In Bitter Chill

by Sarah Ward

  ‘So what happened? How did she act up?’ Rachel was impatient for the whole story and Nancy was typically stringing it along.

  ‘She was rude to him. Mary brought him over to Mair’s chair and she never even got up. She just looked and looked at him, and then finally snapped, “What did you say your name was again?” like he was some kind of child. And he blushed beetroot red and stammered—’

  ‘What? What name did he stammer?’ Rachel practically shouted and Terry was looking at her in alarm.

  ‘Take it easy, Rachel. Your nan is only telling you an old story.’

  Rachel took a deep breath and willed her voice to calm. ‘Can you remember what he was called?’

  ‘Of course I can’t remember his name. This was years ago. My point was after, when the man was gone, your mother turned on Mair and said that she had ruined it all. By being so rude to him. And my mum looked so shocked, which was unusual for her. Normally she couldn’t care less about what anyone thought of her. But, as I said, she always had a soft spot for Mary.’

  Rachel felt like weeping. She didn’t want reminiscences. She wanted hard facts. Which didn’t look like they would be forthcoming.

  ‘Mair went up to apologise to her afterwards. I saw her come down with a grim look on her face and when I asked her what she’d said, she told me to mind my own business. But Mary came down later with a face on her too. Couldn’t look at any of us. But that was the last we saw of the man.’

  Rachel held her head in her hands. ‘Can’t you remember anything else about him? Anything at all?’

  Nancy’s face cleared and brightened. ‘I remember he was tall.’

  Chapter 37

  Connie rolled over in her bed and fumbled for her mobile. She’d slept badly and wondered if she’d done the right thing in talking to that journalist. The thought of the possible ramifications kept her awake for half the night. But then it didn’t take much. She punched in the number of Rachel Jones’s mobile.

  ‘Hello?’

  The man’s voice threw her. ‘Er, hi. It’s DC Connie Childs. Is Rachel there?’

  ‘Damn. Have I answered the wrong phone? Rachel . . .’

  Connie could hear rustling and a whispered exchange. About thirty seconds later Rachel’s voice came on, irritated.

  ‘Sorry about that. Richard and I’ve both got the same type of mobile. He’s mortified that he answered mine.’

  ‘It’s not a problem. I just wanted to pick your brains about something.’

  ‘Go on.’ The muffled voice suggested Rachel was eating her breakfast.

  ‘I was wondering about your mum’s friends. Who she was close to and so on. Maybe someone who had been in her life for a while. Someone who was still a friend around the time you were kidnapped?’

  ‘My mum? I don’t know. DI Sadler asked me that yesterday. After the kidnapping we moved to Clowton and our whole lives changed – friends, colleagues and so on. The only constant was my nan, who I saw all through my childhood.’

  ‘And your nan’s in a nursing home?’

  ‘That’s right. She’s completely doolally. I don’t think you’ll get any information from her at all.’

  There was a long pause. She’s lying, thought Connie.

  ‘Is there no one at all?’

  ‘Well, there was a next-door neighbour that I used to go into if my mum was late home from work and I remember her babysitting a couple of times. This was before the kidnapping. Maybe she will be able to help.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Audrey. I remember she worked as a nurse and so her shift patterns were really strange, which suited us. I would often drop in and see her. It was in the old Bampton hospital.’

  Connie got up and lit a cigarette, the one that she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t have, and jotted into her notebook the name of the hospital that Penny Lander had also been interested in.

  ‘And do you think your mum might have confided in her, this Audrey.’

  ‘To be honest, no. My mum was a private person. But they lived next door to each other for a quite a few years, so if anyone knows anything it will be her. But I don’t know if she is even in Bampton now. It’s been over thirty years. And when the hospital closed she could easily have moved jobs.’

  ‘Last name?’ Connie asked and the silence down the phone indicated that she’d been too abrupt. ‘Sorry. Early mornings aren’t my thing and I’ve already broken my daily resolution by having my first fag.’

