‘I remember everything about that visit. Had to go over it often enough at the time.’ She stared moodily at the photograph. ‘Is it my imagination or are this dog’s ears different sizes?’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Just what people always talk about. Except that the topic of holidays came up. I mentioned Brian and I were going to Marrakesh. In September, though, when the prices came down. Of course, Maggie and Ron had to go during the school holidays because of Amanda, and they could never afford to go anywhere interesting. Not that Ron would have wanted to – a fortnight in a caravan in Weymouth, that was nirvana to him. Anyway, I remember he got a bit grumpy when the topic came up, said he didn’t think they’d be able to have a holiday at all that year because he was too busy. I saw Maggie look at him, but she would never say anything in front of anyone else, not even her own sister.’
‘She was loyal to him?’
‘Well, yes, but it was more like keeping up a good front. She’d never admit everything in the garden wasn’t rosy. And then Amanda piped up and said she was glad they weren’t going away, she’d sooner stay at home. And I saw Ron give her a surprised sort of look. I suppose he thought she was sticking up for him.’
‘You don’t think she was?’
‘Backing up her mum, more likely.’
‘Didn’t she get on with her dad?’
‘Not a lot. I don’t suppose she saw much in common with him.’
‘Did they have rows? Did he tell her off?’
She seemed to sense a trap, and paused, brush in hand, looking at the painting to sort out her answer. ‘He was a bit of a Victorian father, in a way,’ she said carefully. ‘Old-fashioned, you know? Wouldn’t let her wear modern clothes, or make-up. All the other girls wore mini skirts, but Amanda’s had to be right down to the knee.’
‘And she complained about that to you?’
‘Oh, not really complained, as such, but she must have minded it, mustn’t she? She was always interested in my make-up, when she came to visit. I offered to do her face once, and she blushed like fire and said, “Oh no, Dad would kill me”.’
‘Did he hit her?’
‘Ronnie? No,’ she said at once. Then: ‘Well, not that I ever heard. I mean, he wasn’t abusive. He didn’t knock them about.’
‘But you think he might have hit them now and then?’
‘Oh no, I’m sure he didn’t,’ she said. ‘Maggie would have said something. No, I’m sure he never hit them. But he did have a bit of a temper on him. He’d get red in the face and you could see he was wanting to blow. I went over one day when they weren’t expecting me – oh, years before, that was – and I could hear him before I got to the front door, shouting at Maggie about something. It stopped when I rang the bell like it was cut off with a knife, and Maggie came to the door looking embarrassed and pretended like nothing had happened.’
‘Did Amanda have a boyfriend?’ Gascoyne asked.
Mrs Bexley laughed. ‘No! She didn’t know boys existed. She was very young for her age in that way, though intelligence-wise she was streets ahead. No, like I said, she was mad about animals. A lot of girls go through that stage, before they get into boys. With me, it was when I was about ten, but Amanda, like I said, she was young for her age. I don’t suppose it would have been long, though. She’d have discovered boys soon enough. If she’d had the chance,’ she added despondently. Her brush paused. It seemed a genuine emotion: to Gascoyne it was the first time she had not been playing to the gallery, watching her own performance.
‘That day, the day she disappeared, did Maggie telephone you?’
‘Yes, she did. Around six’ish. I couldn’t say the time exactly. She asked me if Amanda had come to visit me. Well, I said no. I was surprised, because that wasn’t something Amanda would do, just come on the off-chance. Not that I’d have minded – she was always welcome – but they didn’t do things like that. Not without an invitation. They weren’t dropping-in sort of people. So then I asked, why? And she said Amanda had gone. She was trying to sound calm, but I could hear underneath she was in a panic. I said, Gone where? And she said, Just gone – she’d been in the garden, and now she was nowhere to be found. So of course, I told her not to worry – God help me! Well, you do, don’t you?’
She seemed to need it, so Gascoyne gave her a nod.
‘I said she’d probably gone down to the library or something, and she’d turn up any minute. And Maggie said, Yes, that was probably what it was, and rang off.’
‘And what did you think had happened?’
