Girl Gone Missing

by J M Gregson

  Chris knew that himself. He might not have old John Lambert’s famed insights, but when his turn came he knew that he would direct his investigations competently enough to win his share of commendations. Not in Lambert’s eccentric and outdated way, chasing across town and countryside like a young detective sergeant, but conventionally, from his office in the CID section.

  He looked forward to directing his own team. It was one of the reasons why he had not once considered leaving the force, even when it had cost him his marriage. But perhaps Anne would have left him anyway: he was clear-sighted enough to realise that the job was sometimes no more than a convenient excuse for fractured relationships, that his wife might merely have tired of the dullness which he recognised in himself in his darker moments.

  Tonight Chris wondered for the twentieth time why he had let himself get involved in a ridiculous and perhaps ultimately dangerous charade. For a man whose watchword was reliability, this was not the right career move. The image of that magic word `versatility’ appearing on his file had beguiled him and betrayed him. He was going out to meet a woman, in the call of duty. With a wad of police money in his pocket, two hundred pounds to be spent ‘only if necessary’ on this most dubious of expenses.

  Because he was prim, the irony and the humour of the enterprise did not strike him, though he realised now that Lambert and bloody Bert Hook were making the most of the situation. He was merely nervous, wondering if he could carry off the most bizarre role the CID had ever demanded of him, wondering how he should present himself for this strangest of all his working evenings.

  He dressed himself as carefully as a woman on a first date and with as many changes of mind. In the end, he donned his best suit, the only one he had never used for plain-clothes work. It was dark blue, with the faintest of pinstripes in the light worsted cloth. His white shirt picked up the blue theme in its discreet striping; his tie had blue and silver stars in its rich crimson silk. New socks, the last in the drawer from Christmas, and black leather slip-on shoes with an elastic gusset, his only concession to ‘casual’ in his outfit. He polished the shoes vigorously to a high shine, as if trying to buff away even that tiny weakness.

  He inspected himself again in the full-length mirror of the wardrobe. Not a policeman, he decided: that much was correct anyway. But as his confidence ebbed away at the thought of the night before him, he thought he looked too much like a tailor’s dummy. He went downstairs into the kitchen and added the last, dubious touch to his outfit, the detail the woman had insisted upon when she set up this meeting, the thing which seemed to tip the whole business over into caricature.

  Before he pinned the pink carnation to his lapel, he sniffed it automatically. It had no scent that he could detect, though he fancied he could smell his own nervousness upon his knuckles.

  When Robert Watts finally came home in the evening, he had an unpleasant surprise. There was a car in the drive, and two senior policemen waiting to see him.

  He took them reluctantly into the house. It was dark now, but there was no knowing how long they had been waiting for him, with curious neighbours conjecturing about the reason for their presence. ‘Well? What is it now?’ he said aggressively. ‘I’m ready for a rest after a hard day’s work, not a session with nosy bleeding pigs!’

  Hook considered the florid, surly face unhurriedly. ‘You might be well advised to keep a civil tongue in your head, Mr Watts. Especially if you intend to sign on tomorrow as usual and collect your Giro.’

  It wasn’t what they were there to pursue, of course, but it cowed him, took the edge off his aggression. He muttered a little to himself. Lambert waited for it to subside before he said, ‘Where have you been for the last two days, Mr Watts?’

  ‘What’s that to you? I don’t see why —’

  ‘You were asked to leave an address if you went away from home. You chose to ignore that.’

  The eyes which glared at them were bloodshot. Their experienced assessment divined a heavy night of drinking, followed by a day working off the hangover. A strong man this, but you couldn’t get away with that kind of life forever; he looked nearer to fifty than the forty-one they had recorded as his age. ‘I been ‘elping a mate put new windows in. Took us the weekend and today.’

  ‘We may need details of where you were in due course. Or we may not, if you cooperate fully with us. Here or at the station, as you prefer.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to tell you. You’ve ‘ad all I got to say.’ He tried to spit defiance at them, but it was no more than a ritual enmity now. He was physically exhausted, and they held all the cards. Lambert said, ‘You chose not to attend the inquest on Alison today.’

