by J M Gregson
Denis was a Croatian, living in the wrong part of Kosovo at the wrong time. He had been training to be a doctor once. He had completed four years of his course, before war and all the things that went with it had intervened. Now he had lived so long by his wits that those student days seemed to belong to another person altogether, living a very different life: someone impossibly young and carefree, without the experience of horror, without the ruthlessness that came with it to enable you to survive.
Someone from the days before the medical student had turned into someone who killed people.
It had cost him money to get here, far more than he could afford. Everything he had owned in Kosovo had gone. And the passport he had been promised had never materialized. He could do nothing about that: he had as much chance of pinning down the man who had taken his money as he had of flying to the moon. He had learned to live life day by day, to survive and to save every penny he could from his earnings.
Denis was a natural linguist, and he had quickly picked up enough of the language to get by with. He trusted nobody, and he tried to anticipate trouble and keep away from it. You kept yourself to yourself, you saw trouble developing, and you kept away from it. ‘Keeping your nose clean’, the English called it. Denis worked very hard to keep his nose clean. At first, he had counted off the days he had been in this strange new country. Then he had begun to measure his success in weeks, even occasionally to feel quite relaxed.
He was an excellent worker. The man who had hired him and a lot of other foreign labour to pick his strawberries was pleased with him. He even told him that, which was unusual for a farmer, Denis thought. He asked him to stay on to pick raspberries when the strawberries were finished. And after that, if all went well, he said, there might be work in the apple orchard, well into the autumn.
It wouldn’t get him a passport. Denis didn’t see how he was ever going to do that. But in the caravans the farmer had crowded onto the smallest of his fields to house his motley army of fruit-pickers, Denis listened and noted. He heard people say that if you could stay in this country for a long time, you had a better chance of being accepted here permanently. He had no idea whether this information was reliable, but it was an idea he clung to as he sweated out his days beneath the polythene tunnels. He didn’t discuss it with anyone. He stored the notion away and kept his own counsel.
People learned to leave him alone. He got a reputation as a loner who didn’t want to make friends. People thought he knew nothing of the language and couldn’t converse. That suited him well. He listened and learned. Many of the people around him would never have been so open in their conversations if they had realized how much was understood by the wiry man with the very black hair and the deep scratches on his forearms.
When he had been in Herefordshire for three weeks, the police visited the site where the three hundred temporary workers were housed. Twenty of them were taken away for deportation.
The ones without EU documents or passports.
Denis spent a tense and uncomfortable time in a ditch by a wood, half a mile away from the fields where they worked. His face was altogether too close to the vestigial socks and odorous feet of a huge Lithuanian who had fled there with him, but neither of them dared to move for three long hours, until the sun had set over Wales and the police had driven away with their cargo of human misery.
Denis put this disturbing visit out of mind in the days which followed. Another crisis endured and survived. He had trained himself now to think in the present and the future, not the past. The one thing he had to do was to learn from things like this. He knew that he should not stay for too long on this temporary site, that it was too dangerous a place for people like him to live. The police would return in due course, and he might not be so lucky on the second occasion. But where else could he find work, where else would he be accepted without questioning?
The farmer was anxious not to lose a good worker, a man who kept his head down and caused no trouble. When he told Denis he wanted him to stay on through the summer, he gave him the address of a man who rented out rooms in Gloucester. He also allowed him to purchase, for a mere three-pound stoppage from his wages, a rusting bicycle which had remained untouched for ten years in a disused barn. Denis cleaned it and oiled it and repaired its punctures and shone up the ancient Raleigh crest on the front of its frame.
The man who rented out the rooms asked for the first month’s rent up front, but otherwise made no conditions and asked no questions. Denis found himself in the rabbit warren of a high Victorian house whose rooms had been subdivided to maximize the letting income. The other residents came and went as shiftily as he did, but they asked no questions and expected no answers from the lean young man, who said little and was not curious about them.
It took Denis nearly an hour to ride to work, but he set off at five thirty in the morning and was there before the rush-hour drivers were peering blearily at the queue of vehicles in front of them. When Denis hinted that there might be work for him on a building site nearer to his new base in Gloucester, the farmer gave him an extra ten pounds a week, which helped to pay for his room.
He was still cheap labour, with no card to be stamped and no records to be kept. And Denis had picked up enough now to know that the farmer was acting illegally in this law-conscious country. His employer wouldn’t talk to the police, wouldn’t even acknowledge the presence among his workforce of this quiet, industrious man from Eastern Europe.
Things were going well for Denis. As well as they could go for one in his desperate situation. And then, on the longest day of the year, when things had seemed to be at their brightest, came the setback.
In the days which followed, he tried to keep to his maxim of putting things behind him, of looking forward rather than back, of preparing himself to cope with the next challenge. But this was bigger than any other thing which had happened to him. This could blow his whole world apart, if the police ever got to the bottom of it. And they would. He listened to people talking in the house, at work, around the streets of this old city where he had begun to feel safe. They all said that the police in England got their man, when it was murder.
