by Susan Hill
‘Could have been a year or two later – or earlier.’
‘Even so. But obviously we’re checking. If we don’t turn anything up, we’ll widen it to a national search.’
Simon sat back in his chair, hands behind his head, listing what had to be done. The Harriet Lowther files reopened and gone through line by line. Follow-up interviews with any witnesses still living in the area, last known movements worked out carefully, contact made with every living relative, friend, neighbour, chance acquaintance, pupil, teacher. The sort of routine that had to be meticulous and painstaking, that took nothing as read, nothing for granted, made no assumptions. Sixteen years of life and change muddied the waters. Sixteen years meant memories faded, events became confused. People had died, moved away, grown up, changed jobs, had families. Sixteen years of events and everyday routine had altered everything. Suspects, if there had been any, must be located, re-interviewed, their subsequent lives gone over in fine detail. Anything like suspicious behaviour, let alone arrests, charges, imprisonments, would have to be examined in the light of the Lowther case and an individual’s relation to it.
The second body was a second inquiry. Not a cold case because at the moment it looked as if it had never been a case at all. A new inquiry then. But the body was of a girl who had gone missing somewhere, her absence reported by someone, surely. Young girls, unless they were on the streets of a city, did not vanish without someone wondering why and where and how. Young girls had families, friends, childhoods, previous lives, they had lived here or there, they were remembered.
It was a huge amount of work. He had hoped for a team – a deputy, and a close-knit group of three or four, working side by side, talking, bouncing things off one another, propping one another up. At the moment, it looked as if he would be lucky to get anybody.
He sat upright. No, he thought. No, he would not ‘be lucky to get anybody’, he would get a team. He was SIO on what was no longer a Missper from sixteen years ago but a definite murder inquiry. There was a second inquiry which would have to be opened, another murder, and probably related to the first. Somewhere out there was a person or persons who had taken the lives of two young women and buried their bodies.
The Chief – or in her absence, the ACC – had a duty to provide him with a full support team, cuts or no cuts, and although he was perfectly prepared to put in extra hours himself and take on the work of others, he was not going to be hamstrung by lack of officers. A team he needed and a team he was bloody well going to get.
He reached for the phone.
Eight
JOHN LOWTHER TOOK the papers out of their folder and arranged them neatly on the conference-room table in front of him. He had glanced around the room on entering and nodded, but in general, not catching anyone’s eye. There were eight of them, eight men and women well used to difficult meetings and differences of opinion, well versed in what to say and how to say it, eight in prominent positions in various areas of public life. And not one of us, Cat Deerbon thought, has any real idea of how to handle this.
There was none of the usual murmur as they waited for him to begin. The silence was perhaps the worst of it.
At last, he moved a typed sheet of paper slightly to his right. Looked down at the agenda sheet. Looked up.
‘Mr Chairman …’
Pamela Vaughan, the hospice chaplain, was looking directly at Lowther. His face had changed, Cat thought, even in a few hours, it was all registered there, in the pallor, the way the flesh seemed to have fallen in, the lines deepened. His eyes had a deadened look. The waiting, the strain and anxiety and fear of sixteen years had fallen away, to be replaced by grief and weariness and more dread, more dread. There was an answer, but that had only raised new and dreadful questions. She felt great sorrow for him, sorrow and some of the same dread.
‘Before we begin, I know I’m speaking for everyone when I say that you have all our sympathy and our prayers today. It’s very courageous of you to be here. And it goes without saying that if we, together or individually, can do anything for you, you know you’ve only to ask.’
There was a murmur round the table.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I do know that and your words mean more than I can say. Thank you. Now, we should make a start and get through a few small matters before turning to the main item on the agenda, which I’m afraid, is financial. We shall need to discuss it at length so may I just approve and sign the minutes of the last meeting and move on?’
The early business was out of the way and tea had come in. John Lowther’s chairing of the meeting was no different from usual. He was courteous, businesslike, well organised. The best chairman they had had, Cat thought, and they were lucky to get him.
‘Finances,’ he said now, glancing down at his agenda paper. ‘To put it bluntly, the hospice is in a very poor financial state. It’s a combination of things, as always – expenditure is up considerably, income is down considerably. We have a large deficit. We have been dipping into our reserves and living beyond our means, though not in any sense of being profligate. But however justified every penny of our spending may be, the fact is that we can’t continue to lay out more than is coming in, so we must either cut our costs or bring in more money, or both, preferably both.’
The meeting gathered energy and determination, proposals flew round the table, suggestions were discussed, strategies examined. After listening and noting, Lowther asked them to consider appointing a fund-raising committee – not, as he put it, to discuss coffee mornings but to find ways of accessing serious financial support from major donors, trusts and grant-making bodies.
‘Don’t we need a professional fund-raiser?’ someone asked. ‘This is a competitive area. Funding is big business.’
‘Fund-raisers command high salaries. I do dislike the idea of paying over a lot to someone before we even start.’
‘We can’t make an appointment of that kind,’ John Lowther said. ‘We simply don’t have the money.’
