In Bitter Chill

by Sarah Ward

  Rachel climbed out of the car and looked around her. The street was more familiar; even the no cycling sign at the front of a passageway looked the same as it had in 1978. Today was refuse collection day and wheelie bins in three different colours stood on the pavement. Theirs had been the old-fashioned metal type, with a large number 5 painted on by her mother. The street was quiet, no one walking on the pavement or looking out of the windows. It was the fatal flaw of suburban streets. People, by and large, minded their own business. A lack of people had once seemed a sign of safety but now Rachel could see how easily it was to abduct a child from such a quiet street.

  She set off up the hill on foot and the houses changed from semis to bungalows, their gardens neater but with an old-fashioned air about the tidy borders. One older woman was doing her gardening even in this bitter cold, on her knees with a thick man’s coat flapping in the wind. She was tidying up some litter that had blown down the street. She looked up as Rachel passed.

  Sophie’s old house was exactly the same as it had been in 1978. The front garden was neatly laid out, but devoid of all character. The two windows at the front were clean, no smudges reflecting off the glass in the low winter sun. But there was still a neglected air about the property. Rachel could see no plants or ornaments in the windows and could have sworn that the same curtains from the 1970s were hanging there. On the day of the kidnap she’d walked up to the front door and waited while Mrs Jenkins fussed round Sophie, who’d taken the ministrations with a martyred but satisfied air. Then they had set off together up the hill.

  On impulse, she walked up the path to the front door and rang the bell. The chimes echoed through the house, a merry discordant note. The woman from two houses along had straightened up and was staring at her.

  ‘She’s gone. The woman who lived there. Gone.’

  Gone, thought Rachel. Yes, that was a good euphemism for what had happened to Yvonne Jenkins. She had gone.

  ‘I’m family,’ Rachel shouted back. And funnily enough it didn’t sound like a complete lie.

  She walked around the back, opening the worn, wrought-iron gate and came to the back door. She tried the handle and to her surprise the door swung open easily. Either the police had failed to secure the scene or perhaps Yvonne Jenkins had decided to make it easy for someone to enter the house. She stepped inside and flinched as the musty air hit her. The heating had been left on, presumably to stop the pipes freezing, but instead of providing warmth, there was a yeasty smell in the house that reminded Rachel of fermenting beer.

  The back door opened onto the kitchen, which Rachel quickly walked through. She had no memories of that room at all. The hallway was more familiar, the carpet the same as in 1978, clean and very drab, Sophie’s bedroom had been off the small corridor to the left of the bungalow. Whatever Rachel had expected, it wasn’t this barely furnished room. A single bed stood to one side, bare mattressed and with no evidence of bedclothes elsewhere. The only other piece of furniture was a small wardrobe, presumably Sophie’s. This was in the days before children’s furniture. Rachel’s wardrobe had been a huge mahogany piece inherited from her great-grandmother. During games of hide and seek it had been possible to hide three or four friends inside it.

  Rachel opened Sophie’s wardrobe. Like the bed, it was bare. Not even spare hangers could be seen. The other bedroom must have belonged to Yvonne Jenkins. It at least bore the signs of recent occupation, with a hairbrush sitting on top of a chest of drawers waiting for its owner to pick it up again. Again Rachel felt drawn to the wardrobe in this room and opened it. Rows of skirts, blouses and trousers neatly hung off the rail. Rachel turned the label of a blouse and saw that it had been purchased from a respectable local boutique. So Yvonne Jenkins had still dressed smartly, even up to her death.

  She peered through the net curtains. The old woman was disappearing into her house, most likely defeated by the cold and damp. Rachel heard a click – and turned her head towards the front door. Someone was standing outside, tall and muffled against the inclement weather. Her heart lurched and, angry at herself, she thought about rapping on the window to catch the shadow’s attention. Like Rachel before her, the caller rang the doorbell and this time the chimes echoed around her. Go away, prayed Rachel, feeling a pressure behind her nose. Nausea building up from within. The figure moved, not down the pathway but following Rachel’s steps around to the back of the house. She faintly heard the gate swing and it was this small noise that brought her from her reverie.

