by M C Beaton
‘Never mind. Wait outside until your statements are typed up, sign them and then you are free to go.’
Agatha joined Charles in the small reception area. ‘Something’s happened,’ she said. ‘Walker looked so excited, I believe they’ve got him.’
‘We’ll wait to sign our statements,’ said Charles, ‘and then we’ll get back to the boat and you phone Patrick.’
‘When did you learn to handle a boat?’ asked Agatha. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you.’
‘I was in the navy as a young man.’
‘Charles! I never ever think of you as doing anything useful.’
A gust of wind rattled the windowpanes of the station. ‘Just as well I have,’ said Charles. ‘Seems to be blowing up.’
After a quarter of an hour they were both called into a side room where they signed their statements. Then they went out into Hewes High Street, leaning against the increasing force of the wind.
‘Do we have to go back to Hadsea today?’ pleaded Agatha.
‘’Fraid so. I promised to have it back. It’s only a river, Agatha. It’s not as if we have to go into the open sea.’
Agatha kept to the saloon as the powerful boat set off downstream. She could feel all her self-confidence leaking out through her fingertips. She remembered with shame bragging to Sylvan about her great detective work. Was she really any good? Or was she surrounded by clever people like Charles? The sheer folly of going out on a date and accepting another with a Frenchman who had been at the scene of every murder was silly, to say the least.
Maybe she wasn’t any good at being a detective at all. Maybe she just bumbled round like a trapped bee against a windowpane until someone opened the window and she saw daylight.
When they got to Hadsea and handed over the boat, Charles volunteered to drive them back as they had both come in Agatha’s car, and a weary and demoralized Agatha sank down into the passenger seat.
‘Before we drive off,’ she said, ‘I’d better phone Patrick and see why my interview was cut short.’
Patrick said that a fishing boat had located Sylvan’s boat adrift in the Channel and was towing it into Dover Harbour. An RAF patrol had been alerted earlier by the fishing boat’s captain and had immediately flown over the area. They had seen Sylvan diving off into the sea. He hadn’t been wearing a life jacket. They had circled over the Jolie Blonde. Sylvan had struck out for a little bit and then had sunk under the waves. They were now searching to see if the body surfaced.
Agatha relayed the news to Charles. ‘That’s the end of that,’ he said.
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Agatha, stifling a yawn.
‘Oh, come on, Aggie. It stands to reason. He’d slept with Felicity. She must have known something.’
‘But he had a cast-iron alibi.’
‘Did Patrick say whether the Bross-Tilkingtons are still being regarded as innocent?’ asked Charles.
‘Evidently so. The police feel they were being simply used all along the way. The security and the hiring of Jerry Carter were all Sylvan’s idea. He frightened them to death with stories of burglars.’
‘So, end of chapter. Good,’ said Charles. ‘We can all get back to normal.’
‘What’s normal?’ mumbled Agatha and fell asleep.
She did not awaken until they were drawing up outside her cottage. ‘I’m starving,’ said Charles. ‘Let’s see to your cats and then walk up to the Red Lion. Has John got his outside bit?’
‘Last heard.’
John Fletcher, landlord of the Red Lion, was lucky in that he’d had an extensive car park at the back. Half was now set out with tables and umbrellas enclosed in a heavy sort of plastic tent. The day was fine, so the sides had been rolled up. They ate a hearty meal and walked slowly back.
‘My time to sleep,’ said Charles. ‘Care to join me?’
‘The usual answer.’
‘You’ll crack one of these days.’
‘Not me. I’d better go into the office. See you later.’
Everyone except Mrs Freedman was out. Agatha sighed and sat down at her computer to check through all the cases logged on it. ‘Nothing on that girl who went missing – Trixie Ballard?’
‘Not a sign yet. Sharon’s been working on it.’
Agatha studied the notes on the case on her computer. The disappearance of the fifteen-year-old had received extensive coverage in the press. She looked up. ‘Did the parents appear on television?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Freedman. ‘If you Google BBC News and check back, you’ll get it.’
