Life Sentence

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Could you order me to? Please.’ Otherwise she had to go down, didn’t she?

  ‘I’ve asked everyone else to give up any spare time this weekend. There are plenty of volunteers. But I’ve got no one at your level. Not with your experience. A child of ten, Fran. Where do our loyalties lie?’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘She was on television earlier this evening, local and national news, telling everyone that some pervert has kidnapped a child of ten and appealing for her safe return. Frances, of course. Strange – I thought she was dedicating her time to finding the man who’d done this to you. And I thought her weekends were given over to her parents, down in Devon. So why she ups and starts dealing with this, goodness knows.

  ‘There’s no doubt the camera lurves her. So many women of her age have either got lovely faces but tubby bodies, or have managed to keep their figures at the expense of their faces. Your face – scars apart – is relatively unlined, isn’t it? You carried a fair amount of flesh, though it’s hard to remember that now. She’s got a few lines, but not as many as you’d expect. Expensive skin care, I suppose. And the camera lights were very cleverly placed to bleach out the worst. Her voice is good, too, of course – and she’s managed to avoid the local accent. I wonder where she was born. I don’t think she ever said.

  ‘I don’t think either of us will be seeing her for a while. The other case will take priority, no doubt about that. Hardly surprising, either. What does it say in the Bible? “Let the dead bury the dead”? And there’s no doubt the police will be more interested in locating a child and its potential killer than poking around looking for your assailant, important though they thought that a very few days ago.

  ‘I shan’t give up, of course, though I’m tied up with something really important. No, not work, as it happens, though I’ve so many assignments to mark – when did they stop being called essays? – that I can’t see my desk.

  ‘So don’t worry, my dear, if I don’t see you for a few days. I will come back. I promise.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘So you can just get out of here. Swanning round like Lady Muck, just because you’re shagging the boss.’

  How the hell had the new Detective Chief Superintendent got hold of that? He’d only been in the building half an hour? Fran was so angry she dared say nothing, not until she’d taken another breath and stepped back a pace.

  ‘You wanted out,’ Henson continued, ‘so you can get out. Get back to your dead case. OK?’

  She thought the veins on his forehead would burst, they bulged so fiercely, auguring a stroke or heart attack. And he was how old? Forty-five at most, but a totally unreconstructed officer, complete with beergut. Where had they dug him out from? In today’s police, there were finer, fitter officers ready to leap out of the woodwork when you tapped it. She replied, so quietly that all the interested ears – and there were many – in the Incident Room had to strain to hear, ‘Chief Superintendent, I believe you were unavailable this weekend, when there was an emergency. I can’t think of a better reason for me to return to what was my job for some seven years. I suspect Senior Management couldn’t, either. I’ve no idea whether they want me to continue. If they do, I assume – no, listen to me! – if they do, I assume we work in tandem until one of us is given overall command.’

  ‘I’m not working for a superannuated old tart like you.’

  ‘Ageist and sexist, are we, Detective Chief Superintendent Henson? What a pity I’m not black so you could be racist, too. You obviously haven’t had the benefit of our in-house training courses.’ The observation hung in the air: in her most recent incarnation she’d been in charge of such developments, and everyone in the room had been on at least one course. ‘Look, why not get off that high horse of yours and get to work. It’s eight-twenty on Monday morning. There’s a child out there who’s been missing since Friday afternoon. There’s a whole new batch of officers to brief. Most of those still here – who’ve worked without proper breaks over the weekend – are on, so far, unpaid overtime. One of us needs to get authority to pay them. That involves speaking to the Chief – would you like to do it?’

  ‘What are you implying?’

  If that was the best the selection board could have come up with, the rest of the candidates must have been awful. She wouldn’t have let him past the interview room door. Personnel always said she had a nose for a good candidate. Certainly when they’d appointed against her advice, they’d always come moaning to her that they regretted it. ‘If I’m implying anything it’s that it’s time to stop bickering and get on with today’s work. There’s a briefing meeting at eight-thirty. I suggest I take that so you’ll know exactly where we are. After that it’s up to the Chief. Whom you should be talking to now.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me? I’m going to take a shower. I’ve been on duty throughout the weekend. When everyone’s up to speed, I shall probably go home for a couple of hours’ sleep.’

