Grace Smith Investigates

by Liz Evans

  ‘They’re not. Daddy let them in.’

  ‘My name is Grace. And this is O’Hara. Nice to meet you Imogen.’

  She gave an excited jump and announced she’d passed her ballet exam. ‘Do you want to see my picture?’

  ‘They can see it later, Imogen. Come and finish your tea,’ her mother tried to turn her towards the kitchen.

  Imogen rolled her shoulders and shrugged her off. ‘Come and see. Now.’ She scampered back into the kitchen, confident we would follow as ordered.

  It was clean without being particularly modern. At first glance it was nothing out of the ordinary — until you noticed that all the cupboards and drawers in the fitted units had proper key locks, as did the doors that could be closed to prevent access to the fridge, washing machine and cooker. A half-eaten meal of fish fingers and peas was sitting on the table, a plastic knife and fork abandoned beside it.

  ‘There I am. That’s me!’ Imogen pointed. A photo in a cheap pink cardboard frame was propped on the counter. Imogen posed in her grey silky leotard with its little frilled skirt and pink ballet shoes. Stamped in gold embossed lettering below her was SceneOne Performing Arts Academy.

  ‘Clemency Courtney went there,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’ Imogen raised her arms and twirled. ‘They have lots of pictures of her. But I don’t know who she is, I’m not allowed to watch her on the telly. Megan can. Megan is my best friend. Can I have green ice-cream for afters?’

  ‘I made you strawberry mousse,’ her mother said.

  Imogen stopped spinning. ‘I don’t like mousse. Mousse is yuk. I want green ice-cream.’

  ‘Well, all right. You can watch your video while you eat it.’

  She settled Imogen, complete with green ice-cream and plastic spoon, in the third room on the ground floor, leaving the door open. She left the sitting room door open too, and took the armchair that gave her a clear view through to the other room. We talked to the background accompaniment of Beauty, the Beast, and assorted items of crockery singing away at each other.

  Graham took the other armchair, leaving O’Hara and me to settle ourselves on the large sofa. There was a copy of the local paper folded on the arm with that damn picture uppermost. Casually I slid it down into the newspaper holder on the floor. Underneath, the arm of the sofa had been neatly darned.

  Ellie Walkinshaw opened the conversation. ‘Graham says you want to look for Heidi. Why would you want to do that?’

  I let O’Hara take the question, interested in seeing how he was going to lie his way out of this one.

  ‘My brother was a police officer, Mrs Walkinshaw. He was involved in the original investigation. He died recently and left a bequest to be used in locating Heidi.’

  ‘That was … very kind of him. But we’ve done everything, everything, possible to find her.’ Far from sounding grateful, Ellie’s tone was becoming indignant. ‘Do you think we’ve just been sitting here thinking to ourselves she’ll turn up sometime?’

  ‘They don’t mean that, Ellie,’ Graham tried to placate her. ‘They just want to help. We’ve done what we can. They’re professionals. Let them try, love.’

  ‘I can’t stop them, can I?’ Ellie tossed her blonde hair off her face. She was in jeans today, with a man’s shirt buttoned over them; casual and elegant.

  O’Hara asked them about that day. ‘Was there anything different about it? Anything to suggest that Heidi wasn’t planning to go to school after she’d done the paper round?’

  I read the conflicting emotions on Ellie’s face. She didn’t want to admit she might have missed the signs that her daughter was a truant. But if that was the case, then she could hang on to the fantasy that Heidi had left of her own choice and perhaps she was alive and well somewhere. ‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘They asked me that at the time. And there was nothing. It was an ordinary day. I heard Heidi and Graham go out at half past six. I left for work at a quarter to eight. Heidi usually got back between eight and a quarter past.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I queried. ‘If you’d normally left for work before then?’

  ‘I didn’t. I’d usually have left at eight-thirty. But Mondays we had a staff conference first thing, so I went in early to set things up.’

  ‘Where do you work?’

  ‘I was the office manager at Burstock and Gemmells, the solicitors in Winstanton. They were very good when Graham was arrested.’

  O’Hara asked, ‘Are you sure she didn’t come back to the house that morning?’

  ‘The police asked us that at the time too,’ Ellie said. ‘Didn’t your brother tell you that, Mr O’Hara?’

