by M. J. Trow
‘I understand you’re working on the Annette Choker case.’
Alison McCormick was suddenly all ears. ‘That’s right.’
‘I have some information.’
‘You are?’
‘Quietly desperate for a cup of tea,’ he beamed at her across the front desk at Leighford nick.
She blinked, glancing desperately at the desk man, filling in ledgers to her left.
‘Sergeant Wilson,’ Maxwell recognized the man above the stripes. Their meetings had not always been the marriage of true minds. ‘Good to see you again. How is Captain Mainwaring?’
‘Interview Room Two, Constable,’ Wilson growled at the girl. He had no taste for Maxwell’s humour and no time for Maxwell’s nonsense. ‘And I’m afraid we’re all out of tea, Mr Maxwell. Home Office cutbacks. We’ve got so many civilians in the station now, there’s no money for anything else.’
‘Do you know,’ Maxwell smiled as the door buzzed to let him in, ‘it’s just the same in teaching. LSAs we call them, Learning Support Assistants – I just don’t know how we managed without them all these years. Christ alone knows what they do.’
‘Bloody right,’ the sergeant concurred. And Maxwell followed the little policewoman, marching away down the corridor ahead of him, regulation shoes clacking on the concrete below the black-tighted legs. Interview Room Two hadn’t changed since Peter Maxwell had seen it last. Windows too high to peer out of. And in case you were tempted, the glass was frosted. There was a table and four chairs – two for the Nice Policeman and Nasty Policeman, one for the Felon, one for his Brief, all of them of course, to varying degrees, members of the criminal fraternity.
‘Have a seat,’ she ordered curtly.
‘Shouldn’t I have a man policewoman with me?’ he asked. ‘Lest you forget yourself and leap upon me in a moment of passion?’
She looked at him for a moment, confused, lost even. ‘You wish!’ she sneered, in command again. A little puerile, perhaps. Not quite up to Maxwell’s level of wit and repartee.
He sat down opposite her. ‘Tape?’ he nodded at the machine in the corner, fully aware of FACE and other pieces of legislation forced on the government in recent years.
‘This is only a chat, isn’t it?’ she asked him. ‘Unless you’ve got something to confess.’ Alison McCormick wondered what kind of madman she’d got here. He was a funny age, well-spoken, with a twinkle in his eyes that spelt trouble. Could she, she wondered, disable him with a well-timed blow to the crotch, reach the door before he did, bang the emergency button on her side of the desk. And wasn’t DS Carpenter knocking off a bloke called Maxwell?
‘Well,’ he reached inside his jacket pocket. ‘In a way.’ And he passed her the note from the Memo King.
‘What’s this?’
‘All part of the riddle that is Annette Choker,’ he told her, leaning back and folding her arms.
‘Do you know her?’ she asked, still not looking at the note.
‘Yes.’ He leaned forward. ‘But not, I must emphasise, in the Biblical sense. I taught her, I think, in Year Seven. Or was it Year Nine?’
‘You don’t know?’ Alison asked.
Maxwell clasped his hands on the desk, doing an excellent stool pigeon impression from a Thirties social conscience picture. ‘Don’t ever tell their parents, Woman Policeman,’ he said, ‘but there are nearly twelve hundred kids at Leighford High and I have to admit, I don’t know them all. Besides, Annette has, I believe, blossomed, since she sat in my classroom.’
The Woman Policeman saw all sorts of promotional possibilities pass before her eyes and leaned back, choosing her words. ‘Like that, do you, blossoming girls?’
‘Not as much as some of my colleagues,’ he tapped the note.
‘What is this?’ she asked.
‘Read it,’ he suggested.
‘“See you tonight. Usual place. It’ll be a bit cramped, but we’ll all have some fun. No knickers.” Who wrote this?’ Perhaps it was the light, but Alison McCormick seemed to have turned pale.
‘John Fry, Head of Business Studies at Leighford High.’
‘It’s not signed,’ she noted.
‘Spot on, Miss Einstein,’ he said, ‘but take it from me, that’s Fry’s writing.’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘It fell out of a folder I have reason to believe belongs to Annette Choker.’
