Just phoned the council and asked. Couldn’t have been simpler.’
‘And?’
‘There’s no development planned for anywhere in that part of town. Nothing. It’s zoned as housing. Just as I told you.’
‘Right.’
‘Wasn’t that what I told you?’
‘You did.’
Joe tackled the screw again and wondered what Marc’s game could be. Why bother to invent a developer? What was wrong with a private buyer? Perhaps he was trying to set up some intricate deal and wanted to cover his tracks. Joe seemed to remember some scandal about a bent estate agent who got an accomplice to buy a property cheap, only to sell it on the following week at a vastly improved price. But all that bother for what? The only person Marc could defraud was himself.
And of course Jenna.
His father had reappeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘I told you, didn’t I?’
‘You told me, Dad. And you were absolutely right.’
After a delay in setting out - Alan had phone calls to make, he couldn’t find his special walking socks - there wasn’t time to go as far as the Peaks, not with dusk at four, so they settled for the Vale of Belvoir half an hour away. Here the trails were narrow, muddy, and interrupted by gates and styles, but the instant Alan struck out along the path, in tweed jacket, tweed hat, errant knee-socks, walking stick swinging jauntily in one hand, map jutting from his pocket, he pronounced himself happy.
‘What’s life about if it isn’t this, Joe? We’re all mad, you know, every single one of us - the life we lead! We have it all wrong!’ The Christmas snow had long since thawed, it had rained for most of February; and now a winter gloom hung over the sky. Alan took long breaths of the damp air and declared, ‘Wonderful! So fresh!’ The hedgerows were almost bare but Alan found enough to catch his eye, identifying each plant with if not the expertise of a botanist then certainly the enthusiasm. He extolled the beauty of the seed-heads, the last shrivelled blackberries hanging off the brambles, toadstools that he pronounced edible - though on second thoughts maybe not: ‘I wouldn’t like to swear to its bona fides without my book, Joe.’ Nearing some woods, he pointed to some circling crows, then, halting, begged silence for the tap of a woodpecker.
‘What a world, Joe!’ he sighed rapturously. ‘What more could one ask?’
Reaching the brow of a low hill they paused to look out over damp fields dotted with sheep.
‘Don’t you long to live in a place like this, Joe?’
‘Half of me. I’m rather schizophrenic about it.’
‘When you have a family, then you’ll see the point.
Children do better in the country, no doubt about it. The freedom.
The innocence - what’s left of it anyway.’ Then, shyly: ‘Nothing in sight yet, Joe?’
‘Sorry?’
‘A special girl?’
‘Oh. Not yet, no.’
He hadn’t had any contact with Sarah since she’d returned from her Jamaican holiday, and then it had only been on the phone. She’d wanted to meet and talk face to face, but hearing the message in her tone he’d opted for immediate pain over prolonged uncertainty and asked point blank where they were.
The conversation that followed was a model of a modern breakup. On her side there was much talk of career demands, personal space and her inability to commit. She stressed it was all her fault, she said how sorry she was it hadn’t worked out.
For his part, he produced the stilted politeness that reveals more about dented pride than it ever manages to conceal: he wished her well, he was sorry it hadn’t worked out, he wasn’t sure he understood why, but if it wasn’t right for her, well, there was nothing more to be said, was there? For two weeks he drank too much and was slow to get jokes, but then, apart from the small ache of loneliness that took him unawares every time he walked into the flat, he began to put Sarah out of his mind. When work allowed, he saw friends; when it didn’t, he went to the gym and started a couple of good books. A month ago, Kate had called him for news of Chetwood and they’d had dinner together. When the subject of Chetwood had been exhausted - he’d told her about the damp cottage and the sudden disappearance - he was surprised to find himself having a good time. Whether it was Kate’s giggly nature - he’d never known a girl laugh so much or so easily - or her irreverence, which fell just the right side of silliness, he surprised himself a second time by suggesting they have dinner again soon. With the trip to Hong Kong he hadn’t got round to calling her yet, but whether it was Kate or someone else - and in all likelihood it would be someone else - he realised that he had opened himself up to the possibility of someone new.