  ‘No. Was I supposed to? No one told me I was supposed to be there.’

  ‘It wasn’t necessary, no. I just thought you might want to hear the evidence, such as it was.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t, see? And I don’t have to account for myself to the likes of you!’

  ‘Not in that perhaps, but in other things you do, I’m glad to say. When did you begin abusing your daughter, Robert?’

  The effect of this attack was remarkable. Watts, who had been standing in the middle of the room, fell back into the chair behind him as if he had been hit. They had been prepared for bluster, fury, perhaps even physical violence. Instead, Watts only said dully, ‘It wasn’t like you think. Not abuse — I never thought of it as abuse.’

  ‘Not many people do at the time.’ Lambert sat down carefully on the edge of the settee, conscious of Hook cautiously following suit as they decided the man was not going to be violent. ‘It would be best if you gave us your side of it. The fuller you make it, the fewer the questions we shall need to ask.’ Interviews were a strange business, he thought: he felt himself moving in a few seconds from bully to therapist.

  ‘Who told you?’ said Watts. He ran a hand through hair that had probably not seen a comb that day. The smell of stale beer wafted from him across the patterned carpet.

  ‘You know that we can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Not Kate. She didn’t know. I’m certain she didn’t know.’ He shook his head, trying to clear his senses, like a boxer who has been heavily hit. It was important to him that Kate had never known of this shameful thing.

  ‘How old was Alison when this began?’

  He looked up at them, the bloodshot eyes widening. ‘Fifteen, I suppose, going on sixteen. There wasn’t that much of it, you know.’

  ‘No, we don’t, Robert. Not yet. We need you to tell us what happened.’

  Watts buried his head in his hands, pressing the palms in upon his temples, as if he sought to squeeze away these events from his brain. They could see a bald patch they had not noticed before amid the strands of unwashed grey hair. His voice was muffled as he spoke into his own chest. ‘I met her on the landing, one night when her mother was out. She was coming from the bathroom, in bra and pants. She said — she said, ‘I’m getting to be a big girl now, aren’t I, Robert?’ It was the first time she’d ever called me by my name — I’d always been ‘Dad’ before. I didn’t know what to make of that.’

  The moment was clearly still vivid for him, and he made it vivid for them by his tortured intensity. He must have expected some sort of reaction. When none came, he slowly raised his head from the cradle of his arms and looked at them with those damaged, hunted eyes. ‘I followed her into her room. I don’t know why — she just seemed to expect it. She stood in front of the full-length mirror in her wardrobe, holding her hands under her breasts, lifting them. Then she smiled and said, ‘I’ll be a woman soon, won’t I, Robert?’ and I realised that she was watching me through the mirror.’

  Lambert said, ‘You were aware that she was a minor. That the law forbade you to have any sort of sexual relationship with her?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course I was. But she looked so innocent, standing there in her white bra and her little white pants. I reached out to her and she put her arms round me. She said I was a real man, not like the boys she knew at schoo
l, that it was all right because there was no blood relationship between us. We held each other for a long time.’

  ‘And then you took it further.’

  ‘No. Not that first time, we didn’t.’ He paused for a long moment, as if reluctant to relinquish the image of that first intimate exchange with his stepdaughter. Then he shook his head, so roughly that it seemed as if he was trying to punish himself. ‘But other times, in the months which followed, we did.’

  ‘There was full penetration and intercourse?’

  ‘Yes. But only once. Most times I just ran my hands over her body, inside her clothes. She said she enjoyed it when we did it, wanted to do it again, but I wouldn’t. I knew it was wrong, really. And I was scared rotten her mum would find out. Allie knew that — I think she was scared of her mum finding out, too, then, and that made her back off some of the times when she wanted to do it. She loved her mum, you see. And I did, too. Still do.’ He glanced up at them, then shrugged his big shoulders, a cornered bear, trapped by the intricacies of a life he could not fully understand.