  Surprisingly, Rachel laughed down the phone. ‘I know what you mean. I’ve just eaten a croissant and that’s before breakfast.’

  Connie sniggered.

  ‘I’m pretty sure her name was Audrey Frost. Her last name was easy to remember as a child and I’m pretty sure that was it. Will you let me know if you find her?’

  Connie agreed and ended the call. The phone rang immediately. Looking at the screen she could see it was Sadler.

  ‘Connie. Sorry to call again so early but in case I don’t see you today we need to have a chat about something outside the office.’

  Connie’s stomach lurched. Had he found out about her meeting with Nick Oates?

  ‘It’s about the wedding tomorrow. We need to think about a present.’

  Connie stopped herself from smiling in case he heard it in the tone of her voice. ‘A present? I hadn’t given it any thought to be honest.’

  ‘Well, we can hardly go empty handed, can we?’ He sounded irritated, thought Connie, as she stubbed out her cigarette.

  ‘I suppose not. Do you want me to get something?’

  ‘Could you? Thanks, Con.’ There was a brief silence. ‘Are you bringing a partner?’

  ‘No one to bring, to be honest. You?’

  ‘Um no. Perhaps they’ll sit us together.’ He sounded hopeful, but not in a romantic way. It didn’t sound like he was looking forward to it. Well, that made two of them.

  ‘Maybe. On the same table as Llewellyn and his wife. They’re going, apparently.’

  Sadler let it pass. ‘Fine. Well, give me a call later with an update how you’re getting on. And thanks for getting the present. Let me know how much I owe you.’

  *

  Sadler sat in his office looking out into the incident room that gave off an air of muted concentration. The tasks had all been successfully allotted and each of the team was working steadily through their jobs. Palmer’s temporary replacement, who’d been brought in for two weeks to cover tasks while his sergeant was on leave, was clearly competent. He had his head bent over a laptop and was tapping away. Sadler ran his hands through his hair and let out a deep breath. The confrontation with Christina yesterday had left him drained and to be back at work was a relief.

  Penny Lander’s murder was connected to the seismic event that took place in 1978, but now it looked like the kidnapping had its roots in events years earlier. So, what had they discovered? Well, for a start, focus had now decisively shifted from Sophie to Rachel. The likely scenario was that Sophie had unfortunately been with Rachel when the kidnapper had struck. And if that was the case, and Sadler was sure it was, then Sophie was almost certainly lying somewhere in Truscott Woods.

  The suicide of Yvonne Jenkins, he was now willing to concede, was merely that. The final act of a woman who had finished with life. Why she’d waited so long was a mystery. Connie’s description of the house had sounded depressing, but clearly she’d made something of a life for herself. Perhaps it was simply that, on this particular anniversary, the realisation finally struck that, no matter how long she waited, Sophie wasn’t coming home. But Sadler wasn’t a man who believed in ‘simply’s. Something had tipped her over the edge. And then Yvonne Jenkins’s suicide had unleashed a chain of events that had culminated in the death of Penny Lander. It wasn’t the first time that Sadler had seen this. Suicide could break up families, awaken illnesses dormant within unsuspecting relatives, cause fissures in lives. But it was the first time in his career that he would be linking suicide to a murder.
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br />   His mobile rang, an unknown number, and he answered it. There was a short silence at the other end of the phone.

  ‘It’s Justine Lander here.’

  Sadler felt his heart thump in his chest and inwardly cursed. He was now not only technically but actually single, so why the teenage embarrassment?

  ‘Is it a difficult time?’

  There it was again. The tang of bitterness that he’d heard in her voice before. ‘No, of course it isn’t. Are you still at the house, or at your aunt’s?’

  ‘I’m still at the house. I’ve been tidying up and going briefly through Mum’s things. Just to see if there’s anything urgent that needs doing.’

  ‘Did you find anything? I hope everything was left in good order after our lot had been through it.’

  ‘It was fine. It was pretty tidy, to be honest. Although I could tell someone had been here, if you know what I mean; But I wondered if they had gone through the garden shed.’

