Missing, Presumed Dead

by J M Gregson

  Derek took care to turn towards the golf club when he backed the car out of the garage, just in case Shirley should be watching him from the house. But when he reached the end of the road, he turned the Astra in the other direction, towards the town centre. He looked at the clock on the dashboard as the tall shadow of the multi-storey car park loomed through the urban darkness. It was eight thirty-seven. He was seven minutes late; that was exactly what he had planned. Let the slimy bugger fret for a little while in the shadows. This business was going to turn out all right, after all.

  He had no trouble in parking on this midweek evening. The air was still with an autumnal cold: there would be a frost before morning. Even the weather was supporting his purposes; there were few pedestrians about to observe this meeting, and those who were abroad hurried about their business with their collars raised against the cold.

  As he passed the lighted windows at the end of the pedestrian precinct and moved towards the appointed spot, a chill gust swirled between the tall buildings, ruffling the inevitable crisp bags and cigarette packets even on this still evening. He did not see Jackson at first but that did not worry him. He knew the man would keep himself invisible for as long as possible, but he was confident his quarry would not dare to deny his summons to this meeting.

  He was right. The Reverend Joseph Jackson came suddenly forward from a shop doorway, his right hand clutching his coat tight against his throat. Derek knew in that instant that he was wearing his dog collar, that he wished to conceal this mark of identity from any curious observer. Perhaps, thought Derek, he wished at this time to deny it even to himself. The thought gave him even more confidence: Minton’s colleagues in the council offices would have been surprised to see the confidence, even truculence, in this man who was so retiring by day.

  The clergyman said, ‘You’re late.’

  ‘Only a little. Sorry if you’ve felt the cold.’

  As if the words had cued it, Jackson was shaken by an involuntary shiver. ‘I don’t see the need for this cloak and dagger stuff.’

  Derek smiled, turning his head a little so that his face got the full light from the high lamp above them, making sure that Jackson could see the smile with which he accompanied his shrug. ‘You wanted us to meet here, not me. I was happy to see you at the vicarage, or in a pub.’

  Jackson’s miserable nod of assent turned into a shudder, as he contemplated again the horror of a meeting in either of those places. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his dark overcoat and said unwillingly, ‘What is it you want with me, anyway?’

  ‘I think you know that. I want to talk about our Debbie. About her relationship with you. And about why she wanted to see you on the night she disappeared.’

  Jackson tried hard for a return to the avuncular manner he adopted for his parish visits. ‘I—I don’t know where you’ve got the idea that I can help you, Mr Minton. I told you, I’m very sorry about Debbie, but—’

  ‘But you’d like to forget all about her. To pretend you hardly knew her. Perhaps to bury what’s left of her, in due course. And then to breathe a sigh of relief, and quietly forget about her!’

  The vicar started, glanced over his shoulder, clutched again at the clothing about his neck. It was so near to what he had been thinking since the discovery of the girl’s remains that he could summon no breath to deny it. Derek noticed how pale his large face was as it caught the light. Normally it was rubicund, as if his professional cheerfulness and benevolence had sunk beneath the skin to produce the appropriate colouring.

  Joseph Jackson had to lick his lips before he could say, ‘I think you’ve got the wrong idea from somewhere about Debbie and me. She—she was just a member of the church youth club, like many other young people of her age. I hope she enjoyed herself there, of course.’ He had prepared this before he came. Because Minton did not interrupt him, he gathered a little strength and pressed on with the phrases he had considered so carefully. ‘She was a lively girl, and we all enjoyed her company. But in due course, as is the way with these things, she moved on to other—’

  ‘Some people enjoyed her company a little too much. Including some who should have known better. Including the vicar in charge of the club. A man of the cloth, who should have known better.’

  ‘But I can assure you that—’

  ‘You can assure me of nothing. Because I know, you see. Know all about you and our Debbie.’

