The Hidden

by Sally Spencer

  ‘You’re a widow, I take it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And was your husband alive when you made the move?’

  ‘No, he’d already passed on.’

  Meadows clicked her tongue sympathetically. ‘How brave of you to make the move entirely on your own,’ she said. ‘Your arthritis – it is arthritis you’ve got, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your arthritis must have come on you very suddenly, then – say, in the last two or three years – mustn’t it?’

  It was plain from the look on the old woman’s face that she was contemplating agreeing with Meadows, but then seemed to decide it would be safer to stick to the truth and said, ‘No, it wasn’t the last two or three years – I’ve been suffering from it for much longer than that.’

  ‘Well, I do call that extra brave of you, moving to somewhere new – somewhere a couple of hundred miles from home – when you already had arthritis. Still, I assume you must already have had lots of friends in Whitebridge before you even arrived.’

  Again, there was the temptation to agree, and once more Mrs Brown decided it was wiser not to.

  ‘I didn’t know anybody from around here,’ she admitted.

  ‘Oh,’ Meadows said, sounding both puzzled and troubled. ‘So what made you move?’

  ‘I felt like a change.’

  ‘And fortunately, you’d no sooner arrived than Mary Green was knocking on your door and offering to look after you when the home helps couldn’t,’ Meadows said brightly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It wasn’t Mary in those days. It was another girl.’

  ‘And what was her name?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Please try, just for me.’

  ‘I’m an old woman, and I can’t remember.’

  ‘Doesn’t really matter,’ Meadows said, in an almost carefree manner. ‘Can you remember how the girls – Mary and the one before her – found out about you? Was it through the social services department? Or was it some other organization – like the Salvation Army?’

  ‘I want you both to leave,’ the old woman said with sudden, surprising firmness.

  ‘If I’ve done something to offend you, then I’m most terribly sorry, but you can’t blame me for being curious, can you?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘I want you to leave,’ the old woman repeated. ‘I want you to leave right now.’

  ‘I can’t believe what just happened in there,’ Higgins said, once they were out on the street again. ‘There was I, trying to talk to a witness who may have had valuable information, and you got us thrown out.’

  ‘You’ve not missed anything,’ Meadows said. ‘If she did have any valuable information, she certainly wasn’t about to share it with you.’

  ‘I don’t even know where you were hoping to go with that odd line of questioning,’ Higgins complained. ‘You don’t think the old woman killed Mary Green, do you?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t,’ Meadows said, ‘but you must surely have noticed that not only are Mr and Mrs Green and Mrs Brown all weird, but they’re weird in more or less the same way.’

  ‘The fact that they haven’t got televisions, and seem to share a poor taste in interior decoration, doesn’t mean that any of them had anything to do with the murder, does it?’ Higgins asked.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Meadows agreed, ‘but the more we understand where Mary Green was coming from, the greater our chances of working out how she ended up as she did.’

  ‘That’s a bit deep for a hardworking, straightforward bobby like me,’ Higgins said. ‘Do you want to go back to headquarters now?’

  ‘You can, if you like,’ Meadows said easily.

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘I think I should go and have a talk to this Roger Smith, who John Green claims he was playing Diplomacy with all day yesterday, but there’s no reason why you should come along and waste the time of two detective sergeants.’

  And that was probably how it started with Paniatowski’s team, Higgins thought. They announced, quite casually, that they were off to follow a lead which they didn’t think was going to lead them anywhere, and before you knew it, they’d got the case solved and were hogging all the glory.

  ‘I think I’ll come with you,’ Higgins said.

  Meadows shrugged. ‘Please yourself.’

  She sounded indifferent – but was that any more than pretence?

  Higgins glanced down at his watch. ‘Do you think your Mr Smith will be at home at this time of day?’ he asked.

  ‘If my theory’s correct, he’s almost bound to be,’ Meadows said, enigmatically.

  She is back in the woods again. She still doesn’t know why she’s there – or why it’s important that she knows why she’s there – but she knows it does matter, and that’s progress of a sort.

  It’s not the same woods that she was in the last time. It’s not a Polish forest at all, but a quintessentially English wood. And since she knows the word quintessentially, she must be quite old, because it’s certainly not a word that the young Monika – light enough and small enough to be lifted through the air and share a saddle with her father – would ever have known.

  It had been light in the Polish woods – shafts of sunlight filtered magically through the trees, and it was not difficult to believe that, hidden just out of sight, wood nymphs were going about their fairy business.

  These woods are dark – the natural home of trolls and goblins – and somewhere in the distance there is the sound of the sort of music which, while it may not actually belong to the devil, is certainly devoid of holiness.

  Suddenly, she comes across two men – dirty, smelly men – squatting down in a clearing, counting out money.

  Then, before she knows what is happening, these two men are holding her down, pressing her into the ground and a third – equally repulsive – is entering her with brutal disregard.

  She can feel the man thrusting away inside her, but she is also outside her own body, observing the process at a distance.

  This is when it happened, she tells herself – this is when Philip and Thomas were conceived.

  She feels both shame and horror, and yet the overwhelming feeling is one of disappointment.

