’

  Simon told the rest of the team about his interviews at the Spilling Centre for Alternative Medicine. ‘So, nothing there either,’ Charlie summarised, when he’d finished. There was red lipstick on her teeth.

  ‘Well . . .’ Simon wouldn’t have said that. Or was he so desperate to be Alice’s knight in shining armour that he was seeing potential leads where there were none?

  ‘Well what, Waterhouse?’ Proust enquired.

  ‘One thing struck me as odd, sir. Briony Morris – the emotional freedom therapist – she seemed really worried about Florence, but less worried about Alice. That doesn’t make sense. She’s never met Florence, but Alice has been her friend for a while.’

  ‘Maybe she’s one of those stupid twats who goes all gooey over a baby,’ Sellers suggested, nodding sagely. ‘Plenty of those about. She’d probably care even more if a fluffy kitten went missing.’

  Simon shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. It was strange. I got the impression she’d worried about Alice more before she disappeared.’

  ‘She’s a woman,’ said Chris Gibbs. ‘They’re all sodding obsessed with babies.’ Charlie’s eyes, narrow with disgust, blazed in his direction. ‘I don’t care if that sounds sexist, Sarge. Some generalisations are true.’

  ‘What’s your point, Waterhouse?’ asked Proust. ‘If not that Ms Morris is, as Sellers theorised, overly sentimental and prone to hysteria where babies are concerned?’ He glanced pointedly at Sellers, who acknowledged the inspector’s wider and more elegant vocabulary by lowering his eyes.

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ said Simon. ‘I’m still thinking about it.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry for interrupting a great mind at work,’ Proust said pointedly. There was an alarming gap between one word and the next. Simon refused to be intimidated. ‘Do let us know the results of this thought process, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’ve got a theory,’ said Charlie. ‘Briony Morris knows Alice Fancourt pretty well, knows she’s an alternative quack who’s been on Prozac for depression and who’s had us running round in circles because she invented some mad yarn about her baby not being her baby . . .’

  ‘Briony Morris didn’t know anything about that,’ Simon reminded her, irritated to have to tell Charlie what she already knew. Was he the only person with a mechanism in his brain that ensured a certain amount of continuity? ‘And she’s an even more alternative quack.’

  ‘She’s worked with Alice for over a year,’ Charlie shot back. ‘And, quite frankly, sir, you only have to meet the woman once to know she’s a flake . . .’

  ‘A flake,’ Proust repeated slowly.

  ‘Mad, unreliable, whatever. The point is, anyone who knows Alice Fancourt is going to come to the same conclusion I have . . .’

  ‘Sergeant Zailer, might I remind you that you have not yet come to any conclusion,’ said Proust quietly. ‘The investigation is ongoing.’ The atmosphere in the room seized up. Everyone’s normal behaviour became, in an instant, very deliberate.

  ‘Of course, sir. I just mean that, well, that’d explain why Briony Morris would be more worried about Florence. Because she thinks it’s most likely that Alice has taken her, and Alice is an unstable freak – not fit to look after a goldfish, let alone a baby!’

  Proust turned to face her. ‘I see. So we’re ruling out the possibility that Alice Fancourt was abducted, along with her daughter, by a third party, are we? Sergeant, we
’re talking about a woman who vanished in the middle of the night, taking none of her belongings with her. Not so much as a ten pound note, not so much as a shoe. What do your conclusions have to say about that?’ Every member of the team took this opportunity to inspect his or her shoes. Time to take cover.

  ‘Answer came there none!’ bellowed The Snowman. ‘There was no break-in, no one heard any noise. So what I’d like to know is this: why is more attention not being paid to David Fancourt as a suspect? A prime suspect. Why isn’t his name up on that board with a circle round it and a big number one next to it? And beneath that, a number two and the name Vivienne Fancourt. It’s standard procedure, common sense. If there’s no break-in, you look first at the family. I shouldn’t have to tell you that, sergeant.’

  ‘Sir, when I interviewed him, my impression was that David Fancourt is genuinely baffled . . .’ Charlie began nervously.