  She looked around the spartan room. She had left the back door unlocked, only closing it behind her to prevent the warmth of the house escaping into the cold air. Whoever it was would surely try the door. Perhaps it was a journalist sniffing around and therefore she should go and confront them as she had that other reporter outside her house. But there was something chilling about the tall shadow that she had seen through the net curtains. If they were looking for something, surely they would search everywhere? And Rachel would not hide. Not ever. She would be not be found cowering under the bed. She steeled herself, pulled back the net curtain, opened the window and climbed out.

  Chapter 27

  Palmer was sitting across from Sadler, fiddling with his jacket and refusing to look him in the eye. The PM report had arrived and Sadler needed someone to bounce ideas off. Usually his sergeant was ideal, in contrast to Connie who, although keen to impress when Palmer was around, worked less well in situations that could be described as a ‘meeting’. But today Palmer seemed out of sorts, his mouth pinched and dark shadows under his eyes, noticeable despite the light tan that must have come from a sunbed session. Sadler ploughed ahead.

  ‘Double strangulation has been confirmed. Ever come across that before?’

  ‘Never. And it’s creepy, the whole idea of it. Strangled twice. You could make a horror film with that title.’

  ‘It’s certainly a first for me too.’ Sadler was scanning the rest of the report. He stood by what he had said to Connie over the phone. The method of the killing was an insight to the killer’s mind, which felt the need to first overpower and then extinguish the victim.

  ‘What about other cases? Llewellyn was sure that there had been no repeat incidents of kidnapped children, but I wonder if we’ve missed any cases where a victim is first overpowered and then killed.’

  Palmer had stopped fiddling with his jacket and was giving Sadler his full attention. ‘I’m not sure. I can go back and look on the computer, if you like. It’s a good point, but I’m still not convinced about the link to 1978. A grown woman in 1978 should be fairly elderly by now. Rachel didn’t know the precise age of the woman who had kidnapped them but her description to police suggested a woman in her twenties or thirties, no younger. A woman in her early thirties in 1978 would be in her late sixties now.’

  His downbeat tone was worthy of Connie and at last Sadler felt compelled to say something. ‘You all right?’

  Palmer’s eyes dropped to the floor. ‘I’m fine. Just a lot on my mind at the moment.’

  Sadler couldn’t think of anything helpful to say. He looked up at the clock and noticed it was an hour until the scheduled press conference. A pre-briefing would take place half an hour before that with the press officer. Which gave him only thirty minutes to start shaping the scant information that they had discovered so far into something more coherent.

  *

  On her way to interview Penny Lander’s few friends, Connie thought back to her interview with Richard Weiss. Rachel Jones and he were obviously an item. She’d looked right at home standing there in the kitchen in woolly hiking socks and what were clearly his pyjama bottoms and T-shirt. Given that Rachel Jones was supposed to dislike women police officers, she’d been as cool as a cucumber answering her questions. Neither had she seemed particularly perturbed about the news that Penny Lander had been strangled. Rachel had been surprised. Connie would have sworn that. But shocked? No. Not shocked.

  Connie arrived at a house on a suburban street not far f
rom the High Oaks area but a world apart in terms of the architecture. A small housing estate had been given planning permission in the 1980s and a conservative local house builder had erected three cul-de-sacs of solid mock-Tudor detached houses with postage-stamp-sized gardens. Admittedly, most of the houses had weathered well over the last twenty years. People attracted to this type of development maintained their properties. It reminded Connie of an inferior version of Penny Lander’s street.

  The door was answered by a woman in her sixties wearing an outfit not dissimilar to that of Richard Weiss, mustard coloured corduroy trousers and a matching V-necked sweater. Her mannish attire was mirrored by the inside of the house that looked like it belonged to an elderly bachelor, although Connie spotted some knitting on the coffee table. Dorothy Cable was the organiser of the book club that Penny Lander attended, which met on the first Tuesday of every month.

  ‘It was my idea to set it up. I didn’t advertise it or anything. I just asked a couple of friends, and they asked a couple of theirs, and between us we got together a group of ten.’

