Missing, Presumed Dead

by J M Gregson

  Peach openly despised sentiment, but he realized on the day of Collins’s departure how much he was going to miss the miserable old bugger. ‘No need to tell you to keep your nose clean, Fred—you’re a bloody expert at that. But all the best, lad. It was time they made you up to Inspector.’

  From him, this was lavish praise, and Collins knew him too well to risk spoiling the moment by modest self-deprecation. He said simply, ‘We were a good team, Percy, you and me. Got results.’

  It was one of the rare occasions when both of them had fallen into the weakness of first names.

  They had a little presentation in the CID section, then went off to the pub to mark the occasion of Fred’s departure. On their way there, whilst they were still out of the range of other police ears, Percy said, ‘Do you know anything about this bloke Blake who’s coming in to replace you?’ He had left it until the last possible moment because it seemed a weakness in him to ask. Any admission of anxiety would tarnish his rough-hewn image.

  Fred said, ‘Nothing at all. Don’t you?’ But he turned his face away, to avoid revealing the tiny smile he could not quite conceal. Rumour had whispered one astounding fact to him about his replacement but, if Percy hadn’t found out, he was certainly not going to be the one to tell him. It was not like Peach to be so ill-informed about things which concerned him.

  ‘I know bugger-all. He’s a transfer from another force, apparently. I got the impression that Tommy Bloody Tucker knew more than he was telling me, though.’

  ‘Boot’s on the other foot from the usual, then, is it?’

  It was true that Percy preferred to keep the super in the dark about his progress and methods whenever he could. But surely Tucker was not capable of some sort of revenge?

  As they went into the pub, Percy felt his first shaft of real apprehension.

  ***

  Paul Capstick was an efficient secretary of the North Lancashire Golf Club. Moreover, he believed in giving his members all the information he could, as quickly as he could. In his opinion, rumour fed on ignorance, and rumour could do much damage to the spirit of a golf club.

  On the morning after the full committee had confirmed the recommendation to alter the eighth hole, he pinned up a typewritten account of the details on the main noticeboard, together with a map of the proposed new eighth hole, with its new men’s tee and lake. The more detail he could announce, the more it would keep the members and their questions out of his hair.

  It did not keep everyone away, of course. In the middle of the afternoon, the Ladies’ Captain came breezily into his office. ‘Sorry to bother you, Paul. You can guess why I’m here. On behalf of the female dinosaurs, who think any change to the course must be the beginning of Armageddon.’

  Paul did not mind being interrupted by Christine Turner. After the harridans he had dealt with in his time, she was a positively refreshing presence in his office on a Friday afternoon. She perched her neat bottom on the edge of the spare desk he kept next to his and said, ‘Just chew the fat with me about the new hole and then I’ll go and reassure them. They use me to fire their bullets, but at least that keeps you out of their firing line.’

  Capstick was ready with the answers to allay female fears. ‘The ladies’ tee won’t be moved back with the men’s. I estimate the carry over the new lake for the ladies won’t be more than eighty-five yards.’

  ‘Is there anywhere they can bale out if they don’t fancy it? We have one or two octogenarians, you know. Shame if they can’t play for as long as they are able to.’

  ‘No problem. We have quite a few male geriatrics as well, you know, even if you are the stronger sex. Let me show you.’ Paul got out his copy of the map and she came over and bent her head beside his. The perfume was a vast improvement on the stale cigar smoke of his last visitor. ‘There’s a flat area just here, to the right of where the lake will be and short of the stream. It’s a little to the right of the present fairway but all we’ll need to do is mow out rather farther. Anyone who doesn’t fancy driving over the lake, male or female, will have the safe option of knocking the ball down there and playing round the water rather than over it.’

  ‘That’s all I wanted to hear. I’ll go and nip things in the bud before you get a deputation at your door.’ At the secretary’s suggestion, she took a couple of photocopies of his map, so that she could demonstrate the solution to her ladies as he had to her. Then she bustled away.

