Girl Gone Missing

by J M Gregson

  It was bitter, disillusioned, a contradiction of the tenderness he had professed so recently for the girl. But it was not so different from what they heard from many a parent. And Alison Watts was not available to put her side of the story. Murder was the only crime where you had to build up a picture of the central figure wholly through the viewpoints of other people, all with their own reasons to like or dislike that figure.

  ‘Alison was at Oldford Comprehensive, wasn’t she? In the sixth form.’

  ‘If you know that, why come wasting your time here? Talk to her friends there. Talk to her bloody teachers, for God’s sake!’

  Hook thought there might be something interesting in that last, vehement emphasis. But this wasn’t the time or the place to follow it up, with a man who was becoming increasingly hostile to them. He stood up, looking round the tidy, soulless room. There was no trace of a photograph of the dead girl; in his experience, that was unusual, with an only daughter. He said, ‘We shall visit the school in due course, Mr Watts. If your wife returns, please ask her to get in touch with us immediately. Thank you for your help.’ He was on his way out before Watts could detect any irony in the remark.

  At the other end of the terrace of houses, a woman stood in her small front garden. She was cutting a bunch of Michaelmas daisies, but the way she looked at the police car as they got into it suggested to Hook, who was something of an expert in such things, that she had been waiting for them to emerge from the Watts’ house. He turned the corner, so that he was out of sight from any of Robert Watts’ windows, and drew the car quietly to the kerb. Sure enough, the woman bustled after them and stepped conspiratorially over the low garden wall as he lowered the window of the car.

  ‘Been talkin’ to ‘im, ‘ave you? Not before time, if you ask me! Tell you where Kate was, did he? Where ‘e’d put ‘er, more like.’

  This woman couldn’t yet know about the death of Alison Watts. She was talking about something else, something almost as dramatic, in her view. But she might know where the girl’s mother was. Hook said, ‘No, Mr Watts didn’t tell us where his wife was. He said he didn’t know where she’d gone.’

  ‘Didn’t know? Wasn’t telling, more like.’ The woman sniffed truculently, clutching the stems of her Michaelmas daisies more tightly; the blue flower-heads trembled dramatically, seeming to reflect her indignation.

  ‘If you know where Mrs Watts is, you should tell us. We need to get in touch with her urgently, you see.’

  The woman was about fifty and looked as if she led a drab life. She sensed a drama in Hook’s word ‘urgently’, one in which she might have a vicarious, peripheral role. Her eyes narrowed with the triumph of her knowledge. ‘She’s in the refuge, isn’t she, Katie Watts? The refuge for battered wives, where they take them in to protect them from their husbands!’

  Chapter Four

  THOMAS Murray was a modern educationist. Oldford Comprehensive was lucky to have him as its headmaster. The Governors thought so. The Chief Education Officer thought so. In his more expansive moments, when he saw the mistakes some other head teachers made, even Tom Murray thought so.

  Murray was shrewd as well as intelligent, a man who understood the strengths and weaknesses of the state education system, and made use of both of them. Most of the general public expected teachers to be dedicated, a little unworldly in the rewards they expected; Tom Murray was aware of that. The fact that the system was supposed to be above and beyond petty considerations of personal advancement only made it the more vulnerable to him.

  Murray was not just a con-man: his progress had necessitated a much greater range of skills than that. He was a sound, efficient teacher; he had demonstrated that in his early days. That did not mean he was brilliant or original; Tom learned early in his educational life that these were qualities which the hierarchy distrusted, however much they might pay lip-service to them. Soundness. Reliability. Those were the attributes hard-pressed head teachers looked for in their junior staff. So the young Tom Murray had provided them: he quickly acquired a reputation not just for being adequate in the classroom but adept in handling both parents and those visiting public and educational dignitaries upon whom a school’s reputation depended. He became a Head of Department in a large secondary school when he was twenty-nine.

