The Missing Witness

by Jo Smedley

  “Yes. I thought I knew the face.” We smiled at each other. Then Janice’s mum turned to Irene. “Sorry. Baby talk. Did you, I mean, I’m sure Nicholas would love a bit of company. Have you time for a coffee? Or are you on a timer for the… what are you collecting for again?”

  “British Heart Foundation,” said Irene. “And no, we aren’t on a timer. And actually I’d love a sit down. We’ve been traipsing around the streets for a while.”

  It was a white lie. We’d been around the streets certainly, but 7 houses canvassed for money this morning was hardly an exhausting undertaking. We’d had more time in the car driving from street A to street B.

  “I’m Fiona,” she shook Irene’s hand.

  “Irene,” Irene shook back.

  “Ruth,” I added, as we weren’t in shaking distance. She smiled back. With introductions made Fiona stepped back and swung open the door to let us into the house.

  I hoisted Lillian out of her buggy and plonked her on her feet just inside the door. The two children giggled at each other and then stumpily ran off into the house, Fiona in pursuit.

  “Just lift the buggy inside the door,” she called over her shoulder.

  Irene looked at me. “What luck!” she whispered.

  “I know,” I whispered back and then called after Fiona. “Watch your cupboards! She loves cupboards.”

  There was a loud crash of plastic from inside what I took to be the living room the children had just run into, followed by a couple of happy “Uh oh!” sounds.

  “Don’t worry!” Fiona called. “It’s just plastic food. Tea or coffee?”

  “Tea, please.” I rolled the buggy onto the plastic sheeting just inside the door, which clearly was there to protect a very nice beige carpet from things like buggy wheels. Another buggy was folded up against the wall. It was a sporty city model. A three wheeler, low footprint style which I’d been eyeing up enviously in town. My own was more a “three wheel 4x4 country model” which had a massive footprint, but was excellent for dog walking. As a town buggy however it was useless. It had the turning circle of a snow plough and did about as much damage as one running between the rails in Mothercare, sending little two-piece outfits scattering to either side.

  “Tea, too,” Irene called out, as we closed the front door behind us. We gave each other a look. This really was a spot of luck. We wouldn’t have to carefully interrogate Fiona on the doorstep; instead we could take our time extracting information over a leisurely cup of tea. Lillian was occupied in a house full of toys and I could legitimately tell Lucus I’d spent some time with a woman from baby group. It was win/win.

  I dropped onto the sofa in the living room and watched as Fiona brought through a couple of steaming mugs of tea. Nicholas and Lillian were busy playing next to each other. Not together as such, children this age rarely did, but companionably looking at things side by side.

  Nicholas had found something with a wheel and was happily rolling it backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, watching with animation as the wheels turned round and round.

  “He likes the buggy best,” Fiona said, watching me watching him. “He’ll sit for hours just pushing it forwards and backwards in the hall. It’s a boy thing.”

  “You have boys?” Irene asked, sipping at the hot tea. She had an asbestos mouth. She could consume hot liquids in a matter of seconds. I blew on mine and watched as the steam rose. It was way too hot yet.

  “One of each. Janice is the youngest. Paul is older by two years. He’s working over in Doncaster now for Nisa.”

  “Married?”

  “Girlfriend, but as good as. He should marry her really, it would make things easier for the kids.”

  Irene looked out of the window. From our position on the sofa we could just see the white van parked in the drive way next door.

  “I can’t believe that house,” Irene said, by way of an opening gambit.

  “I know!” Fiona leaned towards us. “It must have cost a small fortune. But they aren’t short of a bob. Not since the life insurance paid out.”

  It was a conversational bread crumb. She wasn’t a gossip…. no… nothing like that. But if we asked, well, she’d have to tell us, on the quiet. I’d seen this sort of behaviour before, from Irene usually. She was the master of bread crumbing, giving you just enough information that you had to ask the obvious question. A breadcrumb was there to pique interest, to make you want to know more. It worked, obviously, as we were here to find out as much as we could, and the fact we had a willing volunteer was just going to make our goals so much easier.

