Weep a While Longer

by Penny Freedman

  ‘Would she be able to give me the names of online outlets?’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘Can you email those to me today?’

  ‘If you like.’

  Was it his imagination, Scott wondered, or did Malik sound cooler today, more defensive? If Paula’s enquiries in HR about niqab-wearing staff had caused resentment, no doubt that had been fed back to him. The university’s Muslim community would be closing ranks, if not putting up barricades. He thanked Malik for his help and rang off.

  By 10.15, he had driven to the university, found a parking place and was tapping quietly on the door of Malcolm Burns’ office. The office was uncomfortably close to Gina’s and he had slipped past her door with care. Furtive, was what she would have called him; she would have been right and he was ashamed of it, but he needed to get Malcolm without the benefit of her beady-eyed protection. He tapped again.

  ‘Come,’ a voice called indistinctly, and he walked in to find Malcolm Burns with his head deep into a filing cabinet.

  ‘Something slipped down the back,’ he explained as he emerged red-faced. Then he registered Scott and laughed uneasily. ‘David! Back so soon?’

  ‘Records, Malcolm,’ Scott said, settling himself in the room’s one easy chair and opening his arms expansively. ‘Tell me everything you know about record-keeping in your branch of the Samaritans.’

  Burns looked nervously at the door and then glanced at the window, for all the world, Scott thought, as if he expected Gina to come flying, caped and masked, to his rescue.

  ‘We don’t,’ he said, clearing his throat and moving to the protection of a seat behind his desk, ‘keep records as such. Some branches keep no notes of any kind but we do keep brief, very brief …’ he ran an anxious hand over his thinning, pale hair. ‘We don’t like it to get about – the fact that we keep notes. It could deter people from calling us.’

  ‘So why keep notes?’

  ‘People who are in trouble often ring several times and each time they speak to a different volunteer. They’ll tell different people different things. Once we realise that someone is calling regularly, we set up an index card. The cards help us to have a complete picture and decide how best to help the callers.’

  ‘So you don’t just listen to what people tell you?’

  ‘Yes. That is what we do.’ His voice rose in agitation. ‘Active listening is what we do, but we can do that better if we know what we’re dealing with. And then there are the hysterics.’

  ‘Hysterics?’

  ‘People don’t always tell us the truth. There are people who ring with a different tragedy each time: cancer, rape, multiple bereavements, near-fatal car accident, all in one week. The cards help us to spot that. We still listen to them, of course – they obviously need to talk – but knowing what they’re doing helps to save the volunteers from getting too distressed.’

  ‘Where do you keep these cards?’

  ‘In the phone room.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What do you keep the cards in?’

  ‘Well, boxes.’

  ‘And what do you keep the boxes in?’

  ‘I don’t see why—’

  ‘You don’t? You don’t see why I need to know where the boxes are kept? When last time my officers visited they had been somehow spirited away?’

  ‘It’s a matter of confidentiality.’

  ‘For a dead woman?’

  Burns sat back in his chair. ‘They’re kept on a trolley,’ he said, ‘so they can be moved from one phone station to another.’

  ‘And so they can be wheeled away as soon as the police get anywhere near. Where do they get wheeled to, Malcolm?’

  ‘The kitchen. There’s a walk-in pantry in there.’

  ‘Thank you. Now, next question. Presumably you cull the cards from time to time. What’s the system?’

  ‘Once a year. We go through them. If someone hasn’t rung for a year we take the card out.’

  ‘And destroy it?’

  Burns squirmed uncomfortably. ‘We used to but Estelle likes to keep everything.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s just how she is, I think.’

  ‘So where do those cards go?’

  ‘They’re archived.’

  ‘Come on, Malcolm, don’t make me drag it out of you. Where are the archives kept?’

  He sighed. ‘In Estelle’s office.’

  ‘And a card for someone who has died, that would be archived too, I assume.’

  ‘We can hardly ever be sure that someone has died; even if people tell us they’ve taken an overdose, we can’t be sure, so—’

  ‘But you do know that Karen Brody is dead. Has her card been removed?’

