by John Harvey
'What'll you have?' he asked, bending his head in the arched doorway, more or less his first words since the station.
'Let me.'
'No, it's okay.'
'Gin and tonic, then.'
'Large?'
'Please.'
While he was off at the bar she sat looking at the framed photographs on the wall, black-and-white images of fishing boats returning to harbour, the lifeboat being launched into a maelstrom of rain and spray.
Cordon returned with their drinks, a pint of bitter for himself which he sampled before sitting.
'Your hotel's not far from here. Nothing special, but it's quiet and clean. You can move on if it doesn't suit.'
'I'm sure it'll be fine.' This where you live?' she asked.
'The pub?'
'The town.'
'No, Newlyn. Just round the bay. Penzance is too full-on for me.'
She thought he was joking, but wasn't sure.
'The girl,' Cordon said, 'the one as has gone missing...?'
'Still no sign.'
'Not run off, that's not what you're thinking?'
'Doesn't seem likely.'
'Taken then.'
'Most probably.'
'How long is it now?'
Automatically, Helen glanced at her watch. 'Seventy-two hours, come six o'clock.'
'Three days, then.'
'Yes.'
'Leads?'
'Nothing definite, nothing to hang on to. Someone in for questioning this morning, friend of the family—spoke to my DI from the train, they're checking his alibi. May turn out to be something, but ...' She shrugged.
Cordon lifted his pint.
The cat slipped back into the room, jumped on to one of the empty chairs, turned around twice and settled, head down, a paw across its eyes.
'You're wondering if there might be a connection with what happened here?'
'Not at first. Not till you got in touch. First we heard from your force, accidental death. Then, whatever you said to Will ...'
'That's your DI?'
'Will Grayson, yes. Whatever you said to him, made him think it was worth checking over.'
'Two girls, similar age, same mother—one hell of a coincidence.'
'And, clearly, you don't believe the accident story.'
'Didn't then, don't now. But what I don't have is an alternative version of events. Just this feeling. Sits here ...' he tapped his fist against his chest, '... like bloody indigestion. Won't go away.'
'Not after all this time?'
Cordon shook his head.
'You've been over it again? You or someone else? Cold-case stuff?'
Cordon smiled. 'Put it forward, didn't I? Open verdict, after all. This pair come down from Exeter, spent half a day at best going through the evidence, transcripts of interviews, what-have-you, talked to Jimmy Lambert—he was my DS at the time—over a couple of pints in his local—this was before he sodded off to Portugal—talked to me, that was about as far as it went. Not worth expending further resources on reinvestigation. Stuck in my craw, that did, I don't mind telling you. Got a pal of mine to run a story in the Cornishman.' He laughed. 'Might as well've had my name on it. Took a bollocking for that an' no mistake.'
'Made a difference, though? The publicity?'
'Did it, buggery! Silent as the bloody grave. Did a little reinvestigating of my own after that. Contacted the family of the girl who'd been with Heather Pierce the afternoon she got lost—Kelly, that's her name, Kelly Efford—the pair of them caught in a sea fret out on the coast path. Parents living apart by then, going through a divorce.'
'They ever suspects?'
'We looked at the father, of course we did. Didn't seem to be anything there. Talked to him this time and he was in a bit of a state, family breaking up and everything. Preoccupied. Had no more thoughts about what had happened that day than he did at the time.
'The one we did like, real oddball, recluse, living in this shack out on the cliff, went to see him and, if anything, he was more eccentric than before. Chunnering away to himself half the time, humming these old songs. Music hall, stuff like that. Ask him a question and you'd be as like to get the bus times from Zennor to Godrevy or a chorus of "Oh, Mr Porter" as a straight answer.
'He admits finding the other girl, Kelly, and taking her in. Peeled her wet clothes off her, kept her overnight in his bed. No sign he laid a hand on her save for that.'
'And Heather?'
'Never saw her, so he says, and try as I might, I could never prove different.'
'Nothing in the forensics?'
'Not significant. Nothing you could build a case on.'
'This was how long ago?