  “Life insurance?” I asked, providing the appropriate response. My question was rewarded with a conspiratorial face and a shuffle towards us on the chair. She was going to let us in on the secret…the goss.

  “She lost her husband. And when I say lost, I mean lost. Just up and vanished one day. No one knows what happened to him. Of course, they couldn’t do anything until he was legally declared dead. But the insurance must have paid out. Something paid for all that work.”

  “Are they still doing work on it now?” Irene said innocently. “I see they’ve a van out front.”

  “Oh, no. She remarried. That’s her new man’s van. They met when he started my extension.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Well, her other half had been missing a good year by that point. No sign of him. She’d given up looking. We all thought he was dead. They never found a body, but then, they don’t always. Left her bringing up two kids he did. Real hard it was for her, too. And then, Pete comes along. Right Jack the Lad he was. Well. Something started between those two while I was out working. Came back one day and found her passing him tea over the fence and they were getting on like a house on fire. Pleased for her I was. He seemed like a nice bloke. He is actually. Well, it took him nearly 16 weeks to build my little extension, and after that, they just kept seeing each other. I got invited to the wedding. Right nice bash it was. They had to wait until the legal declaration came through first of course.”

  “Of course,” Irene and I had been nodding, shaking our heads at the appropriate moments, and mirroring her posture all the way through Fiona’s story. Just like I’d been shown at university. So far we’d not been told anything of use, but the door was well and truly open. It just needed another little shove. I waited to see what tack Irene would take first.

  “What do you think happened to him then?”

  “Oh… I don’t know. Bill across the way thinks he probably jumped off the Humber Bridge. It happens.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Well... They weren’t a happy couple. Always arguing. I just thought he’d finally had enough. Police said he took a case full of clothes, passport, wallet. If you ask me he’s living somewhere else. New name, new life.”

  “So all this building work…,”

  “Oh, that all happened a few years ago. Like I said, we all think it must have been the life insurance. Seven years isn’t it? Or something like that for them to be declared dead? He must have had a fairly good policy. He was a Finance Director at one of the seafood places up on the Pyewipe. They certainly weren’t short of a bob or two. Them two girls went all over when they were young. Cyprus, Spain, Disneyworld. Made us quite jealous. Janice never got to go anywhere like that. We were lucky if we made Butlins most years.”

  Lucus and I would be lucky if we just managed it to Butlins as well, but I didn’t add anything. I’d already had a cautionary look from Irene. She knew we weren’t terrifically well off. People always assumed teachers were well paid. They probably were when compared to minimum wage earners, but while we were comfortably off, we certainly weren’t rolling in it, and the luxuries of a cleaner, and regular cases from the wine club, had been put to an end when I left work. The fact that the idea of Butlins would have broken Lucus out into a cold sweat, meant we wouldn’t be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. Weekend city breaks taking in art galleries and museums and small babies didn’t exactly go hand
in hand.

  “And what did the kids make of the builder then?” Irene asked, slurping on the cooling tea. “Bit of a come down from financial director…,”

  “Oh, they loved him. He used to throw them around like he did the bricks. Swinging them round and round the garden. You’d never have guessed they weren’t related, well, except for the eldest. Lesley always looked like her dad really, but Lou, she could have been Pete’s daughter they looked so alike. It all happened so long ago. They probably can’t even remember their real father.”

  “It’s nice when things work out that way,” Irene said, taking a big gulp now. I looked down at my own cup. It was just at the point I could start sipping it if I was careful.

  I looked at Irene as Fiona sat back in her chair again. She fidgeted and looked vaguely uncomfortable, as if she had more to say but didn’t know if she should, and remained silent. Perhaps a murder was taking gossip too far, even for her, but we needed to know what she knew and I couldn’t wait for her conscience.

