When Anthony Rathe Investigates

by Matthew Booth

“Six months.” Rathe paused. “When the whole thing with Kevin Marsden started. It broke us apart.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Cook, without any sense of obligation.

  Rathe did not acknowledge the sentiment. “I loved her.”

  Cook looked at him, seeing the lean profile flashing blue in the lights of the police car beside them. There were no more tears in Rathe’s eyes, but the sadness which seemed always to be in them was deeper now. Cook said nothing, unable to think of anything to say which did not sound crass.

  At last, Rathe turned to face him. “Why were you there, tonight, Cook? There was none of this official activity when I arrived, so you hadn’t been called here because of her death. Which means you came here fully expecting to be able to speak to her. About what?”

  Cook shook his head. “You show me yours first. I’m a serving police officer and I’ve just discovered a civilian standing over the body of a murdered woman. And that civilian has just said, pretty much, that the dead girl broke his heart at the lowest point in his life. So, you tell me why you were there first.”

  Rathe’s expression was carved in ice. “Are you saying you think I killed her?”

  “No.” Cook shook his head. “I’m just saying that you need to explain to me as a matter of priority why you were at the scene of a murder, before I choose to confide in you why I was there.”

  “To eliminate me from the enquiry?” scoffed Rathe.

  “If you like.”

  Rathe demonstrated his annoyance at Cook’s approach by falling into silence for a moment. It was a petty display of petulance and Cook recognised it as such, but he supposed it was only fair to allow Rathe to have this sullen moment of anger. He waited for Rathe to speak once more, refusing to betray any impatience at the situation.

  “Six years ago, Alice’s younger sister vanished,” explained Rathe. “You might remember the case, you might not. Kirsty Villiers was her name, and she disappeared on a night out with friends, last seen on CCTV drawing some money from a cash machine. Alone. She was never seen again.”

  “Rings a faint bell,” said Cook without any particular confidence.

  “A few days ago, Alice had a call from a private detective, asking to meet her in person, because he had something personal and private which he had to speak to her about.”

  “And she thought it was about this missing sister of hers?”

  Rathe nodded. “She wanted me to go with her. Moral support, she said.”

  “So you agreed?”

  “I didn’t want her to go to meet a stranger on her own.” Rathe paused for a moment. “And I didn’t want to say no to her.”

  “And when she didn’t show up, you came here to find her?”

  “I couldn’t believe she’d back out of the meeting if she thought it was about Kirsty. Nor could I believe she’d do it without telling me.” Rathe looked over to Cook and lowered his voice. “I feared the worst the minute she didn’t show, I suppose.”

  “This private detective who contacted her… he got a name?” Cook began to bite a fingernail.

  Rathe replied with caution in his voice, his instincts on edge once more. “Roger Gilchrist, from RPG investigations.”

  “Shocker,” said Cook.

  Rathe leaned towards the police detective, lowering his voice. “You knew Gilchrist wanted to meet Alice tonight, didn’t you? That’s why you came here. To speak to her about it, ask what it was about.”

  “Your Alice’s details were in Gilchrist’s appointment book.” Cook still refused to look at Rathe. “I know that because I’ve gone through it tonight. Personally.”

  Rathe buried his face in his hands, hiding the truth from his sight. “He’s dead. Gilchrist… he’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Stabbed in the back in his office,” Cook replied. “Four times.”

  “Oh, God… ” was all Rathe could say.

  Cook pushed himself off the bonnet of the car and slapped a hand on Rathe’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go and get a drink, for Christ’s sake.”

  They found a small, traditional pub after a short walk. It was quiet. There were only four old men drinking in the particular comfortable silence only pub regulars have: happy with their own company, and willing to observe the unspoken etiquette of minding their own business. Only one of them looked at Rathe and Cook as they entered. The others hardly seemed to notice any disturbance. Cook ordered a pint of bitter, as though he thought it was the drink he would be expected to have in a place like this. Rathe ordered a scotch whisky. He doubted the wine would be much more than a few notches above vinegar. They walked to a small table in the corner and none of the regulars seemed to have anything to say in protest.