  She is not here to relive the rape, any more than she had been in the forest to see her dead father. These are things of the past, and her purpose in being there now is very much to do with the present.

  Yet she still has no idea what that purpose is.

  SEVEN

  Roger Smith – the supposed Diplomacy player – lived in Inkerman Street, which was about midway between Balaclava Street and Sebastopol Street. Like the Greens and Mrs Brown, he lived in a terraced house, and like them, he had a front door that was painted navy blue.

  ‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’ Meadows asked, as they stood on the pavement outside the house.

  ‘Doesn’t what strike me as odd?’ Higgins said.

  ‘That all the houses we’ve visited have front doors of exactly the same colour?’

  Higgins laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Meadows wondered.

  ‘There’s an old joke about the lady researcher from London who comes to find what life “up north” is like,’ Higgins said. ‘Anyway, she’s walking down this back alley, and she sees this tiny little house, so she knocks on the door. “Yes?” says a girl’s voice from inside. “Will you let me in?” the researcher asks. “I can’t,” the girl says, “I’m busy.” So the researcher asks if she can ask the questions through the door, and the girl says that will be all right. “How many people live in your house?” the researcher asks. “There’s me, me mam, me dad, and me three sisters,” the girl says. The researcher steps to one side, so she can get a better look at the house. It can’t be more than four feet wide and ten feet deep, yet somehow, six people manage to live in it. “And me granny, and me granddad, and me auntie,” the girl continues. Ten people – six of them grown
-ups. It doesn’t seem possible. Then the researcher feels a tap on her shoulder, and when she turns round she finds herself facing a woman who not only looks angry, but has her hands on her hips – which, as you might realize, is a sign that she’s really pissed off. “If you don’t mind,” this woman says, “I’d like you to explain exactly what you think you’re doing loitering in front of our lavatory”.’ DS Higgins chuckled again. ‘It wasn’t where they lived, you see, love – it was only their shit house.’

  ‘And the point of that story is that I’m an off-comer who has no idea how things are done in Whitebridge?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Well, exactly,’ Higgins agreed. ‘Of course, it’s always possible the front doors are painted blue to identify the people inside as members of a wife-swapping ring, but the idea of sticking my thing into Mrs Green’s withered old—’

  ‘Get to the point,’ Meadows snapped.

  ‘How dare you talk to me like that!’ Higgins said. ‘I’m the senior sergeant here, and I demand my right to be treated with the proper respect.’

  Except that it didn’t quite come out like that.

  Because though those were the words that were formed in his mind, somewhere between there and his mouth, his instinct stepped in and warned him that Meadows wouldn’t like it, and that his heart, stomach and spleen were quite worried about how she might react.

  So that when the message did finally emerge, what Higgins said on behalf of his various body parts was, ‘Keep your shirt on, DS Meadows – I’m getting round to it.’

  ‘No hurry,’ Meadows said, with all the sarcasm inherent in native Whitebridge wit.

  ‘One of this town’s biggest industries is paint,’ Higgins explained. ‘Monarch paints have a worldwide reputation for quality – but despite how fresh the paintwork looks in this town, not much of it is sold here.’

  ‘Because it’s knocked off,’ Meadows guessed.

  ‘Because it’s knocked off,’ Higgins agreed. ‘And as soon as it is knocked off, you’ll find some wide boy selling it from door to door, at bargain prices. Only you don’t have a choice of colours, you take whatever colour has been “liberated”, so some years, everybody’s using claret, and other years it’s navy blue.’

  ‘Well, it was worth a shot, at least,’ Meadows said philosophically. She knocked on the navy blue front door. ‘Let’s see what our Mr Smith has to say for himself.’

  The man who answered her knock was five feet ten inches tall, and around forty-five years old. Meadows did not judge men by their looks – it was their ability to be moderately cruel which drew her to them – but she had to concede that Smith was quite a handsome man.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, come on now, Mr Smith, don’t pretend to be taken so completely by surprise – you must have been expecting our call!’ Meadows said, holding up her warrant card.

  ‘Actually, I wasn’t expecting your call,’ Smith said. ‘Since I didn’t know Mary Green, I could see no reason for you making one. As a matter of fact, I still can’t.’

  ‘You don’t know Mary Green, but you know her brother, John,’ Meadows said.

  ‘Yes, that’s true enough,’ Smith conceded.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind if we came inside for a few minutes, would you, sir?’ Higgins asked.

  ‘As a matter of fact I would mind,’ Smith told him. ‘I’ve got a great deal to get through today, and since I’m satisfied in my own mind that I can’t be of any real help to you—’

  ‘We have reason to believe these premises are being used for immoral purposes,’ Higgins said.

  ‘How dare you?’ Smith demanded, proving, by the expression on his face, that he did outrage extremely well. ‘On what basis would you ever think of making such a statement?’

  Higgins shrugged. ‘You spent last Sunday cloistered with three young men,’ he said. ‘You really should be able to work out what I’m basing my suspicions on for yourself.’

  ‘That was perfectly innocent,’ Smith protested, ‘we were playing Diplomacy.’