Alison McCormick sat there, frowning, trying to make sense of it all. ‘So you’re saying…’
‘I’m saying that John Fry, Head of Business Studies at Leighford High appears to be making an assignation with a girl who has now gone missing from home. It’s a common enough situation, Woman Policeman – the Sundays are full of it.’
‘Why wouldn’t he text her?’
‘Sorry?’
‘This John Fry. If he was having a thing with Annette, why didn’t he text her? Talk to her even?’
‘Why did Leopold and Loeb decide to kill Bobby Franks? Why didn’t Dr Crippen use the right kind of lime to dispose of his wife? Why isn’t the moon made of green cheese? I’m giving you John Fry’s head on a plate, Woman Policeman. Find him and you’ll find Annette.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ the girl was on her feet.
Maxwell sat back, looking up at the bright eyes, the clenched mouth. If ever a woman was on her dignity, this was it. ‘Are you telling me you’re not going to follow this up?’ he asked, incredulous.
‘I’m telling you I’ll think about it,’ she told him.
He reached for the note.
‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘No, that stays here. It might be important evidence. Good evening, Mr Maxwell. I’ll show you out.’
‘It’s not my case, Max,’ Jacquie said across the wires. She was in her kitchen, wrestling with the spring cleaning she’d been meaning to do now for weeks, her cordless tucked between her head and her shoulder, which was a woman thing. ‘I’m on the Radley business.’
‘Look, Jacquie, darling,’ she heard him wheedle, ‘is there anybody at your end who speaks English? Is it money? Can I give you a stash of my earth pounds?’
‘All right,’ she sighed. ‘I’m sure Alison’s onto it. For all your appalling, chauvinist views of womankind, she’s nobody’s fool. Might make a reasonable DC in twenty years or so. She’ll be onto it. Trust me.’
‘All right.’ He held his hand in the air as a gesture of peace, lolling back in his modelling chair in his attic as he was. ‘All right. Let’s hope she will be. I’m washing my hands of this now.’
‘Good, good. Thank you, Pontius.’
‘Jacqueline,’ he sat upright. ‘Do I detect the bum’s rush here? You sound preoccupied.’
‘Max, I’m cleaning the kitchen.’
‘It’s half-past eleven at night.’ He checked the clock to make sure.
‘So I’m nocturnal.’
‘Yeah, right. To change the subject just a threat; what news on the Radley business?’
‘Now, Max…’
‘Come on, Jacquie.’ Maxwell checked the paintwork on the jacket of Private Ryan. Buttons needed highlights. ‘I was the second person to reach him, for God’s sake. After daft Robbie, and I can’t see him solving anything. You know I just can’t walk away.’
‘Yes,’ she stood up, feeling her back in half, and held the phone again. ‘Yes, I know that,’ she nodded, her eyes suddenly moist. That was Mad Max all right and she loved him for it. He had never walked away and never would. ‘But you know my position.’
‘Now, don’t change the subject,’ he scolded. ‘Sex later. Let’s get to cases first.’
‘Behave!’ she growled at him. ‘Look, I’ve got a briefing at the nick tomorrow morning. I’ll know more by then. Now, I really have to go, Max.’
‘I bet you say that to all the men who love you and keep interfering in the cases you’re working on.’
She laughed. She could picture him now, with that silly old military cap on his head, kicking the furniture between dabs with his paintbr
ush and doing his hurt, schoolboy routine. ‘I love you, Peter Maxwell,’ she whispered.
‘I love you too…er…er…Jacquie, is it?’
‘Bastard!’ and she hung up.
Martin Toogood was tired. The VDU screen was flickering in front of him, words jumping before his eyes until they weren’t making sense any more. He logged off, stretched for the first time in what seemed like hours and grabbed his jacket from the chair. He checked his watch. Christ, it was nearly Tuesday morning. And he had a briefing at eight. He couldn’t remember when he’d slept last and when he had, all he saw was the pale, dead face of Susan Radley, alone in the world for the first time in her life.
He grunted something at Wilson, stirring his cocoa at the front desk. He pushed the necessary buttons and made for the car park. The interior lights came on as he clicked the remote. Must clean the bloody thing, he thought as he got in, kicking aside the Ginster’s wrapper and the Coke bottle. One day, one day.