  Burns lifted his head and looked straight at Scott for the first time. ‘I really don’t know,’ he said. ‘I haven’t looked.’

  *

  At 10.30, Paula Powell parked again on a double yellow line round the corner from the Samaritans, walked with Mike Arthur to the front door and rang the doorbell. This time a young woman with piercings and pink hair opened the door.

  ‘Who are you?’ Paula asked.

  ‘I’m Greta,’ she said, startled.

  ‘Well, I’m Detective Sergeant Paula Powell,’ Paula said, waving her ID and breezing past her, heading straight for the phone room.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Greta protested. ‘You can’t just barge in there. There are confidential calls happening. It’s—’

  ‘—absolutely quiet,’ Paula said. ‘It’s a doddle, isn’t it, the morning slot? Your director told us so.’

  ‘I’m ringing Estelle,’ Greta said. ‘I’m not letting you in there without her say-so.’

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ Mike Arthur said. ‘These are what we’re looking for.’ He took hold of the metal trolley that stood in the middle of the room and started to wheel it out into the small room that appeared to be a sort of rest room for volunteers, leading off from the phone room. ‘If we just take these in here then we can have a look at them without disturbing anyone and we’ll be out of your hair in no time.’

  Greta grabbed hold of the trolley. ‘I’m not letting you take them,’ she growled. ‘Estelle will be furious. I’ve gotta have her permission.’

  She looked really scared, Paula thought, but she hardened her heart. ‘We have already talked to your director about this,’ she said. ‘We explained when we came in on Wednesday. My chief inspector has got a search warrant for these premises but a search warrant comes along with two or three police cars, a lot of sirens and police officers with big feet swarming all over the building, taking it apart. Really, taking it apart. You have no idea what a place looks like when that sort of search has happened.’

  ‘But if you agree to let us take a quick look through these,’ Mike Arthur put in, ‘then we’ll be in and out in no time. No problem.’

  ‘I can understand that you’re scared of Estelle,’ Paula said. ‘She’s a scary lady, I imagine, but you’ll be in more trouble if she finds we’ve ripped the place apart, won’t you?’

  ‘Why can’t you just wait till I ring?’ Greta asked plaintively.

  ‘Because this is a double murder inquiry we’re engaged in, Greta, and we haven’t got time to mess about.’

  Greta looked at them, undecided. She didn’t ask what murder inquiry or look surprised, Paula noticed. The volunteers knew about Karen and they knew the police had already been in, she guessed. No doubt instructions were to ring Estelle if the police turned up again.

  ‘I don’t believe Estelle let you look before.’

  ‘She did,’ Paula said. ‘Only we didn’t find what we were looking for.’

  ‘What were you looking for?’

  ‘A card for Karen Brody.’

  Greta looked at the cards on the trolley. ‘You better look, then,’ she said. ‘I’m calling Estelle.’

  ‘Estelle will be down here like a shot,’ Paula said to Mike as Greta left. ‘Which is ju
st what we want. We’re not going to find Karen’s card here, are we? But they know more than they’re telling.’

  Mike pulled the trolley towards him. ‘They’re alphabetical,’ he said. ‘So I’ll take A to F and look for Brody, and you can take G to L.’

  After a minute, he said. ‘Not here. They don’t seem to use surnames anyway.’

  ‘And not here either, I think.’ Paula lifted out a few cards and fanned through them. ‘Katherine, Katy, Ken, Kirsty. No.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘We take a gentle look round while we wait for Estelle Campion to arrive and then put the fear of God into her.’

  At that moment her phone rang.

  ‘David?’

  ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing in the card index on show here. We’re about to start a search. Estelle Campion’s been summoned. We’ll see what more we can squeeze out of her. Anything helpful from Gina’s friend?

  ‘Malcolm Burns? Yes. They hide records in the kitchen – in the pantry, apparently – when they don’t want them seen. And there’s an archive of past – and passed – callers, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘Any information that will save us time?’

  ‘The director’s office.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘And she doesn’t throw anything away.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Keep me posted.’

  He rang off.