When the video link came up on the screen, Agatha turned up the sound on her speakers and listened carefully. Mrs Ballard was a thin dyed blonde who sobbed uncontrollably. Mr Ballard did all the talking, ‘Please come home, princess,’ he said, his voice breaking with emotion. ‘We miss you and we love you.’
‘That’s odd,’ said Agatha when the brief video had finished. ‘He never appealed to anyone who might be holding her to let her go. Where is Sharon’s report? No, don’t worry. It’ll be here somewhere.’
Agatha found Sharon’s report and studied it carefully. Sharon had been very thorough. School friends and teachers had been questioned along with next-door neighbours and local shops. She had left school two weeks ago to go home and seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
Still smarting at what she felt were her inadequacies as a detective, Agatha decided to see what she could find out about the girl herself.
The Ballards lived in a five-storey block of flats off a roundabout on the Evesham Road out of Mircester. It all looked very respectable, with private parking, no graffiti, and a tiny mowed piece of grass and flowerbeds along the edge of the car park.
Agatha was about to get out of the car when a thought struck her. Surely the parents, neighbours and friends would all just say the same thing. The girl’s room would have been thoroughly searched. She remembered from the notes, Trixie’s computer had been studied in case some paedophile had been grooming her.
Leaning back in the car, Agatha lit a cigarette and brought the faces of the parents up into her mind’s eye. The father’s face had looked bloated. Grief or drink?
A memory from her own childhood surfaced in her mind. Her parents had both been alcoholics. One night she had awakened to find her father standing at the end of her bed. ‘Move over, darling,’ he’d said.
And young Agatha had opened her mouth and screamed the place down. Her mother had come tottering in and her parents had ended up having a vicious fight.
Had daddy tried anything on with young Trixie? Now, if you were a fifteen-year-old, would you commit suicide? There was a lot of that around. But the reports had her down as a sensible girl, fairly good at exams.
What would I do? wondered Agatha.
With all the influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe, lousy jobs were hard to find, the sort of jobs where they didn’t bother about employment details. She hoped Trixie hadn’t gone to London, where there were plenty waiting to prey on runaways and put them into prostitution.
She was an ordinary-looking girl, tall for her age, with mousy hair. But if she dyed her hair and wore glasses, she could change her appearance.
What would I do? thought Agatha again. She lit another cigarette.
Work? Chambermaid or dishwasher. That might be it. Maybe not too far away. The report said she had never been out of Mircester before. She was too tall and not nearly pretty enough to attract a paedophile. She could pass for seventeen or eighteen.
She returned to the office in time for the evening briefing. ‘Sharon, you’ve done very good work on this girl, Trixie Ballard,’ said Agatha. ‘But I’ve got a feeling there might be trouble with the father. I don’t think she’s been snatched, and from that report from the school counsellor, she doesn’t seem the suicidal type. It’s a wild guess, but she might be working somewhere where they aren’t too fussy about employment legalities. I want you all to take tomorrow to check hotels for chambermaids and restaurants for dis
hwashers. Jobs like that.’
After briefing them, Agatha went wearily home. Charles had left. She fed the cats and let them out into the garden. She would start work on the Trixie case in the morning.
Toni had enjoyed her brief time of being her own boss. She felt she’d taken a great step backwards to be working for Agatha again. She was grateful to Agatha – too grateful – for all the help she had given her.
Most of the girls she had been to school with had settled for unexciting jobs. Still, thought Toni, they might turn out to be a good source of information as to low-paid jobs where too many questions might not be asked. Toni had opted to search the hotels. Trixie would need somewhere to stay.
Toni began by calling at Mircester’s main supermarket. She walked right around the back of the building to where she knew the staff often stood outside, having a smoke.
Two of her old school friends were there. A thin, scrawny, spotty girl called Chelsea hailed her. ‘If it isn’t our famous tec. What you doing, babes?’
‘I’m looking for Trixie Ballard. Seen anything of her?’