  ‘You couldn’t tell because she washed and dried her breakfast dishes before she left for school. You insisted on that.’ O’Hara said promptly, as if he thought Ellie’s question might be a test of the truth of his story.

  ‘Yes.’ Ellie paused for a moment, then added, ‘He remembered that, did he, your brother? We weren’t hard on her you know. They kept asking us, the police, if there was any reason for her to run away. But there wasn’t. We were close. I’d have known if she was unhappy. Heidi was the most precious thing in our lives. Everything we did, we did for her.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting you were over-strict, Mrs Walkinshaw. I only asked about her returning to the house because often things come back years after the event?’ He stopped on an interrogatory note.

  ‘No. Nothing has. I don’t believe she came back that day, but I can’t be certain. It’s just a feeling.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she have had to collect things for school?’ I queried.

  ‘She had a locker at school. If what she needed was already there … and anyway she took different bags in with her, I … we, couldn’t tell.’

  I guessed from Ellie’s defensive tone that she’d been asked this at the time too, and had been unable to say for certain if any of Heidi’s things were missing from her room.

  ‘Anyhow what difference does it make?’ Graham demanded. ‘We know it was that perv Higgins took her. Your brother would, too, if he was a copper. It was them told us. Showed us pictures.’

  This, I sensed, was news to O’Hara. ‘Showed you when?’ he asked.

  ‘Soon as they started taking us seriously. A couple of the coppers showed us some photos of Higgins. Asked if we recognised him.’

  ‘Did you?’ I asked, expecting a ‘no’.

  ‘Yes,’ Graham said. ‘We often passed him.’

  ‘We?’ O’Hara looked at Ellie.

  ‘Me and Heidi,’ Graham clarified. ‘He jogged early mornings. He spoke to Heidi once, asked which shop she worked for. Said it was hard to get papers delivered. Trying to get her to come to him, the sick bastard.’

  ‘So the investigating officers pointed you at Higgins?’

  Ellie seemed to sense doubt on the score of Leslie Higgins’s guilt. She intervened sharply. ‘He did it. He had some of her things. Hair ornaments, slides and scrunchies …’ Her voice quavered. ‘They said there wasn’t enough to charge him.’ She took a deep breath and raised her chin defiantly. ‘I’m proud of what my husband did. Vermin like Leslie Higgins need exterminating. The world would be a safer place for children if there were more men like Graham in it.’

  Her husband was avoiding our eyes. I asked her if any of Heidi’s friends still lived locally. ‘Your husband mentioned a Maria Deakin?’

  ‘How can Maria help?’

  ‘Higgins may have spoken to Heidi at some other time. He could easily have run into her in town. Used the paper delivery as an excuse to speak to her. Is Maria still around?’

  ‘She wasn’t. Her parents moved about a year after Heidi went away. But I’ve seen Maria recently. Her little girl goes to West Bay Primary. If you come to the school at three o’clock, I’ll point her out.’ By a fractional movement of his head, O’Hara indicated that one was down to me. ‘Can you find her?’ Ellie said suddenly. ‘Can you bring her home? We’ve tried for so long and I … I need to put her to bed. I want to tuck her in, for on
e last time.’

  This time she cried. Not noisily, but with silent tears running unchecked down her cheeks and dropping on her clenched hands. Graham looked as uncomfortable as I felt. It was O’Hara who wordlessly handed her a folded handkerchief.

  I fell back on the usual panacea for sorrow. ‘I’ll make some tea, shall I?’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Graham headed for the kitchen. O’Hara gave another imperceptible nod at Ellie, before following him out.

  I took a photo of Heidi from a table and sat beside Ellie. I sensed she wasn’t the kind of person who would welcome a hug from a stranger, so I passed her the picture without comment and waited to see what effect it produced.