''95.'
'Been a lot of developments since then. Low Copy Number DNA. Could be worth getting the evidence re-examined, clothing and such. My DI's got a contact in FSS. Least he did. Might be able to get something pushed through sharpish.'
Cordon was shaking his head. 'If we could get the go-ahead, maybe. But last time I tried, after that cold-case team come in, response was the same as before, not worth expending further resources. Nobody else was pushing and I let it lie—not so long after I was put out to pasture. The beauties of rural neighbourhood policing.'
Helen grinned. 'What's that? Spot of sheep rustling?'
'Nothing as exciting. Now you're here, of course, bit of added muscle. With this second disappearance, we might swing something.'
He finished his pint; Helen's glass was already empty. 'How d'you want to play this? Check through the evidence? Interviews? Either that or I can take you out where it happened. Start from there.'
'Let me get the facts straight first. Go over what you got at the time.'
'Fair enough.' Cordon rose to his feet. 'Let's get you checked into your hotel, police station's not much more'n a stone's throw away. Find you a desk to work from.'
Helen lowered her hand to give the cat a stroke as she went past and it hissed her away.
'Like that down here,' Cordon said, 'the natives. Some of them. Don't take to incomers so easily.'
All of the faces in the main bar turned to watch them as they left.
55
Ruth's parents had wanted to hurry down to be with her the moment they'd heard: the combination of their granddaughter's disappearance, quickly followed by their daughter being taken into hospital, had them searching through train and bus timetables, then checking road routes in the unlikely eventuality they should decide to drive. Cumbria to Cambridgeshire, a lengthy journey across country in potentially heavy traffic, was a daunting prospect for a couple well into their sixties, whose normal car use didn't extend much beyond a weekly trip to their nearest Booths supermarket.
A phone call from Andrew had alerted them to the situation and then later calls had kept them in the picture, assuring them the best thing they could do was to stay put and let Ruth get over the worst of the shock before coming to see her.
He couldn't ward them off for long.
One bus, a change of trains and a taxi from the station and there they were: Ruth's father—tall, slightly bent and balding, with an abstracted air that made him look like a retired professor of philosophy—her mother, grey-haired, dumpy, nervously smiling at anything and anyone. When they saw Ruth they both began crying, her father embarrassed, looking away, her mother reaching out both arms to take her in an awkward hug.
Andrew hovered anxiously, ready to offer tea or perhaps even sherry; concerned that her parents' arrival would upset Ruth more than she was already.
After an hour or so, practically all that could be said had been said. The four of them sat in uneasy silence in the living room, the day outside waning away.
Abruptly, Ruth's mother got up and began collecting the cups and saucers, prior to taking them out into the kitchen. Andrew asked her father if he'd like to take a look at the rear garden, still quite a bit in flower, extraordinary for the time of year. Anita Chandra came back into the house with the final editions of the pap
ers; one of the tabloids had linked Beatrice's disappearance with the death of Heather Pierce, thirteen years before. Mother's Double Tragedy was the headline above a recently snatched shot of Ruth returning from the hospital, enlarged here into a blurred close-up, mouth open, eyes dark with tears. The same shot appeared on the front page of several other papers as they scrambled to keep up with a rival's scoop.
It was a miracle, Anita thought, the story had taken so long to break. Now the house, more than ever, would be under siege, the phone ringing off the hook, the numbers of journalists and cameramen outside increased, requests for interviews more insistent than before, the press office struggling to cope.
'No,' Andrew said angrily, 'I've said it before and I'll say it again. I am not prepared for my wife to appear in front of the camera and be gawked at by millions as if this were some kind of ghastly reality TV show.'
Ruth said nothing, nodded agreement, took another pill. Exhausted from the journey, her parents called it a night early, a bed made up in the spare room.
At one-thirty, Ruth was up again, her face in the bathroom mirror pinched and pale. Dressing gown belted round her, she went, barefoot, to the kitchen. Since Beatrice had dis - appeared, she had scarcely eaten, certainly not a proper meal, a biscuit here, an apple there, a corner of cheese. Now she took down a bowl and filled it with corn flakes, shook on a shallow spoonful of sugar, poured milk, and, finally, sliced a small banana across the top.