He tried desperately to put the events of that fateful Saturday out of his mind, to tell himself that there was no way anyone could connect him with what had happened in the darkness on the banks of the Severn.
But even now, five days later, he could not get it out of his mind.
Five
Thursday evening. The weather still warm, but unsettled, as it had been ever since the thunderstorms of the weekend. A brisk shower fell as the police Rover moved through the Gloucestershire countryside, darkening the sky above the high treetops of the Forest of Dean.
Bert Hook sensed the unease in the young uniformed woman constable next to him. He knew it stemmed from the mission they had, but he chose to divert it to the more general theme of their surroundings. ‘Race apart, the Foresters. That’s what they used to say when I started to work round here, afore you were born, girl.’
She was reassured by his soft Herefordshire burr, felt comforted rather than patronized. ‘So I’ve heard. Keep themselves to themselves, they say. Close ranks when people like us come among them.’
DS Hook smiled as he swung the car round a wide bend through the woods, keeping his eye on the sheep which roamed unfenced in this part of the Forest. ‘It’s less so than it used to be. But you still get it, in the villages especially. I don’t object to it, myself. Part of that community spirit which we’re asked to foster, if you ask me.’
He was content to make small talk, to try to relax the girl. It was the first time she had been to break the news of the sudden death of a daughter to unsuspecting parents. And this one was much trickier than most.
For a start, they weren’t certain that the corpse from the Severn really was their daughter. People didn’t thank you when it turned out to be a false alarm. After their first overwhelming flood of relief, their next reaction was usually a fierce resentmen
t against the police bunglers for putting them through such an ordeal.
And it was much worse when the child was a murder victim. Parents always found this much more upsetting than a random tragedy like a road accident. But it was much more difficult also for the police who brought the awful news. You had to be conscious that it might not be news to them at all. Beneath your compassion for them as parents suffering the worst loss of all, the death of a child, you had to be coolly observant of their reactions.
There has been a huge rise in gangland killings in the last twenty years. Yet even now, over seventy per cent of killings are committed by members of the victim’s families. Even parents may be murderers. But it is much more likely that they will have some shrewd ideas about who within the family might be responsible.
The address they had picked up from the university files was in a quiet village, four miles from the bustling little town of Cinderford, which was one of the hubs of life in the Forest of Dean. A quiet place, closed in upon itself among the high oaks which had been planted in the nineteenth century, to replace the trees felled to construct the fleets with which Nelson had fought off the bogeyman Napoleon.
Though the cottages and the sporadic outbreaks of modern housing now all sprouted television aerials, not much else seemed to have changed here since those trees were planted. Yet Bert Hook knew as he drove up the narrowing lanes that this was an illusion: life in the Forest had changed radically in the last half-century. Most people who lived here now worked outside the Forest and brought a different perspective home with them at nights. Nor were the families as in-bred as they had been, even in the days only a generation ago, when he had first ventured into the Forest as a fresh-faced young constable.
About the same age then as the uncertain young woman at his side was now, he thought as he followed her up the path to the house: the thought made him feel at once protective and far too old.
It was a high stone house, three hundred yards away from the next residence. There were extensive and well-planted gardens around it, but what had once been a cottage garden beside the oldest part of the house was now largely gravel, providing a wide turning circle for vehicles. The broad oak door was opened before he could ring the bell beside it. Bert Hook took the initiative.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Hook and this is Police Constable Lipton. I rang you earlier.’
The woman nodded, scarcely bothering to listen. ‘You’d better come in.’ She was a well-preserved ash-blonde, probably in her late forties, with alert brown eyes and a sophisticated hairstyling that had nothing rural about it. Only a certain rigidity about the lower part of her face hinted that she might be feeling a certain strain. She led them into a surprisingly light sitting room, with windows on two sides. She said, ‘You said you might be coming here with bad news.’
Hook hadn’t said that, but he had been evasive when she pressed him on the phone. ‘It may be, I’m afraid. I hope it isn’t.’ He meant it, even though a blank here would put them back to the beginning of a baffling investigation, without even an identification of the victim. He hastened to cloak his compassion with the routine formalities. ‘Are you the mother of Clare Mills?’
‘I am. My present name is Hudson, but I was Mills when Clare was born.’
‘And is Clare’s father still alive?’
‘He is. Something’s happened to her, hasn’t it? Something’s wrong.’
‘I’m afraid there may be, yes. When did you last hear from your daughter?’
‘I don’t know. Not in over a week now. Tell me what it is that’s wrong.’
‘Would that be usual, Mrs Mills? Or would you expect her to have been in contact with you over the last few days?’ It was a technique he had learned from Lambert. You fed in as many questions as you could, whilst they were nervous and uncertain. An emotionally uncertain witness was more likely to say revealing things than one who was certain of the facts. It was cruel, but this wasn’t a routine death; they knew now that this was the first stage of a murder investigation.
‘I’ve been expecting her to ring for the last few days. Since the weekend. She usually rings at the weekend.’ The banal repetition trailed away into the corners of the quiet room. ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Something bad.’
