Old Bones

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Slider could have told her that Connie Bindman, nee Fuchs, had started with the police as a civilian clerk, and had gradually burrowed her way into the system like a benign parasite until she was indispensible. The ragging she had had to put up with from the beginning over her name had made her strong, and an insatiable curiosity and a photographic memory had made her wise beyond her years.

  When she did think about it, the word ‘archivist’ suggested to Connolly someone who’d been around a good while. Even so, she wouldn’t have been prepared for the woman who met her at the foot of the stone steps to examine the pass she had hung round her neck on a lanyard. Connie Bindman, to Connolly’s young prejudices, looked about a hundred, and was vast, like a shipping hazard. Her bulk seemed all sideways, and as she was not tall, she gave the impression of having melted slightly and be pooling inside her clothes.

  She wore a strange grey smock of some tough material like canvas over an enormous grey skirt which came almost down to her ankles, below which could be seen a pair of fleece-lined Ugg boots. She wore fingerless mittens on her hands. She had two pairs of glasses on chains round her neck, which she used alternately, one for mid distance and one for reading; and there was a pencil and a Bic pen thrust through her wiry grey hair – probably on the principle that it was as good a place as any to keep them.

  Yet the fingers of the hands were pointed and delicate, and in the lardy face were traces of a past beauty, and a pair of very intelligent dark eyes. She greeted Connolly with a smile of lopsided charm and said, ‘I was expecting you. You’re Bill Slider’s girl, aren’t you? How is he, the dear man?’

  ‘He’s grand, thank you,’ Connolly said dutifully.

  ‘Grand, yes – there is something grand about him. He thinks on a bigger scale than most of us, bless him. But he’s got over losing poor Colin Hollis, has he? He must have taken that badly.’ Connolly looked blank, and she added, ‘Responsibility. You wouldn’t feel it at your age, darling, but the weight of it gets heavier the longer you live. And poor Bill is one of those people who starts off with a guilt complex. Carries it round, like a hump.’

  ‘You’d know him pretty well, then,’ Connolly said, finding the trend of talk embarrassing. This was her boss they were discussing, after all.

  ‘Oh, I’ve met him here and there. Meetings. Conferences. Someone’s leaving bash.’

  ‘So you get out now and then?’

  ‘Yes, they take off the manacles once in a while. But I’m not as isolated as you might think, sweetie. I get to hear everything about everybody down here. And I’m interested in people. Well, when it comes down to it, what else is there?’

  She gave a little laugh. Her voice was clear and beautifully modulated, and though Connolly had read about a ‘musical laugh’, it was the first time she’d heard anything that fitted the description. She waited to see what else would be said, shifting a little on her feet, partly in embarrassment and partly because it was cold down here, below ground and on a stone floor.

  She didn’t like basements anyway – didn’t like any room without windows – and this was the worst sort, with walls of glazed brick, like her old school, and exposed pipes, and cobwebs, and echoey, untraceable noises: watery gurglings, the fitful buzzing of a faulty fluorescent tube, and occasional faint thumps, as it might be of a member of the undead, heavily bandaged, bumping into things as he came slowly towards them, arms outstretched … She tried not to look over her shoulder, but couldn’t help it, and Connie Bindman’s smile widened. ‘There’s nobody down here but us,’ she said. ‘Buildings make funny noises. You’ll soon get used to it. It used to give me the awful whim-whams at first, but interest in the work takes your mind off it. Now then, you want a missing person, I believe?’

  Not the best choice of words, Connolly thought. Want one? Not down here, not in any state they were likely to be in. ‘Human remains were found,’ she said. ‘In Laburnum Avenue.’

  Connie Bindman put her head on one side. ‘That name rings a faint bell. That’s on the Trees Estate, isn’t it? Now, I wonder why I recognize Laburnum?’

  ‘Female remains. Doc Cameron says they’d been in the grave twenty years, more or less.’

