Girl Gone Missing

by J M Gregson

  The girl arrived within five minutes. Hilary Jones: when Kate had seen the name on the message pad in the hostel, she had had to think hard to pin a face on that name. She bought her own tea; Kate was glad of that; she had already bought one cup she did not need, and she would need to watch her money carefully, if she was to contemplate life without Robert. As the girl carried the cup to the table and sat down opposite her, Kate thought sadly that she was the very opposite of her Alison. Squat where Alison had been willowy-tall, spotty with acne where Alison’s skin had been so smooth and soft, greasy-haired where Alison’s golden waves had fallen soft and shining at the sides of her head.

  Not attractive to men, presumably. Perhaps a good thing too, Kate thought sourly. Look where beauty had got her. Look where it had got poor Alison. Suddenly she resented this plain, earnest girl, just for being alive.

  ‘I got your message,’ Kate said roughly. ‘How’d you know where I was?’

  ‘The old lady told me. The one who lives on the corner of your road.’

  ‘I see. Nosy old cow, she is.’

  ‘She means well, I think. She asked me to give you her love, if I saw you.’ The girl was taken aback by this aggression. She had sent her message only because she thought she had better give her information to Alison’s mother, rather than to the police. She had said scarcely anything earlier in the day, when she had sat with the rest of the group and those two big detectives in Mrs Peplow’s room, because she had thought she must speak to Allie’s mum first. Hilary picked up her spoon and stirred vigorously at her tea, even though there was no sugar in it. The woman behind the distant counter folded her arms and looked at them with a sigh, willing them to finish their business and get on their way.

  Hilary said, ‘The police saw us today, asking us for anything we could tell them about Alison. I didn’t say anything. But there is something. Perhaps nothing to do with her death. Probably. I just thought I should tell it to you, not them.’ Her speech was becoming more and more staccato. She looked as if she was going to cry. Kate reached a hand across the table and put it on top of the chubby fist which still held the spoon. ‘All right, m’dear. I didn’t mean to seem abrupt. You tell me about it.’

  The kindness made the tears brim over in relief, so that for a moment the girl could not speak. Kate remembered Hilary clearly enough now. She lived within a hundred yards of the Watts; her family had moved there four years ago from Swansea. She had

  gone to and from the school with Alison, had remained a close friend of her lively daughter, though always in her shadow. The kind of girl who was never a threat and always a support. The kind of companion a girl might choose for a confidante. And Alison had done just that, it seemed.

  The things Hilary told Kate now could only have been told by a confidante, could only have been kept secret until now by such a one. She told her tale haltingly, between little sobs and huge, uneven intakes of breath, with the Welsh accent she thought she had lost coming through with the emotion. It was an awful thing she had to tell, and the horror of it sprung more vividly before her as she fought for the words and watched the revulsion stealing across the face between the whitening fists on the other side of the table. She got it out at last, completed the story, or all she could tell of it, answered the bludgeoning questions which came out of the face. She said, trying to signify the end of it, ‘I did right, didn’t I, to come to you?’

  Reeling from the news, Kate could not give the frightened, exhausted girl the reassurance she wanted. She said harshly, ‘How can you be sure of this? You can’t go around spreading things like this, you silly girl!’

  The tears ran free and unchecked now down poor Hilary’s cheeks. ‘It’s true, Mrs Watts. Honestly it is. Alison told it all to me herself. Just as I’ve told it to you. I haven’t added anything, really I haven’t. I — I just thought you should know. In case — in case he might have killed her!’ The nightmare had been put into words. She buried her face in an already sodden handkerchief.

  Kate said something to comfort her, some vague words to reassure her that she had done the right thing. They went out together, past the curious woman at the counter, into the cool night and the first drizzle of rain. Kate had just enough presence of mind to call after the girl, ‘Don’t tell anyone else, Hilary, will you? Keep it to yourself, for God’s sake!’

  Though what God could have to do with such awful things she could not begin to imagine.

  Chapter Nine

  AS they went up the wide stone steps of the Edwardian house, they could hear raised voices, even through the heavy oak door. And Lambert could see as soon as it was opened that they had come at a bad time.

  ‘Mrs Allen? We’re here to see your son, Jamie.’

  ‘So I understand. It really is most inconvenient that you should come to our house at night like this.’ There were spots of high colour at the top of her cheeks. She was erect and proud, a tall woman who was used to having her own way. She had little or no make-up and her greying hair was bunched high on her head. She wore a sage-green cardigan over a paisley dress. Bert Hook, who had been brought up in a Barnardo’s home and thought himself an expert on severe, middle-class women, thought that she probably had pious tendencies and that she went well with this gloomy, ill-lit house. A throw-back, perhaps, to a more authoritarian age. He did not envy Jamie Allen.

  The boy came into the hall and stood behind his mother. Lambert smiled, trying to remove some of the tension that had been building in the house when these official visitors arrived. ‘We can do this down at the station if you think it more appropriate, Mrs Allen. We agreed with your son that we should come here.’

  ‘It’s all right, Mother, really it is. Sergeant Hook explained that they thought it would be less embarrassing for me to see them here rather than at the school during the day, and I agreed with him.’

