Girl Gone Missing

by J M Gregson

  As she watched him climb stiffly into the old Vauxhall he clung to like a comfortable jacket, she wondered what the future held for them. What on earth would John do, once he had to give up the work which had so dominated his life? He read a lot, when they were on holiday, but holiday habits were notoriously difficult to transfer to retirement. He liked his garden, as she did, but they wouldn’t need to spend much more time on it than they did now. He said he’d had his fill of study courses, and he wasn’t a great one for the theatre.

  He had his golf, of course. That would get him out from under her feet and help to keep both of them sane and civilised. Christine went into the hall and rang Eleanor Hook. ‘Bert left?’ she said cautiously. He had, of course. ‘How’s the golf going?’

  Eleanor laughed. ‘Bert says it’s the most stupid game ever invented. But I think he’s longing to have another go, really. I found him swinging a club in the back garden and he looked like a schoolboy caught with his hand in the fridge. They’re just big kids, aren’t they, underneath?’

  ‘And long may it remain so! I’ll get John to drag him out again, as soon as they have time with this Alison Watts case. As long as I know that it isn’t really purgatory for him.’

  ‘Oh, it’s purgatory all right. But I think he has an idea he daren’t voice that he may win through to heaven in the end. They never learn, do they?’

  ‘Just as well for us that they don’t, Eleanor. I’ve been thinking about the future, when both of them are retired and likely to be sitting at home. We need to make some plans for them.’

  ‘God, what a prospect! A few years away yet, God and the Home Secretary willing. But I suppose we need to plan, as the pension adverts tell us.’

  Christine asked about the Hooks’ children, who were only thirteen and twelve. Bert had married late and happily, and Eleanor was eight years younger than him. The two wives made plans to drag their husbands off to see King Lear at Stratford early in the new year. That parable of old age going wrong would be a warning to people with the shadow of retirement impinging, Christine Lambert pointed out.

  She made her preparations then for her afternoon’s teaching. John grumbled that she spent almost as much time on the half-time post as she had when she was working five days a week, but she found that she was getting much more satisfaction and enjoyment from her work, now that she was relaxed.

  As she lifted the heavy briefcase on to the table, the side of her chest gave her a swift stab of pain, and she clutched automatically at the lung below the breast which had been removed six months earlier. It was good that John should have plenty to do in his retirement. She might not always be here to program him. You never knew, in this life.

  *

  In the garden behind the square 1930s house, Jason Bullimore paced up and down the lawn, pretending to inspect the last flowers of the year on the roses. He was like an anxious father awaiting the birth of his first child, thought his sister as she watched him through the window. She could not see Jason following the modern trend and being present at the birth: too much blood and pain and realism for him in that.

  He was still a boy in many things, if you knew him as well as she did.

  Barbara Bullimore felt the familiar mixture of affection and frustration as she watched her brother’s nervousness through the double glazing. She had needed to be a mother to him ever since they lost their parents, making a mother’s allowances and a mother’s sacrifices. She would never give up her own career, but she had subordinated it to that of her brilliant younger brother when he came down from Oxford, taking a library post near to his school so that they could set up house together, securing a sideways move to the Gloucestershire Library Service when he had had to move because of that ridiculous business with the girls in Wiltshire. She would have been much further up her own career ladder by now if it hadn’t been for supporting Jason like this. But it was what her parents would have wanted, and she was content that it should be so. She just hoped, as she watched him fingering the plants on the trellis, that this latest mess he’d got himself involved in wasn’t going to require even more sacrifices from her.

  For Jason, it was almost a relief when his anxious ears heard the police car turn into the gravelled drive on the other side of the house. He went swiftly through the kitchen and the hall and opened the front door almost at the moment when Bert Hook rang the bell. ‘Good morning,’ said John Lambert. ‘Or is it now good afternoon? Anyway, we thought it would be better to see you here in your lunch hour than at the school. Fewer prying eyes; fewer wagging tongues.’

  ‘Quite. You remember my sister, Barbara?’

  ‘Indeed, yes. But we need to see you alone, Mr Bullimore.’

  Barabara Bullimore, standing foursquare in the door of the lounge with the light behind her like some formidable automaton, looked for a moment as if she might argue. Then she said, ‘Of course you do, Superintendent. I shall be in the dining room, in the unlikely event of your requiring me.’

  Jason took them into the lounge, invited them to sit down, and shut the door carefully behind him. He looked rather more at ease without his formidable sister, but, with his slight figure and his rather epicene good looks, he again seemed much younger than his twenty-nine years. A man perhaps, who made use of his air of naivety, who was reluctant to accept maturity because it might bring with it the responsibility which he found so hard to accept. Many criminals had a personality like that. Some of them panicked and performed violent acts which appeared to surprise themselves as much as everyone around them.

  Jason was aware that they were studying his every move. He found it disconcerting. It made him self-conscious in a way that he could not remember in himself since he had been a child. Under this dispassionate scrutiny, every gesture he made felt like an artificial stage move. He found himself throwing his arms too wide, smiling his youthful smile too broadly, as he sat down and said, ‘What can I do for you, gentlemen?’

