‘No, worse luck. With my annoying little sister.’
‘Well, stick to your annoying little sister like glue. This man might be dangerous. I’m going to have to tell the local police.’
‘I won’t get into trouble, will I?’ Isabel sounded worried for the first time.
‘No. You haven’t done anything wrong.’ Apart from truanting from school, thought Meg. But she hoped that Isabel’s parents would understand if the whole story came out. ‘Thank you very much for letting me know. You may have helped solve the case.’
‘Really?’ Now the buoyant note was back in Isabel’s voice. Maybe Meg could convert her from super fan to super sleuth. She hoped so.
Meg knocked on the super’s door, feeling rather daring. She should tell the DI but he was out on another case. O’Neill and Barker were also out and, besides, she didn’t want to share her news with them. The super had said she was a valued member of the team and here was another chance to show her worth.
‘Come in.’
Superintendent Stephens was at his desk, an open copy of the Evening Argus in front of him. He shut the paper when he saw Meg, as if he was ashamed of being caught reading it.
‘I’ve had a phone call, sir,’ said Meg, thinking how grand the words sounded. ‘I think it might be important.’
The super obviously did think it was important. He didn’t jump up and start issuing orders because he wasn’t that sort of man. But he listened to her very seriously and wrote down what she said in his notebook.
‘Well done,’ he said, when she’d finished. ‘That could be a very important lead. Shows how valuable it was to win the trust of those girls.’
‘Do you think Isabel could be in danger?’
‘She needs to be very careful. I’m glad you told her not to leave the house on her own. I’ve got a friend in London, an inspector at Scotland Yard. I’ll get him to check it out. We need to have the Met on the lookout for this man. It’s a pity we don’t have a better description of him.’
‘“He was just a man”, that’s what Isabel said at first. Later on she said he was “tallish and oldish”. And she’s so short that anyone looks tall to her.’
The super didn’t laugh at this, as she’d hoped. Instead he said, ‘And he had an American accent. Is that right?’
‘That’s what the girls said. It’s what made Rhonda think he was genuine. And Peanuts, Percy McDonald, he said that Sara had been approached by a man who said that she should be a model. He had an American accent too.’
‘Half the young people in England put on American accents these days,’ said the super, sounding about a hundred. ‘Just like the singers on Top of the Pops.’
‘Do you watch Top of the Pops?’ Meg didn’t have a television set but she often listened to Radio Caroline with Aisling. The thought of actually watching the Beatles, rather than just hearing them, seemed almost unbelievably exciting.
‘When I can’t avoid it,’ said the super. He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘It’s a shame that we’ll be so busy this weekend, with the bank holiday and the mods and rockers. Otherwise I’d send you up to London to guard the girl.’
‘I could still go,’ said Meg. She loved the idea of being a bodyguard.
‘No, I need you here. We’ve got reports of thousands of youths converging on Brighton. It’ll be utter madness.’
Meg thought it sounded quite exciting.
‘Maybe I should go to London,’ she said. ‘I could be the bait. Maybe he’d try to abduct me.’ She didn’t really think that the super would fall for this. After all, as she’d said to Isabel when they’d first met, Meg wasn’t exactly the sort of girl who would be scouted as a model. The super was staring at her oddly as if he was thinking the same thing.
‘That’s a no then, is it?’ she said, aware that this wasn’t quite the tone to take with her ultimate boss.
‘Yes,’ said the super. ‘No. Just . . . get on with your work.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Meg. Even she could see that it was time to go.
Emma sat on the park bench looking at the ducks on the pond. She’d been there for half an hour already. But Mavis was collecting the girls for once so she had all the time in the world to set her trap. She’d placed herself in a conspicuous spot and, to make her identity doubly obvious, was reading the Evening Argus. Unfortunately, it was a cold spring day and she was already frozen. There was a sharp wind blowing, it rippled over the water and flapped at the paper whenever Emma tried to turn the pages. And, far from loving the visit to his feathered friends, Johnny was teething again and grizzled constantly. Emma tried to ignore him, stamping her feet to get the circulation back and keeping a weather eye on the undergrowth around the pond. She knew that Sam was there somewhere, she kept getting a glimpse of her red jacket as she walked slowly round the perimeter. There were lots of mothers with children too, a few of whom Emma recognised from the school gates. Maybe she wasn’t isolated enough to make a good target. She got up, walked slowly round the water’s edge and took the path up towards the tennis courts. Apart from two men in white shorts who looked as if they were training for Wimbledon, this part of the park was deserted. Looking back, she saw Sam’s red jacket making its way through the Japanese rock garden.