  Now it was necessary to look beyond the school itself to the educational world at large. Murray took the Times Educational Supplement and read the articles at the front of the weekly journal as well as the lists of jobs at the back which preoccupied his colleagues. He became an expert on educational ideas; more important, his shrewdness enabled him to spot which ones to support as educational fashions changed. He enthused over the child-centred approach to education of the ‘seventies, and his progressive ideals carried him to a Deputy Headship at thirty-five.

  He was diligent, efficient and hard-working. His head teacher, a man twenty years older than Tom, found him an able supporter to whom he could safely leave much of the public relations work which seemed to be increasingly important in education. And Tom saw how events were moving against the progressive ideals of the child-centred approach to education more quickly than most of his colleagues. He began first to question and then to deride what he now called the wishy-washy ideals of learning which was built round the needs of the individual child. ‘Progressive’, the by-word of his early years in schools, now became an insult, and Tom learned to pronounce it with a curl of his wide, expressive lips. He devised a ringing call for a return to basics in education, to the old ideals of discipline and measured progress; it went down well at interviews. At forty-one, he was appointed Head Teacher of the Oldford Comprehensive School, one of the county’s largest. He had reached his goal.

  There were a few casualties of his progress, of course. That was inevitable. He had to give up most of his hobbies. But his marriage to the dutiful, supportive girl he had met in his last year at university survived. There were two children, but they did not have to attend his school, because he had taken the precaution of living some miles away from it, in a village out towards Cheltenham. His children were not in his own school’s catchment area, so their teenage troubles could not be the subject of sniggering at his expense behind the staffroom door of his school. And if his marriage was not as exciting as others he heard and read about, well, there were ways of adding a little excitement to your private life, if you were well organised and discreet. Tom Murray was both.

  On this bright October morning, Mr Murray shut himself away in the headmaster’s office as soon as assembly was over, with orders that he was not to be disturbed. There was not much time to gather his thoughts. The police would be here in twenty minutes.

  They had not said much on the phone. Just that it was about his missing sixth form girl, Alison Watts. But this time it was CID. A Detective Sergeant, who had made the call, and a Superintendent. Big stuff: that meant the news must be bad. Almost certainly the wretched girl was dead. Bad publicity for the school. But then they said there was no such thing as bad publicity, and that seemed to become more true with each passing year. At least the girl’s death would keep Oldford Comprehensive in the public eye. The public reaction must be a sympathetic one, though, if anything useful was to come out of this business.

  Tom took a pad out of the top drawer of his desk and began to rough out his statement for the press. ‘Alison was a lively, intelligent girl. One of the most popular girls in the school. She was a prefect and a much respected member of our school community, and she would certainly have gone on to gain a university place and do well there. Our hearts go out to her family at this tragic time.’ Perhaps he should describe her as a ‘young woman’ rather than a girl; that would give it a bit more dignity, and emphasize the level of education within his school. But what he had scribbled would do for a start; he would polish the phrasing later, when he knew how much detail of the death the police were going to reveal. Eventually, he would add something about the necessity to put behind bars whoever had done this awful thing,
but not yet. Ever since she had gone missing, he had let it be known privately that he thought a girl who behaved as Alison had done could come to no good. But he mustn’t commit anything to paper about the manner of her death at this stage. Not until the police had said something official.

  His secretary brought the policemen in. They were in plain clothes, of course. The Superintendent was tall and thin, with plentiful dark hair which was grizzled with silver and a long, lined face; he had grey, watchful eyes and the beginnings of a tall man’s stoop. Even as he introduced himself as John Lambert and shook hands, he studied Murray. The head was conscious of being assessed, in this room where most people who entered felt at a disadvantage with him; he found it unexpectedly disturbing.

  Detective Sergeant Hook was altogether less threatening. With his ruddy, countryman’s countenance and his ready smile, he seemed much more the kind of policeman who should be coming into schools and dealing with children. Tom Murray could see him in uniform, instructing much younger children about the safety code for pedestrians and cyclists. But he would go carefully with this Superintendent chap.

  Lambert said, ‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid. I expect you guessed that.’