‘Well, I didn’t know. Amanda wasn’t the sort of kid to wander off without saying. That wasn’t how she was brought up. I suppose in the back of my mind, maybe I thought she’d finally reached the age where she broke out – you know, defied them, rebelled against the rules. But Maggie had never said anything about her starting to give trouble, and usually there are signs, aren’t there, a build-up? But I never, never thought anything had happened to her. You don’t, do you? It happens to other people, not you.’
‘How did they take it, Maggie and Ronnie?’
‘Well, they were devastated, of course they were.’ She looked at him as if it was a stupid question. ‘Maggie didn’t know what to do with herself. Ronnie went through all the stages, anger at first that she’d gone off without a word, then fear something had happened to her, then absolute despair. I never saw a man so crushed. I mean, I never really liked Ronnie, if you want to know the truth – he just wasn’t my sort of person – but I had to feel for him, the way he went to pieces. And, of course, poor Maggie, it just got worse and worse for her, when the police started making out that Ron must have had something to do with it.’ She met his eyes, straight and level. ‘I mean, what kind of a thing was that to suggest to her?’
‘You never thought that yourself?’
She hesitated. ‘No, I didn’t. Not at the time. He was too upset about it. But afterwards I thought – well, it could have been. No more than that. Just could have been. If, say, he’d found her walking along the road, and lost his temper because she shouldn’t have been out without telling anyone, and maybe hurt her without meaning to. I don’t believe he’d ever mean to do it, but say he killed her by accident, well, he’d have had to try and cover it up, wouldn’t he? Take the body somewhere in his van and get rid of it.’
‘At what point did you start thinking that? That it could have been him?’
Unexpectedly, she blushed. She averted her eyes from him, put down the brush and palette and turned away. ‘Like some more coffee?’ she asked, in a voice that was probably meant to sound casual but came out gruff and brusque.
‘No thanks,’ said Gascoyne, watching her. She went over to the kitchen counter where the coffee machine was keeping it hot, but did not touch it. She had her back to him, and he guessed she was trying to rearrange her face. He didn’t want to give her too much time, so he said again, ‘At what point did you—?’
And she turned abruptly to face him, her cheeks still pink, her eyes bright. ‘If you want to know, it wasn’t all sweetness and light between me and Brian and Maggie and Ron. I mean, we felt sorry for them, terribly sorry, of course we did, and we tried to do everything we could to help them get through it. But what can you do, in the end? Something like that – it’s unimaginable. You just don’t know what to say or do. And there was no end to it. If she’d been found … If a body had been found, well, at least you’ve got closure. I mean, I don’t suppose you ever really get over something like that, but you have to move on. But they just didn’t know. The agony just went on and on. And I suppose you have to lash out at the people nearest you, don’t you? Because that’s all there is.’
‘And they lashed out at you?’
‘Things got strained,’ she admitted, looking down at her hands, which she had locked together. ‘Things were said. Maybe – maybe I let Maggie see that I had entertained the idea that Ronnie might have had something to do with it. I mean, I never said it, I wouldn’t
say it outright.’ She looked at him quickly. He saw she was ashamed. ‘And then she said, What about Brian?’
He waited, but she didn’t seem to be able to go on. ‘She suggested Brian was involved in Amanda’s disappearance?’
She nodded. ‘She said a lot of things. She said Brian was in and out of empty houses all day with his job being an estate agent, so he had opportunity. She said I never knew where he was from one minute to the next. She said he had a bad reputation where women were concerned. She said I ought to get control over my own husband before I started throwing mud at someone else’s.’ She swallowed. ‘She said he’d always been a bit too fond of Amanda, and she’d been thinking for some time they ought to stop visiting us before things got out of hand.’
Ouch! thought Gascoyne. He could see the whole scenario being played out in his mind’s eye – the two women throwing ever more vicious barbs at each other, a lifetime, perhaps, of jealousy and resentment coming to a festering head, fed by the poison of fear for the missing girl. He would like to bet that at some point Maggie had said, ‘You don’t know what it’s like – you don’t have a child’, thereby striking Pat the one blow that could never be forgiven.