Emma walked past the courts and sat down on another bench. It was more sheltered here and there was no sound apart from the pock pock of tennis balls whizzing over the net.
‘Excuse me?’ It was a woman with an Eton crop and a monocle. ‘Weren’t you in the paper today? The one who’s married to the policeman?’
She started to tell Emma how she would improve law and order in Brighton. Emma listened dispiritedly while Johnny grumbled in the background. Eventually the woman got up and trundled away. Emma sat on the bench feeling cold and fed up. The trap had failed. She folded up the paper and stooped to put it in the basket under the pushchair. As she did so, Jonathan stopped whining and gave a sharp cry of delight. Emma straightened up to find herself looking into her husband’s face.
‘Ed,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I knew you’d be here,’ said Edgar, ‘because I read about it in the paper.’ His voice sounded strange and there was an expression in his eyes that Emma had never seen before. It made him momentarily, and terrifyingly, look like a stranger.
‘That’s right,’ said Emma, trying for a light, casual tone to dilute the atmosphere that seemed to be gathering around them like their own private storm cloud. ‘Creature of habit, that’s me.’
‘Feeding the ducks?’ said Edgar.
‘Well, we were.’ Emma held up the bag of bread as if she needed an alibi.
‘It wasn’t bait then?’
‘What?’ Emma looked at her husband, one hand on the handle of the buggy. Even Jonathan had fallen silent.
‘I thought this was bait,’ said Edgar. ‘This whole thing.’ He gestured angrily at the park and the tennis players and the hurrying families. ‘You thought that the killer might read the paper and that he’d come after you and you’d catch him.’
Emma opened her mouth to deny it but then something made her say, in a voice that came out louder and more wobbly than she had intended, ‘Well, what if I did? It’s a better idea than any you’ve had, or Bob, the wonderful DI, or the intrepid Meg Connolly.’
‘This man is a murderer,’ said Edgar. ‘He killed Sara Henratty. Don’t you realise how dangerous it is? All on your own.’
‘Sam’s here somewhere.’ But Emma had lost sight of the red jacket a long time ago.
‘Sam! I might have known that she’d be mixed up in this. Was it her idea? I’ll get her sacked.’
‘No,’ said Emma. ‘It was all my idea. Sam wasn’t keen at first.’
‘I don’t understand it,’ said Edgar. ‘You were a detective. How could you be so stupid?’
‘Don’t you ever,’ said Emma, ‘call me stupid.’ And she jerked the buggy forward so violently that Jonathan cried out.
‘Emma,’ said Edgar. ‘Co
me back.’
But Emma was heading towards home, blinded by tears.
Twenty-Five
The row went on all evening. Emma managed to go through the motions of making the children’s supper, putting Jonathan to bed and reading to the girls. Then she descended to the sitting room. By now she was almost looking forward to the argument. Edgar was sitting in his usual chair, reading the paper. Was he going to be conciliatory, to tell her he loved her, that he understood? No, when he looked up, his eyes still had that cold, hard glitter to them.
‘What would happen to the children,’ he said, ‘if you’d been abducted? Dear God, you had Jonathan with you.’
‘Oh, nothing must ever harm your precious son.’
‘Emma!’ Edgar stood up and his voice made the windows rattle. ‘How can you say that?’
‘It’s true,’ said Emma, now perilously near tears. ‘You don’t care about me, except as the mother of your children and as . . . as a housewife.’
‘A housewife! I don’t think of you as a housewife.’
‘Yes, you do. You expect me to keep everything clean and tidy, iron your shirts, put food on the table. Make bloody steak and kidney pie. I used to be a detective sergeant. I solved cases. And I had to stop. Because I married you.’ She was crying properly now.
‘You wanted to get married,’ said Edgar.
‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘I wanted to be your wife. Not the house’s.’
