by John Harvey
Did she have any idea where her mother might have gone? She did not. She’d thought about it and thought about it, racked her brains, but no, nothing.
Except...
Except what?
She had a vague memory of her mother mentioning one of the neighbours trying to talk her into going off on holiday, the pair of them. Some Saga tour or other. Ages ago now. A year, maybe more. No, sorry, she couldn’t remember the neighbour’s name. By now, she could even have moved away. But if not, surely she shouldn’t be that hard to find?
When was the last time, Elder asked, she’d seen her mother?
A good couple of months now. January. Since starting this course, just about every minute was spoken for. London, it had been. She’d been back there for the day, shopping. The sales. Her mother had come down to meet her on the train.
How had she seemed?
How did she ever seem? The same.
Elder paused, registering the taint of frustration in the daughter’s voice.
“Tell me the truth,” Jane said then. “Do you think she’s all right? I mean, do you think something’s... happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” Elder said. “I honestly don’t know.”
“As soon as you do...”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you.”
Less than ten minutes later, she rang back.
“Look, Mr. Elder...”
“Frank.”
“Frank, I’ve been worrying, ever since you called—I mean, do you think I should be there? Now? Helping? I don’t know how, but doing something...”
“I don’t think so. To be honest, it’s difficult to think what you might do.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Only I didn’t want you to think I don’t care.”
“I don’t think that.”
“And you will call if anything...”
“I’ll call.”
Elder dialled the number for her brother, James, in Australia, but he was out or, at least, not answering: Elder left a message asking him to call back. The television offered a choice of buying a studio flat in Greenwich for a cool quarter of a million, or a broken-down villa in Tuscany in need of renovation and repair for considerably less. When the phone rang again and he picked it up, expecting it would be James, or Jane again, it was Katherine.
THE NEXT MORNING STARTED BRIGHT AND CLEAR: THE sky a pale but definite blue. There was still a decided nip in the air. Elder found the place Katherine had mentioned without difficulty: a narrow delicatessen and café with a few stools across the front and more down along both sides. She was already there when he arrived, sitting in the window corner, reading through some printed notes, yellow highlighter in hand.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi.”
She put her face up to be kissed, her cheek smooth against his lips.
Her hair was cut short, neat against the nape of her neck, spiked up a little at the front; her face a little fuller than the last time they had met.
“Sorry if this is early,” she said.
“No, it’s okay.”
“I’ve got a class at ten. Then I’m busy the rest of the day.”
“You want another?” he asked, pointing at her almost empty cup.
“No, thanks, I’m fine.”
“Okay. Do I wait here or...?”
“You order down at the back.”
“Right.”
“And Dad...”
“Yes?”
“I wouldn’t mind a piece of cheesecake, actually.”
There were several people in front of him, mostly waiting for sandwiches and coffee to go. Elder looked back at Katherine as she ran her highlighter across a piece of text: faded red basketball sneakers, blue jeans, sleeveless black sweater over a pale top, denim jacket bunched on the stool behind. Something about the way she sat there, concentrating, one hand occasionally pushing up through her hair, made his breath catch low in his throat.
You must be proud.
He fumbled in his wallet for a five-pound note.
“So,” he said, as he slid onto his stool, “how’s it all going?”
“Oh, you know.”
“Interesting?”
“This? Sport psychology. It’s okay. Common sense, really; most of it, anyway. It’ll help when I’m at uni.” She smiled. “That’s the idea, anyway.”
“How’s that going? University. You’ve got a place?”
Katherine shook her head. “Nothing definite yet.”
“But you should know when?”
“Oh, soon.”
“And this is where? Loughborough?”
“Loughborough or Sheffield.”
His coffee arrived, along with Katherine’s cheesecake.
“I asked Mum how come you were here, but she went all mysterious.”
“It’s no secret.” He told her, briefly, what he was doing.
“More white knight stuff, then?”
“Sorry?”
“Those books you used to read me when I was little. Princesses asleep in the tower, waiting for Sir Whatever to ride up out of the west.”
Elder drank some coffee; enjoyed watching her wolf down her slice of cheesecake, four, five bites and it was gone.
“Whatever happens,” he said, “I should be around for a few more days. Perhaps we can get together when you’ve got more time? Go out for a meal, maybe?”
“Yes, sure.” She was already stuffing things inside her bag.
He wanted to ask if she was still seeing her therapist, but somehow didn’t dare.
“Thanks for the cheesecake.”
“Any time.”
A kiss that landed just below his ear and she was out of the door and gone. Elder felt strangely numb. Without the need, he stirred his coffee carefully before drinking any more: it was good and it was strong. Enough to give his heart a jolt, or was that something else?
MIDAS HOLDINGS ANNOUNCED ITSELF WITH A DISCREET gold panel attached to the outside wall. Elder spoke his name and business and was buzzed on through. Several interior walls on the second floor had been taken out to make the main space open plan, but Simon Tranter had an office of his own, with a view down onto a garden at the rear. Dark shrubs and a neat patch of lawn.
