‘That would be great for publicity,’ said Joe.
‘It would be rather nice for me too,’ said Max.
‘Are you still in Brighton?’ said Wilbur. ‘I was brought up near there. A little place called Rottingdean.’
‘I know it well,’ said Max who, in truth, usually drove as fast as he could past Rottingdean with its picturesque village pond and plethora of genteel tea rooms.
‘I know Rottingdean,’ said Bobby unexpectedly. ‘I used to spend my holidays near there. In Peacehaven.’
‘No one goes on holiday to Peacehaven,’ said Wilbur.
‘I did,’ said Bobby, with unruffled affability. ‘I had an aunt who lived there.’
‘It’s the sort of place where aunts live,’ said Max, accepting the inevitable and ordering a dry martini.
Aunts also seemed to proliferate in Seaford, a coastal town between Brighton and Eastbourne. Meg’s Auntie Maureen lived there and, she learnt in the course of the drive, so did DI Willis’s Auntie Doreen.
‘I wonder why,’ said Meg, watching out of the window as the art deco roofs of Saltdean gave way to the grey, gridlike streets of Peacehaven.
‘No hills,’ said the DI immediately. ‘Not like Brighton. The beach is flat too. Auntie Doreen likes to swim in the sea from April to October.’
‘I don’t know what Auntie Maureen likes to do,’ said Meg. ‘Drink stout and bet on the horses probably.’
Unexpectedly the DI laughed. ‘She sounds good company anyway. When we visited as children Auntie Doreen used to read aloud to us from the Bible. We hated it.’
‘Oh, Catholics never read the Bible,’ said Maureen. ‘We go to the pub in the evenings instead.’
Once again she’d said too much (and mentioned the C word). The DI’s ears went red and he lapsed into silence.
Susan Blake, Sara Henratty’s Auntie Sue, lived in a block of flats on the coast road. Today the view was enchanting—blue water topped with little white waves, a yacht with red sails on the horizon—but Meg wondered how cosy it would be on a winter’s night when the wind howled in from the sea.
Susan Blake was also older than she had imagined, a white-haired woman in her seventies, at least. She must be Sara’s great-aunt, Meg decided.
‘Good morning,’ said the DI. ‘I’m DI Willis and this is WPC Connolly. Could we come in for a minute?’
Mrs Blake looked surprised but ushered them into a neat sitting room with a window full of the sea and sky. The DI and Meg sat side by side on an upright sofa while Susan faced them from the rocking chair which was obviously where she sat each evening, her knitting and a pair of binoculars (for birdwatching?) on a table within arm’s reach.
‘We’re very sorry,’ said the DI, ‘but we’ve got bad news about your niece Sara.’
‘Sara?’ said Susan, as if she didn’t recognise the name.
‘Your niece, Sara Henratty. I regret to tell you that she was found dead last night.’
‘We’re so sorry,’ said Meg, before the DI could say ‘regret’ again. ‘This must be such a shock.’
‘Sara,’ said Susan, this time as if it registered with her. ‘Bernadette’s daughter. I haven’t seen her since she was a child. What happened to her?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ said the DI, ‘but we’re treating her death as suspicious.’
‘Suspicious? Does that mean someone killed her?’
‘We don’t know yet,’ said Meg, ‘but when we do you’ll be the first to know.’
‘Born to trouble,’ said Susan, her eyes beginning to fill. ‘Just like her mother.’
‘Bernadette?’ said Meg.
‘Yes, my niece Bernadette. She was a lovely girl. So pretty, she could have been an actress or a model. But she got in with a bad sort. He left her pregnant and went off somewhere. No one knows where. Bernadette wouldn’t give the baby up though. She used to take in sewing to make a living. But then she died. TB. Such an awful illness. Sara would have been eleven then, I think.’
‘And what happened to Sara?’ said Meg, although she thought she knew.
‘She went into care, as they call it,’ said Susan. ‘I couldn’t take her in. I’m too old and I’ve got a bad heart. Sara lived with foster parents and then in a children’s home.’
‘Did you ever visit her?’ said Meg, trying not to make this sound like an accusation.
‘No,’ said Susan. ‘They said, the social workers, that Sara shouldn’t see anyone from her old life. It would help her adjust, they said. I used to send her cards on her birthday though.’
