The Missing Witness

by Jo Smedley

  “No… they might not have any evidence to say he did it, but they’ve enough to convict him on motive and opportunity. Means was the kitchen knife, he could easily have obtained that. He’s their primary suspect and the obvious suspect.”

  There was nothing more to say. So far the board was empty of alternatives.

  “You’re absolutely sur-?"

  “Don’t even say it,” Irene chided. “There’s an answer here. There has to be.”

  Chapter Twenty Five

  I turned up at Toddler Talk the next day still looking for that answer. Lillian was in my arms as usual, but my mind was focussed entirely elsewhere. I had turned into Irene. My eyes were open, but they weren’t seeing anything. I was mulling over the people we’d met to date, the roller derby team who all had an alibi, the gay neighbour next door to Len, Rose Bloom, Phil at the office, Pete and Gill Rand, Lou and Joe, Russ. Any one of them might be the murderer, or it could be none of them, and it might be someone we hadn’t met yet. There were dots still to connect in our picture. Something we still needed to put together to create a whole.

  We sang around the room and I maintained the cheerful clapping and smiling as each mother extolled their child’s latest activities. I even managed to come up with something suitably droll for Lillian as my turn came around without even batting an eye lid. I’d become adept at banalities.

  I played with her amongst the toys for the allotted time and then sidled through to the tea and coffee area without breaking my chain of thought.

  It wasn’t until a woman actually waved her hand in front of my eyes that I realised I was being spoken to. I turned.

  “Sorry. I’m a little distracted. Not a lot of sleep,” I lied. I was getting good at that. I faced the hand owner. Fiona!

  “Hello!” I said in what I hoped was a suitably cheerful and friendly manner – this was after all our best lead.

  “Nicholas seemed happy playing so I left him with Nina.” Nina was one of the other yummy mummies. “It’s my first time. I was really pleased to see a familiar face. I feel a lot older than everyone else.” She was, but only by about five years by my reckoning. Sheila at the group was a mature mother. Gary, her son, was a much longed for IVF outcome.

  “How’s Janice doing?” I asked, aiming for sociable.

  “Great. And actually she wondered if you fancied going out? She’s arranging it with a few of the other mums in the group who’ve gone back to work. She thought it’d be nice to get everyone together.”

  I tried not to grimace. The idea was horrific. We had nothing in common apart from our children. There really was no one here I had met who I would willingly spend any time with outside of baby group. The group was simply a means to an end. I was only here to occupy Lillian. The idea of socialising with any of these “designer baby” women was frightening.

  I was about to make some sort of excuse when I realised Irene would be aghast if I turned down the chance to further the relationship. Janice’s mum was the nearest thing we had to a witness in the disappearance of Geoff, and in every real sense she was the only link we had to the family of Lesley and any chance of working out who killed her and getting Russ released.

  I nodded and smiled. “That’d be lovely,” I lied, and then had a brainwave. “Only, I’m really not that confident in big groups.” I hoped that was enough of a lead for her…,

  “Oh, neither am I,” she smiled. “This was a big thing for me coming out today. Janice is the outgoing one in the family.”

  “I don’t really feel like I know anyone all that well,” I said. And I was being honest there. I didn’t know anyone all that well, though by choice rather than accident. “I don’t even really know Janice all that well,” I added, just to ensure she got the hint. She did.

  “I know… why don’t you come over one afternoon when Janice is off work? You and your mother and Lillian of course.”

  Mother Irene again. Of course! “Yes, that’d be lovely.” I smiled at her over my cooling tea, hoping she couldn’t see that she’d just been manoeuvred into offering exactly what Irene would have wanted.

  “How about this Thursday? You and Janice can plan where you’re going then. I think she has everyone’s number.”

  I could well believe that. Janice struck me as the organised efficient type, though clearly she hadn’t got mine. I wasn’t part of the “in-set” or at least, I hadn’t been until I turned up at her place of work and then at her mother’s. Now I was very much on the notice board of “my type of people”. I was target numero uno. But then, she was mine currently so perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  *

  After the group was over I walked through the park to Irene’s house and told her about our appointment.

  “Good,” she said. “We need another break. It’s hard this, getting to speak to people without having an official reason. It’d be easier if we were the police.”

  “Yes. But we aren’t.”

  “Who’s to say we aren’t?”

  “No,” I said. “Absolutely not. You impersonating a vicar was bad enough. I am not impersonating a police officer. We could get into serious trouble for that. Besides,” I hoisted Lillian. “She’s a bit of a giveaway.”

  Irene frowned at me and shrugged. I was right. She knew I was right. She looked up at the incident cupboards.

  “There’s only one person who knows what we’re up to who might be able to shed some more light on the situation,” Irene said. “Rose.”

  She lifted down the post it note. “Fancy a trip out?”

  *

  We arrived just in time to find Rose and Gill Rand in an argument on the street outside her office. We pulled up on the opposite side of the road and Irene ran down her window so we could catch as much of what was being said as possible. Neither woman had seen us; they were both so focussed on each other.