Hook nodded to the young woman beside him, who went tremulously into the sentences she had prepared for this moment. ‘You may have read that a female corpse was discovered on Wednesday in the Severn at Lydney. There has been no formal identification made yet, but we have reason to think—’
‘It’s Clare, isn’t it? That’s what you think! That’s why you’re here.’ Her hand flew involuntarily to her mouth. White teeth gnawed at her well-manicured fingers, as if like a child she had to stop herself from screaming. Yet Hook had the curious feeling that she was acting out the symptoms of grief, rather than genuinely affected.
‘We have reason to think that it might be your daughter. She has been absent from her flat since the weekend, and if she hasn’t been here—’
‘I knew it! I knew something was wrong when she didn’t ring me. She always rang me, at least once a week.’
‘The body is a female of about your daughter’s age. There was a university library card in the pocket of her jeans. The library computer tells us that this belonged to your daughter. We shall need a formal identification before we can be certain, but—’
‘I’ll do it. I’ll come with you now, if you want me to!’
There was a febrile excitement about the woman, almost an eagerness to have her worst fears confirmed. Hook deduced nothing from that: grief affected people in a host of different ways. ‘The corpse is somewhat damaged, Mrs Hudson. Seeing it will be an ordeal. Perhaps Clare’s father, or your present husband, could do the—’
‘Clare’s father is in New Zealand. And I don’t want my present husband doing this. I’ll come with you myself. I’ll come with you now.’
They waited a few minutes, listening to her movements upstairs. She came down in a dark dress, as if already in mourning for her daughter. The body was still at Chepstow, and Hook phoned the morgue there to warn them of their impending visit.
He wondered why this brittle woman had been so determined that her present husband would not do the identification.
Clare Mills’s flatmate was nervous.
Anne Jackson raced around the rooms in something like a panic when the phone call came through to say that the police were coming. They wouldn’t say why they wanted to see the flat, but it sounded bad to her. The students at the university were all talking about the body that had been fished out of the Severn and speculating that it might be Clare. Harry Shadwell hadn’t told her that he was going to the police. It was just like him, that, dithering so uncertainly about what action to take when she had been to see him and then rushing off to inform the authorities himself the next day, without telling her what he was doing. Other people seemed to have been allotted personal tutors who were much more on the ball than Shadwell.
Anne moved the things she had been looking for, then hastened to tidy the place. She gave the bathroom and the kitchen a quick clean, wiping the surfaces and removing the clutter of make-up in the bathroom and the beakers in the kitchen which seemed part and parcel of student life. She realized with a little start of guilt that it had usually been Clare who did the minimal cleaning they allowed themselves in the place. She put her notebook and the books she had got from the library on the table under the window: might as well play the virtuous student.
She was surprised when they arrived, exactly at noon as she had suggested. Anne had expected a couple of uniformed people, probably about her own age, who would go through a standard list of enquiries. Instead, she got a superintendent and an inspector: top brass, as her father would have said. They were both in plain clothes. The tall, lean one with the beginning of a stoop was Superintendent John Lambert, the man who Severn Radio had just told her was taking charge of the case. He had a lined, intelligent face beneath his iron-grey ha
ir. He also had a habit of studying her as she replied to his questions, which she found disconcerting.
The younger man was introduced as Detective Inspector Rushton. He was probably in his early thirties, she thought, with well-cut brown hair and clean-cut features. He was what her mum would have called dishy and what she and her contemporaries called fit. But his manner was rather stiff and Anne, who had a weakness for romantic fiction, thought that there was a sadness in his large brown eyes which suggested a failed relationship. Anne hoped that he would be the one who put the questions to her about Clare. Instead, he seemed content to take notes whilst the superintendent did most of the talking.
He asked how long Clare Mills had been missing, and when Anne had begun to grow anxious about her friend’s absence, and what action she had taken. All routine stuff, no doubt. But Lambert’s attention never strayed from her face and his eyes never seemed to blink. It was as though he felt that she had something to hide from him. Yet he certainly couldn’t have any real knowledge about that, she told herself firmly.
Then he said, ‘What kind of a girl was Clare?’
She felt suddenly very defensive. ‘Ordinary, I suppose. She was a good friend and a good student. Is this really important?’
‘It is if Clare Mills is identified as a murder victim, which it now seems probable she will be. We have to build up a picture of a girl we’ve never met, to find out what sort of enemies she had, to see what circles she moved in, if we’re to determine who it was that killed her. I’d have thought you’d be anxious to help us.’
It was like an accusation, when she had done nothing. Anne was still trying to cope with the idea that the girl who had laughed with her so often in this room might be dead. She said, ‘Of course I want to help you. It’s just that Clare Mills was – well, kind of ordinary, I suppose. I’m not saying she wasn’t pretty enough, when she wanted to be, but she didn’t wear outlandish clothes or anything like that. She wouldn’t stand out in a crowd.’ She realized with a little spurt of cold fear that they were now talking about her in the past tense.