  ‘I know what that means. Anything from fifteen to twenty-five – and that’s just for starters.’ She sighed. ‘It’s an awkward time slot. Carbon dating’s no good for anything less than a hundred years, so it’s down to guesswork. And if it were seventy or eighty years, there’d be no investigation because the murderer would also be dead. With twenty years you’ve got the worst of both worlds. Well, darling—’ she gathered herself together – ‘here’s the gig. We have them cross-referenced by name and date, but since you don’t have a name, we’ll have to trawl through in date order, which will take us some time.’

  As well as exposed pipes, cable ducts and cobwebs, the walls were lined with metal shelving crammed with boxes, metal cupboards full of box folders, rows and rows of filing cabinets, and tall wooden chests of card drawers. It was to the latter Connie Bindman led her. The drawers were of varnished oak, with brass slots on the front for labels, unexpectedly grand and serious to someone from the age of throwaway plastic.

  ‘It’s quite simple,’ said Connie Bindman. ‘The card will give you the date the file was opened, which will be the date the person was reported missing, plus a few basic facts – name, age, address and next of kin – and a file reference. The files are in the boxes on the shelves over there, in numerical order. If you find anything of interest, let me know and we’ll haul out the file. Assuming it’s still in existence.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Connolly asked.

  ‘Oh, there have been accidents over the years. There was the flood of 1998 – we lost quite a lot of files then. An electrical fire in 1987, but luckily that didn’t do much damage. There are advantages in being right next door to the fire station. We had mice in the 1970s – but they mostly ate the 1950s. And then there’s been human carelessness. People borrowing files and not returning them, or returning them minus some of their material.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘We don’t have that sort of thing happening any more.’ She gave Connolly a meaningful look. Connolly thought she meant that things going missing had not been altogether accidental. Gene Hunt syndrome again. ‘We’re much more careful. Everything has to be signed for and checked.’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ Connolly promised.

  ‘Twenty years, you say?’ Connie Bindman went on. ‘All right, why don’t you start here, in January 1995 and work forward five years, and I’ll start in December 1994 and work backward five years. That will cover the most likely ten years between us. We won’t get more than that done today.’ She led Connolly to a stack of drawers and said, ‘Don’t rush, or you might turn two cards at once and miss something. Slow and steady wins this race, my pet.’

  Connolly opened the drawer and stared in disfavour at the cards stacked along a metal rod which passed through a hole cut at the bottom of each. The cards had been white, but were browning slightly with age, their edges rubbed soft with handling. Some were unevenly typed, and some were written in a beautiful, neat hand in what was obviously fountain-pen ink, because it had faded in some places and changed colour in others.

  Janey Mac, she thought, would you look at the cut of it! This was what came of people not getting on and building computers when they should’ve. Hadn’t she read somewhere that Leonardo da Vinci had invented them in 15-something? Or the ancient Egyptians or somebody? And here they were in the twentieth century writing stuff on cards! With pens! There was no way simply to enter ‘Laburnum’ in a search engine and scan the results. You had to read each card, flicking it forward to expose the next, one card after another, on and on for ever.

  Her fingers got cold. They got dirty. Her feet went dead. Some cards were packed closer together and tried to stick to each other. And the monotony worked on the brain so that after a bit you caught yourself reading without taking anything in. Had she missed something?
Only way was to go back and repeat. Sweet Baby Jesus and the orphans! She’d be here for ever. She’d never get out. She imagined archaeologists digging through into the basement in several thousand years time and finding her fossilised remains, and wondering what she could have been doing here. Some kind of religious ritual, they’d think. They always thought that, didn’t they? Sacrificial virgins buried with the Sacred Tin Boxes to ensure a good harvest …

  Ah, maggots! She’d done it again, stopped taking anything in. Have to go back and re-read. Jaysus, lemme out of here …

  And then, after all that, it was Connie Bindman who found it.

  ‘Laburnum Avenue. Was it number fifteen?’ she asked, with a lift of excitement in her voice. Well, stuck down here, it was as close to a thrill as you’d probably get.

  ‘That’s right,’ Connolly said, keeping a finger in her place and hoping she wouldn’t need it.