  “Janice told me she worked with the girl that was murdered the other week,” I said, as if this was a new conversation, nothing connected to anything we’d talked about already.

  Irene caught my eye. Well done.

  “She did? Oh yes, yes. They do work at the same place. I forgot that. Different departments. Janice has been quite upset by it all. Actually, we all are. Lesley lived just next door. Well, she used to.”

  “The same Lesley?” Irene asked, clarifying.

  “Yes. The same. When you said, “It’s nice the way things work out,” well… I didn’t know what to say. It’s really quite awful. I mean… first the husband, now the daughter. The family are in shock. Janice was too when I told her. They were really close when they were growing up.”

  “Oh, dear. That’s awful,” Irene asked, leaning forwards again in her chair: “Have they caught the killer?”

  “Well. They’ve arrested her ex-husband,” Fiona said.

  “Did you go to the funeral?” Irene asked. We both knew she hadn’t been there though. Her face wasn’t one of the “funeral faces.”

  “No. Janice had an appointment she couldn’t cancel that day. I was looking after this little lad, and you can’t really take children to funerals can you?”

  I looked pointedly at Irene, and watched as she shook her head agreement… no you can’t … I rolled my eyes.

  “I felt bad not going, but Janice needed me, and family have to come first.” She looked over at Nicholas - he was rolling a plastic orange around on the floor next to him. “Gill’s holding things together as best she can. But… well… you can see it’s really cut her deep. Lou’s back now though. She’s been away, Portugal or Australia or somewhere.”

  Thailand I thought to myself, but didn’t say anything.

  “Takes a while, getting over something like that,” I said.

  “Mmmm,” Irene frowned. “How awful though. I guess we better not go calling there.”

  “Oh, no. Don’t. I suppose you don’t know what’s behind doors do you when you do collections like this? Still, forewarned is forearmed, and at least I’ve saved them any upset. Not that they’d have said anything, or that you’d have upset them I’m sure, but, well, you don’t want strangers calling at a time like this, do you?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Here,” Fiona got up. “I’ll go and look out a few pennies, and something for the kids. Is she OK with biscuits?”

  “Not chocolate ones,” I said, smiling. “Unless you don’t value your furniture.” Like the carpet the sofas were pale. This looked the sort of house where Nicholas would be banned from any messy play. Janice would be happy doing that at home I was sure. She looked the sort to enjoy potato printing and glitter glue.

  “What do you think?” I asked Irene, at a whisper. “Sounds like he had the money. Do you think he just did a bunk?”

  “I don’t know,” Irene whispered back, equally conscious of Fiona in the kitchen. “We probably won’t know.”

  Fiona came back through, two biscuits for the children and two spouted cups. Lillian reached for one.

  “Taaaa,” Fiona requested. Lillian looked at her. “Taaaa.” She handed the cup across and then repeated the same with Nicholas. I caught Irene’s eyes and we shared a look. If there was one thing I couldn’t stand about Grimsby it was the “Ta” thing all the mother’s insisted on with small children. Why not teach them to say Thank you? What was it with Ta? Given that neither child was of talking age yet and we hadn’t had a definable word from them, you might as well start as you meant to go on… Thank you was what we used at home.

  I watched as Lillian juggled beaker and biscuit with a delighted look. She loved the independence of finger foods and biscuits were definitely now her favourite.

  “So…,” said Irene. “Which bit is your extension?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You said next door met while you were building an extension. What did you have done?”

  “Oh. Nothing as fancy as their place,” Fiona smiled. “We just had the kitchen extended. These houses were all built with really small galley style kitchens at the end of the house. Nearly everyone on the street has had some form of work done on their houses now I think. Everyone wants a bigger kitchen. Some people have knocked into the house, making it a dining kitchen space, but most have added a little bit on one side, just to take it out a little. Building regs are a nightmare round here though.”

  “Oh?”