  Ellie swept away tears and tried a small smile. ‘This was taken when she was eleven. Still a little girl. You wouldn’t believe how much she grew up in the next couple of years. She was just getting to the age where we could go out together; shopping, having fun. Like girlfriends, rather than mother and daughter. I used to love treating her; clothes, make-up, jewellery. I miss her so much; it’s like a physical pain that never goes away.’ She ran her fingers lightly over the image. A tear splashed into one of Heidi’s eyes and dribbled downwards so that it appeared the photo was crying. ‘I meant what I said. I am proud of Graham for what he did; killing that monster. But …’ She looked at me almost shyly. ‘You didn’t hear about them before Heidi went away. There wasn’t anything in the news back then. Those girls who were kept in cages. Held prisoner for years in cellars and secret hiding places. And I keep thinking, what if she was there, waiting for him to come back …’

  I said what she wanted to hear. ‘It’s not possible. They searched every place Leslie Higgins had ever so much as paused for breath.’

  According to O’Hara, every property Leslie had ever worked in had been investigated. Every acquaintance had been questioned. There had been two cold case reviews over the past fourteen years, and anyone pulled in for a similar crime had been asked about Heidi and their lives scrutinised in case the original certainty of Higgins’s guilt had been wrong. No glimmer of Heidi had ever been found. So what chance did O’Hara and I have of finding her now?

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Don’t look round, but we’re being watched.’

  O’Hara put his arm round my shoulder and drew me into a hug. Resting the side of my face on his chin, I murmured, ‘Description?’

  ‘Male. Fifties. Five-nine. Hundred and seventy pounds. Grey hair and moustache. Walks like he’s on parade.’

  ‘Roger Nesbitt. Walkinshaws’ neighbour.’

  We’d only driven a few hundred yards to the sea parapet after leaving the house. We hadn’t discussed it, O’Hara had simply drawn into the kerb and got out. When I want to think I watch the sea. Apparently O’Hara did too. We’d stood in companionable silence for five minutes with just the scream of the gulls for company, watching the grey rollers rushing in and dissolving in sprays of foam as they slapped into the boulders that were piled, higgledy-piggledy, against the retaining wall under this section of the promenade.

  The marching feet came closer and stopped just behind us. ‘Thought it was you,’ Roger boomed. ‘What’s this then? Old Gray decided to have the old place done up, eh, eh? Be a bit pricey, that?’

  ‘My lips are sealed, Mr Nesbitt. Client confidentiality.’

  ‘No secrets between Gray and me. Best pals, aren’t we? It was me got him the job up the DIY store after that bit of unpleasantness. You know about that?’ He included both of us in the question.

  I answered. ‘Yes. We know.’

  ‘No need to be scared about working there, my lovely. Salt of the earth old Gray. Just did what we’d all like to do. Still, you’ll be all right with your friend here to protect you. Got to look after the fairer sex, eh?’

  O’Hara had been blanking the bloke until then. ‘I’d have said Grace was more than capable of looking after herself.’

  ‘Grace? Thought your name was Bianca?’

  ‘Professional name,’ I said promptly. ‘You’ll have to excuse us Mr Nesbitt, urgent delivery of gloss paint to pick up.’

  ‘What are you paying per litre? Wager I can match it.’

  ‘Oh we don’t pay for it,’ O’Hara said. ‘We steal it. Come along Bianca, tankers to hijack you know.’

  I could tell by his expression that Roger had the same problem with O’Hara that I always did, viz: you thought some of his more outrageous statements were a joke, but you couldn’t be quite sure. We left him with a half smile lifting his moustache, and drove round to Seatoun to pick up a double helping of chips, which we ate while wandering along the main promenade watching them put up the kids’ playground on the beach. In the winter the little carousel, swing-boats and trampolines were dismantled and packed away. Their reappearance around Easter was the Seatoun equivalent of the first cuckoo call — summer was a-coming in. Or, at least, the rain was going to be warmer for the next few months.

  ‘So what’s your plan from here, Bianca?’

  ‘I’m planning to call in at the SceneOne Arts Academy.’

  ‘The one the Walkinshaws’ kid goes to? How’s that going to help?’

  ‘It’s not going to help you at all. But this is nothing to do with Heidi. Clemency Courtney and her husband used to go there.’ I filled him in on my problem with Della Black’s case. ‘I’m short of anyone with a credible reason to threaten Jonathon. Clemency seems to have seriously got up several noses, but not Jonathon. So far the only possibles for my anonymous letter-writer are Clemency’s brother, Vince, who I know is threatening Jon because I heard him do it. Only if he’s threatening Jon to his face, why write?’