  ‘How long did these things go on, Robert?’

  ‘Six months, I suppose. No longer. She said I was too inhibited, too conventional. Those were her words. She went on to other things.’

  He spoke wearily; they sensed in him an unexpected relief that this was out in the open at last. He was a man not fitted to keeping secrets, particularly ones like this. The two CID men studied him dispassionately: a rough-hewn man who resorted easily to violence, who had beaten his wife, who might have killed his daughter if she had threatened to reveal what he was now having to tell them himself. They only had his side of this squalid story, of course. All men said they were led on, whether they were or not. In this case, the details hardly mattered. What did was that this pathetic, dangerous hulk of a man had admitted a motive for killing the girl.

  Lambert said, ‘Alison had a lot of money in the year before she died. Her clothes alone must have cost thousands.’

  He was planning to go on to ask Watts what he knew of his stepdaughter’s activities at the weekends, but the man said unexpectedly, ‘You’ve found out about that, then.’ He shook his head hopelessly, too distraught now to register that they might not in fact have known what he was going to reveal. ‘She used what we had done against me. I suppose you know all about it. She said she needed money, but she wouldn’t say what for. But she said she’d tell Kate about what we’d done, if I didn’t help her.’

  ‘And how much did she have from you?’

  He smiled bitterly at his own futility. ‘Whatever I had, she took. Thirty, forty, once fifty. I was working then, and whenever I was on overtime, she was there with her hand out as soon as Kate wasn’t around. Kate thought I was betting it all away. That caused trouble, because I had to let her think that. I couldn’t tell her where it was really going, could I?’

  ‘How much did Alison have from you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I kept telling her it was the last time, that she could go and tell what she knew to anyone she fancied. But of course she came back again, and I couldn’t let her tell Kate, could I? She must have had about three hundred, altogether.’

  Not enough to account for the wardrobe Alison Watts had assembled, let alone for the money they had now discovered in her building society account. But even if Robert Watts was lying, it seemed unlikely that he had earned enough to give her much more than he admitted to. A resourceful and ruthless girl, this stepdaughter. Lambert said, ‘So she went on bleeding you, coming back for more, as blackmailers always do. You were desperate. There was only one way to stop her demands, and you took it.’

  He looked up at them again, the awful, bloodshot eyes full of fear and hostility. ‘No! No, I bloody didn’t! You’re trying to fit me up with this, aren’t you, you bastards?’

  A denial would have helped him, stoked his fury, but they did not give him one; instead, they studied his reactions to what had been suggested, dispassionately and cruelly. He had lifted his hands into the air in his excitement. After a moment, he dropped them back on to his knees, great helpless paws. He said hopelessly, ‘She stopped asking me for money in the last few months. She said once that she had bigger fish to fry now. And I liked her still, despite everything. She could be a little charmer, our Alison, when she wanted.’

  ‘Where were you on the Friday night when Alison disappeared, Robert?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why should I, at this length of time?’

  ‘Because it would be useful to you to remember. If you had nothing to do with her death, that is.’

  ‘Well I can’t. Maybe I was out having a drink. I usually am, on a Friday.’

  ‘It would pay you to recall the name of the pub, then. And to provide us with a witness to your presence there, if you can.’

  But none of them thought he was going to do that. They left him on the step of his empty, depressing house, scowling a ritual defiance at them as they drove away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THERE was a cool edge now to the early autumn air. The mists dropped through the still night into the quiet Gloucestershire valleys. But in the towns the air was clear. And what that night might hold for the latest recruit to Cotswold Rendezvous was anyone’s guess.

  Christopher Rushton, alias Frank Lloyd, was glad of the cold: anything that would keep people off the streets of Cheltenham on this particular night was welcome to him. He looked anxiously to the left and the right as he took up his agreed station for the rendezvous, in the doorway of a clothes shop adjacent to the Odeon cinema. There was no sign of the woman yet. A female privilege to be late, he remembered. But surely any reasonable woman would realise that this was a nervous time for the man as well?