Her companion Tracy, small and fat with lank hair, jeered, ‘Oh, sure. With all the cops in Britain looking for her?’
‘Just wondered,’ said Toni and walked hurriedly away. She realized that if she questioned them about hotels where Trixie might have found work, they would gossip all over the supermarket and, if Trixie was in hiding in one of the hotels, she might get to hear of it.
The time to hit the hotels would be just after ten o’clock, when guests would be expected to vacate their rooms. At the posher hotels it would be midday. At least Mircester was only a market town. A big city like London or Manchester would be a nightmare.
She checked her list. There were five hotels. The George was the biggest but she couldn’t imagine them employing someone without a social security number.
Then there was the Palace – same thing. The Country Inn was a possibility.
She went round to the staff entrance. A woman in a white overall came out and dumped rubbish in one of the bins and went in again. Toni went off and bought a white overall, put it on, returned to the Country Inn and boldly walked in by the service entrance and up the stairs.
She went up and down stairs and along corridors, checking into rooms where the maids were working, but could not see any sign of anyone who looked like Trixie. In fact, most of the voices she heard sounded Polish.
Toni finally gave up and went back to her car. Two hotels left, the Berkeley and the Townhouse. The Berkeley was actually a motel out on the ring road. That seemed the more hopeful of the two.
It was built like an E with the central bar missing. All she had to do was park in the courtyard to get a clear view of the maids coming in and out as they worked on the various rooms.
Not one of them looked like Trixie. Without much hope, she drove to the Townhouse. It was a small seedy-looking hotel.
Time had passed and surely the rooms would have been cleaned. Toni drove to the side of the hotel where she had a good view of the service entrance and waited. By late afternoon, the maids began to check out. There were about six of them but no Trixie.
She checked into the office for the final briefing. ‘Maybe we’ll give it one more morning tomorrow,’ said Agatha, ‘and then that’s that.’
Sharon caught up with Toni outside. ‘You’re looking right dismal these days, Tone. Is it that fellow, Perry?’
‘It’s part that. He had the cheek to send me flowers and keep phoning. He’s finally given up. The liar kept saying it was a setup and he’d never seen the woman before.’
‘What’s the other thing?’
‘I’d like to be my own boss again.’
‘You could ask Agatha,’ suggested Sharon. ‘’Member she originally offered to set you up?’
‘I want to be totally independent of Agatha. After all she’s done for me, I don’t feel like taking on any more gratitude. And I wouldn’t be free of her. She’d be round checking the books and giving unwanted advice.’
‘Tell you what,’ said Sharon. ‘There’s a sloppy movie, To You My Love, on at the Odeon. It’s a bit of a pinch of Sleepless in Seattle. We could grab a burger and then go there.’
Toni grinned and put an arm around Sharon’s chubby shoulders. ‘Sounds good to me.’
Agatha watched them from the office window. Toni was wearing a black T-shirt, short denim skirt with a broad belt slung low over it and flat sandals. The sun glinted on her fair hair. Sharon was in her usual ragbag of fashions, chattering away animatedly.
I wish I were as young as that, thought Agatha moodily. They’re off, out for the night, and I’m going home to my cats.
The film did not have a strong enough plot to hold Toni’s attention, although Sharon, clutching a giant tub of popcorn to her generous bosom, seemed enthralled. Toni remembered when things at home were bad with her drunken brother, she would often escape to the cinema.
She sat up straight and peered around her. Would a girl like Trixie do the same? Of course the poor girl could be lying dead in a ditch somewhere.
Before the end of the film, she whispered to Sharon, ‘I’ll meet you outside.’
Sharon gulped and nodded in agreement, tears running down her face, as she stared avidly at the screen.
Toni positioned herself outside. The movie had received bad reviews and the cinema had been only one third full.
She took out the photo of Trixie and studied it. The girl could change her appearance but she had a small black mole at the right-hand corner of her mouth. I’ll focus on that, thought Toni.
And then, as people began to come out, Toni spotted a girl with a hood drawn over her head. She caught a glimpse of a little black mole. Sharon came up to her. ‘You missed a great ending… What?’