  It was a good line on which to turn on her heel and walk out. But she had to stop half a dozen times – to offer advice here, encouragement there. And as she pulled the door, it opened to admit Mark.

  ‘You’ve not left yet,’ he said unnecessarily.

  ‘Briefing and then bed.’

  ‘I’ll run you home. Yes, I need a doze and a change of clothes too. We can keep each other awake while I drive. In fact,’ he flicked a glance at this watch, ‘why not have breakfast at your place or mine? I can’t fault the canteen but I just want to crack my own eggs in my own kitchen. As soon as you’ve completed the briefing. In half an hour, say.’

  It made sense. After such sleep deprivation, driving on your own was dangerous. Since she could postpone her shower she could also squeeze in another ten minutes scanning phone calls from the public in response to her appeals. She nodded.

  Her briefing was as short but as full as she could make it. Her face was stiff with fatigue, and it required a supreme effort to make the words come out in the right order and at the right speed.

  ‘To sum up, then: Rebecca – it’s never shortened to Becky – was walking home from her piano lesson through Ashford’s town centre market when she was last seen. At about two o’clock. It was half-term, remember, so the lesson wasn’t at its usual time. People saw her swinging her music case as if she was full of the joys of spring. That’s it. No sightings after that at all. No contact from a kidnapper. A huge public response but nothing yet worth picking up on.’ Then she remembered the way her colleagues had dismissed that sighting of Elise in her bright new car. ‘Nothing apparently worth picking up on. But we’ve got a whole new lot of eyes here this morning. I’d like a couple of you – Tom? Enid? – to go through them again. Left brain time: OK?’

  Tom offered a none-too surreptitious thumbs up and a wink. At least he’d had some sleep: she’d personally sent him home at ten last night.

  ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to leave you in the most capable hands of the new head of CID, Detective Chief Superintendent Henson.’ She hoped she didn’t sound ironic. ‘I’m going to do what I’m telling you to do – take regular breaks, eat and drink properly. Tired brains don’t work as well as fresh ones. And I’m delighted to tell you that DCS Henson has already sorted overtime payments with them upstairs.’ She led the spatter of applause, as if she benefited as much as the lower ranks. ‘Good morning – I’ll see you all later.’

  She’d fallen into step with Mark and was about ten yards from the car when her mobile rang. It was a number she didn’t recognise, but had a Devon prefix. He caught her as she staggered.

  But it wasn’t a hospital. It was a woman who sounded as tired as she with the news that not only were her parents fine, they hadn’t expected her that weekend.

  ‘What do you mean, they hadn’t expected me?’ She found she was leaning against Mark’s car. ‘I wouldn’t have put you on red alert if I hadn’t intended to go down and then had to let them down! Nothing would have prevented me except�
�’

  ‘That’s what they told Sylvia on Friday, anyway, when she saw them. And they were pretty sure.’ Sylvia. All the decent kind women who did the most unrewarding work for less than a pittance seemed to have names like Sylvia. ‘I think we need to talk about their future, Ms Harman – have a case conference soon.’

  ‘With what agenda?’ She was aware of Mark waiting patiently beside her, trying neither to listen in nor to yawn.

  ‘Their long-term care.’

  ‘I thought I’d made it clear that I was going to move down shortly and become their full-time carer.’

  ‘I suppose that’s one option,’ the tinny voice said doubtfully. ‘Anyway, perhaps we can talk about it when you next come down. We could organise it for – let me see – nine-fifteen on Wednesday.’

  ‘Sorry. You’ll have heard on the media about the missing child. I’m assisting the investigation – a vital case—’

  ‘This is a very important case, Ms Harman. To us.’

  She overrode the criticism, both on the phone and in her own head. ‘—and unless there’s an absolute emergency down there, I can’t come down midweek. Ever. And certainly not till we’ve found this child. I don’t know where on earth they got the impression I could.’

