by Liz Evans
I just used to see Leslie on the promenade at first. I always walked home that way from school and he’d be there too and we’d talk. Sometimes he bought me an ice-cream. When the school holidays started, I saw him on the beach as well which was good because it’s no fun on the beach by yourself and I don’t have any mates in Seatoun. We went to the cinema twice to see films I wanted to see. I put make-up and really high heels on so I’d look older otherwise they might not have let me in. He talked to me like a grown-up. He bought me a new blouse and some make-up for my birthday. I had to hide it from mum because I knew she wouldn’t like me taking presents from someone she didn’t know. And at Christmas he got me a Stones album I wanted.
Last week I was walking back home from the shops. It was raining really hard and Leslie pulled up in his van next to me and said he’d give me a lift. Once we started driving I told him he was going the wrong way, but he told me he had a special surprise for me. He drove me along the coast somewhere. I couldn’t really see very much because it was dark and there was no lighting. There were no other cars around. I told Leslie he’d have to drive me back soon because mum was expecting me. He wasn’t being scary or anything. He told me to get into the back of the van because he had something to show me. I didn’t like it much in there, it smelt of paint and turps. Leslie showed me a box he had. It had my things in it: a bead bracelet I thought I’d lost, a lipstick, and a photo of me and my dog which I thought someone had stolen from my bag on the beach. He said he knew I’d been leaving them for him. I said I didn’t know what he meant and I’d just lost them. He said I was teasing him and we both knew what I really wanted.
He kissed me and said he loved me. I didn’t want him to, but I said I liked him too, and then I asked him to take me home. He said he would later, but first I had to be nice to him. I started trying to get away then because I knew what he wanted to do. But he got angry and held me really hard. He kept saying I’d been leading him on, which I hadn’t. And if I had I didn’t know I was doing it. He said no one would believe that. Everyone had seen us together. He pulled my skirt off and then he pulled my panties down and pushed me on the floor. He got on top of me and had sex with me. It hurt a lot. I was crying and telling him to stop but he wouldn’t. Afterwards he made me lay beside him and he cuddled me and told me how he loved me and other things like that.
I don’t know how long we were there. He had sex with me again and then he told me to get dressed and he drove me back to Seatoun. He said not to tell anyone what had happened because no one would believe me. He said he’d say I’d agreed to do sex with him and they’d believe him because everyone had seen us on the beach together and he still had the receipts for the presents he’d bought me. But it’s not true and I didn’t say I would and I hate him.
I finished reading and delivered my verdict on Leslie Higgins. ‘Creep.’
‘Yep,’ O’Hara agreed. ‘He got five years for that one.’ Presumably he hadn’t served the entire term. The second statement was dated eight years later. ‘He kept his nose clean for a while then?’
‘Got lucky more like. According to Dec he was arrested a few times but the girls withdrew their statements. Mostly they’d only made them in the first place because they were being pressured by parents who wanted revenge. They couldn’t hack retelling their stories to more police officers and then facing the witness box. A couple of them kept insisting Higgins was their boyfriend.’
I scan-read the next statement. Pauline Wheeler d.o.b. 13.5.63. Basically, Pauline’s story was the same as Rosemary’s, she was a loner with parents who were both working long hours. In Pauline’s case she’d been born in Seatoun, but had had a falling out with a gang of girls at her school. There was no reason given but perhaps there wasn’t a coherent one; Pauline was simply victim material. (I always walked home a different way so they couldn’t get me. Sometimes if I saw them hanging around waiting for me I used to go into the arcades. I had to keep out of sight behind the slot machines so the cashier wouldn’t throw me out because they only let over sixteens in. Leslie saw me and started talking to me.) After that the path was the same. Leslie had become her friend. Following a few months of presents and outings, he’d driven her into the country for ‘a picnic’ and shown her a box of her personal possessions that he’d been collecting. From the end of her statement it was clear she’d only reported him because she’d been scared she was pregnant.
‘He makes friends with them. Were they all like that?’