  Paul Capstick was fifty-three. He wondered if it was a susceptible age. He had actually been quite sad to see a ladies’ captain departing from his office so briskly.

  Christine Turner chatted with her ageing ladies and enjoyed a pot of tea with them. She had the gift of enjoying most people’s company, which meant in turn that most of them enjoyed hers. At a sprightly forty-five, she had seemed to these elders of the club a very young appointment to the highest office among the ladies, but she was rapidly winning them over. The four of them who had tea with her pronounced her quite charming when she eventually left them to their gossip.

  As she went out through the foyer of the club, she noticed a figure studying the noticeboards which was vaguely familiar to her. She went over and interrupted his perusal. ‘It’s Derek, isn’t it?’

  She scarcely knew him. But she had known his daughter rather too well.

  He turned his lean face to look at her. ‘It’s Mrs Turner, isn’t it? Nice of you to stop.’

  ‘Not at all. Are you playing much these days?’ It was the standing golfing question, but she put it awkwardly to him because of the circumstances.

  He smiled with an infinite sadness, as if he both understood that she was trying to help and knew that it was not possible. ‘Not very much. I don’t like leaving Shirley, you see.’

  ‘She’s still feeling very low, then? It’s understandable.’

  ‘Physically, she’s all right. But she—she won’t take an interest in anything.’ His voice trembled a little.

  She didn’t want him to break down here, in this public place, for his sake, not hers. She said desperately, ‘There’s no news of Debbie, then?’ At least she had remembered the name. But then she had no excuse for forgetting it, after the row they’d had, three days before she disappeared.

  Derek Minton did not answer her question. He turned abruptly back to the noticeboard. ‘Do you know anything about this?’ he said, gesturing at the secretary’s notice and the map beside it.

  His voice was harsh but she understood that he did not wish to talk about his daughter. Christine explained the principles of the development as patiently as she had just done to her octogenarians. ‘It should be a good hole for you men from the new tee. A vast improvement, I’d—’

  ‘What’s going to happen to the old quarry?’

  His voice rasped out the question. She did not mind him interrupting her, because he was so plainly under stress, but she found it unnerving that he stared not into her eyes but over her head. She said, ‘It’s to be drained, I think, and the ground evened out.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as possible. Derek, if you’d like me to sit with Shirley whilst you get away for a bit, come down here for a game, I’m sure I can—’

  ‘There’s no need. She can be left quite safely. It’s just that she won’t accept…’ He shrugged hopelessly, supposing that she comprehended his meaning, not caring if she did not.

  She left him staring again at the noticeboard. She wished she could restore to them the daughter that was gone. But in her heart she knew that she could offer no comfort: the girl was dead.

  When she reached the double door of the club, she heard Derek Minton call from thirty yards behind her, ‘Thank you, Mrs Turner.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Percy Peach played his first round at the North Lancs on the Sunday morning. It was not a happy experience.

  He began with an extravagant slice from a first tee which was surrounded by members waiting to play. There were probably no more than twelve of them but they felt like tw
elve hundred to Percy in the stunned silence which followed his drive. He would not admit to any frailty so human, but he was in fact nervous. His round deteriorated accordingly, even from the low base of its beginning. His partner explained the changes planned to the eighth hole as they played it but by that time Percy was in no condition to digest the information; he comprehended only that an already difficult hole was going to become impossible. Even the powerful tinctures of the nineteenth hole brought only a partial recuperation.

  On the Monday morning following this chastening experience, the last person he would have chosen to meet in the high-walled confines of the police station car park was Superintendent Tommy Bloody Tucker. But life was a bugger, so Tucker was waiting for him. Tommy asked whether he had played golf at the weekend, and for a moment Percy thought that he had somehow discovered the details of his disaster. But when Percy said, ‘I enjoyed the challenge of the new course; some fascinating holes, and not a bad one around.’ The chief did not snigger and come back with a barbed rejoinder, as he should have done.

  Perhaps he had just been trying to be pleasant. Percy found that possibility much more disturbing than his first thought. They went up in the lift together and Tucker left him with an injunction to ‘enjoy his day’ and a look that said more plainly than any words that he was sure Percy would not do so.