  Sadler wondered if he had heard her properly. ‘The shed?’

  ‘It’s where my mum used to keep all the junk she couldn’t fit in the house. Old stuff which didn’t matter if it went mouldy; in fact, if it did all the better as she could just throw it out then.’

  ‘Well, they certainly should have done. Why? Have you found anything?’

  There was a silence again. ‘You might want to come down and take a look.’

  *

  Audrey Frost was a large-hipped woman with smallish waist and an enormous cleavage that stretched the nylon blouse that she was wearing so that it gaped in three places. Connie could see the glimpse of a grey-white bra and made an effort not to stare at the enormous bosom. She had been easy to find. The electoral roll showed her living at Arkwright Lane in 1978 and then in 1980 moving to Hugh Street in the north of Bampton. She was still there, in a semi-detached house, slightly untidy but not in the dirty way of those who failed to care for either themselves or their properties. Audrey seemed merely to take a lackadaisical approach to housework rather than making a deliberate attempt to live in squalor.

  Connie had briefly explained her interest over the phone and Audrey was clearly curious. She sat Connie down and bustled off to make some tea, her nylon blouse sending off darts of static as she left the room. Connie looked around her, and once more was struck by another room without any photographs. She shouted her questions to Audrey, who was taking her time in the kitchen.

  ‘As I mentioned over the phone, your name was given to us by Rachel Jones. I think you’d remember her as a little girl.’

  Audrey came back into the room. ‘I remember her very well, scruffy little urchin that she was. Hair all scraggy like a scarecrow and her school uniform always creased. Some children can look neat and tidy no matter what and others, like Rachel, manage to look like little tinkers.’

  ‘Did her mother look after her properly?’

  A flash of annoyance crossed the woman’s face. ‘Of course she looked after her. It wasn’t easy in the seventies to bring up a child by yourself. You couldn’t sit back and let the state look after you for nothing. If you were single back then, you had to work to support yourself and no harm it did anyone, in my opinion. For a woman, it at least got you out of the house.’

  Connie recalled the interview with Peter Jenkins and thought Audrey Frost had a point. But the woman hadn’t finished.

  ‘And don’t go blaming Mary for what happened with Rachel and Sophie. Children used to walk themselves to school back then. It wasn’t a choice – most people expected it and you kept an eye out for the kids when they were passing your house.’

  ‘What do you think happened, then?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, and one thing is for sure, neither did Mary. I remember going round to the house the night of the kidnapping. Only the local press had arrived; the nationals were struggling to get up here because of a train strike. I remember Mary was white with shock. She kept asking herself who could have done such a thing.’

  ‘She had no idea at all?’

  ‘I’m positive she hadn’t a clue.’

  A slight hesitation in Audrey’s voice made Connie look up sharply. ‘But you’re thinking of something?’

  ‘It’s nothing, really; I just remember she nipped across to mine to make a call just after I arrived, asked if I would keep an eye on Rachel. There was a policewoman there who had come home with them but she wanted me to be there too, as I knew Rachel, while she used my phone.’

  ‘She wanted to use the phone in your house?’

  ‘Not everyone had phones in those days. I thought nothing of it. Said go ahead, and I’ll keep an eye on Rachel.’

  ‘But you think it was suspicious?’

  ‘Then I remembered that Mary had installed a phone in the house only a couple of months earlier. I had a quick look around downstairs and I found it in the dining room.’

  ‘So why do you think she wanted to make a phone call at your house?’

  Audrey’s mouth settled into a thin line. ‘She must have wanted to speak to someone without me overhearing.’

  She turned to stare out of the living room window, her broad back turned to the room. Connie let the silence settle while she digested the information. Mary Jones had installed a phone in her dining room but hadn’t wanted to use it in front of either the policewoman or in front of Audrey. Had she suspected who the attacker was? Connie’s thoughts went to the father of Rachel Jones.

  ‘Did Mary ever talk about her husband, Paul Saxton?’

  Audrey didn’t turn but spoke to the window. ‘Not much. She never really spoke about her husband at all. He died. That’s all that I knew.’