Tranter was young, younger than Elder had expected, but then most people these days usually were.
He offered coffee and Elder declined.
Tranter sat back down behind his desk. “You wanted to talk about Claire Meecham.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure how much I can tell you.”
“Anything might help.”
“Well, she’s industrious, thorough, far too experienced for what she was doing here—she should have been an office manager somewhere at least. But this was what she wanted. Or so it seemed.”
“So when she failed to turn up for work...”
“I was surprised, naturally. I phoned her home, but there was no reply. Thought, you know, she’d been taken ill. When she didn’t turn up again on Tuesday, I sent somebody round. It was so unusual, you see. But the place was locked up, nobody in.”
“And this was all without warning?”
“Absolutely.”
When the phone on Tranter’s desk started to ring, he pressed a button and it went away.
“Does she have any particular friends here?” Elder asked. “Someone she might have talked to more than anyone else?”
Tranter was already shaking his head. “It’s not as if she was standoffish, not exactly; she was always polite, friendly enough on the surface, but, well, she’s quite a bit older than most of the other staff, for one thing, and then, you know, she always seemed to be one of those people who preferred to keep to themselves. Which was fine. She came in promptly, did her job. Sandwiches at lunchtime, I believe; sometimes she’d eat them at her desk. Off home at the end of the day. That was Claire.”
“You sound as if you’re not expecting her back.
”
“We’ll keep her position open for another week or so, but after that we’ll have to advertise.” Tranter glanced, none too subtly, at the executive clock on his desk. The seconds ticking digitally away behind a perspex screen.
“Just one other thing,” Elder said. “At Christmas, does the firm have any sort of—I don’t know—party, get-together?”
“New Year, yes. Kick-start things after the holiday. Buffet dinner, free bar up to a point. DJ. People appreciate it.”
“And Claire, she would have gone along?”
Tranter laughed. “You don’t really know a lot about Claire, do you? Kicking and screaming, you wouldn’t have got her to anything like that. Not in a million years.”
Elder thanked him for his time.
QUITE A FEW OF CLAIRE MEECHAM’S NEIGHBOURS WERE either out or simply not answering the door. “No Free Newspapers,” read the signs. “No Circulars.” “No Unsolicited Mail.” Those who did respond looked out warily, ready to say no to whatever he was trying to sell: God or cheaper gas or a trial subscription to the local health club and gym. Several, seeing Elder there, recognized him for what he once had been, and their faces fell, anticipating the worst: an accident, an arrest, a death.
Gladys Knowles, though, was chirpy, more than ready to talk, bored with her own company and daytime TV. There was a flourish of pink in her permed gray hair, a bright, birdlike look in her eye, and a pair of unlaced sneakers on her feet.
“You’ve not come about the drains?”
“Afraid not,” Elder said.
“I didn’t think so. Too much to expect. I’ve only rung the bloody council half a dozen times since Tuesday last and that’s not enough to get ’em out of bed.”
Elder smiled.
“It’s not funny, you know. You should smell it out back, or better not. Like one of them saunas mixed with Skegness at low tide. I’ve a good mind to bottle it and take it down there, shake it under their noses. Let ’em know what it’s like.”
“Claire Meecham,” Elder said, taking advantage of a pause for breath. “I was wondering if you knew her at all?”
“From across, at forty-three? Nothing wrong, is there?”
“Not necessarily, no.”
“Only I was thinking, just yesterday, I’ve not seen her for—ooh, a good few days now, it must be. Not that we were in each other’s pockets, understand, but I’d see her putting her bins out, you know how it is, tripping off to work of a morning. Down to get the bus, regular as anything. Set your watch by her.”
“Her sister hasn’t heard from her in a while, that’s the thing.”
“And she’s worried sick, I dare say.”
“She’s concerned.”
“These days you’d need to be.”
“You’ve no idea,” Elder said, “if she might have gone off on holiday? Maybe with someone from round here?”
“Holiday?”
“Her daughter said she thought one of the neighbours had suggested they might go away together.”
“That’ll be Mrs. Parker, then. This side, at thirty-eight. Set back off the road. Parker by name and nature, too.” Gladys tapped the side of her nose. “Always coming round, trying to get you to sign some petition or other, refugees or a new pedestrian crossing. Collecting for Oxfam. This—what is it?—tsunami. Wanted me to join her book group, that was the last thing.”
“And you didn’t fancy that?”
Gladys pursed her lips. “Too clever by half.”
A GREENPEACE LOGO WAS DISPLAYED BESIDE THE FRONT door of number thirty-eight, immediately above another heralding membership in the neighbourhood watch. “Welcome” was picked out in four languages on the mat, but no one was home.
Elder went back to his car, propped his book up against the wheel, and proceeded to read. He was almost at the end of his third chapter when a spindly figure came bicycling down the street, sedate rather than speedy, a woman wearing a striped woollen hat, scarf, and gloves, a dark green anorak, and a long skirt over boots. Not taking any chances with the weather. A straw shopping bag wobbled from the handlebars as bike and rider slowed to a halt.