  A strange, almost unnerving, thing happened to Peach when he went into the CID section. A silence fell most noticeably on the big, untidy room. Although there were nine people in it, all conversations stopped at his entry. He said to the girl on the switchboard, ‘Has Detective Sergeant Blake arrived yet? He starts officially today.’

  ‘Locker room, sir. Settling in.’ The telephonist was a blonde, blue-eyed girl, who should have brightened his Monday morning, but today she did not look at him, and seemed, indeed, to have difficulty in delivering the information before she became intensely busy with an incoming call.

  He went and looked in the locker room, but there was no one there, apart from a detective constable who was putting on a clean shirt after what looked like a heavy night of passion. ‘Seen DS Blake?’ he said. With the police penchant for seizing upon the obvious, he expected they’d soon be calling the man ‘Sexton’—surprising that he hadn’t already acquired the nickname, in fact. The bloke had better not make a habit of being this elusive.

  He was in his office, poring over a report from a Saturday evening drugs raid, when the evasive presence was finally made manifest.

  A voice said curtly to the shining bald head above the desk, ‘Detective Sergeant Blake, sir.’

  ‘About bloody time, too!’ said Percy. Might as well begin with some discipline. Be a bastard to start with: it was easy enough to relax later if you chose to.

  Then something in the tone made him look up sharply.

  ‘What the hell’s this?’ he shouted. It was definitely a shout, even in his own ears. He could not control it.

  ‘It’s a woman, sir.’ The voice was cool, unamused, studiously neutral. ‘Reporting for duty. Detective Sergeant Lucy Blake.’

  Peach found himself on his feet before he realized he had moved. But it was outrage, not chivalry, that raised him so abruptly. ‘What the ‘ell’s going on?’ he snarled. The native Black Country vowels which had been submerged for years came leaping out under stress.

  ‘That’s what I’m here to find out, sir. I understand I’m to work closely with you.’

  ‘Like hell you are! I can’t work with a bloody woman!’ He glared at her, willing her to shrivel before him like the pimply youths he regularly reduced to pools of grovel. She did not. She stared steadily back at him, unsmiling but watchful, awaiting his next move. He said belatedly and uselessly, ‘No offence, love, but—’

  ‘I understand we have to work with whoever those on high decide we should, sir. The choice is not ours, but theirs. That was what I was told when I queried this particular arrangement.’

  She stood erect but not quite at attention, almost exactly as tall as he was, not four feet from him. She had red hair and dark blue eyes which were set deep in a face which seemed to Peach at this first meeting to be framed to annoy him. The wide mouth gave no hint of either humour or annoyance. The light tweed jacket she had worn for this first meeting in plain clothes hung open, as it was meant to be worn. The breasts rose and fell gently beneath the light woollen sweater, but regularly, with no sign of passion or outrage. A cool one, this. Percy became aware that she had closed the door carefully behind her when she came in, so that this exchange should not be overheard by others.

  She had expected trouble, then. And she was more prepared for it than he was.

  He felt suddenly ridiculous, fuming without effect so close to this calm opponent. It would have been different if he had elicited some reaction, whether of outrage or of tears. If she would only shout back, he could bounce off that. This woman, with her understated resistance, her suggestion of an athletic frame beneath the demure clothes, her cool temperament in the face of his anger, suddenly reminded him of women cricketers and hockey players that he had played with in charity matches. It was not a comparison that was helpful to him at the moment.

  He became aware that he must turn his wrath elsewhere. She wasn’t responsible for this, any more than he was. They were both victims. He said abruptly, ‘Get yourself some coffee, Detective Sergeant Blake. I’ll let you know when I want you.’

  For the first time, she hesitated, and he felt a little lift at the sight. He barked, ‘That’s an order, Sergeant Blake. The first one I’ve given you. And with any luck at all for both of us, the last!’

