Crooked Street

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘Without his wife?’

  ‘She might be planning to join him when this has blown over.’

  ‘So if that was his plan why draw attention by alerting us?’

  Again Korpanski shrugged. ‘Part of it? Who knows?’

  But Joanna was still shaking her head. She turned back to the board, to the list of names and addresses of the families from the five streets, studying the names, trying to stimulate her mind. Trying to think. In what order had Jadon Glover visited them? That night, had he started with Wellington Place or Nab Hill Avenue? Who last saw him and where? Was the CCTV footage of a figure crossing the small playground him?

  Damn the weather, she thought, then realized. It had aided and abetted, helped to conceal the circumstances.

  She spoke almost to herself, running her eyes down the list of names. Widnes, Stanton, Murdoch, Ginster, Madeley, the three women in Nab Hill Avenue, and wondered who, out of these names almost picked out of a hat, knew anything about Jadon’s disappearance.

  ‘Does one of these people have him, do you think?’

  Korpanski shrugged.

  His sceptical silence brought her to a decision. ‘Well, if we don’t have an answer soon I’m going public on this.’

  Korpanski’s eyes were as black as his hair which made him completely unreadable. But she could guess his thoughts. Somewhere between waste of time and OK, get in there.

  But he was a sergeant. he could afford to be neutral. She could not.

  And in the meantime, Jason Spark, Dawn Critchlow and their teams of officers continued knocking on doors.

  ELEVEN

  Tuesday, 11 March, 8 p.m.

  8 Nab Hill Avenue

  They often met for a glass of wine – or six – and a takeaway on a Saturday night, the three of them. They’d laugh about ex-boyfriends, gossip about the other people in their lives, swap celebrity chatter. Sometimes they’d watch a box set, the three of them as close as pickles in a jar. Their differing ages and backgrounds made absolutely no difference. They were women; they had that in common. It was enough. They’d had their struggles which had bonded them as close as sisters.

  Men? They didn’t need them in their lives, they all said. Men were a complication, a nuisance. An expense. They dragged you down. Back into the gutter.

  Grandma Charlotte was the oldest. She lived in number six and was in her early sixties. Grandma Charlotte held the record for men, having had four husbands but out of that only one daughter – Irina, having gone through a communist-loving phase in her forties. It was then that she’d stopped cooking husband number two’s breakfast because she’d had morning sickness. He had scuttled away the moment Charlotte had given birth and, following in his father-in-law’s footsteps, Irina’s husband had subsequently beaten even that record by doing a runner the minute she’d shared similarly good news with him. Irina had two children herself now and she and Grandma Charlotte brought them up between them. Their father had made a brief reappearance – just enough to fertilize a second embryo – and then disappeared for ever.

  To the Nab Hill Three men were the arch enemy. Their mantra was: men – who needs them?

  Every now and again Erienna or Charlotte would meet someone of the opposite sex and regale Yasmin with their stories of awkward, drunken fumblings and unsatisfactory love-making.

  Erienna Delaney was Irish, fiercely so, with bright blue eyes and dark hair. She was far too independent to even consider having a husband or children. Had the IRA still been around she would have been a bomber or a spy but as it was she was a zealot without a cause. Except to run men down.

  She lived in number eight.

  Yasmin was the most different – the daughter of a Turkish family who had a restaurant in Cardiff, it was hard to work out how or why she had landed in Leek – not that her two great buddies had ever asked. They accepted the fact that she was a Muslim who didn’t appear to currently have a boyfriend or husband but one could never tell with Yasmin. She was – or could be – enigmatic.

  She lived alone in number four.

  One day, they had promised themselves, they would go on holiday to Yasmin’s country, Turkey. She spoke the language. She could be their guide and they would travel around and see the cities and the people, the mosques and the beaches. Oh, yes, the beaches. When they talked about it they could almost feel the heat of that Turkish sun, see the blue of the sea, the yellow sand and imagine sipping elma çay – apple tea – which Yasmin said was nectar, sweet and fruity, just like them and, spoken with a giggle, an aphrodisiac.