  Rose was clearly upset. Tears were streaming down her face and she looked like a wobbling blancmange.

  Their words didn’t carry too well inside our car but we strained to hear as much as we could. It didn’t help that both of them weren’t articulating too well. Gill because she was clearly furious and Rose because she was barely able to stop her lips wobbling.

  “…believe you told…what right did you have to say …lies, all lies… and to think she … you’re a charlatan. They should CLOSE YOU DOWN.”

  “…did what I had… they asked…never lied...”

  “QUACK! I should never have… it’s your fault… “

  “What do you think they’re arguing about?” I asked Irene quietly, both of us straining to catch a little more.

  “I think Rose went to the police.”

  “And they believed her?”

  “I’m not sure, but they clearly followed up a line of enquiry – and Gill knew where it had come from.”

  “YOU THINK SHE NEVER SPOKE TO ME?”

  Rose was cowering in her doorway, one hand on the door handle, when the slap came. SMACK straight across her face. She looked shocked, startled in the same way a bunny in the headlights watches their fate approaching.

  “That won’t look good on the police record,” Irene said, smirking. She was enjoying this.

  “DON’T YOU EVER… EVER…,” before another assault could come, Rose had slipped inside her door, her large frame squeezing through an incredibly small gap in much the same way an octopus can suddenly change shape and move through a pipe at speed. She was gone before Gill could say or do anything more.

  Lesley’s mother stood staring at the door and then she looked around her. Unfortunately for Rose there was a loose brick lying on the pavement from the house next door, whose front wall had crumbled. She picked it up and hurled it at the double glazing and was rewarded with a shattering crack. She then marched back to her car, got in, revved the engine and sped off, taking her frustrations out on the road. I was glad we were parked up. I hoped she didn’t cause an accident on her way home.

  The blinds twitched in the window as Rose p
eered outside. Then the door opened a crack, then fully, and finally Rose was on the pavement eying up the damage and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Irene waited a moment, watching her, and then opened her car door and stepped out. I followed.

  “Are you all right?” Irene asked her. Walking up from one side. “I saw what happened. Did you want me to call the police?”

  “No. No… this was probably my fault. I shouldn’t have – oh. It’s you.” She changed her tone as she turned and faced her Samaritan. She didn’t look pleased to see us at all.

  “What do you want?”

  “Why was Mrs Rand angry?” Irene asked, not missing a beat. Rose knew what we were up to; she knew why we wanted to know. For once, there was no pretence. No subterfuge. Irene could be direct and she was.

  “None of your business.”

  “You told the police.”

  “And look where it got me.” She fingered the crack in the glazing. The brick had fractured the front pane, the rear one looked intact, but it was a sealed unit, the whole thing would have to come out.

  “Will your insurance cover that?” I asked gently.

  “Hope so.” She looked ready to burst into tears again. I rooted in my pocket. Since having Lillian I usually carried a packet of tissues and I was sure I had one that hadn’t already been used somewhere in there. I was right. I handed it to her. She shook out the folds and blew her nose.

  “Thanks.”

  “Why don’t I make you a hot sweet tea?” Irene suggested, placing a hand on Rose’s ample shoulder.

  All the colour had drained from her face and she was beginning to look a little faint. I didn’t fancy our chances of being able to lift her from the pavement. She must have weighed double what Irene and I weighed put together. Reading people’s auras was quite clearly a sedentary occupation involving regular consumption of confectionary. Not that I was one to point the finger. My spare tyre, originally racer bicycle sized, was heading more towards mountain bike width, and if I didn’t cut back soon, I could see me with a motorbike tyre.

  Rose nodded slowly. All fight gone. We led her back into her office and I put Lillian down as soon as the door closed safely behind us, sending her off to root in the toy box in the corner.

  Irene headed over to the kettle on the side unit and Rose collapsed into a chair. If I’d had to have picked a word for her, it would have been stunned. She either didn’t know what she’d said to upset Gill so much or she had no idea the police would have taken her information directly to Gill and prompted the attack. I watched as her hands developed a tremble, which travelled up her arms into her shoulders. She looked at me helplessly and burst into tears again.

  I knelt down by her chair. It was instinctive, something I’d have done with a relative of a patient. Being close without being intimidating. I looked into her face.

  “Are you OK?” I asked. I touched her nearest hand. Stifling the tremble. I let my hand rest. She looked at me.

  “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t tell you. I should have never said anything to the police. But I thought,” her breath caught, I waited. “I thought it was the right thing to do. Lesley was murdered. I…” She blew her nose. Behind us I heard the kettle click off and Irene measuring out the water into the mugs. It was a reassuring noise. A homely noise. The filling of mugs, the regular chink of the metal spoon on the china, round and round, round and round.

  Irene walked over. She’d located a biscuit tin and a chocolate digestive was perched on top of one of the mugs, teetering on the edge.