‘This isn’t something for amateurs – as you say, it’s competitive and it’s time-consuming. A new committee would be drawn from where? Some of us? It’s difficult enough to find time to attend trustees’ meetings every month.’
Everyone spoke, everyone had an opinion, but there were no positive suggestions.
‘Perhaps you’d allow me to reiterate what a really desperate financial situation we find ourselves in.’
Lowther looked round at them all slowly.
‘It ought to focus our minds. It took the effort and will and strength of so many people to build Imogen House – and money. Without that, I doubt if we would be here at all.’
‘We absolutely need to be here,’ Cat said. ‘To lose the services of the hospice is unimaginable. The calls on us are increasing month on month.’
The meeting continued for an hour and a half longer, until everyone was exhausted. They broke up with the decision having been made to establish a separate working party with the sole remit to come up with ways of bringing in money.
Cat was leaving to do a quick ward round before going home when John Lowther beckoned to her.
‘May I have a word? I want to ask your advice.’
She wondered if it had to do with the discovery of Harriet’s body.
‘Have you by any chance met Leo Fison?’
‘I don’t think so. The name doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘Leo is someone I knew years ago. He was a doctor but retired when he had a spell of ill health in his fifties – a cancer but all clear for some time now – and he has been wanting to find a way back into working again, though not in ordinary practice. He inherited some money and he has come down this way – his wife has family in the county. He’s setting up a small care home specifically for people with dementia – no more than eight or so patients at a time. The emphasis, as far as I can gather, is on individual care and one-to-one therapy.’
‘It’s very much needed,’ Cat said. ‘A lot of new work is being done on dementia car
e. There isn’t a cure but some of the ideas are quite positive.’
‘I knew you’d be up to speed with this. I told Leo as much.’
‘Oh?’
‘We were talking about things here. I’d like you to see what he’s doing – the house has been renovated and updated, made fit for purpose. But they plan to take people in quite soon.’
‘Then I should go over. It’s important to see what’s available – people expect an honest report from their doctor.’
‘I did have another thought. Leo will be running the home with his wife, Moira – and of course staff – but I think he will have some free time. He’s always had business interests, via a family firm, as well as being a doctor, but those don’t occupy him much nowadays and he would make a first-rate chairman of our new committee. Leo knows a lot of people.’
‘Not what you know …’
‘Indeed. He has a way with him, lots of contacts, but he’s also new to this part of the world and so without prejudice, if you take my point. That can be a positive asset.’
‘It needs someone with energy and a real commitment to the work of a hospice. Not going to be easy, John.’
‘We should show him round – you’re the best person to do that, I think. Initially I would sound him out – if he says he won’t do it there’d be no point in wasting your time. But if you feel it would be worth my making the approach …?’ He put a hand briefly on her arm. ‘Though you may have someone in mind already. Forgive me.’
‘Absolutely not. I can’t think of anyone who isn’t already very committed.’
‘This is where we miss your mother so much.’
‘People found it hard to say no to her.’
They left the conference room together and then, as she turned to the ward area, Cat glanced at John Lowther’s back as he went down the corridor. He was stooped and walked slowly, as if he had given everything he had to conducting the meeting and, in order to do so, had somehow set aside what had happened, but now, remembering it, he was cowed under the weight of his grief, all over again.
Nine
NOW, SHE HAD said to herself. Do it now. Don’t wait. Don’t dither. You know what you want, you have thought about it, gone into every aspect of it, lain awake thinking about it, written it all down to try and make it even clearer.
You haven’t any doubt and you know what the specialist will say without needing to wait for the appointment and the scan. So tell her now. Ask her now.
Penny’s case at the Crown Court was likely to continue for another week. The amount of evidence, she had told Jocelyn, was considerable and difficult for a jury to follow and there were a larger than usual number of witnesses.
Laying the small table by the French windows for their supper, she wondered again if she ought to have postponed this – not for her own sake but for Penny’s. Was it fair to give her this news and then to tell her what she hoped she would do, while she was the defending barrister in a major criminal trial?
Anyone else would have spared their daughter from all of it for another few weeks. What stopped Jocelyn was Penny herself, the person Penny was. Competent, organised, controlled, frighteningly capable of putting a dozen things into separate compartments of her mind, her emotions, her life, and never letting their boundaries blur. Penny would walk out of the court at the end of each day and set the trial aside, once she had done any reading and preparation for the next day. She would not let it keep her awake, she would not worry about it or dream of it.
That was the only reason Jocelyn was not putting off what she had to say. Penny would be annoyed if she delayed. Penny had stood on her own two feet and fought her own battles, no quarter given and none expected, since she was two years old.
There was home-roasted ham with baked potatoes and salad. Penny did not eat any form of pudding so Jocelyn spooned coffee into the cafetière and took out a bottle of Beaujolais, hesitated, tried to work the corkscrew and failed, as she had guessed she would. Left it for Penny.
Then she went to sit down on the wicker chair in the conservatory. There was a little warmth still left in the sun. This, she thought. There is this and it is now. The minutes were separating themselves and taking on a new significance.