She was just sitting at the counter when Anita Chandra entered quietly.
'I thought I heard someone.'
'I couldn't sleep. I thought I had, but then, when I looked at the clock, I realised it had only been a couple of hours. And then I thought I was hungry.' She nodded in the direction of the cereal bowl. 'Join me.'
'No, thank you.'
'This used to be my daughter's favourite snack, before going to bed.'
'Beatrice?'
'Heather. Sometimes after she'd been packed off to bed, she'd sneak back down and you'd hear these noises in the kitchen. Like having mice, Simon would say, gnawing away at the cereal supply. I think he quite liked it, the idea of her tiptoeing down.' She smiled sadly. 'I was always more concerned with her going back to bed with sugar all round her teeth.'
'Simon—that's Heather's father?'
'Yes. I thought, when he heard what had happened, he might have been in touch. Simon. I mean, he must know, mustn't he? He must see the papers, watch the news.' She picked out a piece of banana with her spoon. 'He didn't look too well the last time l saw him, maybe that's the reason. Or perhaps he just doesn't want to intrude.'
The kitchen clock ticked.
'How long ago was it that you saw him?'
'Just this summer. We bumped into him, Beatrice and I. In Cambridge.'
'Is that where he lives?'
'I don't really know. He didn't say. Just that he'd moved—left London—and wherever he was living now, it was close. Close to us.'
'Here in Ely, then? That close?'
'I don't know. I don't think so.' From her expression Anita could tell she was thinking of something else. 'The photographs,' Ruth said. 'The photographs of Beatrice that were on our computer. You know about those?'
'I think so, yes.'
'I thought at the time—I never said this to Andrew, he was so certain they'd come from Lyle—but I thought—I don't know why—but it might have been Simon.'
56
Mist hovered pale grey over the fields, grey hardening to a purplish-blue at the furthest edges. Will, wearing a bright reflective top and with fluorescent strips fixed to the backs of his running shoes, ran easily within himself, letting his thoughts jog down, arranging and rearranging. Beatrice, cross at her father's lateness, stomping off in a show of temper; the outstretched hand, the waiting car; Lyle Henderson locked in his room with his images of young girls; the lewd grin on Mitchell Roberts' face—You got children? I'd like to see 'em some time.
At first, he'd thought the breaking news, linking Ruth's first daughter's death with Beatrice's disappearance, would be enough to consign the appeal for information about Roberts' whereabouts to small print on centre pages, but now he reasoned some enterprising news editor would happily link two and two and weld them into something closely resembling four. What price the police-released photograph of Mitchell Roberts and one of Beatrice Lawson ending up on the same front page of the Express or the Sun?
Back home, he dropped his running gear in the washing basket and stepped into the shower. Lorraine, he could hear, was already bustling the kids through their early morning routines, getting ready herself between times, nothing fancy, a touch of mascara here, a brush through her hair.
By the time he got downstairs, dressed in a dark blue shirt and grey trousers, a blue and white tie loosely knotted at his neck, coffee was beginning to bubble on the stove and Lorraine was just slotting bread into the toaster.
'You're a wonder, you,' he said, kissing her on top of the head.
'So they say.'
Will kissed her again, close to the mouth and, from behind his Rice Krispies, Jake made a loud snort of disgust.
'How was your run?' Lorraine asked.
'Okay. Slow.'
'You're getting old.'
'Just trying to avoid ending up in a ditch.'
He poured them both coffee and sat down.
'No progress, I suppose? The girl?' She glanced slightly anxiously towards the children, uneasy about discussing Will's cases in too much detail in front of them.
'Nothing really.'
'That man you had in for questioning?'
Will shook his head. When they had checked Lyle Henderson's alibi for the time Beatrice Lawson had gone missing—that he had been playing cards at the golf club until seven-thirty, a quarter to eight—none of the statements from his erstwhile friends had borne him out; no one had seen him in the clubhouse later than half past five.