  ‘I don’t care how baffled he is! This a man whose first wife was murdered, whose second wife last week accused him of lying about the identity of their baby and this week disappeared with that baby. There are so many suspicious circumstances surrounding Fancourt, it would be the utmost negligence not to investigate him from every angle.’

  Simon looked up, surprised. He’d made the same point on Friday and Proust had rubbished it. Another one whose mental continuity apparatus had broken down, it seemed. The nerve of the man, plagiarising ideas with no mention of where he’d got them from. Thanks a fucking lot.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Charlie.

  ‘So get on to it!’

  ‘Yes, sir. I will.’

  ‘Sir.’ Simon cleared his throat. ‘I was wondering, in the light of what you’ve just said . . .’ In the light of your having stolen my theory and passed it off as your own, you complacent bald shit . . .

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shouldn’t we look at the Laura Cryer case again? You know, go over the files, the statements, interview Darryl Beer?’

  ‘I don’t believe this!’ Charlie muttered. Her eyes shone with indignation. ‘Beer confessed. David Fancourt was in bloody London on the night his wife was killed. Sir, think about it. Fancourt left Cryer.’ She flicked through her notebook in search of facts to support her argument. ‘She was too controlling, he said. She wanted to make all the decisions about the baby even before it was born, wouldn’t let Fancourt have a say in the name or anything. She was bossy and dominating, tried to stifle him completely, by the sound of it. He hung on for as long as he could, mainly because he was embarrassed to separate so soon after the marriage, but eventually he couldn’t take it any more. He was thoroughly sick of Cryer by the time they split up. He found her, and I quote, “physically repellent and tedious”, but he didn’t hate her. He was just relieved to be rid of her. I doubt he’d have felt passionate enough to stab her with a kitchen knife. He’d found a new woman, Alice, with whom he was happy. Things were going well for him, finally. He didn’t have to pay Cryer any maintenance. She earned a stack, much more than him. Why would he kill her?’

  ‘So was Darryl Beer passionate about Cryer, then?’ asked Simon. ‘Since you’re claiming he stabbed her.’

  ‘That’s different and you fucking well know it,’ Charlie snapped.

  ‘Fancourt’s son went to live with him after Cryer died.’ Proust wrinkled his nose, as if bored or disgusted by the precise details. ‘His mother, I gather, was happy to act as an unpaid Mary Poppins, and Fancourt was free to swan off with his new girlfriend. The best of both worlds. It sounds like a viable motive to me.’

  Charlie shook her head. ‘You haven’t met him, sir. All Fancourt wanted, after separating from Laura, was a new start. He wouldn’t have risked prison to kill Laura. Alice Fancourt, on the other hand . . . I can imagine her taking a crazy risk like that.’

  ‘You can imagine.’ Proust sneered at Charlie. ‘If I wanted to work with John Lennon, I’d hire a clairvoyant.’

  ‘Sir, if I could just . . .’ Simon persisted. The Snowman had asked for the results of his thought processes, so now he could damn well listen to some of them. ‘Yesterday I had a look at the Laura Cryer files.’

  ‘I see. So you’re asking my permission for something you’ve already done.’ Proust sounded interested, though. The leaden atmosphere had diluted; everyone felt it.

  ‘I noticed some things that didn’t seem quite right. There were no cuts on Cryer’s arms or hands. If Beer tried to grab her bag and she fought for it, surely there would have been.’

  Charlie looked as if she had turned to stone.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Chris Gibbs. ‘It’s easy to imagine Beer panicking and plunging the knife straight into her chest. As we know he did.’

  ‘In which case Cryer would have stopped struggling pretty soon after receiving that one fatal blow. So why was there so much of Beer’s hair and skin on her body? There were no foreign skin cells found under her nails, nothing at all.’

  ‘Of course there wasn’t,’ said Charlie. ‘Both her hands would have been on the bag, to stop him taking it. As for the hair and skin on her body, Beer probably knelt down and leaned over her after she was dead. He might have checked her pockets, in case there were any valuables he’d missed.’

  ‘Why did he cut the strap off the bag with his knife, then?’ said Simon, who’d had this argument with himself already. ‘It was cut at both ends. That would take a while to do, with a good quality leather handbag. If Cryer was lying on the ground bleeding to death after the one killer stab wound, Beer could have taken the bag in one piece.’