He said, gently, ‘I have to ask you – did you ever have any suspicions that way yourself?’
She gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘No. Not for a second. Brain loved his twinkies, it’s true, but Amanda wasn’t to his taste. He liked ’em older, and he liked ’em obvious. All eyes and mouth. Fully developed – udders like a dairy cow. He was definitely a boob man – the stinker!’ she added with parenthetic disdain. ‘He’d always had women on the side – I always knew that. But what can you do? At least it meant he didn’t bother me too much with all that malarky. I could do without it, if you want to know the truth. He was seeing some girl anyway, at the time Amanda went missing. I could tell – he wasn’t exactly subtle about it. So he didn’t have a vacancy, if you like.’
‘All the same—’ he began, even more gently.
‘No, listen,’ she interrupted him. ‘The police back then looked into him. I suppose they have to look at everyone. But he was covered. He was at the golf club all morning, had lunch with half a dozen of his pals.’
That didn’t cover the important part of the day. ‘And afterwards?’ Gascoyne asked.
‘I told them he was at home with me all afternoon.’ Her expression was stony now. Gascoyne felt a quickening of interest.
‘Was he?’
She seemed to hesitate, as if wanting to say something but having some block on it. ‘We had a terrific row afterwards – probably the worst we ever had. It was so stupid. He wanted to tell them where he was. He said she’d give him a complete alibi. But I didn’t want to admit it. To anyone. It was one thing knowing where he was, what he was doing. But to say it out loud, to strangers, washing our dirty linen … It was humiliating. I couldn’t do it. So when they asked me, I said he was with me, at home, all afternoon. I got my word in first. So when they asked him, he had to go along with it. But he was furious. He wanted to show off his manhood, all blokes together – stupid, macho shit that he was! Wanted the police to think he was a great guy. Ho ho, nudge nudge. I wasn’t having that. He was doing Karen Beales from the office, at her place, but I told the police he was home with me. I said we were doing a jigsaw puzzle together,’ she added with vicious satisfaction. ‘One thousand pieces. A Cottage Garden. That hit him where it hurt!’
‘That must be nearly unique,’ Gascoyne reported to Slider afterwards. ‘Giving a man a false alibi he didn’t want, while knowing he had a genuine one.’
‘She may have known it,’ Slider sighed, ‘but we don’t. We’ll have to check his alibi. It gives us one more person to find. Damn.’
‘She’s given me this Karen Beales’s address at that time. I’ll make a start on her, guv. But …’
Slider saw from his expression that he had seen the snag. Even if Karen could be found, and even if she confirmed Brian was with her, there was no way to be sure she wasn’t just saying it. And if she didn’t confirm it, they might suspect him, but what good would that do, when he was dead already?
‘I suppose there’s not a lot of point,’ he said, ‘but you have to go through the motions.’
‘You know what they say,’ Slider told him kindly. ‘If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t be in the Job.’
‘Yes, guv,’ Gascoyne said with a reluctant grin.
The best solution, Slider thought, would be if she told them Brian had confessed the whole thing to her one night under the influence of passion, with full details of how he had gone about burying the body. But who was ever that lucky?
‘How did Mrs Bexley take the news about the body being found?’
‘Just what you’d expect,’ said Gascoyne. ‘Surprise. Disbelief. Sadness. She said she supposed that meant it must have been Ronnie, but I don’t think she’d really thought he did it, not in her heart of hearts.’
Heart of hearts. Gascoyne was a sweet, old-fashioned boy, Slider thought. ‘And did she give you a line on where the Knights are now?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Gascoyne said, obviously reluctant to disappoint him. ‘The sisters had a falling out after the big row, when Maggie said Brian might have done it. They patched it up, but things were never the same again. She said the Knights moved away about eighteen months later – to try and make a fresh start, was the way she put it. I suppose Ronnie could never have a normal life once it was known the police had suspected him. They moved to Reading first, and Ron got work with a construction company, but after a couple of years things broke down again and they moved on to Swindon. Pat and Maggie sent Christmas cards to each other for a few years, but one year no card arrived from Maggie, and the next year the one Pat sent was returned undelivered. So she doesn’t know where she is now.’