‘We could get a cleaner. A nanny.’
‘That wouldn’t solve anything,’ said Emma, ‘because I still wouldn’t be a detective.’
She thought that Edgar would come across the room to comfort her, as he always did when she was crying, but instead he said, in that cold superintendent’s voice, ‘No, you’re not a detective and you shouldn’t try to be one. You could have been killed today. By your own arrogance and stupidity.’
Edgar slept badly, the quarrel running round and round in his head. He wanted to make up with Emma but he was still furious. They had had very few arguments in the course of their married life and it was as if they had been storing everything up for this one. Edgar could not believe that he could feel so angry with Emma, his wife, the woman he had loved steadily for over eleven years, probably since the moment he first saw her. Even the sound of her quiet breathing infuriated him. How could she sleep after the things she’d said to him? After the things he’d said to her? It was a relief when the alarm went off at six.
‘Don’t bother to get up,’ he said to Emma, who had sat up, bleary-eyed. ‘I’m going into work. Don’t take the children onto the beach today. We think that’s where the mods and rockers will congregate.’
‘You don’t have to tell me how to look after our children,’ said Emma.
‘It seems as if I do,’ said Edgar. ‘It might be dangerous. If you care about their safety, that is.’ He left the room before she could answer.
Edgar argued silently with Emma all the way to the station. Despite everything, though, he was pleased to see the station full when he arrived. He’d asked for volunteers to work at the weekend and it seemed that everyone had come in. He sent a panda car down to Madeira Terrace on the seafront and the report came back that there were a few groups of mods and rockers but no trouble as yet. It was a sunny day and the beaches were full of holidaymakers. Edgar had increased the numbers of officers on the beat but, apart from the usual incidents (lost children, missing purses, an attempt to break into the penny arcade on the West Pier) Brighton was fairly peaceful. Edgar began to feel guilty that he’d made so many people miss their bank holiday weekend. Should he ring Emma, say that she could take the children out? But he heard her voice saying, You don’t have to tell me how to look after our children. He didn’t want to have another row with her, on the phone at work. They could make it up that evening.
He was glad when his phone rang. It was an old friend, Inspector Fred Jarvis from Scotland Yard.
‘Are you getting ready for the great invasion?’ said Jarvis. He had a laconic delivery that made everything sound like the build-up to a joke. ‘The battle of the mods and rockers.’
‘I’m ready,’ said Edgar. ‘But the invaders aren’t here yet.’
‘They’ll come,’ said Jarvis. ‘I’d heard that Monday was going to be the big day.’
‘Have you got secret intelligence?’
‘Yeah. I’m a rocker in my spare time. But that’s not why I called. We checked out Angels Modelling Agency.’
‘You did? What did you think?’
‘Seems legit. They do a lot of glamour work, which seems to mean girls taking their clothes off, but there’s no law against that. Lou Abrahams is quite a respected photographer. He’s published books.’ Jarvis managed to make this last sound very sinister.
‘You know we’re looking for an American who might have been approaching girls offering them modelling work?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jarvis, and Edgar thought he could hear him lighting a cigarette. Edgar hadn’t smoked for years, since the war, but suddenly his soul ached for nicotine. ‘I don’t think Lou is your man. He’s quite distinctive-looking, for one thing, and he’s no youngster.’
‘Tallish, oldish, that’s the description we have from the girls.’
‘Pure poetry,’ said Jarvis. ‘But everyone over thirty’s old to these kids. You and I are old, Edgar.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ said Edgar. ‘Did you send someone round to talk to the girl in Dollis Hill, Isabel Rowlands?’
‘Yeah. Do you remember Alan Deacon?’
The name brought back a memory. A memory and a smell: a neat little house in Wembley, a woman dead in a playpen, Deacon in policeman’s uniform, Edgar holding a spectacularly smelly baby.
‘I remember Deacon. A good man.’
‘One of the best. Dollis Hill’s his patch. He’s going to call on the family this morning.’
‘Thank you,’ said Edgar. ‘I think it’s possible that our man might be stalking Isabel.’
‘I’ve got Lou Abrahams under surveillance just in case it’s him. But I don’t think it is. Doesn’t feel right.’