  ‘They’ll be very disappointed.’

  ‘Why? They always insisted they counted the hours from my leaving on Sunday till my returning on Friday. What’s going wrong?’

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t make it clear. Or perhaps it’s what we need to talk about: their mental health.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Have you ever considered the possibility that one or both may be suffering the onset of Alzheimer’s, Ms Harman?’

  ‘Alzheimer’s?’ she repeated stupidly, as if in the first stages herself.

  ‘The carers aren’t sure. We need a conference involving your parents’ GP and of course yourself. Dr Baker’s free on Wednesday, as Sylvia and I are. But now you say you’re not.’ She sounded personally disappointed.

  Wrong-footed, she tried to defend herself. ‘It isn’t a question of my saying it now – I’m not cancelling on a whim, please believe me. Next weekend’s the best I can do. I might just be able to stay over till Monday morning for a very early meeting, but my place is here until this case is over.’

  There was no response from the other end.

  ‘Look, I’ve been literally on my feet for the last sixty hours so if you’ll excuse me—’

  ‘We can’t just leave it at that, Ms Harman—’

  Her voice breaking, she said, ‘Then – you have her number – call my sister.’ She turned to grimace guiltily at Mark but, leaning against the driver’s door, he was literally asleep on his feet. Very gently she retrieved his keys and steered him round to the passenger side.

  Since they were going against the rush hour traffic, it didn’t take very long to reach Mark’s house in Loose, once an independent village, now more or less a suburb of Maidstone. If she lived there people could call her a loose woman. If Mark had been awake, or if she were surer of where their relationship was going, she could have observed as much. If only she could talk to Mark about Devon. But he was audibly snoring and she had to keep awake herself. She mustn’t think about Devon lest she cry. So she thought of variants on the loose theme. Loose cannon. Loose talk. Loose limbed. Loose tooth. Loose box.

  She parked without panache in front of his high-fronted, rather forbidding Edwardian house. He awoke on the instant, and got out of the car as stiffly as she did.

  She couldn’t burden him with the parent problem, not yet. ‘Tell me,’ she asked, handing him his car keys and then standing aside as he opened the front door, ‘what stone did you find Henson under?’

  ‘A Met paving-stone. His references shone. And his interview was outstanding – I was in on it myself. God, all this junk mail.’

  ‘They wanted to get rid of him, then. And probably he was coached for his panel. Any idea why he couldn’t come in over the weekend?’

  Mark coughed as if embarrassed. ‘A wedding.’

  ‘It’d have to be a very close family member for that to wash as an excuse.’

  ‘It was. It was his own.’

  ‘Bloody hell! And there I was ready to rip into him. As it is, I suppose we should commiserate for the poor bugger’s missing his honeymoon.’

  ‘We should but we can’t. He wanted it kept absolutely confidential.’

  ‘Any idea why? And no, before you ask, not a word, not even a hint of a syllable, will pass my lips.’

  ‘I didn’t expect it to,’ he said brusquely. He added, dropping his voice as if they could be overheard, ‘I gather he’s marrying his long-term partner, and there is some urgency. Maybe she’s pregnant, maybe she’s ill. But not a word.’

  ‘I don’t gossip, Mark,’ she said, more emphatically than she meant. But someone had: to Henson. She and Mark were lovers, were they? If only. ‘Well, the sooner I’m back on the Elise case the happier we’ll both be.’ She closed the door behind them as he laid his post beside a previous pile on a mahogany table. The house smelt unlived in. Did hers, to a stranger? At least she had strategically placed bowls of pot pourri to sweeten up the mustiness.

  ‘Breakfast and shower? Shower and breakfast? Which would you prefer first?’

  She looked at him; she might have to wake him to give him his breakfast, whereas her brush with Henson and then with the social worker had left her with just enough residual adrenaline to keep her on her feet. ‘You shower, I cook. So long as it’s no more sophisticated than toast and scrambled eggs. Don’t worry – I’ll find everything I need.’