‘The children’s home had you down as next-of-kin,’ said Meg. She wondered how true it was about the social workers telling Susan not to visit. Maybe it was just more convenient to believe that. But looking at the old lady now, sitting in her rocking chair, dabbing at her eyes, Meg felt a rush of pity. It would have been hard to take on a young girl who had just lost her mother.
‘Her father’s her real next-of-kin, I suppose,’ said Susan. ‘But no one knows where he is. In prison, I expect.’
‘What was his name?’ asked the DI. ‘Was it Henratty?’
‘Yes,’ said Susan. ‘Bernadette gave the baby his name although they never married.’ Her lips pursed in disapproval. ‘Malcolm Henratty. Malc, that’s what he called himself. I met him once. Bernadette brought him here to meet me. She adored him but you could see he was a bad ’un. Charming enough but rotten inside.’
DI Willis took a note of the name. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘you’ve been very helpful.’
‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’ said Meg. ‘You’ve had a shock. Is there anyone who could come in and sit with you?’
‘I’m all right, dear,’ said Susan. ‘At my age you get used to bad news.’
Thirteen
Edgar wasn’t a fan of Surrey. He had been brought up in Esher which, to his parents, had seemed liked paradise but to Edgar had often felt like a prison, a tidy prison surrounded by privet hedges and smelling of roast lamb on Sundays. After his father died, his mother had stayed on in their house, laying the table for one every day and living a life of bravely managed disappointment. Then, unexpectedly, three years ago she had married again, to Colonel Brian Cooper-Smith, a florid gentleman she had met at the library, Rose inspecting the romances for unnecessary displays of affection and the colonel checking a recent military history for mentions of himself. Edgar had found himself liking his new stepfather. Brian was a large, noisy, generous man with no time for subtleties; Edgar sometimes imagined him as an elephant at a watering hole, the nuances of family life simply washing over him in a muddy tide. Rose seemed happy and his mother’s marriage meant that Edgar no longer felt guilty about not visiting her enough. Rose had sold the family home and moved in with her new husband. They still lived in Esher, in a square twenties house on the edge of the golf course. Visits there were surprisingly jolly. Brian got on well with the girls and played cricket with them in the garden or took them for drives in his opulent pre-war Rolls Royce. Emma and Rose, after initial mutual suspicion, now maintained a fairly easy relationship, as long as Emma confined her conversation to praise of Edgar and stories about the children. Edgar liked the new house with its conservatory and view of the thirteenth hole. It had none of the depressing memories of the bungalow and even Jonathan’s picture, still in pride of place on the mantelpiece, only gave him a momentary, and almost comforting, twinge of sorrow.
Crispian and Valerie Miles lived in Weybridge, only fifteen minutes away from Esher, and their house initially reminded Edgar of the colonel’s hacienda. It had the same solid, complacent look, as if it had every right to take up its acreage of land. Unlike the colonel’s house, though, Green Lawns was mock-Tudor in style, with mullioned windows and a lot of unnecessary timbering. The door was opened by a maid, unusual enough these days, but this one was actually wearing a uniform. She gave Edgar an unfriendly look (he didn’t blame her) and asked him to wait in ‘the parlour’. Edgar had to stop himself muttering ‘said the spider to
the fly’. There was something web-like about the shadow of the mullions on the green wallpaper. Or prison-like.
Crispian Miles entered the room like a whirlwind, the window panes rattling as he flung back the door.
‘Why are you here? Have you found Rhonda?’
‘Is Lady Miles in?’ It was partly to see the elusive Lady Miles that he had come all this way.
‘She’s resting. What’s this all about?’
‘I’m afraid we haven’t found Rhonda.’ Better say this straight out. ‘But the body of a girl has been found in the Brighton area. We think there might be a link to Rhonda’s disappearance.’
‘A link? What do you mean?’
‘The girl, Sara Henratty, was wearing a Roedean cloak with Rhonda’s nametag inside.’
‘She was wearing Rhonda’s cloak? Why?’
‘I don’t know. It’s obviously a line of investigation. Do you know if Rhonda was acquainted with a girl named Sara Henratty?’