  ‘Debbie was an attractive girl.’ Jackson found Minton had begun to move away from him, down the side street which ran by the side of the multi-storey car park, into the large pool of shadow where one of the lights was not working. Jackson followed him, because he could do nothing else.

  He felt certain that this intense, threatening man would turn to physical violence if he chose the wrong words now. The thought distracted him, making what he was trying to say even less effective. ‘I’m sorry to have to say this, Derek, but she was—well, a little promiscuous.’ He stopped, studying the shoulders in front of him for some sort of reaction, wondering when he least wanted to whether it was even possible to be ‘a little’ promiscuous. He tried to appeal to reason, but his pleading rose almost to a whine, ‘Debbie had plenty of young boys of her own age interested in her. Why should she be interested in an old fogey like me?’

  Minton whirled upon him then, catching Jackson with arms outstretched in entreaty, so that the dog collar he had been so anxious to conceal was for the first time revealed, even in that gloomy place; a brighter band of white against the pale flesh of the throat behind it. ‘Only she knows that. And she isn’t here to tell us, is she? Minister?’

  His voice turned into a snarl on the last word, so that Jackson was consumed not just with the fear of discovery but of being struck by the man confronting him. He scratched desperately at his panicking brain for the phrases he had prepared in his study during the afternoon. ‘You’re not in a position to be objective about your stepdaughter’s conduct, Derek. That’s understandable, but—’

  ‘I know all about you and her, Jackson. You had your hand up her skirt when she was no more than a kid. She told me, you see. Not at the time, but afterwards, when she saw you for what you were. When she was able to be “objective” about randy men in cassocks.’ He flung Jackson’s own word back into the pale oval of his face like a blow, feeling the surge of excitement when it flinched from him in the darkened street.

  Jackson felt his head swim. He felt now that he had known from the start that he could only be defeated in this contest. Yet the stakes were too high for him to lose. He knew suddenly that if this was not over quickly, he would collapse, here on the street, in the centre of the town. If only the girl had not been at once so desirable and so available; he had never met that combination before. He said hopelessly, ‘What do you want from me?’

  Derek Minton knew that he had his victory now. He must keep his head, though, if he was to extract what he needed from it. ‘I want to know what happened at the end. That last night, when she came to see you.’

  Jackson had not expected this. He found his racing mind could not cope with the unexpected. He had thought the angry father would press him for the full details of what he had done with the girl. Indecent assault, they called it, didn’t they? Or was it worse than that? Would it be in his favour that there had been no actual penetration? Or were all these things called sexual acts, nowadays?

  His first reaction to Minton’s question was one of relief that it was about that last brief meeting, that he was not to be pursued on the physical details of what he had done with that wretched, forthcoming, smiling girl in those earlier months. Perhaps, if he could provide this avenging angel with the answers he wanted, he might after all escape without physical assault. ‘I—I can’t remember, exactly. It’s two years ago.’

  ‘Try. Now.’ The monosyllables came at him like bullets.

  ‘Well, I hadn’t seen her for quite a long time. Then she saw me in the street and stopped to talk. That would be about a week before�
�before she disappeared.’ He was expecting to be interrupted, to be badgered, to be contradicted. He found the concentrated silence of his interrogator almost more unnerving than his aggression had been. He could see only the outline of the wiry Minton in this darkened street. The man was like a panther, waiting to pounce on a wrong move by his victim, thought Jackson. ‘She was different. Quieter than I remembered her. She was quite a bit older, of course. She said she’d like to come and talk to me some time.’

  ‘And she did.’ It was quiet, a prompting rather than a threat.

  ‘Yes. She came, as you said, on the night when she disappeared.’

  ‘And she told you things.’

  ‘No.’ His denial came too quickly. He felt absurdly like Peter denying his Christ.

  If Christ was everywhere, as his ministry preached, then perhaps it was the Christ in that wretched girl that was calling out to him. ‘At least, nothing that can help you much in the search for her killer.’

