In Bitter Chill

by Sarah Ward

  ‘But it was something. To do with the kidnapping?’

  ‘I think so. I just keep feeling something that’s just out of my reach. It happens sometimes just before I’m about to go to sleep. Something comes into my head and I’m trying to grasp it.’

  ‘You never tried hypnotherapy or something like that?’

  ‘God, no. My mother wasn’t going to have anything of that and I’m not going down that route now either.’

  ‘How did you cope, then? Don’t say you came through the experience without any trauma, as I wouldn’t believe you. Something like that happens and it affects you physically and mentally.’

  Rachel was silent. He was forcing her to think about something that she had locked away in her mind. She could envisage a great wall of metal drawers and within one of them, if she was willing to open it, were some of the answers she was looking for.

  ‘I made lists.’

  ‘Lists? What sort of lists does a child make?’

  ‘All sorts of things. Books I’d read, favourite TV programmes, animals I’d seen that day. Then, when I was older, I did my family history. It also felt comforting. Personal on one hand but also objective. Creating a list that only ended when you ran out of sources.’

  ‘You’ve mentioned before that you concentrate on the maternal side of your family. The female line.’

  ‘It wasn’t always the case. My supervisor at university suggested it and it seemed like a good idea. I could link genealogy, which was my main interest, with wider social mores. You know, how the matrilineal line has always been considered less important in Western society. Unlike in others – Judaism, for example.’

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘Sure. I wrote a little bit about it in my dissertation. How the maternal line is the proof of Jewishness for Orthodox Jews.’

  Richard made a snorting noise at the back of his throat.

  ‘You don’t agree?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Clearly I’m not an Orthodox Jew, but to be honest I steer well clear of the subject of Jewish identity. It’s one of those issues you could tie yourself up into knots with.’

  ‘But you do consider yourself Jewish?’

  ‘Of course.’ He seemed unwilling to say more on the subject. ‘So you started to compile lists and then you moved on to genealogy. And did it help?’

  ‘Yes, and it still does.’

  ‘And you’ve never thought about psychotherapy? Are you scared of something?’

  She put her glass down and looked at him. ‘Wouldn’t you bloody well be?’

  He reached over and put his hand over hers. She was unable to meet his eyes, although she desperately wanted to see his expression. She had rejected comfort over and over again in the years since 1978. Now, despite having taken the initiative in suggesting they go to the pub, she could feel the weight of her past threaten to drag her under again. And here was someone who was prepared to accept her as she was. Someone who knew about her past and yet didn’t censure her for it. For her lack of ability to remember. Or for her reticence in opening up.

  As she felt his eyes on her, she made a decision.

  Chapter 24

  Connie, exhausted from the day, decided to skip dinner and go straight to bed. It was a once-a-month habit, when the accumulated stresses of the job got too overwhelming and she needed to catch up on her much-needed sleep. She left her clothes in a heap by the side of her bed and climbed under the sheets naked. Within two minutes she was asleep. Dreamless, or so she thought, until a loud ringing pierced her consciousness. Her mobile. She reached over and picked it up, noting the time as she answered it. Eleven minutes past nine: not late, but not exactly early either. Someone had better be dead, she thought.

  ‘It’s Sadler. Thought you would want to know the results of the PM. Strangling has definitely been confirmed.’

  Bloody hell, thought Connie. He’s woken me from my beauty sleep for this. She swung her legs over the edge of her bed and planted her feet on the floor. She noticed that the nail varnish on her toenails had chipped off, leaving an unattractive ragged strip across each nail. And she’d run out of remover too. Just as well it was the middle of winter; no one would notice under her socks.

  ‘It’s nothing new, is it? We suspected strangling anyway.’

  Something in her voice must have given her annoyance away as the line went silent. Connie waited, too tired to try and fill the empty silence.

  When he spoke again, Sadler’s voice seemed tired too. ‘Bill says that she was strangled twice. First to disable or disarm her and then a different type of strangulation to kill her.’

  Strangled twice? Connie’s stomach lurched. She should have eaten something after all.

  ‘So the cord around the neck . . .’

  ‘According to Bill, that was the method used to kill her. A tightening on the carotid arteries that would have blocked the blood flow to the brain and resulted in death.’

  ‘And the other strangulation?’

  ‘Manually. With their hands. And the person must have been stronger than Penny Lander. Manual strangulation is rarely effective on someone of equal size.’

  ‘And why not use the rope straight away? Wouldn’t that have been more effective?’ Connie stood up and walked over to the window looking over the canal.

  ‘I don’t know. The manual strangulation suggests an element of chance. In other words, an opportunistic crime. But the finishing off with rope – Bill thinks it might have been a guy rope – suggests premeditation. I’m also wondering if it gives us an insight into the events of 1978.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m taking this too far. But perhaps, if we’re linking the two cases, then we’re looking for someone who likes to overpower their victims before they kill them.’

  Connie was silent, mulling over his words.

  ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘Not at all.’ She flopped back down on the bed.

  ‘We can discuss this further in the morning. It’s given us something to think about.’

