The headmistress of the village school merely shrugged when we discussed the matter at a social in the village hall. “Thank God that’s all it is,” she had commented. “In this day and age I’m lucky I’m not being sued for looking at someone’s little darling the wrong way!”
Since being at boarding school, Isabelle hadn’t really changed, but she had developed. She was an attractive girl and she was going to break many hearts. She dressed sensibly – her mother’s influence – but she was now growing her nails rather than biting them. She had begun to wear make-up but, again, she didn’t overdo it. However, even her sensible clothes couldn’t disguise the young, maturing figure underneath. I saw her receive a number of admiring glances from young men we passed, and some who weren’t that young.
Isabelle couldn’t hide the fact that she noticed the looks she was getting. She and Belinda had been very close. Sometimes, but not that often, my opinion was sought during their discussions but mostly I was told they were indulging in ‘girls’’ talk and therefore not only was it inappropriate for me to listen but also my views would be equally unacceptable.
It worried me that Isabelle no longer had Belinda to confide in and to help her through the more difficult teenage years. I hoped that she would eventually turn to me but it was too early. She was doing well academically in most subjects although she particularly liked music. According to Anthea Brookfield, her music teacher, Isabelle had taken to the piano like a duck to water and was showing exceptional promise for the future.
David, on the other hand, was already two to three years behind Isabelle in the maturity stakes. He was into sport and played all ball games well. He was a fanatical Manchester United supporter and as the school had a couple of teachers who were also supporters, every now and again spare tickets for a home game appeared out of the blue, resulting in David and some other boys going to Old Trafford.
In the classroom David gave me the impression that he attended because he had to, but he could equally well do without the boring bits. His achievements didn’t exactly bear out his reluctance, but he put it down to luck.
Belinda and I had been simply relieved.
David was a couple of inches taller than Isabelle but shared her blonde hair and blue eyes. All the sport he played meant that he also weighed a good three stone heavier than she did, and I suppose he looked older than his years.
However, he was still at the stage where girls were to be tolerated. They giggled a lot and were generally boring, talking about things that didn’t interest him or his friends in the slightest. I smiled when he related stories from school; Isabelle simply put out her tongue.
While roaming around London, we talked about my experiences in Derbyshire and I hated myself for lying to them when I explained I had cut short my expedition because I came to the conclusion pretty quickly that I wasn’t really the camping type.
They didn’t ask any searching questions.
Of course, I was proud of the twins: proud of what they were achieving and proud of the way they were coping with the loss of their mother. Isabelle was more understanding of my feelings. David tried to hide his feelings and I suppose he expected me to hide mine as well.
We were all clingy during our short trip to London. Whenever we walked along the crowded pavements, I had one on either side, their arms round my waist and mine round their shoulders, and created the sort of pedestrian obstruction we would normally have complained about. We had fun and it was with great reluctance that I took them back to school on the Sunday, yet again unprepared to hand them over to their proxy family.
After leaving the main building and as I was walking back towards the car, I heard the crunch of somebody coming across the gravel behind me.
It was Isabelle.
She came up to me, flung her arms round my neck, and rested her cheek against my chest.
“You’re okay, Daddy, aren’t you?” she asked, looking up at me, her pretty face covered with concern.
“Of course I am,” I replied, kissing her forehead.
“But we’ve got the school and our friends. You haven’t got anyone now.” The frown remained on her face.
I smiled. “I’ve got the golf club and I’m not exactly shutting myself off from the world.”
“But your job, you’ve given that up. What will you do?”
“You choose your moments, don’t you?” I admonished her jokingly. We were standing next to my car and I could see across to the main entrance where parents were dropping off their children. “I’m not exactly on my last legs, you know. I’m still under forty …”
“Just.”
“All right just, but … oh, I don’t know, Bella, I’ll look for a job locally and take whatever might be on offer. It’ll all sort itself out, don’t you worry.”
She took hold of my hands. “Daddy, can you afford for David and me to stay at St Edward’s? I didn’t want to ask in front of David. You know he’d get the wrong end of the stick.”
Isabelle’s question surprised me because I had deliberately kept away from the subject of money as I didn’t want either of them to even think they were a burden. Of course, I would have preferred to have them at home which would allow them to travel daily to the school in Market Harborough now that my globetrotting was over, but they really did seem to be happy at St Edward’s. David was getting all the sport he wanted and Isabelle thrived in the boarding school environment. They wanted to stay and it would have been cruel of me to take them away. I had no other reason. We were well off and Belinda and I had taken out various insurance policies – Belinda’s life policy alone covered school fees and, if all went well, the expense of two university places as well.
I squeezed Isabelle’s cheek and smiled. “Yes, I can afford it, so don’t you worry about that. If I fall on hard times, you’ll be the first to know.”
Isabelle, a little reluctantly, returned my smile. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“And you won’t be lonely?”