  In the kitchen, the pantry held only odd items of clothing: lost property or emergency hand-outs, Paula wondered. The other cupboards held mugs, coffee, biscuits and an extensive array of herb and fruit teas. On the first floor, they found a small room obviously designed for interviews, a bathroom and an office with a photocopier and an unlocked filing cabinet containing printer paper, ink cartridges and publicity leaflets of various kinds. Which left the director’s office, and this was, of course, locked.

  *

  Mike Arthur went back downstairs and heard Greta in the phone room talking to another woman who seemed to be in a fluster of apologies. Just blocked solid, he heard, all the way to the roundabout, and Greta’s grudging reply, Can’t be helped but I could really have done with someone else here with those two just swanning in. He put his head round the door and smiled cheerily.

  ‘Key to that room up at the top?’ he asked. ‘We’ll just take a quick look in there and then we can leave you in peace.’

  Greta turned to glare at him. ‘That’s the director’s office. We don’t have a key.’

  ‘Then we shall have to trouble her to bring it in,’ he said.

  The two women exchanged a look. ‘She’s coming in,’ Greta said.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘She lives out at Lower Shepton. She’ll be fifteen minutes. I suppose you can wait that long before you break the door down?’

  ‘Probably,’ he said, and gave her another smile.

  *

  Estelle Campion arrived ten minutes later and climbed, slightly breathless, to the second floor, where Paula and Mike were waiting outside the locked door. She was less perfectly groomed and less composed than on the previous day, Paula noted, though just as expensively dressed, in cream trousers and a blue jacket with a silk shirt under it.

  ‘So, you again,’ she said, with a tight little smile at Paula. ‘But without your sidekick.’ She coughed. ‘Too many fags,’ she said.

  ‘This is DC Mike Arthur,’ Paula said.

  Estelle Campion gave him a brief, appraising glance and turned back to Paula.

  ‘And how can we help you today?’

  ‘We’d like to take a look in your office.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Information relating to Karen Brody.’

  ‘I don’t keep that sort of information up here. If you’re looking for the caller information—’

  ‘We found the cards, thank you, but nothing on Karen there.’

  ‘I told you, we destroyed it.’

  Yes, you did. But there’s an archive, isn’t there? And it’s in your office and we’d like to see it.’

  Estelle Campion’s face flushed under its screen of creamy foundation. ‘How do you know—’

  ‘We’re CID, Mrs Campion. We know all sorts of things.’ Paula allowed an edge to sour the sweet reasonableness of her tone. ‘And lying to the police is a criminal offence for anyone, Samaritan or not.’

  ‘I resent that, DS Powell.’

  ‘Just open the door, Mrs Campion.’

  Estelle Campion made a theatrical gesture that was almost a flounce and took a bunch of keys from her pocket. She unlocked the door and flung it open, standing aside to let them in. ‘Be my guests,’ she said, ‘and if you don’t find anything I shall expect an apology. I didn’t want to mention it but my husband knows the chief constable.’ She turned to go. ‘I’m going downstairs for a coffee,’ she said.

  ‘A cigarette more like,’ Mike Arthur muttered as he closed the door and removed the keys she had left in the lock. Then a thought struck him. ‘Do you think she could be double-crossing us and destroying something downstairs?’ he asked.

  ‘David’s info is that the archive is up here. He got that from Malcolm Burns. We’ll go with that.’

  They looked round the room. It had been built into the attic of the little house and had a steeply sloping roof under which sat a large, untidy desk. Under the window was the sofa Paula and Sarah had sat on during their previous visit, with a coffee table in front of it, and against one wall was a tall filing cabinet. In the opposite wall were two doors. Paula walked across and opened them. One led to a cupboard, empty except for a couple of cardigans hanging on a rail and a pair of velvet slippers. ‘Comfort clothes for when she’s not on show,’ she commented. The other door opened to a flash of gleaming ceramic walls. ‘And her own executive bathroom,’ she reported.

  Mike Arthur was at the drawers of the filing cabinet, trying the keys on the key ring. He opened the bottom one first, to reveal a bottle of single malt whisky and four heavy, cut-glass tumblers. ‘Who do you think these are for?’ he asked.