  “Gilchrist was found by his wife this afternoon,” Cook began to explain. “She’d expected to meet him for lunch but she’d got delayed at an appointment with the bank. They’re having money troubles, apparently. Turns out Gilchrist is too fond of vodka and poker and neither of them are his friends. He didn’t answer his mobile, so she went round to the office. Found him slumped over his desk.”

  Rathe was staring into the amber fire in his glass, his mind only half registering what Cook was saying. The rest of his thoughts were those few streets away where love had died once and for all. “Same killer,” he volunteered at last.

  “Looks like it from the wounds to the back.” Cook drank some of the beer. It was warmer than it should have been. “Gilchrist’s last client was a woman by the name of Eliza Graham. He‘d been retained by her a week ago from what we can gather. As part of his investigation, it looks as though he came across Miss Villiers’s name, which is why he wanted to speak to her.”

  “But what’s his investigation got to do with Alice?”

  Cook leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. “Eliza Graham had hired Gilchrist to find out what happened to her daughter, Lyndsey Crane.”

  “Mother and daughter have different surnames?” queried Rathe.

  “The girl’s natural father died,” said Cook. “Mother remarried a man called Elliott Graham, but Lyndsey wanted to keep her father’s name. Mrs Graham let it happen,” he added with a shrug.

  But Rathe barely seemed to be listening. “What’s all this got to do with Alice?”

  Cook’s voice lowered. “Lyndsey Crane disappeared... ”

  Rathe had that same sensation of history repeating itself. It felt like snakes crawling over his skin. “When?”

  “A year ago. Police enquiry went nowhere.”

  Rathe slumped back in his chair, burying his head in his hands, the connections forming in his brain and the idea of coincidence dissipating with each link he forged. Kirsty Villiers vanished six years ago; Lyndsey Crane disappeared five years later. The private detective investigating what happened to the Crane girl contacted Alice saying he had something important to discuss. Within twenty four hours, Gilchrist and Alice had been murdered in the same manner, probably by the same man. The whole sequence of events made Rathe’s throat constrict and, for a moment, he felt he would either cry or vomit.

  Cook spread his hands, palm upwards, on the table. “So, we have to look at the possibility that Gilchrist found out something about Kirsty Villiers’s disappearance.”

  “Or the other way round,” muttered Rathe. “He might have hoped that something in the Villiers case would help him with his own enquiry into the Crane girl.”

  “Fair point,” conceded Cook. “But there’s a connection somewhere and we need to find it. I don’t suppose, by any chance, Alice Villiers ever mentioned Lyndsey Crane?”

  Rathe shook his head. “Not to me.”

  “Right.” Cook had hardly expected the answer to be any different. It would have made things too easy, but he was too seasoned to such setbacks to be discouraged by it.

  As though aware of the inspector’s thoughts, Rathe spoke once more. “It doesn’t mean anything though, does it? Kirsty could have met Lyndsey Crane at some point but not told her family.”

  “Why wouldn’t sh
e?”

  Rathe shrugged. “All sorts of reasons. Did you tell your parents the names of everyone you met? There doesn’t have to be a sinister cause for it. And another point: if the Villiers family heard about Lyndsey Crane’s disappearance, there’s no reason to assume they would have made a connection with Kirsty. Just because two girls go missing in London doesn’t mean there’s automatically a connection. Especially with five years between them.”

  Cook waved his finger between the two of them. “We’re assuming one, though.”

  Rathe nodded. “But we’ve got the two murders to suggest a link. Too much of a coincidence otherwise. Alice and her parents didn’t have that connection, did they? If they heard about Lyndsey Crane’s disappearance, and we don’t know they did, all it would have done to the Villiers family is open up old wounds. Assuming they had healed at all.”

  “Again, fair point.” Cook had a sip of his beer. “So where does that get us?”

  Rathe shook his head. He was suddenly aware that he had just been speaking to avoid a silence, an effort to keep his mind occupied so that it would not recall the tragic events of the last hour or so.