  His mother’s lips tightened at this assertion of independence. ‘That’s true enough, anyway. You’ve drawn quite enough attention to yourself over that girl as it is, without having the whole school sniggering about it and thinking you’ve been arrested.’ She turned back to Lambert. ‘We’ll go into the drawing room. You can say whatever you have to say in there. And that will be an end of it.’

  ‘We shall decide that, Mrs Allen. We may or may not need to see Jamie again. That will depend both on how frank he is with us and on what we subsequently find from other people. We are still at an early stage of our investigation. And I really think we need to see Jamie on his own.’

  He thought for a moment she was going to erupt; he had not met such patrician hostility at close quarters for a long time. But she controlled herself and said between teeth that were almost closed, ‘That is not going to happen. Jamie is still a juvenile, not yet eighteen. He has the right to be accompanied by a responsible adult at any interview. I am asserting that right, Inspector.’

  Amused to find himself summarily demoted, Lambert said, ‘I’m afraid that isn’t so, madam. This isn’t a formal interview, in any case: we’re hoping Jamie is going to assist us with our enquiries, as any responsible citizen should. But we don’t need an adult present when interviewing someone over sixteen.’

  Jamie’s flushed face brightened and he came forward. ‘I told you that, Mother. And I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself. Why don’t we do this in my room upstairs, Mr Lambert?’

  His mother’s face hardened, the lips setting in a thin line. ‘There isn’t room in there. And it won’t be tidy, if I know you.’ There was something further, a vague sense of impropriety which she could not voice. She wanted to say that a bedroom was a wholly unsuitable, even a shocking place in which to take strangers, even of the same sex. But she had no idea how to voice that thought, had not even formulated it properly for herself.

  Jamie said, ‘It’s all right. The room’s plenty big enough for three. I’ll bring a couple of extra stand chairs in from the box room.’ And before she could object, he bustled away up the wide staircase, leaving them staring after him
from the hall.

  His mother raised her hand, then slapped it against her hip in frustration as he disappeared. ‘Come in here for a moment, please,’ she said imperiously and turned away from them into the drawing room where she had wanted them to conduct the interview. Lambert exchanged a meaningful look with Hook, then led his sergeant into the room. It was a surprisingly cheerful room, with the flames of a real fire blinking at them from a big marble fireplace on the long wall and glasses glinting reflections from the china cabinet in the corner. The high ceiling was almost invisible, for the light in the room came from a standard lamp and two table lamps. She turned to face them and said, ‘My son had nothing to do with this death, you know. He can’t tell you anything which can be of any relevance.’ Patiently, firmly, Lambert reiterated the formula he had gone through with so many people over the years. ‘We shall have to decide that for ourselves, Mrs Allen, in due course. What we have to do at the moment is to build up as full a picture as we can of the murder victim. Someone who knew her as well as Jamie can clearly help us to do that.’

  ‘He didn’t know her that well, you know. Don’t let anyone persuade you that he did. Not even him.’

  Sometimes people’s denials were more interesting than the information they offered. Lambert said, ‘I see. How did you see his relationship with Miss Watts, Mrs Allen?’

  Her face relaxed a little, for the first time. She was going to be allowed to say her piece about the girl, after all. It might even be better without her son present; she could be more trenchant about the little slut. But she had better be quick about it. ‘Jamie was infatuated with her, for a little while, that’s all. She was older than him. And — and more experienced. That girl had boys round her like flies round a honeypot.’ The sibilants hissed as her face registered her distaste at the thought. She looked as if her mouth had suddenly filled with vinegar.

  Hook said, ‘Alison was ten months older than your son, to be precise. But you think that she took advantage of him in some way?’

  She looked at Bert as if he was something dubious the cat had brought in and dropped on the rich Persian carpet. ‘You need to understand about Jamie, Sergeant. He’s a brilliant boy. The best in his year. Perhaps the best they’ve ever had. He’ll be going to Cambridge, in due course.’

  Lambert said, ‘The school certainly gave us to understand that your son was an intelligent young man. They expect him to get good results at A level.’

  Mrs Allen’s smile could have patronised for England. It said more plainly than words that this dubious educational establishment was lucky to have her son, that he would bring it more honour than it could ever offer to him. ‘James has been outstanding throughout his school career. He is our only son, Inspector Lambert, and a sensitive boy. He has been brought up in a strong religion, given strong convictions.’ She glanced nervously at the door and dropped her voice a little. ‘Until — until this girl came upon the scene, his father and I even entertained the idea that he might enter the priesthood, in due course. Not that we ever put any pressure upon him in that respect, of course.’

  Not half, thought Bert Hook. Wiping all expression save a puzzled smile from his face, he said, ‘So Alison Watts was Jamie’s first girlfriend, Mrs Allen?’

  She winced at the expression, as visibly as if he had suggested her son was on some sort of rake’s progress into depravity. ‘James had associated easily enough with girls, Sergeant, from the time he first went to school. The Catholic primary school is mixed, of course. Unfortunately, the only single sex Catholic Grammar school in Gloucestershire has now closed. We had to let James go to our local comprehensive and mix with all sorts of beliefs, but he handled it well. Very well, until this — this young trollop came along.’