  ‘A little girl went missing in August 1990. I thought the address rang a bell.’ She read off the reference number, and shuffled in her fleecy boots over to the shelves; took down a metal deed box, carried it to a table and opened it. Connolly half expected a flock of bats to fly out. Instead Connie Bindman drew out a beige folder, double checked the reference number, and opened it. ‘The case is still live,’ she said. ‘Which means she’s never been found.’

  Connolly met her eyes across the chilly basement, her mind working. ‘It must be the same one. It can’t be coincidence, can it?’

  At that moment a telephone rang, loudly and nearby, startling Connolly so much she bit her tongue.

  Connie Bindman answered it, and said, ‘They’re asking for you upstairs. Front shop. You’d better go. I’ll send this over in the bag.’

  ‘I can take it,’ Connolly said.

  ‘Bless you, not that I don’t trust you, but who knows where you’ll be going next? Bus, train, pub, home for the night. That’s how things get lost. I’ll send it over in the bag, then we’ll be safe. You won’t look at it before tomorrow morning anyway, will you?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘All right then. Off you go. My regards to Bill Slider when you see him.’

  Upstairs, in the front shop, it took a while to find out who had asked for her. Everybody seemed to be busy, nobody was willing to break off and help her. Obviously the activity was meaningful, she knew that; but beyond the security doors, the public who wanted to talk to a policeman sat around on benches waiting with the air of dead people in the ante-room of the afterlife: how long it would take to be processed, and where they would be bound afterwards, equally out of their ken.

  Eventually, by the exercise of much patience and persistence, she got herself directed to a tall, curly-haired and moley woodentop, who was engaged with a tablet and looked up at her with such reluctance she could almost hear the ripping sound as his eyes pulled away from the screen.

  ‘You’re DC Connelly?’ he asked, frowning, as if it was hard to believe.

  She flourished the visitor’s pass. ‘Yes. Rita Connolly. Shepherd’s Bush. What’s it about?’

  ‘Come this way.’ He led her through the pass door to an interview room, where he invited her to look through the glass.

  At the table, looking both bored and defiant, was the skinny figure of Julienne Adams, dressed in pink leggings and sweatshirt, alternately chewing her fingernails and making faces at the camera in the corner of the ceiling.

  ‘Are you a relative or something like that?’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ said Connelly, puzzled. ‘She was part of a case we had recently. What’s she done?’

  ‘Shoplifting. TK Maxx are getting really tough on theft these days. It’s an epidemic.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘She wouldn’t give a name or address and she had no ID on her so they called us in. And then all she would say was we had to get in touch with you and you’d sort it out.’

  ‘Oh, she said that, did she?’

  He shrugged. ‘Usually they start crying after a bit and blurt it all out, but not a tear, that one, and she wouldn’t budge on the name or anything. She’s a tough kid.’

  ‘Her sister was killed and then her mum died and she was put into care,’ said Connolly. ‘That’d make you tough.’

  ‘Well, do you want to talk to her?’

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to. What did she take?’

  ‘Lipstick. Retail value £14.99. The store doesn’t want to prosecute for that amount, but they want her frightened enough so she doesn’t escalate.’

  ‘I think I can manage that,’ Connolly said grimly.

  Julienne Adams, age eleven going on forty, looked up with a defensive scowl as Connolly came in, then her face lit and she jumped up and ran at her, arms out.

  Connolly fended her off, held her at arm’s length by her skinny wrists. ‘None o’ that,’ she said sternly. ‘What have you been up to?’

  At the rejection of her embrace, Julienne’s face collapsed, and she burst into tears. She wrenched herself free, ran back to her seat, dropped her head on her folded arms on the tabletop, and sobbed as though life were over. Connolly stood where she was, arms folded, watching impassively for a break in the storm.

  Eventually the rhythm altered and she sensed a readiness for dialogue, so she said, ‘Knock off the waterworks. I want to talk to you.’ Julienne said something splurgey and tear-choked that she couldn’t catch. ‘Would you stop the cryin’, for Pete’s sake? I’m tryna help you!’

  The child raised a wet face, mouth bowed like a Greek mask. ‘You don’t care! Nobody cares! I wish I was dead!’

  At this hopeful sign, Connolly pulled out the chair catty-corner to her, and dragged over the universal box of tissues. ‘If I didn’t care, would I be here? Here, dry your face and wipe your nose. You look like an explosion in a snot factory.’