  ‘For cosy chats with favoured volunteers?’ Paula suggested. ‘She strikes me as a woman who might play favourites.’

  ‘Or she drinks on her own and the other glasses are there so she can kid herself that she doesn’t really drink on her own.’

  ‘How cynical you are, DC Arthur.’

  ‘Just a student of human nature, ma’am.’

  ‘You can mock me with ma’am. Just you wait till I’m a DCI.’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘It is.’

  She had pulled out the drawer above the bottom one and was running through the hanging files in it. ‘This seems to be all fundraising,’ she said. ‘Details of donors, copies of receipts, copies of letters of thanks, and some newspaper clippings, all relating to fundraising, I think.’

  ‘Being a DCI doesn’t seem to make our DCI Scott particularly happy,’ Mike Arthur commented as she pushed the drawer back in.

  ‘That’s because he’s got the wrong woman.’

  ‘This seems to be stuff about the volunteers,’ he said, scanning the contents of the next drawer. ‘What’s wrong with his woman?’

  ‘She doesn’t understand about police work.’

  He turned to look at her. ‘And you do,’ he said.

  ‘I do,’ she said.

  ‘Is there—?’ he asked.

  ‘Might be,’ she said. ‘Are you sure it’s only volunteer stuff in that drawer?’

  ‘I think so.’ He opened the top drawer. ‘Ah. Here’s the archive.’

  They looked into the contents of the drawer together. It contained neat stacks of cards, held together with rubber bands, each labelled with a year. Paula flicked through one or two.

  ‘There aren’t any for this year,’ Mike Arthur said.

  ‘There wouldn’t be, would there, if they go through the cards at the end of the year to decide which ones to archive?’

  ‘Then why isn’t Karen’s card still the
re downstairs. Because she died?’

  ‘Let’s get all of these out. Maybe there’s a separate group of dead ones.’

  They carried the bundles in armfuls over to the coffee table by the sofa and spread them out in date order.

  ‘Realistically,’ Mike Arthur said, ‘how often do they know that someone who called them has actually gone ahead and killed themselves? ‘

  ‘Some suicides get reported in the Herald.’

  ‘I guess.’

  Paula flicked through a set of cards, pulled one out and passed it to him. ‘Look at this one. Someone has written believed deceased on it. So the cards of callers who’ve died do go in with the others. So where is Karen’s?’

  ‘It ought still to be downstairs with the others, until the end of the year.’

  ‘It ought.’ She looked round the room. ‘Bring those keys over, Mike.’ She went to the desk and pulled open the left-hand drawer, which contained the usual litter of desk drawers – pens, staples, paper clips, a spare printer cartridge, a pack of tissues, a half-eaten Kit Kat, a couple of postcards, some paracetamols, a lipstick and a map of the Marlbury district. The other drawer was locked and none of the keys on the ring fitted. Paula and Mike Arthur looked at each other. ‘OK,’ she said.

  He reached into his pocket; she moved away and headed for the door to the bathroom. ‘I’m going to the toilet,’ she said. ‘I never saw you.’

  When she returned, he had the drawer open and was running a gloved hand round its interior. He picked up a card from the desk. ‘Archived all by itself,’ he said, and waved it at her.

  ‘Karen’s?’ she asked.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Anything else in the drawer?

  ‘Just these.’ He indicated half a dozen packs of cigarettes piled on the desk. ‘The card was hidden underneath.’

  She pulled gloves out of her pocket and picked up the card. ‘Have you read this?’

  ‘Only glanced.’

  She took the card over to the window to scrutinise it. In the top right-hand corner someone had written KAREN. Beneath that were five entries, dated between July 9th and July 17th. The entries were written in different hands, each signed, and the first four entries all said the same thing: Asked to speak to the director. Only Malcolm’s, the final entry on July 17th, gave any indication of what she had wanted to talk about: Initially asked for director (not available). Said she had info for the police. Has promised not to go to police herself but fears for her and her daughter’s safety. Asked if we would pass info to police. Sounded desperate. Call broken off.