‘When you’ve got a winning formula, why change it? Higgins plainly liked to think he and the girl were in a relationship, rather than seeing them as perpetrator and victim.’
‘So, logically, he should have been seeing Heidi for some time before she disappeared. Was he?’
‘The investigating team never found anyone who’d seen them together.’ O’Hara flexed and stretched his shoulder muscles. ‘But then he may have learnt from his previous mistakes and got a whole lot cuter. He was getting older. Another stint on the vulnerable prisoners’ wing, waiting for someone to get to him with a razor blade probably didn’t appeal.’
‘And not letting Heidi go was one more way to make sure he wouldn’t be charged?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ His navy blue eyes were very close. I could see my own battered face reflected in them. ‘If we knew where he took her, we might have a better chance of finding out where he left her.’
‘And I think I know the woman to tell us.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maria Pierpoint (née Deakin) lived in yet another street of red-brick Edwardian houses. My contact at the gas company had rung back within half an hour of my asking on Monday morning. A Mr and Mrs Pierpoint had signed up three weeks ago. As soon as he gave me the address I recognised it as one of the roads bordering the square recreational green that straddled the unofficial border between Seatoun and West Bay. On three sides, the green was edged by large semis with bay windows and gabled roofs, on the fourth it touched on the road that ran along the coast above the pedestrian promenade. It was one of the prime positions in Seatoun. Whatever Mr and Mrs Pierpoint did for a living, it plainly paid well.
They lived at number twenty-four. Standing outside number one, O’Hara and I started counting front gates. A young mum wheeling a toddler in a buggy, with a little girl in pink dungarees splashed with yellow flowers clinging to the handle, gave us a brief smile as we stepped back to let her get past. By my count the Pierpoints lived at the last garden gate on this side.
I started towards the house and then something struck me. The little yellow flowers on the dungarees were … ‘Maria!’
She was manoeuvring the buggy up the kerb on the seaward side of the main road. When I yelled she lifted a startled face. Daisy, with the dungarees decorated with her namesake, let go of the buggy and skipped away a few paces. Her mother darted after her and pulled her back.
We all arrived back at the pushchair together. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to yell at you, but you are Maria Deakin, aren’t you?’
‘I was, yeah. I’m Maria Pierpoint now.’
‘I’m Grace Smith. I’m a private investigator. This is O’Hara.’ I left O’Hara’s status out of it. I wouldn’t have known how to classify him anyway. ‘We need to talk to you about Heidi Walkinshaw.’
A light flickered in Maria’s brown eyes. ‘Have you found her?’
‘No. That’s one of the things we need to speak about. Mrs Walkinshaw told us you’d returned to the area. Can we talk now?’
She looked at the children.
Daisy sensed her plans were in danger. ‘We’re going to play. On the beach, Mummy.’
O’Hara said, ‘Can we come too?’
Daisy eyed him up and down. ‘Okay.’ Maria had been politely ignoring our battered appearance. Four-year-olds don’t cover tact in the curriculum until they’ve passed on finger-painting and using the toilet by themselves. ‘What happened to your face?’
‘I had a fight.’
Her mother gave
me a wary look. I put her straight. ‘Not with me. I’d have done a lot more damage than that. I fell down the metal staircase at my flat.’
We carried the buggy down to the promenade and walked around to West Bay beach. It was much smaller than Seatoun’s wide flat stretch of sand. This was more of a cove; bigger and less rocky than the one the Shoreline crew had used to film. Equipped with plastic bucket and spade, and hampered by a two-year-old brother, Daisy flung herself into digging with enthusiasm. O’Hara elected to help her, giving me the unspoken message that interviewing Maria was my job.
She sat herself on the edge of the low concrete seawall, letting her legs swing free over the sand. ‘How did you find me? I’ve only been back in Seatoun a few weeks.’
I sat down next to her. ‘After Heidi’s mother saw you at the school gates I found your marriage details on the web.’
She didn’t ask how I’d found her address. Instead she said, ‘I wasn’t sure she recognised me. She didn’t say anything.’