Elder slipped his bookmark into place.
“Mrs. Parker?”
Her face swivelled sharply in his direction. “Ms.”
“I beg your pardon. Ms.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if we could talk about Claire Meecham?”
She looked at him carefully. “Just let me take this around to the back and then you’d best come in.”
WHAT LOOKED TO ELDER LIKE A SOUTH AMERICAN BLANket was draped across a deep settee; a black-and-white cat sat curled on an easy chair, interested enough in Elder’s arrival to peer out from beneath one paw, but no more. Framed on the wall was a photograph of a younger Ms. Parker at the head of a demonstration, shouting at the heart of a police cordon and holding a CND banner defiantly aloft.
“Anti-Polaris demo,” she said. “Holy Loch. Useless, of course. Polaris was decommissioned and in its place we got something worse. But you do what you can. Either that or go under.” She looked at him keenly. “I presume you don’t agree?”
“It depends.”
“You are the police, though?”
“Not exactly.”
“Name and not rank, then.”
“Elder. Frank Elder.”
“Marjorie Parker.”
“Ms.,” Elder said, smiling.
“I’m sorry about that. Insisting, I mean. It’s just these stupid assumptions. After a certain age, if you’re not Mrs. then you might as well be dead.”
“You’re clearly not that.”
She brightened. “I expect you’d like some tea?”
“Thanks, that would be nice.”
“Chamomile, peppermint, or Assam?”
Elder opted for Assam.
When it arrived, accompanied by a plate of biscuits, he summarized Claire’s sister’s concerns.
Marjorie Parker set down her cup. “I knew she wasn’t there, of course. No lights at night, that sort of thing. I mean, you notice. In fact, I telephoned the police myself. Because of the place standing empty as much as anything else. Had to wait two days before someone came back to me. We have the matter in hand, that’s what he said, the young officer who called. Wouldn’t tell me any more. In hand. As if poor Claire were one of those old cars you see abandoned with ‘police aware’ pasted to the windscreen. Six months like that before someone finally comes and tows it off for scrap.”
Nodding, Elder drank a mouthful of tea.
“You said ‘poor Claire.’”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I? I thought of her that way, I’m not sure why. Wrong of me, really. She had no problems with her health, at least none that I knew of. She seemed perfectly competent, held down a good job.”
“Yet still ‘poor Claire.’”
Marjorie Parker gave it a little more thought. “I got this impression, I suppose, of someone who’d given up on life too soon.”
“And you thought she should resist that?”
“Don’t you?”
Elder wasn’t sure. “People make their own choices. It’s not always possible to understand why.”
“What you mean is, don’t interfere. Leave well enough alone.”
“That’s not for me to say.”
“You’d think it, though. And say it, too. Behind my back if not to my face. People do. Interfering old busybody. And worse.” She sighed. “When you’ve lived your life thinking it’s a duty to help, to be concerned, it’s hard just to sit on your hands and do nothing. Appreciated or not.”
“And you tried to help Claire?”
“I always tried to find time to talk to her, yes. Suggested one or two little things she might find interesting. Exhibitions at the Castle, or out at Lakeside, that sort of thing.”
“And how did she respond?”
“Oh, politely enough. She came along with me on one occasion and seemed to find it interesting. She even talked about t
aking a course, I remember, though I’m not sure if she ever did.” She paused for another mouthful of tea. “I tried to convince her to come away on holiday once. Ten days in Egypt. Fascinating it would have been.” She smiled. “You’d have thought I’d asked her to come to the moon.”
“So she never went out at all?”
“Hardly ever. That’s to my knowledge, of course.” Another smile. “I’m not my sister’s keeper, however it might appear. I do go away myself, usually to see friends. And Claire used to visit her daughter, of course. But no, in the ordinary way of things, I don’t think she ventured out more than was necessary.”
“And you’re not aware of people coming to visit her?”
“Aside from her sister, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Not really. Her daughter used to pop up from time to time, but I haven’t seen her in quite a while now. As I say, it was more often Claire who went to see her.”
“You wouldn’t happen to remember when she did that last?”
“I think I do, as a matter of fact. Yes, it was—let me see—four or five weeks ago. Maybe a little more. I met her at the bus stop, that’s how I know. She had a small suitcase with her, so naturally I asked if she was going away. Just to London, she said. Jane’s coming up from Bristol for the weekend.”
“And this was when?”
“February, I’m sure. I could probably find the exact date if you think it’s important.”
“It might be, yes.”
A small Letts diary provided the answer. “Here we are. The last but one weekend in February, that’s when it would have been. I remember telling her I was going to London myself the weekend after. A CND conference at Westminster Hall.”
Elder rose to his feet. “You’ve been generous with your time.”
Marjorie Parker escorted him to the door. “I had a good friend once,” she said. “Went out for a walk and took a fall. Banged her head. Nothing too serious. Someone passing took her to Accident and Emergency. When the triage nurse asked her name, she realized she didn’t know. Three weeks it took her before she could remember a thing.”
“And when she did, she was okay?”