Will's hopes had flared.
Henderson had been dragged back in, his solicitor summoned. Faced with the testimony, he had sheepishly admitted the truth: after leaving the golf club he had driven to a discreet brothel on the outskirts of suburban Cambridge and paid for sex. The madam, who ran the place with all the efficiency and cleanliness of a cottage hospital, recognised her client immediately.
'Oh, yes. Humbert-fucking-Humbert. Twice a month regular.'
When Beatrice Lawson had been, in all probability, stepping into a green Vauxhall Corsa, Lyle Henderson was being serviced by a twenty-seven-year-old part-time hair stylist wearing a gym slip and bottle green knickers.
'There's no need, is there,' Henderson asked, 'to tell my wife? I mean, you know, the details.'
'I'm sure,' Will said, 'she can work them out for herself.'
He was upstairs in the bathroom, brushing his teeth after finishing breakfast, when the phone rang and Lorraine answered.
'For you,' she called up the stairs. 'Anita Chandra?'
As Will left the house some ten minutes later, a blade of blackbirds scythed up into the morning sky.
By the time he reached the Lawson house, Ely a relatively short drive away, the media were out in all their glory. Stopping at the newsagent's on the way, he'd been pleased at how well his expectations had been met. Turn from the photo of the missing Beatrice Lawson on page one—the picture of her in her school uniform the press seemed to love—and there on page three was Mitchell Roberts, with the headline Missing! Wanted by Police! and details of the offence for which he'd been convicted. Let the readers make whatever connections they would.
Will had elbowed his way inside the house and was met by Anita Chandra in the hall. 'I didn't know, sir. I wasn't sure if it was important or not ... I mean, it might be nothing ...'
'No, you did right.'
'She's up, Ruth. Been up for an hour or so. I told her you were coming.'
'How's she seem?'
'A little better, I think. Calm, even.'
Tranquillisers, probably, Will thought. 'The living room
?'
'Yes. Oh, and Mr Lawson, Andrew, he wants to go into his school, just for a couple of hours. Says it's important. I think he could do with the break.'
'Okay, arrange a car. Do what you can to get him past that mob outside. And last night, getting her to talk, well done.'
'I didn't do anything really, she—'
Will stopped her. 'Praise in this job, little enough and far between. Don't knock it back.'
Ruth had taken her parents a cup of tea and encouraged them to stay in bed longer, though since then she thought she had heard her father pottering around in the bathroom. Andrew had been at the computer, mainly responding to emails from his deputy, and was preparing to leave. Ruth had made herself a mug of Ovaltine and was sitting, legs pulled up, on the settee, with John O'Conor's recording of the 'Nocturnes of John Field' curling out across the room. In normal times, if she'd worked herself up into any kind of a state, the sound of the piano, delicate yet somehow assured, would have been enough to calm her, but these were not normal times.
Earlier, she'd been leafing through a book about Bonnard and his house in the south of France that she'd bought at Tate Britain the day Beatrice had disappeared, but instead of the richly coloured reproductions showing the Mediterranean gardens and the shimmering light above the sea, it was the desolate self-portraits he had made towards the end of his life that she returned to again and again, his jaundiced face like skin stretched across a skull, dark pits for his eyes. Looking at them, she could not shake Simon from her mind, the sunken cheeks, the air of hopelessness, almost of despair.
When Will came in, she started to get up, but he signalled for her to stay where she was.
'How are you feeling this morning?'
'I don't know. More myself, I think.' She brought her feet round on to the floor. 'Anita said there isn't any news. That's not why you're here.'
'I'm afraid not.'
'I'm almost relieved. It's what I'm frightened of most. Each day that goes by. You or someone else like you, walking in to tell me Beatrice has been found.'
He knew what she meant; knew she didn't mean found alive. He glanced down at the book he presumed she'd been reading earlier and the artist's face that looked back at him was both familiar and shocking: the face of a man who had seen so much loss, so much of the horrors of the world, he couldn't stand to see more.