  ‘And how did Penny join the group?’

  ‘She was known to a couple of us, I think. She’d taught a few of our kids, mine included.’

  Connie rapidly revised her assessment of Dorothy Cable. ‘Was this a long time ago?’

  ‘She knew mine in the 1970s. I’ve two boys and Penny taught both of them. They both liked her.’

  ‘Do you remember the kidnapping of Sophie Jenkins and Rachel Jones?’

  ‘We’re not likely to forget any of that around here. David, my eldest, was in the same year as the two girls but a different class. He was a sensitive boy. He still is, in fact. He had nightmares about the whole thing after the girls were taken. The headmistress at the time had to call a parents meeting because apparently a lot of the kids were suffering from some kind of trauma – anxiety, stress. You name it, although we didn’t particularly in those days. I think it came under the catch-all of “shock”.’

  ‘The headmistress was a Miss Coles?’ asked Connie, checking her notes.

  ‘Yes, the old-fashioned type she was, too. Ran that school like clockwork and recruited both Penny Lander and another teacher who still works there, Jane Thomson. The pair of them were of that traditional mould. Most of the pupils, when they left St Paul’s for secondary school, went to Bishop’s. Apparently teachers there could tell when a child came from St Paul’s because their reading and writing skills were well in advance of children from the other schools.’

  ‘Do you know what became of Miss Coles?’

  ‘She died about ten years ago, I think, well into her nineties. She was on the verge of retiring when the girls were taken, if I remember, and she stayed on for an extra year because she thought it unfair for a new head to have to take on a school that had just experienced that kind of tragedy.’

  Connie looked around the bare room, noting the absence of photos of the sons that Dorothy Cable had mentioned. ‘Is there anything you can tell me that might shed light on why Mrs Lander was killed?’

  ‘We just discuss books.’ Dorothy folded her arms. ‘I was quite adamant about that. I’ve heard all about these book clubs where all they do is chat about what has been on TV the previous evening. Gossip is for before and after the meeting. Not during discussions. We don’t verge on the personal.’

  ‘And what about a particular friend? Was there anyone in the group that Penny was particularly close to?’

  Dorothy Cable looked at Connie curiously. ‘Have you spoken to Bridget Lander? She was Penny’s sister-in-law. Bridget was the sister of James, Penny’s husband. I don’t think they were particularly close but they were both in the book club and I know they both got a surprise when they turned up for the first meeting and saw each other.’

  ‘Neither knew that the other was coming?’

  ‘Exactly, but I wouldn’t read too much into it. I’ve a sister the other side of Bampton and I wouldn’t know what she was up to one week to the next.’

  ‘But you don’t think they were close?’

  ‘I don’t think they were that friendly, but she would have known as much about Penny Lander as anyone I can think of. She only lives two streets away. Why don’t you pay her a visit?’

  *

  After the press conference, Sadler followed Llewellyn into his office and shut the door. Llewellyn stretched his long legs out underneath his desk. ‘That went well.’

  ‘Did it? I don’t think we told them anything they didn’t already know.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Llewellyn was grinning at him, his red hair and broad face momentarily reminding Sadler of a picture of the Cheshire cat in one of his childhood books. The phone rang on Llewellyn’s desk and as he took the call, Sadler watched the smile fade and a look of concern cross his features. He put his hand over the receiver.

  ‘Sadler, Penny Lander’s daughter’s just arrived in reception. You go and see her, will you? I’d rather you did this.’

  Sadler walked down to the station’s reception area and Justine Lander stood up to meet him. She was about Sadler’s height and, by today’s standards, her solid long limbs and sturdy frame would be considered overweight. But she was beautiful, her pre-Raphaelite face framed by long fair hair that fell loose to her shoulders. Her grey eyes were shaded underneath with smudges of purple-brown. Her hand was cool in his clasp and she withdrew it quickly. He steered her towards an interview room and got a PC to fetch them both a drink.

  ‘The news must have come as a shock.’