  Being a Muslim, Yasmin had to be very careful to keep her head down and she never told them anything about her previous life. She was secretive but very beautiful with big brown eyes, heavy black eyebrows, an infectious giggle and, beneath her hijab, a naughty sense of humour. When the others spoke about sex she would simply giggle without giving anything away. Erienna and Charlotte had learned not to ask Yasmin about her life and loves so they focused on their own adventures and enjoyed hearing her giggle at the more risqué bits. As for children, that was another taboo subject. They didn’t know whether Yasmin had any. For some reason Charlotte and Erienna felt she did have offspring but if she did she never talked of them. There were no photographs of any family around her neat but spartan house.

  Yasmin wasn’t supposed to drink any alcohol but, as she said, when she downed her first glass of cheap white wine, three for ten pounds at Asda, ‘Who’s to know?’ It was one of her favourite phrases.

  It wasn’t really very funny but after a couple of glasses of the sharp wine it had the effect of making the other two shriek with laughter.

  ‘Who’s to know?’

  Naturally the talk that night was of the disappearance of the one person who had helped form their initial bond – their creditor – who landed on their doorstep every single Wednesday evening.

  Without fail.

  Yasmin spoke first. Being unused to alcohol, the wine had loosened her tongue faster than the others.

  ‘What do you think’s happened to him?’ Her big eyes sparkled with merriment. All she knew was she’d had a week off paying. A blessed week when she had an extra twenty pounds to spend all on herself.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Charlotte took a long swig. ‘Maybe he’s run off with another woman.’

  ‘Well, we’re all here, so it’s not one of us,’ Erienna responded, chortling while the others exploded at her wit.

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Listen, love,’ Charlotte said, ‘I don’t know and I don’t care either. I just hope he never surfaces again, smarmy little bloody worm.’

  Erienna held her glass up. ‘I’ll drink to that.’ They clinked glasses.

  ‘But,’ Yasmin said slowly, ‘if he doesn’t appear again someone else will only take his place. They won’t let us go.’

  The words were almost enough to sober them up. Defiantly, Charlotte opened another bottle of wine. This week they had money to spare. They had a third bottle to go but tonight they didn’t feel like drinking it. It was starting to taste sour.

  The knock on their door sounded ominous even through their alcohol-induced state of relaxation.

  It being Erienna’s house, she was the one to get up and answer it after an anxious glance at her friends. She looked so pale and suddenly frightened that Charlotte almost stood up and offered to answer it for her but Erienna being Erienna, Charlotte didn’t think the gesture would be appreciated.

  She heard the conversation, albeit one-sided, and glanced at Yasmin, worried.

  ‘It’s not convenient,’ she heard her friend say. ‘I’ve got a couple of pals round for the evening.’

  The person on the doorstep spoke again and she answered. ‘Yeah, he did use to call.’

  More talk, then, ‘Yeah, I heard. No. No. He didn’t come last Wednesday.’

  There, it was said now. He didn’t come last Wednesday.

  Erienna answered another question. ‘Sometimes early-ish. Sometimes later. In between half seven and
nine.’

  The person on the doorstep spoke again and Erienna responded, ‘If we was out?’ A cynical laugh. ‘If we was out he’d charge double the following week. With interest.’

  And for the first time during the interview Charlotte heard it in her friend’s voice. A hard, bitter note of resentment. ‘Jadon? Forget? Never. He never forgot. A mind like a spreadsheet, he had.’

  Then they both heard her sarcasm. ‘My pleasure, Sergeant.’

  A mumble corrected her so she scooped up the compliment. ‘Sorry – Constable.’

  Wednesday, 12 March, 8 a.m.

  The day was bright and blustery. Matthew was subdued and Joanna knew that the murder of the oddly-named child might recede in the evening’s distraction but this morning it stuck with him. She could see it in his face. He looked … hurt. She sat on the side of the bed and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  He smiled at her abstractedly. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘Because sometimes you take the cares of the world on your shoulders, Matthew Levin.’