‘Good women are hard to find,’ Alan said. ‘And then you have to persuade the object of your affections that she’s not going to do better elsewhere, even when she’s surrounded by dozens of blokes with more money and better looks!’
It was good to see Alan’s round face split by a wide grin, his little eyes rolling with laughter, and Joe laughed with him.
They walked on for a while, single-file, then as the path broadened out, abreast. As soon as Joe drew level, Alan said in a tone of careful preparation, ‘I’m sorry about Christmas, Joe.’
‘Nothing to be sorry about.’
‘Marc takes these things to heart.’
‘Of course.’
‘I want you to know - we never had any doubts about what you told us, Helena and I. No doubts at all.’
‘I only wish it could have been different.’
‘Not your fault if she was determined to make off. Not your fault if she didn’t want to be found. No, you did your best, Joe. More than we could ever have asked for.’ The swing of the walking stick had been describing smaller and smaller arcs until it barely matched his next stride. ‘And Joe?’
‘Yes?’
‘Now I know Jenna’s in good health, now I know there was nothing to stop her contacting us … well, it’s made me realise. It’s her choice, and there we are. Nothing to be done about it. Life moves on. Got to accept that, haven’t you?’ He flung a brief barren smile at Joe. ‘You bring them up, you do your best, but then - well, you have no right to expect anything after that. They must go their own way. They must do their own thing.’
They came to a style, and with a puff and a pant Alan clambered over.
‘Things might change.’
‘No, no!’ Alan declared firmly. ‘Got to respect her choice.
And that’s all there is to it.’
‘The police were okay about dropping the search?’
‘Oh yes. Got enough on their plate. To be honest, Joe, I don’t think it was ever very high on their list of priorities. I got the feeling they hadn’t taken it very seriously.’
‘You saw them yourself?’
‘With Marc,’ he said quickly. ‘We went together.’ Something in his tone spoke of difficulties and tensions.
‘And what about the money? Will Marc be able to manage ?’
‘We’ve lent it to him. No, no - what am I talking about?
We’ve given it to him. An outright gift. One way and another we gave Jenna quite a bit over the years. Lessons, master classes, dresses for concerts, this and that. So now - well, it’s only fair.’
Joe remembered Helena’s call for sanity over the money issue, and wondered if she’d persuaded Alan to take out a loan.
Coming to a bend in the path, a wide view opened out before them, a reach of fields, a distant undulating horizon, but Alan didn’t appear to notice.
‘One thing, Joe.’
They were single file again, Alan leading.
‘Yes?’
Alan was walking doggedly, head down, no longer swinging his stick but clutching it under one arm like a military baton, so that when he stopped abruptly Joe almost walked into the mud-caked tip.
‘Marc went to Wales.’ He turned and offered an unhappy glance.
‘He went to look for them?’
Alan answered with a small sigh.
With a s
urge of irritation, Joe made a swift inventory of the information he’d given Alan and Marc: the name of the Arcadian valley - Nant Garth - an approximate position for the cottage - what was it he’d said? Something like at the far end - and the name Evans. In fact, pretty much everything.
‘And did he find anything?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘So what was it about? He thought I was lying?’
‘You know how Marc is, Joe. He has to do everything his own way.’
Joe thought: You can say that again. ‘But he didn’t find them?’
‘No, no. He’d have said.’
Joe’s irritation was replaced by a bafflement that was an echo of the one he’d felt yesterday. What had driven Marc to go to all that trouble? Was it just the money? Or was it something else altogether, something to do with his easily provoked sense of righteousness?
‘The offer for the house, Alan - how did it come about?
Was it an agent who approached Marc?’