  Julienne sat up and obeyed, blew her nose, and muttered again, ‘Wish I was dead.’

  ‘You’ll be a lot worse than dead if you don’t stop this carry-on. What the hell were you thinking? Robbing stuff from a store!’

  ‘I didn’t do nothing,’ Julienne protested.

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ said Connolly. ‘Exhibit one. A lipstick. Colour Miss Fizzy. Price £14.99. You robbed it right off the counter and the store detective nabbed you at the door.’

  ‘I hadn’t got £14.99,’ Julienne said sulkily. ‘I’d only got three pounds.’

  ‘You little eejit! If you can’t afford something, you don’t have it. That’s it. End of. There’s no just takin’ stuff because you fancy it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Connolly wasn’t having a philosophical debate on capitalism with an eleven year old. ‘Because it’s the law,’ she said shortly. Julienne took another tissue and wiped her nose again, avoiding Connolly’s eye. ‘So what’s going on with you?’ she asked in a kinder voice.

  Julienne chewed her lip. She had a pale pointed face decorated with pink lips and, now, pink-rimmed eyes; thin, very fair hair caught back with a pink plastic slide. Her skinny little bod, still innocent of curves, seemed all joints, like a foal’s. Connolly waited with the sort of silence that most people feel compelled eventually to fill – something DCI Slider had taught her – and eventually Julienne said, in an impassioned burst, ‘I hate that place! I’m not going back there! They’re mean to me.’

  ‘Who’s mean to you?’

  ‘Everybody.’

  ‘Why aren’t you at school?’

  ‘I hate that school. I don’t know anybody. I hate the other kids. And the lessons are, like, really hard. It’s really bo-o-ring. I hate the teachers.’

  ‘That’s a lot of hates. Anything you like?’

  ‘No. I hate everything. I wanna go home.’

  ‘Well, you can’t, can you?’

  Now Julienne looked at her, and her lip trembled. With an effort she said, ‘No. Cos my mum’s dead.’

  There was a long moment of silence. Connolly looked at her steadily, noting her determination not to cry aga
in. It was an heroic effort for so small a child. Fair play to her! she thought in tribute. At last she said kindly, ‘Yeah. It’s tough. You had a tough break, Jule.’

  The child looked down at her hands, and heaved a long sigh, which was the fight and tension going out of her. ‘What’s gonna happen to me?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I’m going to try and get you out of this. But you’re never to do this again, you understand me? No more robbing. No more getting into trouble.’

  She looked up. ‘I like your trousers. I like your top. I wish I had nice things like you.’

  ‘Then you’ve got to work hard at school, get good exams, and get a job. Then you can buy nice things for yourself.’ The programme didn’t seem to appeal to Julienne. ‘D’you think it’s easy?’ Connolly asked harshly. ‘D’you think I got given this stuff? Life is hard, kid. You either give up, or fight. I thought you were a fighter.’

  Julienne tried to look tough, but her lip was quivering again. She met Connolly’s eyes pathetically. ‘Will you come visit me?’ she asked in a mouse’s voice.

  An unwelcome surge of pity plus the vision of a waterfall of complications swept over Connolly and almost washed her away. Damn, I don’t want to get involved. I’m not responsible for her. I’m not a social worker. It’d do more harm than good if she got attached to me. It’s not my job.

  Plus any number of other excellent reasons, excuses and caveats. But the kid was looking at her. There was a connection. Connolly didn’t want it, she most passionately didn’t want it, but it was there, like a sticky little paw creeping into hers. She had called for her when she was in trouble. Out of the depths I have cried to Thee O Lord! Lord, hear my voice. Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication. They got you with poetry when you were a kid – what were the psalms but poetry? You could shed the homilies and the tellings off like a duck sheds water, but the poetry dug right in like a parasite and wouldn’t be dislodged. She didn’t suppose Julienne had ever had poetry. Her mother had been a drug-addict, part-time prostitute with no more sense than to name her daughter after a method of chopping vegetables. Damn, I don’t want to get involved!