  “I’ve no idea,” he said, with something like a sigh but which might have been a repressed sob.

  Cook leaned back in his chair, cradling his glass in his lap. “No sign of any break in at Gilchrist’s office. Theory is that the killer pretended to be a prospective client. One of the filing cabinets was open, the one where he kept his client documentation and contracts. We reckon he went over to the cabinet to get the necessary paperwork and while his back was turned… ”

  “I get it,” muttered Rathe.

  “Right,” said Cook again, accepting his dismissal for the second time. “I’m going to interview Eliza Graham tomorrow morning. If there is a connection between her daughter and Kirsty Villiers, I want to know what it is.”

  Rathe fixed his eyes on Cook, his lips pursed in anticipation. “Cook… ?”

  The policeman was already shaking his head. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”

  “I don’t want to have to beg you, Cook.” Rathe had turned his gaze away.

  Cook shifted in his seat. “I know you and Alice Villiers were close, Rathe, I get that. And I know you’ve got a vested interest in the case this time, not just idle curiosity. But I can’t have you come with me. It’s not right.”

  “I’ll only look into what happened anyway, no matter what you say,” Rathe pressed. “You know that.”

  “Then you’d be a bloody idiot,” hissed Cook. “I know you’re that too.”

  “I just want to know what happened to her,” Rathe insisted, although he knew explanation was not necessary. “And why it happened. I want the truth, Cook.”

  “For your own peace of mind, like every other time?”

  Rathe shrugged his shoulders and then, after a moment’s thought, he shook his head. “No, for Alice’s parents’ sake.”

  Cook dropped his head once more and gave a crooked smile of resignation. As though to drown out his doubts, he finished the beer in one, long draught. He slammed the glass down on the table. Two of the four regulars were startled by the noise into a disdainful response, but Rathe remained seated, not looking up from his glass, waiting for an answer.

  “I’ll pick you up at eight, so be ready,” snapped Cook, turning on his heel and heading to the door. “And don’t outstay your welcome here.”

  Rathe watched the doors to the pub be pulled open and allowed to swing shut on their own accord. He looked back down at the whisky and finished it without hesitation. It would warm his insides for the long walk home he was compelled to make.

  * * *

  The first thing to strike Rathe about Eliza Graham was her sense of resolve. He had no doubt that in her private moments she had shed more tears than she had thought possible. Similarly, he felt certain that she had experienced her emotional state fluctuate between grief and despair at the loss of her child, before eventually turning into rage and fury at the injustice of it all, and finally into a determined resolution to do something about the situation herself. As she stood in front of them with her arms folded and her eyes glaring at them with defiance, Rathe could imagine the moment when she decided that it was time she took matters into her own hands. She retained the fierce expression of a capable and practical woman, someone who was not prepared to take life’s cruelty any longer without at least some effort being made to retaliate against it.

  She was older than he had expected, suggesting that Lyndsey was a late arrival. Her hair had once been blonde, according to the photographs which he saw on the hall table, but now it was so streaked with grey that it seemed to appear naturally platinum. Her cheeks were drawn but shaded with a pink glow which suggested warmth of character which was belied by the cold, piercing blue of her stare. Her lips were tinged with red but they had the pressed expression of sourness about them, as though the presence of Rathe and Cook in her house was offensive to her. Her face was not that of a grieving woman who floundered in her own misfortune; it was the face of a woman who had a definite course of action mapped out in her head but their arrival had interrupted somehow the smooth progress of that plan.

  “The police being in my house can only mean either that you have something to tell me about my daughter or, yet again, that there is nothing to tell me,” she said. “I suspect I know which it is. I don’t see any reason to assume that the police have suddenly developed either an interest in my daughter’s case or the capability to make any headway in it.”

  Cook wasn’t about to allow her to walk away from that. “The police have always had an interest in your daughter’s disappearance, Mrs Graham. You shouldn’t think otherwise.”

  “They didn’t manage to find her,” she replied.

  “That doesn’t mean we weren’t trying to,” returned Cook, leaving her in no doubt how he felt about her implications.