Judging by the time it took Alan to answer, it wasn’t something he’d thought about very much. ‘I’m trying to remember,’ he said at last. ‘I’m not sure Marc told me. Why?’
‘No special reason.’
A little later, Alan waved a hand in the air: it had come back to him. ‘A solicitor’s letter - that’s what Marc said. A firm somewhere in Nottingham.’
After two hours they stopped at a village pub and had a trencherman’s lunch, roast beef with all the trimmings followed by steamed sponge pudding.
‘I think I’ve settled a bit lower in the water,’ Alan puffed on the way back.
They reached the car at dusk. Alan sank heavily into the passenger seat. ‘Done me good,’ he gasped with a laugh.
‘Cleaned out the arteries.’
Nearing home, he said with a touch of anxiety, ‘You’ll come and have some tea before you head back, won’t you, Joe? Come and see Helena?’
‘Of course.’
‘She always loves to see you, you know that.’
They lapsed into a preoccupied silence. Joe needed no reminding that it was Sunday evening, and another long week stretched before him. A video link with Ritch and his team had been booked for Tuesday. Ostensibly it was a progress meeting, but no one at their end had any doubts it was a shoring-up exercise. Harry was going to sit in, and Harry never sat in unless he felt that his massaging skills were going to be put to triumphant use.
Making the final turn into the Laskeys’ road, Joe asked, ‘Got any plans for Easter, Alan? Shall we try for a day in the Peaks then? Arrange to leave a car at our finishing point?’
When Alan didn’t answer, Joe glanced across and saw him staring intently ahead with a deep frown. Following his gaze, Joe saw nothing, just the dark road interspersed with pools of light around the infrequent street lamps, and outside the house some cars, one white. Only as they got closer did he make out what Alan had perhaps already spotted: that the white car had bright stripes down the side and a blue bubble on top. It was a small police car, the sort used for community policing.
Joe grimaced sympathetically as he parked. ‘Is this going to mean work for you, Alan?’
Alan shook his head, still frowning, and climbed out.
As Joe closed the car door he saw Alan’s walking stick lying on the back seat. Having retrieved it, he arrived in the hall a few seconds after Alan. He remembered the walking stick for a long time afterwards because he was still clutching it when the policewoman took Alan a couple of steps to one side and told him that Jenna was dead.
Chapter Nine
The orderly tapped in a key-code and opened the door to let them through. Craig, the senior police officer, went first, then the younger detective whose name Joe hadn’t caught, while the family liaison officer, WPC Jaffrey, hung back, waiting to follow up behind. Alan got as far as the threshold and faltered. Joe tucked a hand under his elbow. After a moment, they entered together.
It was a small bare room, dominated by a large interior window with curtains drawn back. Through the glass another small room was visible, also empty but for a corner of a white-draped trolley. Joe felt his stomach bunch, a sudden breathlessness.
They walked to the middle of the window and looked through the glass at Jenna’s body. The white sheet had been pulled up to her ears and chin. In profile, her face might have been an effigy, timeless, untouched. But when Joe brought himself to look more closely he saw the unnatural tautness of her skin, the hollowness of her cheeks, the eyes which seemed almost too deep in their sockets, the lids tinged with grey.
Craig moved up to Alan’s shoulder.
‘Are you able to confirm that this is your daughter, Dr Laskey?’ he murmured in a low voice. ‘A nod will be sufficient.’
Alan took a sudden breath. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘it’s my daughter.’ Then, as if breaking free from a trance, he stated in a stronger voice; ‘I’d like to spend some time with her. Alone, please.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘But in there. I’d like to go in there. With her.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, but that won’t be possible at this point in time.’
Alan trembled visibly. ‘But I’m a doctor. There’s nothing I haven’t seen - nothing I don’t know.’
‘I regret, sir - it’s a matter of procedure.’
Alan shot Joe a look of appeal.
Joe whispered, ‘Why don’t we go back to the other room?
I’ll see if there’s anything that can be done.’