  “Two metre foundation. Two metre? I watched Pete digging. The rest of the house doesn’t go below one! I tell you, if there was an earthquake, the only thing standing of my house will be the extension.”

  We laughed along with her. Irene looked at me. What had she spotted? I couldn’t tell.

  “Did you get a recommendation for Pete then, originally?”

  “Yes. Bill over the way there had some work done the year before. He said Pete was really good.”

  Irene made a show of swigging down the dregs in her tea cup, though I knew from experience she must have finished her tea ages ago. She picked up the collection canister. “We really should be getting on Ruth.”

  I looked at my cup. It was still half full. Typical.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  The person we had been told was Bill was out, and we didn’t call in on the Rand family. Although we’d already broken into two houses, gate crashed a funeral, and she was currently posing as a vicar, apparently harassing a grieving family for money was unethical. Besides we’d just promised Fiona we wouldn’t be calling, so to do so would have been a breach of trust.

  Instead we’d returned to Irene’s, put on the kettle and for once I was being allowed to drink a full cup of tea at a temperature I could manage. It had also been stewed properly. Something non-tea drinkers, which Fiona clearly was, didn’t do. Teabags in cups just didn’t work for me at all. The flavour was distinctively different, scalding, tart, heavy and unrounded. Rather than hot, full and developed. Not that I was a tea snob, but if you were making tea, you needed a teapot.

  Lillian was tucking into yet another biscuit surrounded by various plastic pots and saucepans she’d emptied out of Irene’s cupboards. I felt bad, in a way that only first time mothers must do, about her nutritional intake. Two biscuits in one day… what would the health visitor say about her sugar levels. I’d have to remember to ply her with pasta spirals and fresh vegetables later.

  “So what do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” We’d been through this nearly five times already and I was still no nearer an answer. The house was extensively renovated and it must have cost a fortune.

  “I suppose he could have been siphoning money into another account to be able to disappear,” I said, reaching for another biscuit myself. I caught Irene watching me. “I’ll burn it off later on the dog walk,” I told her. “Besides, if you were trying to help me with my diet, you wouldn’t have put the tin down in front of me.”

  She closed the lid
and moved it through to the kitchen. I saw Lillian watching her. Like me, she’d remember where the biscuit tin was kept in this house. Like mother, like daughter. She was an observer, too. Satisfied on the location of the tin, she returned to her pans. Irene handed her a wooden spoon. Lillian looked at it.

  “For the pots,” she told her. “Look.” She bent down, turned over all the saucepans, and then carefully took hold of the little hand holding the wooden spoon and showed her how to use it to drum on the upturned pots.

  Irene returned to me. Lillian lacked the power to create a truly horrific noise, so the gentle tap tap, was hardly going to ruin our conversation and it would keep Lillian happy a little longer.

  “So,” said Irene again, retaking her seat.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t see how we can check either. We aren’t the police. We can’t just take a look at their bank account. Besides, surely if they’d reported him missing, then the police would have traced the money, found out who it was with.”

  “Cash withdrawals are hard to chase,” Irene reminded me. “The fact they’ve never found him… I’m going to go with Fiona. I think he’s dead.”

  “You thought he was dead anyway,” I told her. “Alive or dead, it sounds like the life insurance paid out anyway.”

  “Yes. Hence the building work.”

  “So… did they have too much money before? Or are you going to agree with me now that the dip in the filed returns you’ve found was just expanding business premises or something?”

  “I’m not closing any doors yet.”

  “I think we’ve got too many open,” I told her. “We were supposed to be investigating Lesley’s death, getting Russ off the hook, now we’re looking at something which happened years ago. I think we need to get back on target.”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “I don’t know.” I stood up again and walked into the ‘kitchen incident room’. Irene followed me. Our boards hadn’t changed much in the last few days. The key suspects were still the family. ‘Boyfriend’ still had a question mark above him, did he or didn’t he exist… we still didn’t know. ‘Drugs?’ had gone back up, I noticed, despite me taking it off.