  Rathe had declined the invitation to sit down as readily as Cook had accepted it. Instead, he had chosen to stand by the entrance to the conservatory and look out onto the impressive lawns which stretched out at the back of the house. Flowers and shrubs whose names he would never know, but which his late father would have identified with ease, gave splashes of colour to the expanse of green and so beautiful was the display that the comparatively ugly gravel path which led down to a flagged raised patio at the end of the garden seemed less intrusive than it might have done otherwise. On that patio there was a small table and a couple of wicker chairs. Seated in one of them was a man reading a broadsheet, one leg crossed arrogantly over the other, his head tilted back as he looked down his nose at the pages of the newspaper. Occasionally, he would reach out to a coffee cup which was placed on the table beside him and take a sip, checking the cafetière occasionally to make sure it had not lost its heat. It was not a cold day but, in Rathe’s view, nor was it warm enough to justify having breakfast or morning coffee outdoors. It somehow struck him as a pretentious gesture and, as if to show it the disdain he felt it deserved, Rathe turned his back on the man and looked back to Mrs Graham.

  “Was it your frustration with the police which prompted you to approach a detective agency, Mrs Graham?” he asked softly.

  “Sometimes one feels one must do something,” was her reply. “There is only so much sitting about and waiting for news one can manage. I have done my share of lying awake wondering, worrying, and speculating. If one acts, one feels one is doing something proactive. That brings its own support, especially when there is no comfort elsewhere.”

  “I can understand that,” said Rathe.

  Cook cleared his throat, as though to remind them that he was present in the room. “I appreciate this may be difficult, Mrs Graham, but could you tell me what happened on the day Lyndsey disappeared? As briefly as you like.”

  She rolled her eyes as though the request was a party trick she was tired of performing. “The number of times I’ve had to tell this story to the police, it’s a miracle to find an officer who d
oesn’t know them.”

  “Just a brief recap will be fine,” said Cook, his voice barely polite.

  “It was a Saturday afternoon,” Eliza explained. “Lyndsey was going to the West End to buy a dress for a party she was attending the following weekend. I had been with her to pick an outfit, see her try them on, and what have you. We’d narrowed down the choice to three and Lyndsey was going to go and have a last look at them and decide.”

  “You didn’t plan on going with her that time?”

  She shook her head, as though a different decision might have made all the difference. Rathe thought again about the friend of Kirsty Villiers who had not gone with her to that cash machine. History rolling back over itself.

  “She told me that she didn’t need me there to make the final decision,” Eliza was saying. “God forgive me, I was relieved. I had some things to do myself that day and couldn’t really spare the time to go with her. I realise how that sounds in retrospect.”

  “What time did she leave the house?” asked Rathe.

  “Half past ten. She was going to get the tube, buy the dress, have lunch, and come home. My husband said he would pick her up and drive her home.”

  Rathe’s eyes narrowed. “Lyndsey’s stepfather, am I right?”

  The woman nodded slowly. “Elliott and I have been married for ten years, but he took Lyndsey on as his own right from the beginning.”

  “Lyndsey’s natural father died, I understand,” said Rathe.

  Her eyes were glaring at his impertinence in asking a private question, but something about his expression prevented her from expressing her disgust. It was something in those melancholy, dark eyes which suggested to her that he might not be probing after all, but seeking some way to help. Her offence remained, but her outrage at it was somehow diluted under that calm, yet tragic stare.

  “Yes, when Lyndsey was a little girl. There are days when I still miss him,” she added, placing her fingers to one of her eyes, ensuring that no tears were betraying her.

  Rathe was fascinated by the woman’s apparent desire to show as little emotion as possible. It seemed to him that she was almost pathological in her desire to demonstrate emotional austerity, even in circumstances when it would be entirely appropriate to give in to those most basic emotions, and he began to feel captivated by her reason for it. He felt certain that it was not simply her desire to be proactive in the wake of the police’s failure to trace her daughter, understandable though that was, and he started to wonder what more powerful cause was behind the woman’s sensual reticence.