He turned the wheel full lock and purred out of the gate. Traffic was slow this time of night, all the drunks extra wary as they passed Leighford nick and the slightly less legless wary of the unmarked car that came out of its car park. The lights were with him at Cross Street and again at the flyover. This was good. He’d be home by half-past twelve. Quick shower. Something slimy from the freezer – thank God for microwaves. Then bed. What an invention.
He checked his speed. There were cameras on Gravel Hill, and they had film in them. Still, he had mates in Traffic. They wouldn’t be asking too many questions. He put his foot down, catching the sea like a slab of silver under the half moon. The lights were still twinkling along the sea front away to his right, tiny bulbs bouncing on the breeze. He flicked his way through the radio channels. Some bollocks about the EU; a particularly crap rap; ah, this was all right – a band his mum had told him all about; The Moody Blues.
‘It’s not the way that you say it when you do those things to me,’ Justin Hayward was singing as he began the descent. Hayward was still looking for a miracle in his life, singing of the silence of the mountains and the crashing of the sea when Martin Toogood put his foot gently on the brake. Nothing. He pressed harder. No response.
And Justin Hayward was still singing about the dead and the sleeping when the car left the road, roaring with a scream of tyres through the hedge, to roll and bounce over and over on the ridges of the Down, circling in all the slow motion of death.
There was no eruption of flame, no spurt of fire. Just a long, dying hiss of steam and the relentless squeak of a slowly turning wheel. The rest was silence.
Chapter Six
Milk bottles growing daily in number. A parcel too long on the step. Mildred Hanson wouldn’t have classed herself as a nosey neighbour, but she couldn’t help noticing how oddly still the Fry house seemed as May edged towards June and the blossom passed and the sun warmed the earth. You could normally set your watch by John. His car was always growling along the gravel at eight-thirty, back around five, later sometimes.
Eleanor was different. Mildred knew that John was a teacher, but Eleanor didn’t appear to work. She’d go shopping most days; Mildred had often waved to her in Asda, but her car came and went at irregular intervals. Occasionally she heard her radio in the garden. When the two of them were there, they didn’t seem to talk much. But now there were no cars coming or going. No John at eight-thirty and five; no Eleanor at any time. So Mildred, the non-nosy neighbour, sent Keith round. And Keith had gone – anything for a quiet life. He had taken retirement too early – he knew that now. And, love Mildred though he undoubtedly did, she was just beginning to grate on him a little. She was just so…daily.
Six pints stood in the plastic thingy on the front step. There was a parcel addressed to Mrs E Fry alongside. The free Leighford paper that advertised crap that nobody wanted jutted from the half-open letter box.
‘Hello!’ Keith called through it, risking his old trouble by bending so low. Nothing. He knocked the paper through to land with a thwack on the pile of unopened mail on the mat. He could see the hall was empty, the whole place silent except for the ancient tick of the grandfather clock one of the Frys had inherited as a wedding present. Keith had retired years ago, but he still had a powerful pair of shoulders and he tested one of them against the door. Solid.
He tried the side gate, the one that led to the garden. No obstacle here. A hose lay uncoiled across the lawn, the lawn that could do with a mow. There were daisies and buttercups sprouting with a glory that Solomon might have envied. But then, Solomon was no gardener. He looked in through the patio doors to the kitchen. No one there. He tried the handle and the door opened. That was odd. A loaf of bread lay discarded on its board, its cut face grey with mould; a half-full (or was it half-empty) cup of cold coffee stood nearby, its surface mottled with turquoise blotches. The room seemed oddly cold on this bright Thursday morning, unlived in, abandoned, dead.
‘Hello?’ he called again. ‘Eleanor? John?’
It wasn’t half term for another week so he knew John would be at school. But why hadn’t he collected the milk? The post? The letters lay in front of the door where the postman had been dutifully slotting them through for the past few days. The lounge was empty. Telly off. Papers, days old, on the coffee table.