  She looked at him for a second which seemed much longer, then turned abruptly and walked out, shutting the door as carefully behind her as when she had entered, denying him the satisfaction of a slam.

  Percy went back to his desk and sat down. For two minutes he studied the harmless yellow wall opposite him unblinkingly, listening to his breathing returning slowly to normal. Then he went out of his office, ignored the lift, and leapt up the steps two at a time, until he reached the hardwood door of Superintendent T Tucker’s room. He rapped the mahogany, did not even wait for the display from the column of lights, and marched in. The words began to pour before he had even crossed the threshold: ‘It’s not on, sir! I’m not going to stand for—’

  His words stopped as abruptly as his stride checked. He was left comically off balance, stumbling from foot to foot in the centre of the room. In the armchair he had

  been invited to occupy himself on his last visit sat Sergeant Lucy Blake. She looked up at him and at last volunteered her first smile. It was small, but there was no doubt that it stemmed from amusement. It was as welcome to him as a Lurcher’s snarl.

  Peach said, ‘But I told you—’

  ‘To get myself some coffee, yes. It’s on the way. Superintendent Tucker was kind enough to offer me some.’ Lucy Blake looked up interrogatively at the man behind the big, empty desk and he took his cue.

  ‘Indeed I did. Must try to make the newcomer feel at home, mustn’t we, Percy? As you have arrived so precipitately among us, I suppose I should ask you to join us.’ Before Peach could deny him the pleasure, he pressed the intercom and said to the speaker, ‘Would you put another cup on the tray, please? Detective Inspector Peach has ascended among us unexpectedly.’

  Peach found himself sitting in the chair next to Lucy Blake before he knew it had happened. He had never seen Tucker so in control of a situation, so patently enjoying that control. The bastard must have been getting ready for this all last week. His series of knowing looks and smug rejoinders fell into place at last. Percy summoned his resources of control, made himself speak calmly, began with the phrase the man must surely detect as an irony, ‘With the greatest of respect, sir, I must protest in the strongest—’

  ‘Protest, Percy?’ Tucker sprang upon the word he had clearly been waiting to hear. ‘One at a time, please. Sergeant Blake was here first, and I’m not at all sure that in these situations
rank should carry any precedence. My door is always open as you know, and whilst it is regrettable that you should both feel the need to complain—’

  Peach ignored Tucker in his indignation as he twisted ninety degrees to confront the woman next to him. ‘You, making a protest? I send you out to get a coffee and you come running up here—’

  ‘Even faster than you ran yourself! That’s what’s getting to you, isn’t it? You’re such a pompous little chauvinist that you couldn’t even see that you were being insulting. I was warned about you but I was prepared to make my own judgements, not rely on gossip. Well, it seems you’re as blinkered and bigoted as those who have worked with you said you were. So I’m objecting to working with you. I want out.’

  ‘That’s enough!’ said Tucker. ‘I’m here to listen to complaints, but I won’t stand for insubordination.’

  But he had heard her out without interruption, thought Percy, and he didn’t sound unduly displeased by her attack. That was undoubtedly true, for Tucker now said, ‘I shall investigate your complaint, of course, Sergeant Blake, and if I find it justified I shall take appropriate action.’ He glanced at Peach with un-disguised pleasure, like a butcher just given the go-ahead to put down a vicious bull.

  Peach articulated each syllable carefully as he said, ‘No doubt you will be prepared to listen to my complaint just as carefully, sir. You’re well known for your sense of fair play and your ability to take an objective view.’

  Tucker looked at him suspiciously but Percy kept his eyes upon the wall behind the man’s head, concentrating furiously, aware now that he must be careful to sound a note of reason. ‘I should like to make it clear from the start that I have no personal complaint against DS Blake.’ He ignored the snort of derision from beside him. ‘I do not know where that notion could have come from. No, what concerns me, as always, is simply getting the job done as well as we possibly can. I think my methods have proved themselves over the years. But serious crime is dangerous work—more dangerous with each passing year, regrettably. There is no room in the work I do for a female detective sergeant, I’m afraid.’