  Lambert glanced at Hook, who said, ‘We thought you might want to change the statement you made, in certain important respects.’

  Jason looked what he hoped was suitably blank. ‘I can’t think that I would want to change anything I told you last time you came here. You seemed already to know more about me than was comfortable for me. I told you everything that was relevant about Alison Watts and me. At least I think I did. I was certainly very frank with you, as I think you would concede.’

  Lambert said drily, ‘You appeared to be so, certainly. Only the speaker knows exactly how honest he is being with us, at the time of an interview. We form our own opinions, of course. And we take statements from a lot of people, in the course of a murder investigation. Almost inevitably, we find that some of these contradict each other. And the points of difference are always of compelling interest to us, as you would expect.’

  Jason nodded, following each phrase of the explanation, almost enjoying it. This meeting of minds reminded him of the long nights in his room at Oxford, where they had argued into the small hours about all kinds of theoretical propositions. Those had been the happiest years of his life. He had to remind himself that this situation was practical, not theoretical, that there might be danger for him in the quiet pronouncements of these intelligent, seemingly friendly men. He tried to resist the impulse to fence intellectually with his opponents. He said, ‘You’re saying that someone else’s statement conflicts in some respect with mine? In some important respect, I presume, or you wouldn’t be here.’

  Lambert nodded, smiling slightly. ‘You have pin-pointed the issue admirably, Mr Bullimore. Would you tell us again when you last saw Alison Watts alive?’

  That word ‘alive’ was not lost on Jason. He winced a little, then gave a wry, answering smile, like one acknowledging a debating point well made. ‘Certainly. It was on Thursday, the twenty-second of July. The day before the end of term. The day before she disappeared.’

  ‘That is what we recorded in your original statement. Do you feel any need to change that time now?’
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  Jason’s blue eyes opened a little wider. He looked from one to the other of the two impassive faces opposite him and brushed with his hand at the single soft curl which strayed over the right of his forehead. If his surprise was an act, it was a good one. He said, ‘No, I don’t want to change what I said. The last time I saw Alison was on the Thursday afternoon. There was morning school on the Friday, but I didn’t see her then. Plainly someone else has told you otherwise. I can only say that whoever it might be is lying. I imagine the fact that he or she is lying will be of considerable interest to you, as it would be to me.’

  ‘Indeed. But sometimes people are merely mistaken, rather than malicious. You would be surprised at the number of discrepancies we find in statements, Mr Bullimore. Or perhaps you wouldn’t: I believe teachers are used to pupils taking away widely differing impressions of what they have been told.’

  It was almost friendly. Certainly it was more relaxed than he had expected. But Jason was curious still to know who had tried to land him deeper in this dangerous swamp. He said, ‘Someone has obviously told you that I saw Alison later than that Thursday.’

  ‘Yes. Later even than the Friday morning. The person involved thinks that Alison saw you on the Friday night. That would make you the last person we know to have seen her alive. If it were true, of course.’

  The atmosphere in the comfortably furnished room, previously unnaturally relaxed, was suddenly taut. Jason, feeling the silence stretching as they watched him, was drawn into words, almost as if it was his line in the stage drama he still could not quite dismiss from his thoughts. ‘And where is this — this last meeting supposed to have taken place?’

  ‘That we don’t know. If you hadn’t arranged to see her, it seems possible that Alison might have come to see you here. Perhaps early on that Friday evening.’

  Bullimore looked annoyed. Then his too-revealing face lightened, like that of a boy who suddenly sees a winning move at chess. ‘She wouldn’t have found anyone here, even if she came. Barbara was working late, and I wasn’t here. What’s more, I have a witness. I was having a couple of end-of-term drinks with a colleague, in the White Hart in Oldford. Member of my department, as a matter of fact. Young Fred Souter. He’ll confirm it for you, I’m sure.’ He beamed at them with a relief that was all too evident.

  ‘What time was this, Mr Bullimore?’

  ‘We were there about an hour and a half, I should think. It was meant to be just a quick one, but these things stretch a bit. I should think we were in there from about six-thirty until eight. Fred will tell you.’

  They could check that with his young colleague, and try to get independent witnesses at the pub, in case he had set this story up with Fred Souter. That would be difficult, though, after all this time. It didn’t get him off the hook, by any means, of course. It merely meant he hadn’t been with her in that part of the evening. He could have seen her later, might indeed have murdered her and dumped her in the river later on that summer night. Murder often needed darkness to cloak its movements.

  ‘Did you see Alison later in the evening? After you’d left the White Hart?’

  ‘No. I imagine from what I’ve heard that she’d gone off to the fleshpots of Cheltenham or Gloucester by then. She might have come here and found no one in, of course. Barbara wasn’t in until late on that particular Friday.’

  Lambert, watching the delight of this immature young man as he thought he was outwitting them in an intellectual cat-and-mouse game, was suddenly irritated by him. He said, ‘You must have noticed that Alison Watts was suddenly rather affluent in the last few months of her life.’