‘Hello!’ the old man called again. ‘I’m coming up.’ And he made for the stairs. He felt more awkward now than he had on the ground floor. There was something half-sacred about other people’s bedrooms. He’d only ever once been in next door’s downstairs and never up here. He felt like an intruder. ‘Hello?’ the call was softer now, as if he was afraid of an answer. He tried the first door. Spare room. Bed made. A pair of trousers on the duvet. He tried the second. The master bedroom – a double kingsize, the covers pulled back, pillows rumpled. No sign of life. There were more doors. One, he knew, was the airing cupboard, because his and Mildred’s house was a mirror image of this one. The other would be the bathroom – no point in looking in there. The third was the second spare room. This was the junk heap, what estate agents incomprehensibly called the box room. There was an old computer here, parts of an exercise bike, piles of books.
Something made Keith go back to the master bedroom and he opened the wardrobe. Her clothes were there – dresses, tops, sling-back shoes. His seemed to have gone. No shirts, no jackets, no trousers. So that was it, then; he’d left her. Done a runner. And what about Eleanor? Chased after him? Gone home to mummy? Keith was still pondering the possibilities when he pushed open the bathroom door.
For the rest of his life he wished he hadn’t. Eleanor Fry lay in a bath of blood, her skin the colour of parchment, one arm resting on the edge of the porcelain, fingers slightly curled. On the floor below them, an empty bottle lay on the bath mat. Keith gripped the door to steady himself. For a fleeting, silly, shock-induced moment, he saw himself in a Midsomer Murders scenario. People who found bodies there always screamed and came rushing out of picturesque cottages off chocolate boxes. Real life wasn’t quite like that. He couldn’t make any sound at all. All he could do was stare at the dead woman’s face. Her grey eyes were sunk in, dull in the half-light. Her right breast jutted from the crimson water, her shoulder raised slightly against her head, as if she’d been holding a phone there.
Keith had seen the dead before. He should have recognized the smell. As soon as he left the kitchen, he’d been aware of it, a sickly sweetness which is unplaceable at first, the unforgettable. He knew she’d been dead for days, that rigor would have come and gone, that her back and legs would be dark with lividity, that her flesh would be cold.
He turned and padded down the stairs, pausing at the phone on its cradle by the kitchen door. He didn’t use it. It just didn’t seem right, somehow. And he waited until he was back on his own soil before he said softly to his wife, busy at work in her flower beds, ‘Mildred, you’d better call the police.’
Missing persons were always difficult. Missing girls a hundred times so. To begin with, there was th
at fine line between civil liberties and panic. Annette Choker would be sixteen in five weeks. And in five weeks, all the rights of adulthood would kick in. As it was, she was a minor and the law galvanized itself into action. DCI Henry Hall had his hands full with the Radley inquiry. He couldn’t really spare the personnel to hunt for the girl, but he couldn’t ignore her either. He didn’t want to pull Martin Toogood off the murder case – the man was too useful. On the other hand, a rookie PC like Alison McCormick couldn’t handle it by herself. There was always Jacquie Carpenter. But Jacquie had her uses too, on murder enquiries, especially when Peter Maxwell was involved. And Henry Hall would rather know where Peter Maxwell was at all times in these situations – and that meant using Jacquie as a sounding board.
The word of Annette Choker’s disappearance had gone out to every police authority in the country. Her description; a school photo from Year Ten when she looked more angelic than she did the day she vanished; what she was last seen wearing. It all travelled the electronic miles through cyberspace to find itself, hard copied, on police station walls, supermarket notice boards, night club billboards. Did anybody look at those, Alison McCormick wondered as she checked the wording of the description for the umpteenth time. Did anybody care? What did they see? A little girl lost, caught up in a frightening world she didn’t understand? Or a tart out on the razzle, deserving everything she got? Welcome to police work.
Newspapermen had a take all their own. They snooped like the heavy, bloated flies of summer, onto cases like these. Those that weren’t already bivouacked on the trench-dissected slopes of Staple Hill were clamouring for exclusives on the steps of Leighford Police Station. They circled the Barlichway Estate where the law of the jungle prevailed, wafting greenbacks under the noses of impressionable kids and mixing with the lowest of life other than each other. They hovered at the gates of Leighford High, asking all and sundry whether they knew Annette Choker or where she’d gone.