  There came a sound through the darkness from the other man. It might have been a sigh of resignation. It might as easily have been a gasp of disbelief or outrage, and Joseph Jackson hastened on to justify himself, ‘She said she was desperate, or she’d never have come to me.’ That much, at least, must ring true, he thought abjectly. ‘She said there was an older man. She wanted to get rid of him, but she didn’t know how to go about it.’

  ‘What was his name?’ The small, fierce face of Derek Minton came out of the shadows to within a foot of the vicar’s larger one. Jackson could even see the glittering blue of the eyes; they were on a level two inches below his own, and they seemed to have drawn into themselves all the scanty light of that shadowy place.

  ‘She didn’t tell me that.’

  Those glittering, scarcely human orbs tunnelled into his face for a minute, then apparently accepted it. ‘What about her pregnancy?’

  ‘She—she didn’t tell me about that. I—I sort of half guessed, I suppose, from other things she said.’

  ‘Who was the father?’ There was a pleading note suddenly about the sharp features so close to his, but Jackson had no information to give. ‘I don’t know. Really I don’t. She didn’t even acknowledge openly that she was pregnant.’

  ‘Was it this older man?’

  ‘I—I don’t know. It could have been. Or the child could have been a younger man’s. Perhaps that’s why she wanted the older man out of the way. But I couldn’t say. At the time, I didn’t know I wouldn’t see her again.’

  ‘What advice did you give her?’

  Jackson felt almost easy about this; what he had to say must surely be acceptable. ‘I said she should discuss her problems with her parents. She laughed and said that wasn’t on. That’s why she’d come to me, she said. I’m afraid a lot of girls won’t reveal their troubles to their parents, even when we think they should.’ For a moment, he might have been consoling a distressed mother over the teacups at the vicarage.

  ‘Did you kill her?’

  The words were so quiet, so matter-of-fact, that Minton might have been inquiring about the time of a weekend service. Something warned Jackson that the speaker was exercising supreme control, which might break at any moment if he made a wrong move. ‘No. I swear I didn’t.’ He could feel the sweat upon his forehead, even on that bitter evening. It cooled even as it arrived, as if someone was sliming his brow with crystals of ice.

  ‘You’d better be right. You seem to have been the last person to see her alive. The police would certainly be interested in that. But perhaps you shouldn’t tell them about that. Unless your conscience tells you to do it, of course.’

  The contempt came at Jackson through the darkness. Then Minton turned away from him and he felt as though his arms had been released; it was only at that moment that he realized that Minton had not laid a hand on him throughout their exchanges. He said, ‘I—I’m not proud of what I did with Debbie. At the time when she was attending the youth club, I mean. But I didn’t kill her. Perhaps I should have been of more help to her on that last Friday night, but I didn’t know—’

  ‘All right. You can go.’ There was no pretence that this had been a meeting between equals, no attempt to disguise the fact that Minton had summoned the man here against his will. Suddenly, he was anxious only to be rid of this pathetic creature.

  The vicar had parked in the anonymous wastes of the multi-storey. He wanted to leave this place of humiliation immediately, to drive swiftly to the relative safety of the high old vicarage rooms and the wife who knew of his weaknesses and had grown used to offering him her own strength. But his hands shook as he put them upon the steering wheel. He started the engine, and felt a welcome warmth stealing presently over the ageing upholstery. It was a full ten minutes before he trusted himself to ease the car down the concrete ramps to the exit.

  He drove past Derek Minton’s Astra as he went, but he did not register the man who had lately been his tormentor. Minton felt perfectly in control. He was merely composing himself, allowing the excitement to ooze away before he went back to a wife who must think he had been having a quiet drink in the warmth of the North Lancashire Golf Club.

  He was a law-abiding man, who had never been in trouble with the police in his life. But if you were to secure the results you wanted, it was sometimes necessary to take the law into your own hands.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Superintendent Tommy Tucker was enjoying the media briefing he had arranged to update journalists and broadcasters about the investigations into the murder of Debbie Minton.