‘I think she was waiting for you to speak to her.’
‘She didn’t want me to before. After Heid went missing, I went round there loads of times to see if they’d heard any news, and just … like … to be near Heid. She was my best friend, see?’
‘Ellie Walkinshaw didn’t like you coming to the house?’
‘It was like she blamed me for still being here when Heid wasn’t. She always thought it was me who led Heid into trouble.’
‘Did she tell you that?’
‘No. Heid did. Her mum thought I was a bad influence. Which was a laugh. It was Heid who had the mad ideas, I just went along with it usually.’
‘Like running off to London?’
‘Yeah, that was one of hers.’ For the first time, she smiled broadly, memories of Heidi’s disappearance were momentarily replaced with the good times they’d shared.
She was quite short, with a round face framed by dark brown hair cut into a fringed bob, large brown eyes and bee-stung lips. She shook her head to dislodge strands of hair blown across her face by the sea breeze.
‘I still miss her you know? I’ve had friends since. At college. And at work. But never like Heid. I think that’s why I came back here.’ Delving into her shoulder bag she pulled out her wallet, extracted something from the back pocket, and handed it to me.
It was a photo of Heidi; very similar in appearance to the one they’d used for the missing posters. She was wearing a maroon V-necked sweater over a white shirt. Her hair was tied back in a single plait and her face was partially covered by a pair of spectacles with translucent pink plastic frames.
‘School photo. She hated it.’ Maria explained. ‘The photographer snapped before she could take her glasses off and he wouldn’t take another one. She loathed those specs. That’s the way everyone thinks of her, on account of those posters, but it’s not what she was really about.’ She took another snap out. ‘Couple of weeks before it happened.’
It had been taken in the amusement park. Blurred swirls of neon lights and pink faces merging together on the waltzer ride behind them. Maria’s dark hair had been much longer then. She’d worn it up in a high ponytail on one side of her head, a growing out fringe clipped back with slides. Her make-up was too heavy and the big silver hoop earrings didn’t suit her. Heidi’s blonde-streaked brown hair was loose around her shoulders; like her friend she’d not spared the trowel when applying the slap. Both of them wore jackets pushed back for the photo to show off tight tops, short skirts with side-slits and knee-length boots. The clothes looked cheap; the kind of tat you picked up at the local market.
‘Pair of mingers, weren’t we? And we thought we looked fantastic,’ Maria said. Her face today was make-up free. Then she asked the question I’d put to O’Hara. ‘You think she’s dead?’
‘Probably.’ But like the Walkinshaws I couldn’t bring myself to let go of that tiny little bit of hope that a miracle might happen. ‘Do you always carry her pictures around with you?’
‘I started soon after she disappeared. Now every time I try to put them away, it feels like I’m saying she’s really gone for good. Daft isn’t it?’
‘What do you think happened to her, Maria?’
She was watching O’Hara playing with her children. He was making sand-pies, which the little boy was squashing with squeals of delight. For a long while she didn’t answer me. Then she said, ‘I guess that man got her. The one Mr Walkinshaw killed.’
‘Did you ever see her and Leslie Higgins together?’
Maria shook her head. Her attention was still fixed on her children. ‘Did Heidi ever talk about Higgins?’
Once again there was that brief shake of the head. Something about the way she wasn’t looking at me, sent an alert shiver down my backbone. There was something. I just had to find the right question. ‘Her father said she often went round to a mate’s to do homework after school.’
She understood the question without my having to spell it out. ‘I used to say I was going round hers. We bunked off round the arcades.’ She glanced at me, screwing up her eyes against the wind-driven sand. ‘A few times, she went off on her own.’
‘How many is a few?’
‘Six, seven. She’d come out with me and then she’d say she had somewhere to go and she’d meet me later. I asked her where she’d been, but she wouldn’t tell me. She was meeting a bloke though. I know because he gave her money. She bought clothes and shoes, but she had to leave them at my house so her mum wouldn’t see them. She used to laugh about it. Say how easy it was to get men to do what you wanted.’