‘I need a break on this case,’ said Edgar. ‘Four girls abducted, one girl dead.’
‘And now he’s got Ruby Magic too. Now that is a tragedy. Ruby’s a real favourite with me and Mrs Jarvis.’ Jarvis always referred to his wife like this, again with a slightly ironical note in his voice. Edgar had never met her. And Jarvis had no idea of his own history with Ruby.
‘Ruby’s vanished into thin air,’ said Edgar. And he thought of the times that he’d seen Ruby on stage, her turn at the cabinet door, waving and smiling, but then, when the door was opened again . . . the girl had disappeared.
‘Look at me, Mummy!’
‘I am looking,’ said Emma. She wondered how much harder she could be staring at Marianne. But her daughter did look adorable, perched on top of a skewbald cob called Toby. Emma wished that she’d brought a camera.
‘My turn,’ said Sophie. Jonathan strained at the straps on his pushchair, wanting to touch the horse’s glossy brown-and-white leg.
‘Marianne’s got to go round the field first,’ said Emma. ‘Then it’s your turn.’ Toby belonged to Emma’s old school-friend Vera, who also owned a highly strung chestnut called Tempest. Vera had invited Emma and the children over to Rottingdean where the horses were stabled and Emma was glad that she had accepted. At least it stopped her obsessing over the row with Edgar. She couldn’t believe that he had woken up still angry with her, still in that maddeningly superior state of mind. It might be dangerous. If you care about their safety, that is. How dare he talk to her like that? She would never put her children at risk. The trouble was that Edgar had got used to being the boss at work, everyone doing what he said. Bob would never argue with him and she imagined Meg Connolly and the rest hanging on his every word. He hadn’t even been right about the mods and rockers on the beach. They’d had a good view of the promenade from the bus and all they could see were holidaymakers and deck
chairs. The sun was shining, the sea was sparkling. A perfect day.
Vera led Toby round the field. Emma had ridden the horse once and she remembered that Toby’s main interest was eating. How awful for him to have to walk on grass, like a hungry human walking on bread and butter. ‘Come on Toby.’ Vera pulled him away from a tasty hedge.
‘Look at me, Mummy!’
‘I am looking.’
Now Vera urged Toby into a reluctant trot. ‘Remember what I told you, Marianne. Up down, up down.’
Marianne’s slim body rose in the saddle, perfectly in time.
‘She’s a natural,’ shouted Vera to Emma, as she stood by the fence with Jonathan in her arms. Sophie watched enviously from her perch on the top of the gate.
‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’ said Sophie.
‘I’m not,’ said Emma.
But she was.
Max was walking along the promenade at Brighton but he was not in the mood to enjoy the view. The whole scene: the sun, the sea, the holidaymakers (the English at their worst, sunburnt and noisy), seemed almost an insult when Ruby was still missing. He thought of the day that he’d seen her from the Rolls Royce, walking along this very stretch of road in her pink suit. Where had she been going? Was she on her way to see Emma? If so, she had never turned up.
Max walked past the Palace Pier, a blaring cacophony of pop music, the shouts of stallholders and screams of thrill-seekers on the Ghost Train. He could see the gypsy caravan by the railings. Should he go and ask Astarte where Ruby was? He’d met the famous medium once and had been impressed by her ethereal good looks, less so by her professed ability to see into the future. Lydia read her horoscope every morning (she was Virgo, Max was Scorpio; a clash of opposites apparently) but, as far as Max could see, it always said the same thing: you are special and wonderful, special and wonderful things will happen to you at some unspecified point in your life. All very nice, but hardly the basis for informed decision making.
He was at the arches now, the place where he’d last seen Ruby. A gaggle of mods went by on their scooters, all chrome and khaki. Like Joe, Max could see the attraction of the suits but he’d never had any desire to go round in a pack. At school he’d been described as ‘lacking team spirit’, something he took as a compliment. Were these spotty youngsters really about to destroy the town, as Edgar feared? It didn’t seem very likely. The rockers were slightly more threatening, they were older for one thing and had more horsepower. But he only saw one rocker on his walk, an overweight man in a leather jacket eating chips by the Volks Railway. As stand-offs went, this one was proving very dull.
Now You See Them Page 19