  Connie found it impossible to get to sleep after Sadler’s call and lay awake in the darkness trying to make sense of it all. She finally gave up on sleep at four o’clock in the morning. The night was inky black as she opened the front door of the building and groped her way to the car. The council had made the decision to have a strategic switching off of street lamps in the middle of the night to save precious money that was needed for resources elsewhere. Which was fine until she one night pitched headlong into the canal as a result of this cost-cutting exercise.

  The station was silent. Whatever trouble that had materialised on a Tuesday evening had been dealt with and the desk sergeant barely looked up at her as she passed.

  ‘Anyone who can dig out some BMD certificates for me around here?’

  The look he gave her clearly suggested that she should be able to do her own donkey work.

  ‘Field’s around somewhere. He can probably help. He’s had a quiet shift so far.’

  She tracked down the young constable at a desk, playing solitaire on the computer. She sat down beside him as he carried on with his game without a glance at her. She clearly was gaining a fearsome reputation at the station.

  ‘Can you do me a favour?’

  She had his attention, but only just.

  ‘I need to see some certificates – birth, marriage and death. Can you print them off for me?’

  ‘It’s not rocket science, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry to remove you from your card game. If I’d known you were busy I’d have stayed in bed an extra hour to let you finish.’

  He shut down the game and logged into the computer. ‘Go on. Shoot.’

  It took about half an hour and she left the room holding the bare bones of the life of Paul Saxton, Rachel’s father. Born 25 August 1945; died 4 August 1970, three months before Rachel Jones was born. He had both entered and left this world at the old Bampton cottage hospital. Connie knew it by repu
tation, as the site was now covered in executive apartments and nothing remained of the original buildings.

  The cause of death was listed as pneumonia. Connie frowned as she looked at the certificate. It was usually old people who died of this. How did a young man of twenty-five end up dead of pneumonia in the middle of summer?

  The marriage certificate was also dated 1970, the first of May. Connie did some rapid sums in her head. Mary Jones must have been three months pregnant by then. In 1970 pregnancy was clearly still a reason to marry and, even though Paul Saxton had died before the baby was born, it would still have given Rachel precious legitimacy. It would also explain why Mary Jones hadn’t changed her name. There had barely been any time between the marriage and the death of her husband.

  Connie wafted the certificates in front of her to cool down her tired head and thought. It all seemed OK. Could she eliminate Paul Saxton from the equation?

  *

  Sadler frowned as he walked past Connie, who seemed to be staring into space.

  ‘You OK?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Couldn’t sleep either? It sounded like you had an early night.’

  He saw her jump and then flush. ‘Sorry. I was miles away thinking about something.’

  ‘I can’t stop for long. I’ve got an early meeting with Llewellyn. You look like you’ve been here a while. Anything I should know?’

  She turned round fully in her chair and looked at him. ‘No. I don’t think so. This case is really strange. Llewellyn was right, you know. The team in 1978 did do their job properly. I can’t find anything wrong. And yet there is something. There’s something we’re not seeing. A person we’re missing. I’m sure of it.’

  Sadler sat down. ‘I’ve really not got long, but tell me.’

  Connie spread out some of the notes across the desk. ‘Everything here adds up. There are no discrepancies, nothing jars. But I just don’t trust it.’

  ‘The team missed something – a person?’

  ‘I think so. I would say a person. A Mr X.’

  ‘Mr X?’

  ‘Yes. Or Ms X. An unknown man or woman who the original team never found. Someone whose name we don’t yet know.’

  ‘Nomen nescio,’ said Sadler.

  Connie looked confused.

  ‘It’s a legal term. For someone we don’t know the name of. It’s often abbreviated to NN.’

  ‘NN? OK, if you prefer. This nomen . . . what was the second bit?’

  ‘Nescio.’

  ‘OK, this NN is the person who is involved in the case but we don’t know about.’

  ‘And how did you reach that conclusion? Intuition?’

  She looked him directly in the eyes. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fair enough, but it’s going to be solid police work that will lead you to NN. Look, I have to see Llewellyn. You realise we’re almost certainly going to be dropping this. Don’t let it occupy your thoughts too much. Park it away. But you may well be coming back to NN again.’

  He left her sitting there, her small body hunched over the desk. At Llewellyn’s office, the superintendent’s secretary was taking off her coat and smiled as he approached.

  ‘You can go straight in. Do you want coffee?’

  He thought of the jar of instant sitting on the side of her desk, smiled as he shook his head. Llewellyn was sitting at his desk writing something on his computer, his large hands spread across the keyboard as he typed with his two index fingers. From what Sadler could see, he was tracking changes to a document.

  ‘I’m not fully reopening the 1978 enquiry any longer. I don’t have the resources. You know what I’m about to say. However far you’ve got with the 1978 case, you’ll have to see if it’s relevant to the investigation that you’re now conducting into Penny Lander’s murder.’

  ‘And Yvonne Jenkins?’

  ‘The details have been sent to the Coroner’s Office, but looking at the evidence I would say a verdict of suicide was a dead cert. And I have to say, Sadler, that I’m happy with that.’ Llewellyn caught himself and winced. ‘Not happy, but you know what I mean. Satisfied. I’m fairly clear that Yvonne Jenkins committed suicide.’