‘Sara what?’ Sir Crispian’s voice rose in incredulity. Edgar was about to repeat the name when Sir Crispian suddenly raised his hand and tilted his head, as if listening. Edgar heard footsteps, light childlike footsteps, coming down the stairs and then the door opened and a voice said, ‘Why are you shouting, Crispian?’
Lady Miles. At last.
She was a tall woman, a head taller than her husband, but very thin, almost emaciated. She was dressed in what may have been a dressing gown or a housecoat, floor-length embroidered silk. It made her look as if she’d come from a different century altogether.
‘Go back to bed, Valerie,’ said Crispian, but in a gentle voice. In fact, Edgar had not thought that the irascible MP could sound like that.
‘But why are you shouting?’ said Valerie. ‘Is it Rho Rho? Have you found her?’ She said it in a vague way, as if Rhonda had been playing hide-and-seek.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Edgar. ‘I’m Superintendent Edgar Stephens from the Brighton Police.’
‘A policeman!’ Valerie backed away, her hand to her throat. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s nothing to be alarmed about . . .’ Edgar began.
But Valerie had turned to her husband in terror. ‘Is he going to arrest me?’
‘No, dear.’ Crispian moved forwards but his wife backed away further, her eyes still on Edgar.
‘He’s a policeman. He’s going to arrest me for losing Rhonda.’
For losing her? Trying to make his voice sound reassuring, Edgar said, ‘I’m simply here to give you some information, Lady Miles. It’s nothing to be alarmed about.’
Valerie Miles came closer and put her hand on Edgar’s sleeve. Her fingers were almost skeletal but their grip was like a vice. ‘I let her walk home alone,’ she said. ‘What sort of a mother does that? She was meant to be with a friend but they quarrelled. Rhonda’s quick-tempered, like her father. Then he took her. That man. And he’s taken her again, hasn’t he?’
She must be talking about the first kidnapping attempt, when Rhonda was abducted on her way home from her ballet class. ‘Ernest Coggins is in prison,’ said Edgar. ‘He hasn’t taken Rhonda. We think this is the work of someone else entirely and we’re working flat out to find them. To find Rhonda.’
‘Valerie . . .’ Crispian put his arm round his wife. ‘The police will find her. Superintendent Stephens is a clever man. The very best. He’ll bring her back to us.’
Despite everything, Edgar wished that he could get this glowing reference in writing. Crispian was looking at his wife with tender affection—again, Edgar was surprised that the MP’s features could even form themselves into such an expression—but Valerie spun round and her face was a mask of fury.
‘You did this!’ she screamed at her husband. ‘This is all your fault. You killed Rhonda.’
Meg and the DI drove back in a silence, which lasted until Newhaven. The bridge was up which meant they had to wait in a line of cars, watching a tall sailing ship glide past, like an emissary from another age. Meg wondered if she ought to make some casual conversational remark (but what?) when DI Willis said, ‘It’s sad, isn’t it? A young girl has died and there’s no one who really mourns her.’
This was so much what Meg had been thinking earlier that she turned to look at the DI, his familiar profile serious as he stared straight ahead. Was it possible that DI Willis also had human feelings? This was a new idea altogether.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was thinking the same thing. I’m one of seven. If I went missing there would be plenty of people to notice. It’s as if Sara just slipped out of sight and no one really cared. That woman, Susan, she wasn’t a bad sort—and she’d obviously been fond of Sara’s mother in her way—but she didn’t really care, not in the way a mother would care.’
She wondered if she’d said too much but the DI said, still not looking at her, ‘I wonder if we’ll ever trace the father. Not that he seemed to bother about his daughter when she was alive.’
‘That seems wrong too,’ said Meg. ‘Imagine having a daughter and not knowing about her.’ Too late, she remembered that this was the story with the super’s famous friend, Max Mephisto. He was the father of the TV star, Ruby Magic, and hadn’t known of her existence until they were both mixed up in the Conjurer Killer case. She couldn’t remember who had told her this bit of gossip. She thought it might have been Sergeant O’Neill.
‘Sara was such a pretty girl too,’ said the DI, moving the car forward. ‘Not that that’s significant in any way,’ he added hastily.