‘Are you out there?’
Penny. Tall. Hair pulled back so tightly it gave her a facelift. Wide-apart eyes. The eyes she got from her father, like the colouring, but where had the height come from? Jocelyn supposed it was useful, for a woman barrister in court.
She loved Penny. But she had never felt entirely comfortable with her, always been anxious to keep her happy, not to annoy her, since she was a child – kowtowing to her, she sometimes thought. Not that Penny had been spoiled, or had tantrums if she had not got her own way, but she had had an air of seeing through her mother, seeing through an argument, seeing through a fudge or an evasion, a rationality about her from the start. Jocelyn had been head of a Civil Service department for years, as competent and authoritative in her sphere as Penny, but the moment she arrived home that authority had always seemed to fall away. When she retired, it had gone altogether, though when alone she felt confident enough. She had done an Open University degree, then an MPhil, and had planned to continue, until she had woken one morning wondering why and could find no satisfactory reason. Since then, she had felt increasingly overtaken by her daughter, overtaken and overlooked, she occasionally thought in self-pity.
‘Did the carpet people come?’ she asked now as Penny came through with a glass of wine for them both.
‘They did, all sorted. I realised I never liked the colour of the old one anyway. Thank you, Mother.’
‘I didn’t do much. Once I’d found the cleaning firm and the carpet people …’
‘All the same.’ Penny raised her glass.
‘How’s the case?’
She shrugged. Talk about it, Jocelyn willed her, talk about the case, the court, the jury, what you think the outcome might be. Talk.
‘Did you see the doctor?’
Jocelyn got up. ‘I’ll just put the ham on the table. Could you get the potatoes out of the lower oven?’
‘Don’t change the subject, Mother.’
‘I wasn’t. I was postponing it. I’m rather hungry.’
Postponing it. Yes.
‘Anyway, did you?’
‘Let me say what I have to say when I want to say it, which is not yet. I want to eat.’
Penny held up her hands.
The sun still shone. They took coffee into the conservatory. Two comfortable chairs. A neighbouring cat. An early butterfly.
‘The doctor,’ Penny said.
Now that it had come, she felt entirely calm. And quite sure.
‘I have motor neurone disease,’ she said.
She had not imagined Penny’s immediate reaction but would have assumed a moment’s silence to digest the information and then a battery of questions and cross-questions, requests for second opinions, statement of medical options. Penny had been born with a lawyer’s mind.
Instead, after a split second, she simply burst into silent tears. Jocelyn was so taken aback she got up and went into the kitchen, where she stood looking out onto the bricks of the side wall, counting them, making her eyes trace the lines of mortar – along, down, across, down, down, along …
Penny would need the time to compose herself. She had not, to Jocelyn’s knowledge, cried since childhood and the circumstances that might make her do so were unimaginable, other than in reaction to sheer physical pain.
But when she went back, Penny was still sitting with tears on her cheeks, head bent. Jocelyn put her hand tentatively on her shoulder.
‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of any other way but to – tell you.’
‘Oh, it’s the only way.’
‘Yes.’
She sat down and poured them both more coffee. Waited. A small breeze rustled the bushes.
‘What did Dr Deerbon say? What has to be done?’
‘A scan. I see the neurologist
. But Dr Deerbon knew. And I knew the minute she ruled out both arthritis and MS. Then, as soon as I got home, I looked up the symptoms.’
‘Mother …’ A flash of the usual Penny.
‘I know, I know. I’m not a fool.’
‘It’s the worst thing I can imagine. Worse than cancer, worse than – anything. I knew a brief with it when I was a student. He taught us for a couple of terms, constitutional law, he was brilliant. Just a couple of terms.’
‘Drink your coffee.’
‘I’ll move back here of course.’
‘You will do no such thing.’
‘We won’t argue.’
‘We will argue.’
‘Of course I must.’
‘Neither of us could stand it, as you well know. Besides …’
‘Well, you couldn’t stand being in a home.’
‘I could not.’
‘You would hate having a stranger living in here.’
‘Yes.’
‘So …’ Penny waved a dismissive hand. The tears had stopped now. She blew her nose. Drank her coffee. ‘What’s happening to you at the moment?’
Jocelyn smiled. The cross-examination.
‘A few irritating things.’
‘Irritating?’
Jocelyn did not reply. She was trying to compose the next sentence which would somehow tell, explain, ask, defend – all in the same few words. But there were none. Penny was looking at her, eyes tearless now, the usual faintly challenging expression back, and for a second, Jocelyn thought that she would neither tell nor ask after all, would find someone else. Who else? She lacked courage not in the face of her decision but of her daughter’s reaction.
‘The sun’s gone,’ she said. ‘Are you cold?’
‘No. Is that a symptom? Feeling cold?’
‘I don‘t know. I suppose it may be eventually. If one can’t move …’
‘How long does it take to develop? Did the doctor say?’
‘I’ve read –’
‘Not Google. The doctor.’
‘I have to see the neurologist, I told you.’