  ‘And you’re happy to leave it at that?’ asked Sadler.

  Now Llewellyn did take his eyes off the computer. ‘You know my feelings on this. You know that I want to know why Yvonne Jenkins chose now, after all these years, to do away with herself. And only two days before a teacher in Rachel Jones’s old school is found murdered.’

  ‘There could be a connection.’

  Llewellyn lifted his hands off the keyboard and gave Sadler his full attention. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s a possibility. Perhaps the suicide of Yvonne Jenkins triggered something that led to the death of Penny Lander.’

  ‘Like what?’

  He was being perverse, thought Sadler. Exactly how far was the team supposed to have got in so short a space of time?

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Let me give you a bit of advice, Francis. Don’t let this case get to you. Forget what I told you about 1978 when you look at the murder of Penny Lander. I need your objectivity on this one. No hunches.’

  Sadler thought back to his young detective constable bent over her desk.

  ‘You can rely on my complete objectivity.’

  Chapter 25

  The incident room began to fill with personnel. There was that low level of urgency that pervades a space just after a violent crime. In theory, the team were working against the clock: gathering evidence and witness statements and establishing a chronology of events, all of which would provide the bedrock of the investigation. The Crown Prosecution Service required it and the public entrusted the police to do a thorough investigation. But still Connie felt curiously detached from the intense activity that was taking place. Her mind was still stuck in 1978 and the discovery of a shivering girl, wearing no shoes and socks, with a missing friend.

  Sadler was in his office, on the telephone, but pointed her towards Palmer, who was drinking a cup of coffee and staring into space.

  ‘All OK?’

  Palmer put down his cup and shrugged. ‘The usual.’

  ‘You can always call it off, you know.’

  ‘Oh, that’s really helpful, Con. Call off the wedding. Do you know how long we’ve been planning this event?’

  ‘Months.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Months. Eighteen of them, in fact. And I’m now supposed to call it off.’

  Connie could feel herself getting angry. ‘I was only trying to help. Do what you like. Has Sadler assigned me any tasks yet?’

  Palmer took a deep breath. ‘He wants you to look into Penny Lander’s personal history. Her back story, as it were. I’ve been doing the employment angle. Seeing if there are any discrepancies in her employment history, why she chose that school to teach at and so on. You’re to dig into her personal life.’

  ‘She’s got a daughter, hasn’t she?’

  ‘In Kent. Apparently she’s on her way up here now.’

  ‘She’s been informed that it’s murder?’

  ‘I don’t know. The local uniforms broke the news to her. I’ve got the details here.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Palmer, perk up.’ Connie snatched the file out of his hand and walked out of the office. What was the point of getting married if you felt so bad about it?

  Connie plonked herself down at the desk and flicked through the file. The unfortunate PC who had been given the job of breaking the news had let Bampton station know that Penny’s daughter, Justine, had been shocked but sufficiently composed to answer some preliminary questions before she set out on her journey. According to Justine, her mother was born in 1953 in Somerset and had moved to Derbyshire aged eighteen to attended teacher training college in Bampton in 1971. The reasons for her move north were unclear. Of course, everyone went away to university these days. But then?

  ‘Anybody know if it was usual to go to university in another town in 1971?’ asked Connie across the room.


  Two detectives leaning over a computer looked up and then at each other. Palmer was ignoring her.

  ‘My dad was from Nottingham and he went to Leicester Uni,’ said one of them.

  But not across the country, thought Connie to herself. She turned her attention back to the file. According to Palmer’s research, Penny Lander’s first teaching job had been at Greenacres primary school, long since closed down. In 1975, she had moved to St Paul’s, where she had remained for the rest of her teaching career, which included a year’s break in 1977 following the birth of Justine. According to her daughter, she had liked her job except for the fact that every September she had caught a chest infection that on a couple of occasions turned to bronchitis. She had taught almost continuously the junior classes as she preferred the older pupils. That, in summary, had been a teaching career spanning forty years. Nothing remarkable about it whatsoever.

  Connie turned to Palmer about to say something disparaging about the scope of her task but noticed he’d disappeared. She stuck her pen in her mouth and thought.

  In 1978, she would have just returned to St Paul’s after the birth of Justine. According to Jane Thomson, she’d never taught the two girls but had, like her, heard of the kidnapping from the headmistress. Penny Lander’s personal life had suggested little to get excited over. According to the interview with Justine, her mother had married as soon as she graduated in 1972. Justine came along in 1977 and her father, James, had died last year of a heart attack. According to Justine, her mother had taken the death stoically but, as attested to by Sally Arden, had been bewildered as to what to do with herself.

  Somewhere amongst the bare bones of this life there was something hidden deep down. It was the only explanation for Penny Lander lying dead in Bampton mortuary, less than a week after Yvonne Jenkins had killed herself. There had to be a link somewhere. No friends of Mrs Jenkins had come forward and she wouldn’t have the time to go looking for people who, if Llewellyn’s assessment of the dead woman was right, didn’t even exist. Which meant, given that she was now assigned to the Penny Lander murder investigation, finding out about Penny’s circle of friends.