  Tom had a strange feeling that the thoughts he had indulged before they came were being laid bare for the inspection of those cool grey eyes. ‘I feared the worst, yes. One always hopes against hope, of course, but —’

  ‘Quite. The body of a young woman was retrieved from the Wye at Chepstow two days ago. We are now quite certain that it is that of Alison Watts.’

  Now that the moment of revelation had come, Tom Murray felt oddly unprepared for it. He was searching for the right reaction, when he should not have even needed to think about it. There was a pause that should not have been there before he said, ‘Oh dear. She was a girl with everything to look forward to. Was it — was it some sort of accident? I can’t think that Alison would have done anything foolish, even with the traumas which seem to loom so large as we pass through adolescence —’

  Lambert let his words peter out, when he had expected to be interrupted. It made them sound curiously hollow. Then the Superintendent said, ‘Miss Watts’s death wasn’t an accident, Mr Murray. And neither was it suicide. That’s why we’re here. The girl was murdered.’

  ‘But how can you be sure that… You said she was pulled out of the river. I naturally assumed that —’ Again Lambert let him go on, studying him steadily as he spoke. And again Tom Murray felt that his words acquired an unreal, theatrical edge, as if he were speaking lines in a bad stage thriller.

  ‘I didn’t say that she drowned, though. Perhaps I should have made myself clearer. Alison Watts was dead before she ever went into the Wye. The details will be revealed at the inquest, but I can tell you now that she was strangled. By person or persons unknown. It’s our job to make them known. That’s why we’re here.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I see. And of course we must do everything we can to help you, Superintendent. It’s just rather a shock, you see, to find that one of our girls, who was with us for seven years, has been killed so brutally. It’s — it’s a little like losing one of the family, you see.’

  It was overstated, and Lambert let the overstatement hang in the air for a moment, in which its falsity seemed to grow. It was almost as though the words, conventional as they had seemed to Murray, were weighed and found wanting by this disconcerting visitor. Eventually he said, ‘We shall need your full cooperation, and that of your colleagues. We’re starting a murder investigation late, far too late. Our initial enquiries suggest Miss Watts died eleven weeks ago.’

  ‘Just after the end of our summer term, then.’ With a reaction that had become instinctive over years of dealing with the local media, Murray began to distance the death from his school.

  ‘Yes. We’re assuming until we find anything to convince us otherwise that she died shortly after she disappeared. We shall need to talk to both her teachers and her friends in the school. We need to piece together a picture of the girl and her movements both in her last hours and in the weeks before her death.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I see that. I’m sure everyone here will be only too anxious to help resolve this terrible business.’

  Again he found his conventional sentiment was examined, when it was not strong enough to bear such scrutiny. Then there came an assault from where he had least expected it. The rubicund Sergeant Hook, notebook at the ready, said without warning, ‘When did you last see Miss Watts alive yourself, Mr Murray?’

  Tom tried not to look ruffled that he should be asked the question. He had half-expected it when Alison first disappeared, but the uniformed men had scarcely spoken to him in July. He supposed that he should always have been prepared for it. But he found now that he was not. Not at the outset, and so abruptly. These men behaved as though directness was a habit and they expected directness and simplicity in his replies. He realised how much preliminary fencing, how much polite, irrelevant nonsense went on in this room, as he put visitors at their ease and they put off saying what they had really come about in the early stages of conversation. Without these habits, without this greasing of the wheels of exchange, he felt very exposed.

  He said carefully, ‘It’s a long time now since the end of our summer term. But I think I spoke to the first year sixth on the last Thursday — the term ended formally on the Friday. Gave them a little pep talk about the importance of what for most of them would be their final year in the school as they came up to their A levels and looked for entry into higher education — a very high proportion of our boys and girls go off to universities, you know.’ He dropped unthinkingly with this last phrase into the mode of address he used for local councillors.

  Hook said, ‘And Alison Watts was there among that group. You’re saying that that was the last time you saw her.’

  ‘If she was there, yes. I really can’t recall at this distance of time whether a single girl among nine hundred in my school was present in a large group.’