‘Oh joy,’ said Slider.
‘At least it narrows down the field of search a bit,’ Gascoyne tried to comfort him. ‘It could have been anywhere, from John o’ Groats to Johannesburg.’
‘It still could,’ Slider pointed out.
EIGHT
Making the Red One Green
Atherton had been called away again, for another grilling at headquarters. Slider found it comforting in an obscure way, a sign of life in Neptune, which otherwise, from his position, looked as lively as a botoxed brow.
The parallel investigation by the Fraud Squad into the finances of the North Kensington Regeneration Trust – he had suggested the line of inquiry, along Al Capone lines, as another way of getting to some of the perpetrators, since many of them were involved in both – had also gone quiet, though that was not surprising, since fraud investigations were highly technical and generally took years. You couldn’t expect the tightly knitted financial arrangements of terminally rich men to be unpicked in a brace of sheiks.
Repetition had lulled any concerns he had about Atherton’s standing up to the inquisitors, so he was startled when his bagman returned, came into his room and shut the door behind him. Closed doors were not a big part of his firm’s routine.
‘What?’ Slider said. ‘Has something happened? Was it bad?’
‘No,’ said Atherton. ‘It was worryingly not bad.’ He took his usual position, sitting on the windowsill, the day outside another sweet, fog-and-fruitfulness backdrop to his lean good looks. ‘It started off the usual way. They shoved me in an empty room, and left me there for three quarters of an hour to contemplate my sins. I spent the time working out how much my enforced idleness was costing the taxpayer. Do you want to know what the answer was?’
‘No. Get on with it. Who interviewed you?’
‘Medlicott from the IPCC.’
‘Oh, bloody Nora!’ said Slider. He was the top inquisitor. ‘It must have been serious.’
‘You’d think so. It had me sweating when I saw him come in. But here’s the thing – he didn’t seem to know what to say. He seemed almost embarrassed.’
‘Medlicott?’ Slider exclaimed in dis
belief. Medlicott embarrassed was like Ivan the Terrible watching The Sound of Music. And reaching for the Kleenex.
‘I know. He kept fiddling with his papers and clearing his throat. Then he said, “It was you, wasn’t it? You leaked the story.” And I said no, it wasn’t me, and that was it. Dismissed.’
‘Seriously? That’s not a grilling.’
‘Hardly a light toasting. I thought, well, maybe it’s his time of the month or something, but …’
‘It’s worrying,’ Slider agreed.
‘We know they must really, really want to know who leaked – if anyone did – so if they’re walking away from that aspect of it, maybe they’re losing interest in the case. And here’s the thing—’
‘I thought we’d already had the thing.’
‘No, this is the real thing – when I came out of the room, I headed for the lift, but something made me look back, and I saw someone coming out of the observation room. He went the other way so I only caught a glimpse of his face, but I’ll swear it was Assistant Commissioner Millichip.’
‘Millichip was observing your interview?’
Atherton nodded. ‘So what’s going on, guv?’
‘I don’t know,’ Slider said, thinking. Millichip back in the driving seat? The newspapers dropping the story? Freddie Cameron’s revelation that they had appointed a new forensic expert?
‘Ron Carver tried to warn me in his cups,’ he said. ‘At his leaving party.’
‘Had a load on, did he? Isn’t he known as a bit of a fantasist?’
‘You weren’t there,’ Slider said. ‘It was one of those booze-induced moments of embarrassing frankness. And whatever we think of him, he knows people.’ He lapsed into thought again.
Atherton was watching him like a cat waiting to be fed. Come on: tin, can opener, bowl. How hard is it to put them together?
Slider stood up. ‘I think I’ll go and have a word with Mr Porson,’ he said.
Porson was standing by his window, reading something, his bushy eyebrows pulled down to the bridge of his nose like two Arctic fox stoles. He didn’t look up as Slider tapped politely on his open door, but he said, ‘I thought you’d be in.’ He turned a page. ‘You’ve read this, then?’
Old Bones Page 9