  Connie was missing something and she tried to formulate the words properly. ‘Did she talk about anyone else?’

  This time Audrey did turn round. ‘There was someone else.’

  ‘Before her husband?’

  ‘Certainly before and maybe during. I’m not sure.’

  ‘Did she mention his name?’

  Audrey shook her head and sat down heavily on her sofa. ‘No, never a name. But there was someone. She used to talk about a man who’d let her down. I got the impression that he must have been something of a rogue. She certainly didn’t want to talk about him in any detail.’

  ‘But she mentioned the fact that there was someone. How did she seem when she talked about him?’

  Audrey looked down at her knees and rubbed her hands over them as if to warm herself up. ‘She seemed ashamed.’

  Chapter 38

  Rachel was feeling guilty about her conversation with Connie. Doolally indeed. Nancy’s faculties were all there, despite her great age. There was nothing wrong with either Nancy’s mind or her memory, but that policewoman wasn’t going to be the one who unpicked it. Nancy could hold her secrets too, though, and Rachel would need to approach her with caution. Nancy’s carefree manner was, in its own way, as protective a cloak as her own prickly exterior. She pushed open the doors of Bampton library and Sydney Markham looked up from behind the desk, her expression changing from mild interest to excitement.

  ‘Any news?’ Sydney’s eyes brimmed with barely suppressed curiosity.

  Rachel was too tired to engage. ‘What about?’

  Sydney picked up on her mood. ‘You should take some time out instead of staring at a screen all day. Go and read a book.’ She pointed at a sign that was encouraging people to do the same.

  Sydney’s smile was infectious and Rachel found herself smiling back. ‘Got any recommendations?’

  ‘A bit of fiction perhaps, help you escape from wintry Bampton. What about a crime novel?’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘I’ve got to work. Got anything on the history of the old Bampton hospital that I might not have seen yet?’

  Sydney looked concerned. ‘You’re not doing some investigating yourself are you, Rachel? You need to leave that to the police.’

  Rachel looked at the floor, unwilling to catch Sydney’s eye. The librarian relented. ‘I’m pretty sure we’ve got
nothing new. You know more about that place’s history than anyone else. Why don’t you look at the archives in the town hall?’

  A recent conversation flashed into Rachel’s mind. ‘The ones Penny Lander was interested in? Did you send her there too?’

  ‘Penny?’ shrieked Sydney. ‘Of course not. Why should she want to go there? It’s not a place she would have visited.’

  ‘I think she did, you know.’ A tall middle-aged man had stopped serving a patron and called over to them. ‘It was one of the days you weren’t here. I was rushed off my feet and a woman was asking me about the location of the old records for Bampton hospital. She looked like the woman they found in the woods. I saw her picture on TV.’

  ‘And you told her that they were in the town hall archives?’

  ‘It was fresh in my mind as we’d had a memo saying that all the files were being transferred to the County Records Office next year but in the meantime they would be remaining in Bampton.’

  ‘And you told Penny Lander that they were there?’

  ‘If that was the woman’s name. It’s not secret, is it?’ The man was on his defensive now. As Sydney turned to reassure him, Rachel slipped away.

  *

  The town hall had been built at the height of Bampton’s Victorian prosperity. Once, it must have been a gleaming white edifice with its graceful porticos and imposing front lobby. Most of the stone had turned to a dull grey colour but it was still an impressive building, reminiscent of Bampton’s merchant past. The archives, naturally, were where archives often could be found: in the very pit of the building. This wasn’t a problem. Rachel liked archives, where the smell of long-forgotten records was combined with the archivists’ natural sense of order and precision.

  Rachel had once been friends with the head archivist at the town hall but the woman had married and moved on. Now a serious young man, the badge pinned to his shirt naming him as Tim Dowling, with piercings down one ear, was in charge of the records. He listened to her request with the gravity of a patient receiving bad news from his doctor, which was probably about right, given what she was asking for. Her first surprise was the amount of files that were available.