‘Are you sure it was a man? Could it have been someone nearer her age?’
‘Don’t think so. She’d have told me.’ She flashed me another one of those half-ashamed glances. ‘We used to pretend we weren’t bothered about getting a boyfriend, but we were both dying for one to ask. Only I was shy back then; I gave off “stay-away” signals. And Heid could be dead sarky. It put boys off, thinking she was going to make fun of them. I know that now, but neither of us did then. I never told the police about her going off like that. I know I should have, but I didn’t know about Leslie Higgins, did I? I thought Heid had run away and she’d ring me soon. And then, when Mr Walkinshaw killed Higgins …’ She wiped something from her cheek. ‘I was fourteen and I was scared I’d get into trouble.’ Another tear welled over her bottom eyelid. ‘I didn’t believe it, about Higgins you see? Every time I went round to her house, I expected her mum to say she’d phoned or something. And then we moved away and, I don’t know …’ She shrugged. ‘It was easier to pretend what I knew didn’t matter.’
‘But you never actually saw her with Higgins? Or getting into a van?’
‘No. I had to stay in the arcade and wait. She told me I wasn’t to follow her. She could get mental when you did something to make her mad.’
‘When she went off on these jaunts, how long was she away? Did she ever say where he’d taken her?’
‘I told you, she wouldn’t say. But it couldn’t have been that far. She was only gone an hour or so. Sometimes less.’
‘Why do you think she wouldn’t tell you who the bloke was?’
‘I don’t know. I think …’ She gave a little shrug. ‘Sometimes I thought maybe it was someone she thought I wouldn’t approve of; maybe give her a hard time about it.’
‘Like a much older man?’
‘I guess. I mean it would depend on the man, wouldn’t it?’ Her gaze went back to her children and O’Hara. One of Daisy’s hair clips fell out and was pressed into service as a colour feature on a sandcastle. She was a small, dark, plump poppet who looked much as Maria must have done at that age. ‘He’s good with kids, isn’t he? Have you got any?’
It took me a moment to realise that those two statements were connected. ‘No. I mean, we’re not together. Except in a professional sense.’
‘Sorry. I just assumed.’
‘Why did you think Heidi had run away? Did she have reason to?’
Maria
scrunched down harder inside her coat. Out on the horizon a cross-channel ferry was slowly sliding into a curtain of moisture. Rain would be here within minutes. ‘She was really pissed off with her mother. They were always having rows.’
‘About what?’
‘The usual things. Clothes; make-up; what time she got home; playing music too loud; drinking booze. It was all the stuff mothers go on about; mine did as well. But with my mum, we’d usually talk round it and she’d get her way over some things and she’d give in on others.’
‘How did Heidi’s mum handle it?’
‘Everything had to be her way. Always. Like we were supposed to be picking out our subjects for GCSEs? And she made Heid take all the subjects she thought would be most useful, never mind if Heid liked them or not. It was the same with her clothes and make-up. She had to have the stuff her mother liked, otherwise she wouldn’t pay for it. Those clothes in the photo …’ She indicated the picture I was still holding. ‘They’re the ones Heid bought with her own money.’
‘From her man-friend?’
‘No. This was before that. We got Saturday jobs at a fish bar. We lied about our age, said we were sixteen. It was good money, but we only lasted a few weeks. Heid’s neighbour saw us and told her mum.’
‘Roger Eh-Eh?’
Maria laughed. ‘We used to call him Major Eh-Eh. Anyway Mrs Walkinshaw told the fish bar we were only thirteen and that was the end of that job. Heid was furious. She was desperate to save up some money of her own. She hated that paper round, but it was the only job she could get. She wanted to get away from home. We were going to get a flat together soon as we could. Do what we liked, when we liked.’
‘A bit different from abandoning your bike in Schoolhouse Lane and taking off.’
‘I know.’ The first drops of rain hit our faces. Maria shivered. ‘I thought she’d had a bad row with her mum and flipped. She was really spitting on Sunday.’