  He ate in his bathrobe, falling asleep again, head on the arms he’d folded on the table, as soon as she removed the plate. She found a cushion from his sofa to slide under his head. He didn’t stir as she lifted him and gently set him down. She smoothed down the ruffled hair, allowing him some dignity.

  Time for her own shower then.

  ‘My God!’ She stepped back gasping. What had she done to deserve a blast of icy water? Did Mark always return the thermostat to zero? Little by little she realised he must have set it like that to wake him up enough to eat. Had her thought processes been as slow as that over the weekend? And if so, what vital information had she missed?

  She needed sleep as much as Mark did. So she basked in warm water, not caring how deep she drained Kent’s reservoirs so long as she was soothed. There was no spare bathrobe. Swathing herself in her towel, she wandered into his bedroom, thinking at first she could simply lie under the duvet as she was. Almost without knowing why that might not be a good idea, she fumbled through his wardrobe and found a tracksuit. There.

  ‘Fran. Fran. Are you OK?’

  In the past she’d been able to wake instantly after a catnap. Now she clawed her way slowly into the realisation that Mark was standing beside her shaking her shoulder. There was a mug of tea on a mat on the bedside table.

  ‘It seems indecent to go straight from breakfast into lunch,’ he said. ‘Shall we go on to your place first and pick up something on the way back?’

  She shook her head: there was no chance of rational thought yet. ‘I’m sorry.’ She yawned in his face.

  He sat on the bed, facing her, easy, relaxed, as if he’d been bringing her tea in bed all their adult lives.

  He hadn’t. He’d brought his late wife tea like this. As for him and Fran, they’d exchanged no more than the most tentative kisses. Tina’s bed and the middle of an abduction case: this was not the place, nor was it the time for any intimacy at all, whatever her body might say. Why the hell should she be so aroused in the middle of a crisis? How easy it would be to reach for him.

  She sat bolt upright. ‘Good idea. I could do with some fresh clothes.’

  He offered a quizzical look.

  ‘Don’t worry. I haven’t been stinking the place out in the same things all weekend. I had my Teignmouth bag handy.’

  ‘Including your glad rags for dinner with the Marstons. I’m
sorry it all went pear-shaped.’ His smile began as rueful, but soon became weary.

  She switched on her briskest tones. ‘So am I. But I’m even more sorry about the kid. And we ought to get a move on, oughtn’t we?’ She found her voice sliding to the confessional. ‘You know, given a choice between working round the clock twice and dealing with my parents – and now their social workers – I know which I’d choose. And you’re to forget I ever said that.’ She tried to sound assertive. Perhaps she did.

  ‘You never said a word. When this is all over, Fran, I—’ He lifted a hand, to caress her face before kissing her.

  Inevitably her phone burst into ironic sound.

  ‘At least it doesn’t play “Für Elise”!’ he said resignedly, leaving her to take the call.

  It didn’t take long for her to join him in the hall, where he was leafing through his mail. Most of it ended in a Sainsbury’s carrier, unopened. Recycling, no doubt. He’d retrieved stamps from other envelopes, ordinary British ones.

  ‘Save the Children,’ he explained, following her gaze. ‘One of Tina’s pet charities.’

  She nodded, but did not comment. How would he feel if she started to add to his collection? ‘That was Tom Arkwright on the phone,’ she said. ‘Alan Pitt called. Information that simply couldn’t wait. And he’ll only speak to me personally.’

  ‘Attention seeking?’

  ‘Possibly. But it’s like all these things, isn’t it? You can’t dismiss them just in case. But I asked Tom to call him back and explain that important though the Elise case is, at the moment Rebecca must take priority.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ He held the door for her.

  Was that why, she wondered, he worked all weekend too? For the first time since the panic had started, she realised that in the normal scheme of things an incident room was by no means the natural habitat for an assistant chief constable.

  Mark seemed happy for her to drive his car to her cottage, so that he could make a series of calls from his mobile. When hers rang again, he held it enquiringly.