  ‘Maybe you were, but what I’ve learned is that if you want to get a search warrant for somebody’s house, you’ve only to whisper the word “pervert” to the issuing magistrate.’ Higgins shook his head sagely. ‘Magistrates are very conventional people, and they really don’t like perverts, you know.’

  ‘Do you actually think I’m a pervert?’ Smith asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Higgins admitted. ‘I’m sort of standing on the borderline at the moment – teetering on a knife edge, as you might say. I think it’s more than possible that you could persuade me you’re not a pervert, but if you haven’t got the time …’

  ‘I suppose you’d better come in,’ Smith said, bowing to the inevitable.

  The first thing they noticed as they stepped into the hallway was a large red suitcase.

  ‘Are you planning to go away, Mr Smith?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Yes, my mother’s not well, but it’s not serious, and I only expect to be away for a few days,’ Smith said.

  ‘It’s a big suitcase for a few days.’

  ‘It’s the only one I own – I don’t travel much.’

  Smith turned the handle on the parlour door, and pushed the door open. ‘Go inside. I’ll make some tea.’

  ‘That’s all right, sir, we don’t want any tea,’ Meadows said.

  ‘But I do,’ Smith told her.

  As they entered their third parlour of the day, Meadows had a pretty good idea of what to expect, and was not disappointed. In this parlour, the pictures on the walls were of boxers, and the ornaments on the mantelpiece were racing cars, but once again, this seemed like a film set (and a rather old-fashioned one) rather than being somewhere that someone actually lived. But here, at least, there was one difference – unlike the Greens and Mrs Brown, Mr Smith actually had a television set.

  Smith returned with the tea tray. He looked first at Meadows, then around the room, and finally back at Meadows again.

  He didn’t really want tea at all, Meadows thought, with a sudden burst of insight. What he wanted to do was to give us the opportunity to see how normal his home is.

  ‘Take a seat,’ Smith said.

  ‘We’d prefer to stand, sir,’ Higgins said. ‘Keeps the whole business on an official footing, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Very well,’ Smith said, discarding the tea tray – which was no longer of use to anyone, now it had served its purpose – on a low occasional table.

  ‘So you say that John Green and two other boys were playing Diplomacy in here all day Sunday,’ Higgins said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And no one ever left the house at all.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Not even to eat?’

  ‘No. I made us a big plate of sandwiches before the game began, but it all got so exciting that half of them were still left at the end.’

  It was one of those little details, Meadows thought, that people insert into their conversation because they think it gives it an air of authenticity. Sometimes that worked, and sometimes it didn’t. This time, it definitely didn’t work for her.

  ‘Who won in the end?’ Higgins asked casually.

  It was still remotely possible that Smith was telling the truth, Meadows thought, but if he wasn’t, he certainly wasn’t going to be tripped up by as simple a trick as that.

  ‘Nobody won,’ Smith said. ‘The game wasn’t completed. We were going to finish it off next week, but now that John’s sister has been murdered, I expect that will never happen.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you don’t play with men of your own age,’ Higgins said.

  ‘If I knew any men of my own age who wanted to play the game, then I would gladly play with them,’ Smith said. ‘What you seem to fail to understand, sergeant, is that the players are not important to me beyond the fact that they are willing to play the game. I’d play with chimpanzees, if they could learn the rules and turned out to be worthy opponents.’
r />   ‘So you’re a fanatic,’ Higgins said, smiling.

  ‘I suppose I am,’ Smith agreed, returning the smile.

  ‘But how did you find out the other three were also fanatics?’ Higgins said, springing what he fondly imagined to be yet another trap.

  ‘I don’t recall saying they were fanatics,’ Smith countered.

  ‘Surely, if they’re prepared to stay here all day Sunday, playing one game, then they must be.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Smith agreed, ‘but as I’ve already explained, I tend not to think of my opponents as people at all.’

  ‘Then how do you think about them?’

  ‘As threats.’

  ‘That is interesting,’ Higgins said. ‘Well, that’s just about it.’ He turned towards the door, then stopped himself. ‘Though now I think about it, you still haven’t answered the question I asked earlier.’

  ‘And what question might that be?’ Smith wondered.

  ‘How did you first make contact with these three lads?’ Higgins said.

  ‘Through an advertisement in a gaming magazine,’ Smith said.

  ‘Are there such things?’ Higgins wondered, looking at Meadows and inviting her to comment.

  ‘There are at least half a dozen I could name, and probably a lot more,’ Meadows told him.

  Higgins sighed. ‘You said you were going away for a few days, Mr Smith,’ he said. ‘Not too far, I hope?’

  ‘No, just to Skipton.’

  ‘Well, that’s not far at all. We’ll need the address you’re staying at, of course.’

  An innocent man would have given his address immediately, Meadows thought, and a guilty man would have refused without a second thought. But there was a class between them – the man who was not quite sure how guilty he was – who would hesitate before agreeing, and that was what Smith did now.

  Once he had the address, Higgins seemed willing to leave, but Meadows said, ‘I have a few questions of my own, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Do I have to answer them?’ Smith asked, playing the all-fellers-together card by addressing the question to Higgins.

  ‘I’d certainly advise you to,’ Higgins said, displaying absolutely no sign of either support or sympathy.