“I’ve told you, I fly to Germany on Tuesday and then, when I get back, I intend playing a lot of golf after which I might go down to the job centre.”
“The job centre?” She looked quite shocked.
“I’m joking, but you never know, they might have what I want.”
“Bella!” Somebody called and Isabelle looked over her shoulder.
“Coming!” she shouted to another girl I couldn’t see. “Must go, Daddy.” She reached up and kissed me on the cheek. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too, Bella, and thank you for your concern.”
I watched her run back towards the main entrance and stood by the car for a few seconds thinking about what she had said.
Over the preceding few days, I found the frequency with which I thought about Ingrid Mesterom becoming less and less. Belinda was constantly there, but I was learning to cope with the trauma of discovering a murder and the brutal images that went with it.
Seeing Isabelle disappear through the doors into the school and for some inexplicable reason, a perfect image of Ingrid’s mutilated body forced its way into my mind, and I shuddered.
The clunk of the wheels lowering brought me back to the present and I looked out at the ground rushing past.
The flight attendants were already in their seats for landing and as I absentmindedly switched my gaze towards them over the seat in front of me, I thought how alike one of them was to Belinda: she sensed me looking at her, made eye contact and smiled. It was a professional smile and one that she would have offered to anybody who she thought was uneasy about the landing. I smiled in return and perhaps let my eyes rest on her a little too long.
Belinda would have been about four or five years older but the more I looked at the flight attendant the more the likeness was there. Her shoulder length blonde hair tied back in a ponytail in the same was Belinda used to wear hers when she was being practical. An oval face, with high cheekbones and large blue eyes, tapered to what I called, with Belin
da, a cheeky chin. Her smile revealed the dimples … the likeness really was uncanny. She hadn’t been in business class during the flight which meant I hadn’t noticed her before. Was I looking for something that really wasn’t there? She held my eyes for a few seconds longer before she turned away to say something to the other flight attendant sitting next to her.
There was bump as the aircraft touched down, followed by the roar of the engines going into reverse. On the few occasions I had flown into Düsseldorf, I never regarded it as an attractive airport but then again, what constituted an attractive airport? The last time I flew to Germany was a couple of weeks after the awful fire in 1995 that cost an awful lot of lives. The airport authorities had reacted with typical German efficiency and erected alternative arrival and departure areas that appeared to operate as effectively as their purpose-built predecessors. The investigation into the cause of the fire suggested a welder doing some work in the roof cavity above the arrivals area, had looked away at the wrong time.
Poisonous fumes swept among the unsuspecting crowds waiting for passengers to emerge. The lucky ones reacted quickly, unlike the Japanese tourist who decided it was the time to take photographs of the drama unfolding in front of him.
He paid with his life.
When I left the aircraft, I nodded towards the female flight attendant on whom my eyes had lingered perhaps a little too long. I saw her name was Wendy. She held my gaze again and this time her smile seemed genuine rather than professional. She wished me a safe onward journey and then switched her attention to whoever was behind me.
Once in the gangway, I smiled as I imagined Belinda wagging her finger at me. When we were out, she used to point to females she thought were more than slightly attractive and wait for my reaction with a knowing expression on her face. She would then ask me what I found most attractive about the female she had pointed out. Her explanation for her behaviour was that if I noticed something she could replicate – a hairstyle or clothing maybe – then she would. I always thought she was testing me.
I collected the hire-car I had pre-booked and drove the forty miles south on the autobahn to Bonn. The Hilton Hotel overlooking the Kennedybrȕcke and the Rhine was the chosen location for the conference this year. I was fortunate that my room had a small balcony from which there was a splendid view of the river.
There was a Reception in one of the anterooms before the formal dinner and, as I stood on the balcony sipping a gin and tonic and watching the river traffic, for the first time I wished I could give both events a miss. The annual conference brought together the same main and sub-contractors every year, regardless of its location and we shared the experiences, problems and solutions that had come out of the preceding twelve months.
According to the programme I was handed on arrival, my sixty-minute session was programmed for the second and final day.
Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed the two days more than in previous years mainly because I knew at the end of the conference I was a free agent. None of the problems discussed were mine any more, and whereas previously I would leave with more work than when I arrived, it was good to know on this occasion it all belonged to somebody else.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t enjoyed my job because I had, but my enthusiasm for it had died with Belinda. I had made a few good friends and many acquaintances over the years, and I would be remaining in touch with a few of them.
My session seemed to go well. It generated an amazing number of questions, which suggested that maybe I hadn’t put enough detail into my brief. I overran my time allowance by at least thirty minutes. Peter Schuter III said some nice words at the end of my presentation, accolades he then repeated during the final dinner. There was much handshaking, back slapping and promises of staying in touch. I was surprised as I drove away from the hotel on the Friday morning that I felt relieved to be free from the formality of such conferences. My conscience suggested there ought to be a smidgen of regret as well, but there was not.