  His smile broadened. ‘You too, I think.’

  ‘Yeah. I just don’t have it planted in front of me in such graphic detail. I don’t have to …’

  He held his hand up to stop her. ‘I’ll get over it, Jo. Until the next time I see a child … I don’t know. Knocked down, diseased, hurt.’ He stared across the room, eyes unfocused. And his voice, when he continued, was bitter. ‘I wish I came home to something of my own, something I could cuddle and love.’

  Hurt, she bit back the words that had landed on her tongue without thought. So I’m not enough? She knew they would sound petty and selfish. Instead she got off the bed, moved into the bathroom and started brushing her teeth.

  But when she came back into the bedroom Matthew still looked troubled. He was still in that horrible place. ‘I hated it, Jo. The poor little thing; he just didn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘What about the mother?’

  ‘The little scrap spent most of his time with the evil grandma. I don’t think she wanted him any more than the mum but apparently Mum’s new partner didn’t like kids.’ The glance he gave her was almost an appeal. ‘How can anyone not like children, Jo?’

  There was a time when she could have answered this rhetoric but her brain had scrambled since they had married. She’d changed. She could hardly believe how much. Her own ambition and desires seemed to have merged with Matthew’s. What was more, he knew it. He wasn’t saying anything but the way he looked at her, with a mixture of humour, sympathy and understanding, told him that he was only too aware of her metamorphosis.

  Wednesday, 12 March, 10 a.m.

  Jason Spark and Dawn Critchlow were continuing to knock on doors with their allotted team. And finally they were gaining a clearer picture of Jadon Glover’s movements last Wednesday night. Dawn was a hardworking officer whose husband had a failed garage business. He currently stacked shelves in one of the local supermarkets so she was the main breadwinner. In some ways she was unsuitable to be a police officer. She rarely saw harm in anyone, always seeming to peer beneath the surface and find some good, somewhere. She grinned at Jason. ‘If there were sinkholes in this part of Leek,’ she said slowly, ‘I’d like to think Jadon Glover had fallen down one.’

  PC Spark chortled and the pair of them continued with the pretty fruitless house to house. Either no one knew anything relating to the disappearance or else they simply weren’t talking. The overwhelming response of the debtors who denied having seen the money collector on the previous Wednesday was relief at having a week’s grace from paying.

  But the two officers did their job. They took statements from everyone and poured over the results, made an attempt to tabulate them.

  At eleven a.m. they would have a brainstorm and briefing and pool their knowledge with the rest of the investigating officers, try and pinpoint the exact moment when Jadon Glover had dropped beneath the radar. And they knew DI Piercy would expect them to be concise and precise. Then someone would have to make the decision whether to escalate the investigation or scale it down. It was an unenviable responsibility and would depend on their findings.

  Joanna had begun the day with yet another phone call to Eve Glover which she already knew would be fruitless. But there was some point to this. The first and most sensible reason was that as SIO she was supposed to keep relatives informed of any progression in their case.

  Some hope, Joanna thought as she picked out the number.

  The second reason for the call was even more futile. But there was just the vaguest of possibilities that Jadon might have turned up.

  After all, if he had reappeared, tail between his legs, or even if he had contacted his bemused wife to explain the inexplicable, it would no longer be a police matter. Lying about your place of work was nothing to do with them. It was an uncomfortable lie between husband and wife, something they could sort out privately. No point having egg on your face if Glover had simply been sleeping off the mother and father of all hangovers but, as before, she could tell from the tense tone when the phone was picked up that none of these scenarios had happened. Jadon was still missing. And, she expected, he would remain so.

  Today Eve displayed a mixture of hysteria, grief, worry and absolute confusion. Her voice alternated between flat and hysterical.

  ‘Something bad must have happened to him,’ she said, her voice stiff and – frankly – flaky. She sounded so strange Joanna wondered whether she had been prescribed tranquilisers. ‘I don’t understand, Inspector. Where is he? Why hasn’t he come home? Why hasn’t he rung? What’s wrong? I wonder if I even knew him. Who is he? What is he? Has someone …’ Her voice, high and hysterical, finally trailed away.