  Jason was immediately more guarded. ‘I told you, I didn’t see a lot of her in those months. Our affair ended in January.’

  ‘You did tell us that, yes. But you also told us that you made attempts to renew the relationship. That you even entertained ideas that you might eventually marry the girl.’

  ‘But I didn’t actually see much of Alison, except in school. I was aware that she seemed to have some very good clothes — not much more than that.’

  ‘And you didn’t speculate about the source of her new affluence.’

  ‘No. At least — well, I wondered about what she did at weekends, even at the time.’

  ‘I see. Well, you were right to wonder, as it turns out, Mr Bullimore. We are now certain that Miss Watts was selling her favours for considerable sums on Friday and Saturday nights. Not walking the streets, like other misguided girls. Her assignations were in comfortable flats. They were set up for her, through an agency run by a man who will no doubt be appearing in court, in due course, on a variety of charges.’

  It was brutal, but calculated. They watched Bullimore’s open face flinch as if it had been struck physically. His small hand brushed angrily at the single curl on his forehead again. He looked for a moment as if he would deny these things on the dead girl’s behalf. Then he dropped his hands helplessly to his sides. ‘It’s what I suspected, I suppose. It still comes as a shock. She was so young — so innocent-looking.’

  He wasn’t the first man to say that in that dazed way. And these were the very qualities for which the girl had been recruited by Eddie Hurst, of course. The qualities other, less handsome men than Jason Bullimore were prepared to pay for. He would be less likely to deny what they had to put to him now, whilst he was reeling still from this. Lambert said, ‘We know that Alison also had other illegal sources of income. Blackmail, if we give it its proper name.’

  ‘No. I don’t believe that.’

  ‘It’s true, I’m afraid. We have already identified at least one victim. And we are told that she was planning to blackmail you. To extort money from you by threatening to reveal the details of your affair to others. She was shrewd enough to know that could be harmful to you, could end your teaching career, in view of your previous indiscretions with female pupils. Our informant believes that Alison was planning to see you, to put pressure on you for money, on that last Friday night.’

  ‘She didn’t. I was in the White Hart.’

  ‘You still say she didn’t see you after that?’

  ‘No. I’ve told you. I didn’t see her after Thursday morning.’

  Another pause. another of those long assessments which Jason found so disconcerting. Then Lambert said, ‘Have you any idea who killed Alison Watts?’

  ‘No. Perhaps the person who told you these lies about me. Whoever that was.’

  They left him then, seeing themselves out because he was too shaken to accompany them. They half-expected his sister to appear to usher them off the premises, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  Barbara Bullimore came and stood beside her trembling brother as they watched the police car drive away. He did not look at her as he said brokenly, ‘They wanted to know if I’d seen Alison on that last night. They said she was trying to — to get money from me —’

  ‘To blackmail you. Yes, I heard. Heard it all.’ She glanced towards the serving hatch which connected the two rooms, on the other side of which she had listened with mounting, helpless horror. ‘Oh, Jason, what a fool you are! To have ever got yourself involved with a slut like that. Even to be thinking of marrying her, apparently. What on earth are you going to do with yourself, if ever I’m not here to protect you?’

  Chapter Eighteen

  DI RUSHTON was happy. He was back at his computer, feeding in the bewildering variety of information which continued to accumulate around the murder of Alison Watts, working out his own system of cross-referencing the different items to search for significant correlations.

  That awful evening with Sharon was now no more than a memory: a memory which would not easily fade, it is true, but with no long-term repercussions for him. Indeed, it seemed that something positive had come out of it, after all, thanks to the over-enthusiastic follow-up by that woman who had been rash enough to try to sell him sexual services over the telephone. In a year’s time, he might even be able to speak of himself as the undercover man who had init
iated the coup which had put Eddie Hurst behind bars at last. He might even have that magic word ‘Versatility’ on his file when the Promotions Board came to consider his potential to act as a Chief Inspector.

  Today, he was even happy to see Superintendent Lambert and Sergeant Hook, who had so enjoyed his unease in the role they had devised for him at Cotswold Rendezvous. For he had things to report to the chief. ‘Still more money for Alison Watts,’ he said cheerfully. ‘She had not one but two building society accounts, as well as the account she opened at Barclays. As we already know, there is over two thousand pounds in the Cheltenham and Gloucester Building Society account, most of it deposited in the six months before her death.’

  Lambert looked at the details on the print-out. ‘That will be from her weekend activities in the Eddie Hurst set-up. The C and G is an appropriate institution for her to patronise, in view of the towns where she accumulated her wealth!’

  ‘We’ve now turned up a new account with the Halifax. There’s another thousand in that. Most of it accumulated over the last year. Would that be from her blackmailing activities?’

  ‘Could be. A girl with a tidy mind, our Alison was. She’s quite likely to have kept separate accounts for her different entrepreneurial activities.’

  ‘There’s very little in the Barclays account. And not too many transactions.’

  ‘That will be the one she kept for public perusal. That’s why we found it in her room. No suspicion aroused there, if her mother should happen to come across it at home,’ said Hook.