‘I’ll wait here,’ he replied firmly.‘On my own.’
The rest of them filed out. When Joe glanced back, Alan was standing at the window, staring into the white reflected light.
The liaison officer stationed herself outside the door while Joe followed Craig back to the room where they had assembled what seemed a long time ago but was no more than five minutes. The young detective came in after them and closed the door, though this did nothing to shut out the mortuary smell which seemed to pervade every corner of the room.
Craig said, ‘Do sit down, Mr McGrath.’ He moved two chairs either side of a low table.
As Joe sat down he made a conscious effort not to hold too much against Craig before they started: the fact that he and his colleague had only just made an appearance, the fact that Alan and Joe, having arrived the previous evening, had been left all night without information; that even this morning things had got off to an unbearably slow start. The liaison officer had done her best, but nothing could dispel Joe’s angry suspicion that they’d been forgotten for the last four hours.
‘You came up last night?’ Craig asked.
‘We arrived at ten.’
Craig seemed to feel no need to apologise for the fact that they were only meeting now, fourteen hours later. ‘And you found somewhere to stay all right?’ he enquired.
‘Well, yes.’ Irritated by Craig’s polite nod, Joe added sharply, ‘I have to say it would have been a considerable help to Dr Laskey if some basic information had been available last night. If there’d been someone - anyone - on duty.’
‘But you were seen by a liaison officer?’
‘Who had absolutely no information whatsoever.’
‘The officer should have been able to give you a few basic facts. I’d be concerned if she hadn’t done that.’
‘The name of the river, the name of the nearest village that was it. Nothing about how the body was found, if there was a suicide note, did she leave a car somewhere, was it far from where she was found, does her husband know what’s happened, does he need to be contacted? Just for starters.’
Craig took this on board with a solemn nod. ‘It takes time to establish the facts, Mr McGrath, and last night there weren’t that many facts available. But perhaps we could come to those matters in a moment?’
He was a man of about forty with a broad face, strong features, and a steady benign gaze. There was no hurry about him, and no menace. His voice, which had only the mildest Welsh accent, was low and consider
ed, and it was this, together with his air of quiet professionalism, that made Joe retreat a little. ‘Okay,’ Joe said. ‘Okay. What about Dr Laskey having time with his daughter? Is there no way he can go into the room with her?’
Craig folded one arm over the other, then swung a hand out as if to divert the conversation onto another track. ‘Before we start, could you tell me in what capacity you’re here, Mr McGrath?’
‘What? As a family friend.’
‘Ah. It was just that someone mentioned you being a lawyer.’
‘Purely coincidental.’
‘I see.’ His hand swung in again. ‘To answer your question, there will almost certainly be a point when Dr Laskey can have time alone with Jennifer. But it will not be possible until the formalities are complete.’
Joe bristled at his use of her name. It was as though Craig were claiming a gratuitous and rather offensive intimacy. The formalities,’ he echoed coolly. ‘With the coroner, you mean?’
‘The next of kin will have to make contact with the coroner’s office in due course, yes.’
‘Is there anything the family need to be doing right now?’
‘Not at this time.’
It was many years since Joe had acquired the few dry facts on family law required to pass his finals, and almost as many years since he’d forgotten them. Everything that would have been useful now - a working knowledge of the procedures, the paperwork, the family’s duties after a death - was at best sketchy in his memory. ‘What happens next then?’
‘We have to complete our investigations.’
‘But she drowned.’ He had meant this as a question. When Craig didn’t reply, he tried again. ‘It was suicide?’
‘Nothing can be assumed till we have the results of the postmortem and the other investigations we have in hand.’
Joe did his best to keep all expression out of his face. It hadn’t occurred to him that there would be a postmortem, though now he came to think about it he realised the procedure would be obligatory in cases like this. ‘Right,’ he said, trying to shut unholy visions out of his mind. ‘Right. The postmortem -
that’s happened, has it?’
A Death Divided Page 22