  The phrases sparked an emotion which resonated in Joanna’s copper’s mind. Who is he? The real Jadon Glover. Who was he?

  Joanna tried to put herself in the woman’s position and understood only too well. Had it been Matthew who had vanished she would have been beside herself. But this was an unusual disappearance. Later today, she promised herself, she would do a little more digging into Jadon’s identity. The lab had found nothing untoward in the car so far, so Joanna had no further information for Eve except to reassure her that police enquiries were ongoing and they would be making an appeal later today on local radio and television. Apart from that everything she could say with assurance was negative. None of Jadon’s credit or debit cards had been used; neither had there been any activity on his phone. ‘For the moment,’ she told her, ‘it seems unlikely that your husband has been abducted or assaulted. We’ve found no evidence of any assault in your husband’s car or in the area from where he disappeared.’ She hesitated before exploring her thought. ‘I take it no one has contacted you?’ She left the word ransom out of the question.

  ‘No.’ Eve’s response was snappy.

  ‘And you can’t think of anyone who had a grudge against him?’

  Apart from the people whom he was robbing hand over fist.

  A sniff was Eve’s response.

  ‘So all we can do, for the moment, Mrs Glover, is exactly what we are doing – ask questions and wait.’ Her meant-to-be reassurance was greeted with silence.

  Joanna tried again, to reassure the upset wife that in cases like this there was every chance that Jadon would turn up with his own explanation but when, minutes later, she put the phone down, Joanna was very reflective. She didn’t believe her own words, neither did she think for a moment that she had hoodwinked Jadon’s wife. They might not be saying it but they both knew that there was something rotten at the core of this scenario. It wasn’t simply the deceit that had lain between them but Jadon’s insistence his wife leave her career. It smacked of almost pathological insecurity and a need for control. Perhaps stemming from Jadon’s past? And Joanna knew another thing: he wouldn’t have got halfway through his evening’s work. Everything screamed against it.

  It was only as she put the phone down that she really chewed over the possibility of kidnap. And that ope
ned another entire recipe book of issues. But, unless Eve was lying, the contraindication to that shouted at her. No ransom note.

  So what would be the point?

  Joanna couldn’t resist smiling to herself. There had never been a kidnap in Leek. Maybe the first? She shook her head.

  When Mike arrived back ten minutes later they began to dismantle Jadon Glover’s life brick by brick. He had, it appeared, been a careful, even thrifty man. His bank account was OK. Regular payments in which easily covered his outgoings. Paid in in cash. Unsurprisingly no monthly cheques, no debt. All cash. Household bills paid by standing order. Mobile phone records showed that most telephone calls were to his three colleagues or to his wife. He’d led a carefully controlled life. A tidy life. Apparently no family. He was a mystery. Almost a shadow existence. Was this deliberate? What was behind the shadow?

  TWELVE

  Wednesday, 12 March, 11.20 a.m.

  Joanna looked at the list of names in her hand. There were more than forty. They had cast their net wider. Forty families in Leek affected by debt and hardship, desperate enough to need payday loans or something that would eke out their existence. For ever an albatross around their necks. And if this was the list of people in one area of one small town, how many more families were affected in the Potteries? Hundreds? She scanned the list again and homed in on the nineteen families who lived in the immediate area around Sainsbury’s, the families that Jadon Glover visited on a Wednesday night, walking up from the car park in heavy rain, shrouded by the hood on his waterproof, invisible and unidentifiable to passers-by. Anonymous.

  Well, there was only one thing for it. She would listen to Jason and Dawn’s account and then she and Mike would have to visit each and every one of these families and try and pinpoint the moment and place where Jadon had vanished into thin air. At what point had he ceased to be a visible human being? They needed to home in on that exact time. It would mean further extensive house-to-house interviews. She had forty officers assigned to her and now divided the list of people up so each and every one of them was visited.