  ‘Which leaves you with?’ O’Hara balled his chip wrapper into a bin.

  ‘Jonathon’s ex. His one and only ex by the sound of it. During a brief hitch in the long love affair between him and Clemency. Her name is Laurel something and according to Della she aborted Jon’s baby. It occurred to me that if she didn’t get rid of the baby, then junior is now an acne-ridden fourteen-year old with a grudge against everybody, because teenagers have to have someone to hate — it goes with the hormones.’

  ‘And SceneOne is —?’

  ‘The place where Jon and Laurel first got it together. I’m hoping someone up there will remember her.’

  *

  ‘Of course I remember Laurel. Such talent. Such verve. Such legs,’ Ms Phyllida Tricorver enthused. She sounded as if she envied the legs most of all.

  Her own were stick-thin. At first I’d assumed she was part-Chinese, then I’d realised I was looking at a face that had more lifts than the Empire State Building. ‘This is Laurel.’ She pointed with her walking stick at one of the dozens of framed photos lining the walls of the reception area. It was Grease again; plainly one of the high spots of the SceneOne productions over the years. ‘Laurel was our Rizzo.’

  Laurel/Rizzo was curvier than Clemency Courtney’s slight, blonde Sandy. To me, she looked the prettier of the two. When I said as much to Ms Tricorver, she agreed. ‘And it might be argued that she had the greater talent. But that isn’t enough you see …’ Leaning heavily on the stick, she walked to a chair and lowered herself carefully. ‘War wounds,’ she said. ‘I once had a promising career myself but I over-exercised and paid the price. Laurel didn’t want success enough. It’s a cruel profession. You need to be totally certain that one day you will make it to the top.’

  ‘And Clemency was certain?’

  ‘From the beginning. She started classes here when she was five and I recognised her hunger for fame even then. That first year …’ She stopped and turned her face towards me. Her eyebrows were hitched into a permanently surprised expression and her mouth into a half-smile, so it was hard to read her expression, but I thought I detected caution. And then malice. ‘I shouldn’t really say, but I don’t owe her any loyalty, she’s shown me none — not so much as a single visit. During Clemency’s first year with us, we put on a Christmas pantomime: Babes in the Wood. Clemency understudied one
of the babes. On the first night, that babe fell and knocked out her front teeth. Singing was impossible. She said someone pushed her, but nobody saw it.’

  ‘What about Jonathon Black?’

  ‘Jonathon had talent, but he was unreliable. The boys often are. A lot of them only come because some girl has dragged them along. The girl grows tired of them and poof — they disappear.’ She made a conjurer’s gesture with the hand that wasn’t gripping the walking stick, throwing an invisible dove into the air.

  I pointed out that Jonathon hadn’t disappeared. ‘And Clemency didn’t tire of him. Apart from that time he and Laurel got it together. And talking of Laurel, have you any idea where I can find her?’

  ‘Not at present. However I can tell you exactly where she will be tonight.’ She pointed to a poster on the wall beside the front door: Salsa Course. 7.30 to 9.30 p.m. Thursday — unlock your sensual side and learn the dance of love.

  *

  I had an hour to kill. I made the mistake of going for a drink with O’Hara. And then the bigger mistake of letting him drive me back to SceneOne. Calling it an ‘Arts Academy’ made it sound a heck of a lot posher than it really was. The entrance was through an old chapel sandwiched between a small industrial park and the football ground. Behind it were the studios, which were housed in three small converted factory units. I knew this because I’d seen them from the road. However, I wasn’t going to be seeing them from this angle unless I paid for a Salsa lesson.

  ‘I don’t want to learn the Salsa. I just want to talk to someone called Laurel. Can’t I just nip inside for a second? Or you could get her to come out and talk to me.’

  The receptionist was a clone of Jan. Which is to say she’d made blanking customers into an art form and being helpful was way outside her job description.

  ‘Let me talk to Miss Tricorver. We arranged this earlier,’ I suggested.

  ‘You can’t,’ the unhelpful one sniffed. ‘She ain’t here. And she said no one goes through ’less they join up and pay. We’ve got alcohol you know, so you’ve got to be a member. We can’t just let anyone in to drink it.’