  He had had his hair cut for the occasion (some of his colleagues said tinted and restyled, but they were scarcely dispassionate observers). In his neatly pressed suit, with his striped tie and the immaculate shirt cuffs which he fingered from time to time, he presented the right police image of smartness and competence. He was sure of it.

  And the questions he faced after his opening statement were scarcely demanding. A single Granada TV camera was there, but nothing from the BBC. The local press and Radio Lancashire were keen enough to hear him, though they knew him well enough to expect nothing very startling. The national papers’ crime correspondents were mostly absent, content to rely on hearsay. Since the melodramatic activities of Frederick West in and around Gloucester, single killings of young women, even with the whiff of sex which always doubled the column inches, did not generate the excitement they once had.

  There had been some lurid headlines and some splendid initial pictures of the newly blasted quarry pond where the remains of Debbie Minton had been found. But ten days later the story had run out of steam as far as the nationals were concerned. Of course, if the man proved obliging enough to go on to other mysterious killings; if he should turn himself into a serial killer, terrorizing even the sensible women of Lancashire…

  But this killing had been two years ago, apparently, and the murderer had refused to add to his list of bodies in the intervening period. An audience of media people who felt they had supped full with horrors found it difficult to be excited by Superintendent Tucker’s efforts, though they listened attentively enough, just in case.

  ‘I can assure you that this case has top priority,’ said Tucker impressively. As it was the only murder currently under investigation in Brunton, that was no more than routine procedure. ‘I am happy to be able to tell you that my team has already made impressive progress.’

  ‘What progress?’ A man on the front row stopped picking his nose to make this abrupt interjection. He had not bothered to make a note throughout the account Tucker had just delivered to his audience. Tommy decided when he addressed himself to this disruption that he preferred his listeners to be young and dutiful. This man was neither. With his too-long grey hair and his nicotine-stained fingers, he was probably a hack who had been diverted from other pursuits to cover this briefing, just in case it produced anything new or unexpected.

  Tucker turned for the first time to Percy Peach, who was sitting beside him and had been pointedly studying his
beautifully manicured fingernails for the preceding five minutes. ‘I think I’d like Detective Inspector Peach, one of my most valued and experienced officers, to take that one,’ he said.

  Percy looked briefly at Tucker, then with a not uncongenial distaste at the slumped figure on the front row of the scanty audience. ‘We’re making progress,’ he said. ‘Most of it I wouldn’t care to report at the moment, except of course to my superior officers. This isn’t the place for it, Bert.’

  The man recognized the game they were engaged in. Despite himself, he was a little flattered to be recognized, to be treated by Peach as an old adversary, though they had spoken to each other only once before. He said, ‘Does that in fact mean you’ve made no real progress at all?’ Then, warming to the task, he grinned up at the platform and adopted his headline voice. ‘“Local police baffled by ruthless killer.” “Will this poor girl ever be avenged?” “Town waits with bated breath for sex killer’s next strike.” “Psychopath’s cunning defies the local plod.”’ He spread his gaze to take in all the policemen on the platform for his most daring sally. ‘Is it perhaps time to get in help from elsewhere, I have to ask myself.’

  Tucker sucked in his breath and prepared to be outraged, to denounce this irresponsible insolence. Percy, who recognized the technique of provoking a reaction by aggression because he used it so often himself, was merely amused. With his erect posture, short legs tucked under his chair as he leaned forward, his sprucely groomed air of shining cleanliness, Peach was a physical contrast to his slumped and raddled questioner, upon whom he now visited his brilliant beaver grin. ‘Even you will understand, Bert, that there isn’t much of a corpse left after two years at the bottom of a pond. You wouldn’t expect forensic to be as helpful as usual, and they haven’t been. But the diligent police work you choose to deride has been surprisingly successful. We have eliminated some twenty possible candidates—what you would no doubt call “suspects”—from our investigation. The public, I am happy to say, have been most helpful. We have several other people—I am not prepared to give you a number, of course—who are still helping us with our inquiries.’