‘I’ve seen Trixie,’ hissed Toni. ‘Let’s follow her.’
They hurried after the hooded figure. The girl walked to the marketplace and waited. A van drove up with GREEN FINGER NURSERIES painted on the side. Trixie got in and the van drove off.
Toni and Sharon raced to Toni’s car. ‘I know that nursery,’ said Toni. ‘It’s out on the Bewdley Road. We’ll go there and see if we can get a better look at her and then we’ll call the police.’
They parked a little way away from the nursery and got out. ‘I must get a closer look,’ said Toni. They cautiously approached the garden nursery. The air was full of the sweet smell of flowers and plants. The van was parked outside a low bungalow. ‘You wait here,’ hissed Toni. ‘I’ll creep up and look in at the window. I hope they don’t have dogs.’
Toni moved silently forward across the parking space in front of the bungalow. Behind the bungalow, long glass-covered sheds glistened in the moonlight.
She crouched down and peered in a window which was lit up. A man and woman and a girl were sitting at a kitchen table. The woman was pouring tea. Staring at the girl, Toni realized that if it hadn’t been for that tell-tale mole, she might never have recognized Trixie. She was wearing glasses and her hair was dyed blonde.
Toni slowly backed away. When she joined Sharon, she said, ‘I’ll call the police.’
‘We’ll get no glory,’ said Sharon.
‘But they may have abducted her, even though it doesn’t look like that.’
‘You phone,’ said Sharon. ‘I’m going behind that hedge for a pee.’
Once behind the hedge, Sharon took out her mobile phone where she had logged in the numbers of all the important newspapers and television companies and began to talk rapidly.
Toni had managed to get Bill Wong and had urged him not to bring the police with all sirens blaring or Trixie might escape.
Very soon the first of the police cars began to arrive. Toni met them at the corner of the road. ‘Go easy,’ she whispered to Bill. ‘I think Trixie might have had trouble with her father.’
‘You mean abuse?’
‘Something like that.’
‘You stay there and leave the job to us.’
<
br /> It seemed to take a long time. Then the press arrived in numbers. ‘It was Toni here that found her,’ said Sharon proudly.
‘And Sharon,’ said Toni loyally. They put their arms around each other and stood smiling and flashes went off in their faces.
Then there was a press scrum as the bungalow door opened and Trixie was led out, her head concealed by a blanket. The couple were led out as well, but Toni noticed they were not in handcuffs.
Detective Inspector Wilkes approached the two girls and said curtly, ‘Come down to headquarters. You’ll need to make a statement.’
On the way there, Toni said urgently, ‘Phone Agatha. She’ll want to be in on this.’
‘Why? She did nothing.’
‘She’s the boss. Phone!’
Sharon sulkily pulled out her mobile phone and pretended to dial. ‘No reply,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Did you leave a message?’
‘I forgot.’
‘Well, do it now!’
Agatha was outside James’s cottage. He was not at home. She went back to her own cottage and locked up. She went upstairs and undressed and showered and then decided to put a face pack on.
As she sat on the edge of her bed, waiting for the face pack to harden, she suddenly noticed the red light blinking on the phone receiver, which meant she had a message.
She picked it up, listened impatiently to the well-modulated recorded voice of the operator telling her she had one message and then pressed button one.
It was Patrick. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from a contact. Toni’s found that missing girl and the press are all over the place.’ Cursing, she ran to the bathroom and rinsed off the face mask, struggled into her clothes, rushed out of her cottage and into her car and set off for Mircester.
By the time she got to police headquarters, all she could do was wait in the reception area for Toni and Sharon to reappear.
Two hours went past and then Toni and Sharon came out, looking weary.
Agatha listened as Toni described how they had managed to find Trixie. When she had finished, Agatha said coldly, ‘You should have phoned me immediately.’
‘I did phone,’ said Sharon. ‘There wasn’t time to phone earlier and Toni could have made a mistake.’