I had hired the car, an Audi A3, for a full week, having already planned to see a bit more of Germany before returning to England. With this in mind I found myself heading south on the autobahn towards Koblenz without knowing what my destinations might be.
I crossed over the Trier to Weisbaden autobahn and decided to continue south towards Strasburg, letting the time of day determine my ultimate destination. Approaching the viaduct over the River Mosel, I changed my mind and took the next exit. Joining Route 49, which ran southwest along the left bank of the river, I asked myself why I had altered direction.
It was almost as though some unseen force was in control.
It was a gorgeous day. The sunshine reflecting off the water and the lack of traffic made me feel tranquil. I slowed down a little to enjoy the moment.
My thoughts were wandering again.
I had already put the conference behind me, relieved that it was all over. Belinda, as always, was either at the forefront of my mind or not far away from it. We had been to Germany together but not to the area I was now driving through. When the twins were young, Elizabeth and Charles kindly took them off our hands for a fortnight, which gave Belinda and me time to take a break together. We flew to Munich and then toured Bavaria before dropping down through Austria to the Italian lakes.
Belinda, although the most tolerant of people, couldn’t for whatever reason stand the Germans. She found them arrogant in the extreme and her love for the countryside, and in particular the Bavarian Alps, failed to increase her enthusiasm sufficiently to want to return. Afterwards we settled on France or Spain, the former ironically generating similar feelings in me towards the French to those Belinda had for the Germans.
Following the road that ran parallel to and close to the river, I wished that she could have been with me. Exploring and sharing new places together had become a pastime for us and we hadn’t let the twins reduce the adventures we had.
Now I was on my own but the past was still with me.
I described everything of any interest to Belinda, even pausing in my descriptions and pretending to hear her comments. I told her about the almost claustrophobic steep hills erupting towards the sky on either side of the narrow and fast flowing river, the terraced vineyards hanging on precariously as they flourished in the sunshine, and the strange looking contraptions used to access the grapes. Anybody watching might have thought that I wasn’t alone: although I suppose I wasn’t and never would be.
South of a village called Alken, I crossed over the river and saw a road-sign to a place called Cochem. I slowed the car and pulled into a lay-by. I sat and stared at the road ahead, not aware of the other vehicles drifting past in either direction.
Cochem? Why did I recognise that name?
Then it dawned on me.
Of course, the envelope I looked at after taking it out of Ingrid’s rucksack.
Is that why I had subconsciously chosen the Mosel?
Was it really that simple and coincidental?
Ingrid.
The address I had seen on the envelopes that I’d eventually handed over to the police, was an address in Cochem, and now I was only a few miles away from it.
I didn’t know whether I wanted to proceed: there was something ominous about what might lie in store. My life with Belinda and the brief but horrendous experience I had with Ingrid Mesterom, we now in the past. Ingrid was dead. I would have to relive my experiences when I returned to the UK but there was certainly no need to dwell on what had happened when I was supposed to be relaxing.
Why would I want to go to Cochem?
I got out of the car, crossed the road and walked down to the river’s edge. I hadn’t realised the strength of the current but now I was close to the water I could see how strong it really was. A couple of barges going upriver were battling against the flow whereas another barge coming in the opposite direction seemed to be skimming across the surface. Each barge was loaded to the gunnels with what looked like aggregate, which made me wonder why someone hadn’t g
ot their act together and reduced the river traffic by at least two barges. The barges were also low in the water but the crews appeared to be unaware that, in my opinion, their charges were on the point of sinking.
A couple of wagtails were flitting around the water’s edge a few yards away, the sun was shining and there was a light fresh breeze coming off the water. Other than the infrequent noise of the traffic behind me up on the road, the rush of the river and the chugging of the barges, there wasn’t a sound to spoil the tranquillity.
I asked myself why was I considering wrecking it all?
Why was I contemplating going to Cochem and possibly meeting with complete strangers just because I had the unfortunate experience of seeing someone they might have known, lying dead in an English wood?
However, there was more to it than that.
I had not only seen Ingrid when she was alive, I had also spoken to her. I had cared for her while she was unconscious, bathed her wound and bandaged it, and almost shared a meal.
I had then deserted her,
My neglect leading ultimately to her death.
Maybe my conscience was driving me forward. The police had listened to what I had to say but they were detached; they knew less about Ingrid than I did. At least I had seen her when she was alive. I had not had the opportunity to talk to anybody who could empathise with me about my experiences.
I hadn’t told Elizabeth and Charles everything. I restricted the truth to the morning when I found the body. I didn’t mention what had happened the previous evening.
A jet crossing the clear blue sky tried to disturb the tranquillity. I shaded my eyes with my hand and watched its slow vapour-trailed progress as I attempted to guess its destination. Regardless of where the aircraft might have been going, at that particular moment I rather wished I was on it.
Pooh Bridge: conscience stricken Page 6