  Within two minutes, he was shivering, resisting the temptation to stamp his feet to keep warm. He cursed the pink carnation. Not only did it seem absurdly festive in the darkness of this chill evening, but the agreement to display it meant that he could not wear a coat over his suit. No one seemed to be paying much attention to the lone man in the doorway; yet he felt very conspicuous, just when he wanted to remain anonymous to the citizens of this town, whose respectability was a national cliché.

  Then, for the first time, he was noticed. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, forcing himself to ignore the youth in the leather jacket who called over his shoulder to his companion to ask if ‘Oscar Wilde’ was waiting for him. The burst of raucous laughter which followed this almost brought out the policeman in him; deep in his pockets, his fingers itched to feel a collar, to show these yobs who really controlled this town. In his old, pre-CID days on the beat, these lads wouldn’t have known what hit them. But Frank Lloyd wouldn’t react like that, he told himself.

  Staring resolutely through the plate-glass beside him, he pretended an absorbing interest in the unlined, robot faces of the dummies who carried the clothes. Their arms were held permanently at unlikely angles, their suits mirrored his own tailored rectitude. They seemed to be mocking him with their frozen smiles; for a fanciful moment, he expected their slim hands to gesture two-fingered contempt, their inscrutable faces to break into derisive smiles at his pretensions.

  ‘Good evening.’

  He almost leapt out of his highly polished black casual shoes. The voice had a city accent. In his confusion, Chris could not place which city. A woman’s voice, polite but confident. A voice which had done this before. He said, ‘Oh, good evening!’ He almost added the ‘madam’ which would have completed his discomfort and given him away immediately as a policeman. ‘You must be…’

  ‘Sharon. Well, Sherry to my friends.’ She looked him up and down; a slow, predatory smile gradually suffused her features. ‘And now my friends obviously include you, Mr Lloyd.’

  He managed a sickly smile. ‘Frank.’

  ‘Frank it is, then.’ She took his arm, turned him sideways into the street, walked his uncertain legs across the front of the cinema.

  Chris tried in vain to think of something to say, failed, blurted
out desperately, ‘That’s nice!’ Neither he nor she knew exactly what he was referring to, but she took it as evidence of good intent and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze.

  She had a determined face, blue eyes which stared resolutely ahead, a smile which was now fixed and unmoving. Risking a glance down at the head beside him, Chris saw that the brass-blonde hair was darker at its roots. A bracelet heavy with gold charms glittered on the wrist which now lay firmly upon his forearm. The feet which marched so resolutely alongside his uncertain shoes were in high heels, the calves above them in sheer black nylon. Christopher Rushton had endured a conventional upbringing in a Methodist household: for him, black tights meant loose women. It looked as though the deception of planting him at Cotswold Rendezvous was going to pay off, for this must surely be a tart. There might be kudos in this yet, if he could only carry it off.

  They had to wait for the lights at the pedestrian crossing. She looked up appreciatively into his weakly smiling face and said, ‘Lucky old me, then!’ Caught in the headlights of the car accelerating away from the lights, her top teeth were regular and very white. Too regular and too white, he decided. A dental plate, for sure. In his limited range of intimate exchanges with the opposite sex, he had never had to deal with one of those before.

  But then he had never had to deal with a situation like this before. He knew he must take things far enough on to get the evidence they required and yet stop before he was fatally compromised. He wondered miserably when that point might be. Images of bedrooms and discarded clothing swam before him. As the panic welled within him, he wondered why he had ever let that smiling Machiavelli Lambert talk him into this.

  He said desperately, ‘Where shall we go, Sherry?’ He had to force out the name; his mouth clenched tight on it, as it done in anticipation of foul-tasting medicine when he was a child. ‘Should we take in a movie, do you think?’ It seemed the right transatlantic idiom for this phoney situation, and he thought he trotted it out quite well.