  She stared at her hands and spread them out in front of her, her long white fingers unadorned by rings. ‘I can’t believe it. I’ve lost both my parents in the space of a year. And there I was thinking that they would both live to enjoy a healthy old age.’

  ‘They were healthy, then?’

  ‘Oh yes. Dad played golf; Mum took herself for walks around the Bampton countryside. They both looked after themselves.’

  ‘But your dad died last year of . . .’

  ‘A heart attack. He keeled over outside one morning.’

  ‘How did your mum take it?’

  ‘She was shocked. Like me, she never expected it. But she carried on. Finished her job until retirement and got on with life. We were always a family to get on with things.’

  She said it with a slight undertone of bitterness. Sadler tried to guess her age. Late thirties, he thought. When had Connie said that her mother took maternity leave?

  ‘And you live in Kent?’

  ‘I went to university in Kent and liked it down there. I still work at the university in Canterbury, in the undergraduate admissions department.’

  She’d had a longer drive than he first realised. No wonder she looked exhausted.

  ‘Are you staying at your mother’s house? You can go there to freshen up, if you want, before we have this conversation.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’d really rather get it over with. I presume you want me to identify Mum’s body. Then I’ll drive to the house.’

  Sadler looked at Justine’s pale face. ‘We won’t be requiring a visual identification.’ Sadler picked his words with care. ‘In circumstances such as this we rely on forensic evidence.’

  She looked at him in horror. ‘God, what did they do to her?’

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ he said quickly. ‘But when a body has been exposed to the elements for a while, we prefer to rely on medical records and so forth.’

  Justine shrugged her shoulders and looked down, a gesture of defeat.

  ‘When were you last in touch with your mother?’

  ‘About two or three weeks ago. I’ve looked in my diary to see if I could pinpoint the exact date, but I’ve not been able to. It was mid-week and I called her after work. After my work, I mean.’

  ‘And she seemed normal.’

  ‘Completely normal. We chatted about a couple of things and then said our goodbyes.’

  ‘Were you close?’

  ‘We were, actually. Th
e problem was that Mum was useless on the phone. Everything came out in monosyllables so sometimes I used to steel myself before I made the call. We were all right when we were together. It was just over the phone that communication was really difficult.’

  ‘You didn’t think of moving nearer to each other?’

  ‘It was in the back of both our minds, I think, but we were letting things settle down after Dad died. I didn’t really want to move back up to Bampton and Mum liked it up here. Even though it wasn’t where she was from.’

  ‘She was brought up in Somerset?’

  ‘Yes, but her parents died before I was born, so we never visited the place. We’re not proving to be a very long-lived family I fear.’

  Sadler changed tack. ‘Was she interested in family history?’

  If she thought the question strange, she gave no sign of it. ‘I don’t think so. We used to go and visit my grandparents on my dad’s side when I was small but they both died before I was a teenager. She was an only child and I don’t think she was that interested in the family. Why do you ask?’

  ‘She attended meetings of the Bampton History Society.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Justine was dismissive. ‘She was a well read person, my mum, and interested in history. I’ve heard some of her former pupils say that she used to do some cracking history lessons. I’m sure that’s all it was.’

  It sounded plausible enough, in Sadler’s opinion.

  ‘Any enemies? Feuds and so on? Did she mention anything that could have given you cause for concern? However trivial.’

  But Justine Lander was shaking her head. ‘I honestly can’t think of anything. She led a blameless life, my mother. I swear there was nothing that ever threatened us as a family and when I spoke to her on the phone she seemed her normal self. Are you sure that this wasn’t a tragic mistake?’

  *

  As Bridget Lander only lived two streets away from the organiser of the book club, Connie left her car outside Dorothy Cable’s house and walked there. It was a big mistake. The sheeting wind blew straight into her face and the cold air pierced her lungs, causing her chest to constrict with pain as she breathed. At the bottom of the first street, she debated going back for the car but, feeling that she was already over halfway there, she put her head down and carried on. The street was a mirror image of Dorothy Cable’s road and Connie had a sense of déjà vu as she walked up the path to Bridget Lander’s house.