  It was a word neither of them had heard for years, and it was plainly the worst expression this daughter of the Church could bring herself to utter. Hook bit his lip, concentrated fiercely upon the intricate design of the carpet at his feet, and resolved to let Lambert do the talking. The Superintendent, deliberately casual, almost insulting, said, ‘Bad influence, was she, Alison Watts?’

  ‘The very worst, Inspector. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead.’ Her lips pressed together twice, proclaiming that she was very definitely going to do just that. ‘But she was a Jezebel, that girl!’

  Lambert suddenly felt that he had had enough of this stifling house and its matriarch. ‘It takes two to tango, Mrs Allen. So they say.’

  Her neck arched slowly backwards, making her considerable height seem even greater. ‘If by that you mean that two people are involved in a relationship, that is obviously so. Hardly worth stating, I should have thought. But there is no doubt in my mind who took the initiative in this — this particular coupling!’

  She stopped, aghast at her use of the word, aware of its sexual connotations from the days when she too had studied literature. She had not meant to use it, had intended something else entirely, but it had sprung unbidden to her lips from that dreadful image of her pure son writhing in naked carnality with that awful, shameless girl. She tried desperately to lower the tone of this for these strangers who were intruding upon her most intimate sufferings. ‘They met at school, of course. They were studying the same subjects. Jamie no doubt began by helping her with her work — he’s always been generous like that. But I’ve no doubt that she set her cap at him, that —’

  ‘You’ve no doubt because that’s what you want to think! You make it up as you would like it to have happened!’

  Jamie Allen stood in the doorway, quivering, red-faced, scarcely able to control himself in his anger. He had opened the heavy door without a sound, making them wonder how long he had stood on the other side of it, how much of this he had heard before he intervened. Most of it, Hook surmised: when you were seventeen and stumbling towards adulthood, you were perpetually curious to know what the rest of the world thought of you.

  Jamie stood for a long moment, breathing heavily, savouring the shock his entry had brought to his mother. Then he controlled himself, turned to the CID men he had scarcely registered in the fury of his arrival, and said, ‘If you would like to come upstairs to my room, please, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about Alison and me.’

  He led them through the high, wide hall and up on to the landing. The lighting was poor: a 60 watt bulb in each of these large areas, Hook thought. It seemed appropriately dim and gloomy for this oppressive house. It made the boy’s own room seem like a cavern of white light. He had installed three ceiling spotlights; the walls were light and the yellow velvet curtains were the lightest shade they had seen in the house. A tiny fan heater hummed beneath the table, which had open books upon its surface; the high-ceilinged room was pleasantly warm. There were pictures on the walls: a family grouping, with a young Jamie in short trousers sitting cross-legged at the front amidst a dozen adults, a picture of Jamie at about twelve in tennis clothes, beside a man who had dropped a protective hand on his shoulder, presumably the father they had not yet seen. And in pride of place on the narrow mantelpiece of the old fireplace, picked out by one of the spotlights, a picture of Jamie with Alison Watts, both of them looking very young and carefree, sitting on the grass with arms loosely around each other’s waists.

  Lambert was amused by the seating arrangements the boy had set up for them. He had dragged in a second comfortable armchair and set it alongside his own. He now seated the two interrogators in these and sat himself awkwardly on the stand chair, which he turned round from the table to face them. It left him slightly elevated, and in another context they would have known that the subject was trying to maintain the position of physical eminence in the group. Here it was no more than a natural politeness: Jamie was affording the more comfortable chairs to his elders and betters, as the upbringing he now affected to despise had taught him to do. He went to the door of the room and looked out on to the landing before he closed it carefully; the action made them more than ever convinced that he had listened to the bulk of their exchang
es with his mother downstairs.

  Lambert said briskly, ‘There’s no reason why this should take very long, if you are frank with us, Mr Allen.’

  The boy blushed immediately: he was not used to being addressed as an adult. Lambert found himself wondering how successfully he would handle a Cambridge University interview. Jamie said, ‘I think I knew Allie better than anyone else you will have seen.’

  It was the arrogance of youth, of course, asserting that his relationship was more important even than that of parents. Jamie was even a little annoyed at the suggestion that his account of the girl would not take long, thought Hook, as if that somehow diminished the intensity of what had gone between them. Lambert said calmly, ‘I take it that the two of you were lovers?’

  ‘In every sense of the word.’ Jamie spoke defiantly, with an involuntary glance at the door he had shut so carefully.

  He obviously expected that this open assertion would cause some sort of sensation. He looked almost disappointed when Lambert said calmly, ‘And when did this relationship begin?’ and Hook prepared to record the details in his notebook.

  ‘We’ve known each other for a long time, of course. Since we first went to Oldford Comprehensive. But we weren’t in the same form then. We first got together when we were studying for GCSEs. And it was in the summer holidays, whilst we were getting ready to begin our A levels in the sixth form, that — that the relationship deepened and we became very close.’

  Lambert looked into the flushed, animated young face. ‘You mean that that is when you first went to bed together?’