‘What if it is significant?’ said Meg.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you remember what Susan said about Bernadette, Sara’s mother? She said she was so pretty that she could have been an actress or a model. Sara obviously took after her. Well, when I was in London, undercover with the Bobby Soxers, two of them said that Rhonda had been approached by a man who said that she should be a model. It’s in my report.’
‘Yes,’ said the DI, in a way that made Meg think that he hadn’t read it.
‘What if there’s a man going round telling young girls that they could be models? Then he lures them away and kills them. That could have happened to the nurse, Louise, too.’
‘You’re right,’ said the DI, almost sounding excited. ‘Did you get a description of the man who spoke to Rhonda?’
‘No,’ said Meg. ‘I suppose I’ll have to go undercover again.’
By lunchtime, Emma could bear it no longer. She had waited up for Edgar to come in last night but all he’d told her was that a girl’s body had been found and they thought it was one of the missing girls, Sara Henratty. He also told her that Sara had been wearing Rhonda’s cape. ‘So I was right,’ Emma couldn’t help saying, ‘the two cases are linked.’ ‘Yes,’ Edgar had said heavily, ‘you were right.’ He had looked so sad and reproachful that Emma hadn’t wanted to ask more.
All morning she had thought that he might ring to tell her the latest developments. She had even rung through to the station to be told that the superintendent was ‘away from his desk’. ‘Where is he?’ she’d asked. ‘Surrey,’ replied Rita, Edgar’s secretary, in the repressive tone that she seemed to reserve for Emma.
So there was a lead important enough to be chased by the superintendent himself and Emma didn’t know about it. She put the phone down and looked at Jonathan who was sitting happily in his playpen, banging a saucepan with a spoon. Edgar didn’t like him to be in the pen (something to do with finding a dead body in one years ago) but it was impossible to get anything done with a baby crawling all over the place. Emma almost dreaded the day that he learnt to walk. Marianne and Sophie had done this at ten months but everyone said that boys were slower at reaching the milestones.
‘Come on, Johnny,’ she said now. ‘We’re going on a trip.’
It was a pain bumping the pushchair down the front steps but at least it was better than the pram, which needed a turning circle bigger than the Queen Mary. Emma walked briskly to the seafront and caught a
bus to Rottingdean. Once again, it was a palaver getting the pushchair on board but the conductor was helpful and, once installed in a seat, with Johnny on her lap, Emma enjoyed the journey, the sea on one side, Regency houses on the other, giving way to the golf course and then to Roedean itself. When they passed the school, Emma could see girls playing lacrosse on the front field. She’d hated lacrosse but now she felt a wave of nostalgia so strong that she almost felt sick. Or maybe it was the diesel fumes from the bus.
At Rottingdean the conductor helped her lift the pushchair off the bus and said goodbye with a cheery, ‘See you later, alligator.’ Why did that remind her of something? She crossed the road and pushed the buggy down the ramp beside the White Horse pub.
The tide was out, exposing chalk rocks interspersed with limpid blue pools. Johnny strained at the straps of his pushchair and Emma vowed to take him on the beach. There was nothing Jonathan liked more than getting thoroughly wet. But she had something to do first. A section of the undercliff walk was cordoned off with police tape and sitting on a wall opposite, eating chips out of newspaper, were Sam Collins and a man whom Emma vaguely recognised.
‘Well,’ Sam greeted her, ‘if it isn’t the great detective herself.’
‘Just out for a walk,’ said Emma.
‘Of course,’ said Sam. ‘Of course you’d take a bus all the way to Rottingdean just to walk past the place where a body was found last night. Makes perfect sense.’
Emma ignored this. She was looking at the crime scene, a square of concrete by the foot of the cliff. The chalk had been shored up with bricks which reached to about seven foot and embedded in this wall was a green wooden door, padlocked shut.
‘What’s behind the door?’ said Emma.
‘Apparently it’s an old smugglers’ tunnel,’ said the man, who was offering Johnny a chip. ‘But it’s been locked up for years.’
‘Emma, you know Harry Payne, the press photographer, don’t you?’ said Sam.
‘I think we’ve met before,’ said Emma. They shook hands. Harry was a tall man with pale blue eyes and colourless hair, receding slightly at the temples. Emma thought she recognised him but he was the sort of man who faded into the background. Perhaps that was necessary for his job.
Now You See Them Page 9