  He allowed himself a flash of petulance as he felt on safer ground. He knew the way a school worked, and these intrusive men didn’t. It was the area to assert himself. But it didn’t have the effect he desired. Lambert said sharply, ‘Of course not, in normal circumstances. But these are scarcely normal. The girl was registered some time ago as a missing person, and enquiries have already been made in the school by other officers. I’m surprised you haven’t already asked yourself when was the last occasion on which you saw the girl.’

  It was a direct challenge, which left Tom Murray feeling a little foolish. He said sullenly, ‘I have done that, of course. But this is a busy school, and I have had a thousand other problems in the weeks since the girl went missing and your uniformed men came in to ask us about where we thought she might have gone. Yes, I seem to recall now that Alison Watts was in the group I spoke to on that Thursday. That would indeed be the last time I spoke to her. And as I told the people who came here originally when she went missing, I didn’t speak to her individually, and I didn’t see her again after that meeting.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hook. He made a note in his round hand. ‘What were your impressions of Alison Watts? Was there anything unusual in her way of life? Anything which distinguished her from others in the group?’

  ‘No.’ Tom wondered if his negative had come a little too promptly and insistently. ‘She was an intelligent, lively girl. A credit to herself and the school. I can’t think of anyone who would have wished her any harm.’

  It sounded even in his own ears like a prepared, empty statement, and Hook treated it as such, not even bothering to record this reaction. He said, ‘We shall need to speak to those of your staff who were in daily contact with the deceased girl.’

  ‘Yes, of course. The best person for you to start with is Margaret Peplow. I’ll get my secretary to take you across to see Mrs Peplow now. She’s our Director of Sixth Form Studies.’

  Titles had got more grandiose since he was at school, thought Lambert. Well,
schools didn’t exist in vacuums: they were part of society; it was inevitable that they should reflect its small vanities, as well as its greater evils. He said, ‘Thank you for your help, Mr Murray. We shall disturb the life of the school as little as possible, but I must ask you to remember that this is a murder enquiry: it is our duty to do whatever is necessary to conclude it. Goodbye for the moment. We shall no doubt need to see you again in due course.

  The words rang in Tom Murray’s ears even after he heard his secretary taking them out of her room and into the corridor. They sounded to him almost like a threat.

  He looked out of his window and watched his visitors moving swiftly across the wide quadrangle within the modern red-brick blocks of his school to the sixth form complex. He went over again in his mind what had passed between him and them. The content of it seemed straightforward enough, even if he had been thrown off balance by their manner. He could not see how they could possibly have spotted his concealments.

  Chapter Five

  MARGARET Peplow did not fit the conventional view of a schoolmarm. She was a slim, dark-haired woman of thirty-nine, with an unlined face and sparkling black eyes. The Head’s secretary had informed her of their arrival, and she came out from her office to meet them. Hook noted a trim figure, a skirt which suggested the contours of her figure without stretching too explicitly over her rear, as she led them through a large, carpeted room which had easy chairs and a drinks machine and the notice ‘Sixth Form Common Room’ on the door.

  ‘Bit different from my day!’ said Lambert. He looked round appreciatively at the room and the decor, lest Mrs Peplow detected a personal note: she was indeed a considerable improvement on ‘Chalky’ Morton, who had taught a gawky John Lambert about Hamlet and Hardy and reeked of pipe tobacco and hair pomade. But he had better not say so. Their guide looked round the room and grinned. ‘Bit of a con trick, really, I suppose,’ she said with a grin. ‘We didn’t get this until we started to lose our students to the further education college. They like to feel they’re no longer schoolchildren when they’ve finished their GCSEs. And why shouldn’t they? They’re old enough to vote by the time they leave here. And a lot of them have part-time jobs at the weekends, however much we affect to disapprove of such things.’ She looked back at the large, empty room as she led them into her office. ‘It’s not big enough, of course, when all the lads and lasses get together at lunch times, but they like it. You can almost hear the adolescent hormones rattling around in there at times.’