  ‘Maybe she had the strap diagonally across her chest,’ Sellers suggested. ‘A lot of women wear their bags like that. When she fell to the ground, it might have been trapped under her body. If Beer wasn’t wearing gloves, he wouldn’t have wanted to touch the body to move it, would he?’

  ‘The strap was found beside Cryer’s body, not under it,’ said Simon, amazed to have to tell Sellers such a basic fact, Sellers who had worked on the case. Had none of the team spotted this crucial detail? What the fuck was wrong with them? ‘It just doesn’t add up. It’s almost as if the strap was cut and left by the body to draw attention to the missing bag. To make the stabbing look like a mugging that went too far.’

  Proust was looking worried. ‘Sergeant, I want you to go over all this again with a fine-toothed comb. Go and see Beer, see what the little toe-rag has to say. It’s all going to be in tomorrow’s papers anyway, according to the press liaison office. Some pipsqueak has cottoned on to the connection between the names Cryer and Fancourt. If we aren’t seen to be going over the Cryer case again, they’ll accuse us of negligence, not to mention downright stupidity. And they’ll be right!’ So that was what had changed the inspector’s mind, the threat of censure from the tabloids. Nothing Simon had said. Might as well be fucking invisible, he thought.

  Proust looked pointedly at Charlie. ‘All Waterhouse’s reservations sound valid to me. You should have been on to this already.’

  Charlie blushed and stared at the floor. Simon knew she wouldn’t get over this in a hurry. Nobody spoke. Simon waited for Proust to soften the blow, to say, ‘It’s just a formality, of course. As Sergeant Zailer rightly points out, Beer is as guilty as hell.’ But Proust was not a softener of blows. All he said was, ‘Sergeant Zailer, can I see you in my office, please? Now.’

  Charlie had no choice but to follow him to his cubicle. Simon felt irrationally guilty, like a collaborator. But sod it. All he’d done was inject a bit of rationality into the proceedings. Charlie seemed determined to be dense at the moment. Was she doing it to spite him?

  Sellers elbowed Simon in the ribs. ‘It’s going to take a pretty decent blow-job to get the Sarge out of trouble this time,’ he said.

  19

  Monday September 29, 2003

  Feeling worse after seeing Simon, I park the car and prepare myself, once again, to walk into the big, cold, white house that is supposed to be my home. I see Vivienne watching me from the window of Florence’s nurse
ry. She does not retreat when she sees me look up at her. Neither does she wave or smile. Her eyes are like two perfectly engineered tracking devices, following my progress along the drive.

  When I open the door, she is in the hall, and I do not understand how she could have got there so quickly. Vivienne manages to be everywhere, yet I have never seen her hurry or exert herself. David stands behind her, watching avidly. He doesn’t even look at me as I come in. He licks his lower lip nervously, waiting for his mother to speak.

  ‘Where’s Little Face?’ I ask, hearing no baby noises, only silence vibrating through the house. Hollow, screaming silence. ‘Where is she?’ There is panic in my voice.

  No answer.

  ‘What have you done with her?’

  ‘Alice, where have you been?’ says Vivienne. ‘I thought you and I had no secrets from one another. I trusted you, and I thought you trusted me.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You lied to me. You said you were going into town to do some shopping.’

  ‘I didn’t find anything I wanted.’ My lie was pathetic, I can see that now. As if I could even think about shopping in my present distraught state. Vivienne must have seen through my story right from the start.

  ‘You went to the police station, didn’t you? That policeman telephoned, Detective Constable Waterhouse. Is it true that you told him your mobile phone had been stolen?’ She places a disgusted stress on this last word.

  ‘I was going to go shopping,’ I say, thinking quickly. ‘But then my phone wasn’t in my bag . . .’

  ‘Detective Constable Waterhouse said you were hysterical. He was extremely worried about you. So am I.’

  Defiance rises in me like a fountain. ‘My phone was in my bag this morning and I know I didn’t take it out! One of you two must have. You’ve got no right to take my things without permission! I know you both think I’m sick in the head, and so does Simon, but even sick people have got a right not to have their private possessions stolen!’