  “I’ve added some sugar,” she said, handing Rose the single mug in her left hand. Rose took it without a word. Either she took sugar, or she realised Irene thought she needed it. Hot sweet tea for shock. Everyone knew that, didn’t they?

  Now that her left hand was free of the mug, Irene took the biscuit from the edge of the mug in her right hand and offered that to Rose, too. Rose took it. Irene handed me one of the remaining mugs, no biscuit. I looked at the colour inside the mug and immediately knew Rose lacked a tea pot. I wouldn’t be drinking all of it. It looked far too strong.

  Irene gestured to the other chair, the “patient” chair, and I sat as directed. She pulled over the coffee table and perched on that, making us into a triangular configuration.

  She watched and waited as Rose drank and ate her biscuit. The colour slowly coming back into her face.

  Lillian acted as a focus for us all. Happily burbling to herself and emptying out the toy box and then putting everything back in again. Thud, crash, thud, crash. One toy after another joining the rest in an ungainly heap. They wouldn’t all fit when she’d finished. I could tell that already. Without some neat adult stacking, those toys were never going to squeeze back into the confines of the box. I watched as she stacked items higher and higher until they started falling back out as fast as she put them in.

  “Try again,” I told her. “Start over.” I mimed tipping out the box again, and Lillian copied my gesture and the toys all went careening across the floor. “Biggest first,” I said, knowing she was still too young to understand. But as a mother I had to try. Lillian just started again, haphazardly stacking. Happy and occupied. I turned back around to Irene and Rose. Rose was nearing her normal colour.

  “Better?” Irene asked.

  Rose nodded. “It’s my own fault.” She looked into her mug, clearly unsure if she should say any more. We waited. She didn’t say any more. I looked at Irene and shrugged.

  “What did you tell them?” Irene asked, much more gently than she had outside. Using a tone like a mother reassuring a young child. Rose looked at her, bottom lip quivering slightly.

  “I told them Lesley had seen something. Something when she was younger.”

  “How much younger?”

  “About the time Geoff vanished.”

  “She told you?”

  Rose nodded.

  “What?”

  “I told the police she’d seen a woman moving his body, burying it in the garden.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “Not in as many words.”

  “But you told the police anyway?”

  “What she said… they’d just have discounted it. It was nothing. But it was something. She knew it was something. I knew it was something. She said it wasn’t clear enough. She was going to think about it. Try on her own.”

  “What did she tell you she saw?”

  “Shapes. A giant, a cocoon. Lines in the ground. Shapes in the moonlight. Trees. It was all darkness, shapes, descriptive. She was young. She didn’t know what she saw at the time. This regression stuff, it’s reliant on your ability to interpret what you see, what you remember. She was so young when she saw it. Too young really to know what she saw.”

  “So you filled in the gaps?”

  “It would have been shadows. The view of a child through a window. Something wrapped up maybe?”

  “A body.” Irene said. “You thought Gill had killed her husband?”

  “Everyone thought it,” Rose said. “They weren’t happy. He was… well…,”

  “How long have you known the family?”

  “I am family,” Rose said. “Geoff was my cousin. We all knew what he was like. He’d been like it as a child. A bully. This -” Rose rolled up one of her sleeves and showed us a small circular scar on her forearm. “He did this. Said I was fat. Said I wouldn’t feel it. The fat would act as insulation.” She rolled her sleeve back down. “I felt it. I always felt it. ” I guessed she didn’t just mean the physical pain. Trauma can take two forms. I knew from experience.

  “Why now? Why report it now?”

  “Twenty years ago. The police don’t look at domestic violence the way they do now. She had two small children. Children who relied on her. None of us wanted to think she’d done it. But none of us would have blamed her. He was mean. Nasty. He deserved it. Her children didn’t.”

  “So why now?” I asked. “Why mention it now?”

  “Lesley.
” Irene said before Rose could reply. “Lesley didn’t deserve to die.”

  I looked at Rose. She nodded.

  “You really think Gill killed her own daughter?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But why wasn’t Gill arrested at the time?” I asked.

  “No body.” Irene interrupted. “No body, no murder case. He was a missing person.”

  I looked at Rose. She nodded.

  “But the police didn’t take your information seriously?”

  “No. It seems they went back to Gill. Asked about Lesley’s relationship with me. Whether Lesley had a history of mental illness. They weren’t going to reopen Geoff’s case.”

  “But you think Lesley saw him being buried?”

  “I know she did. She always had a memory like a steel trap. Even as a girl. Some kids remember everything.”

  “Traumatic events, things of significance,” Irene said.

  “How old would she have been?”

  “Three and a half.”

  “Three and a half?” I asked.

  What did I remember from three and a half? I thought back to my earliest memories… Chocolates in a shoe box in a kitchen cupboard, lining up for our treat of the day. A wall frieze around a shared bedroom. My favourite donkey toy being given away. A goldfish I had won from a fair. How old would I have been? Younger than five. We’d moved before my fifth birthday. All these memories were from a much older house.

  I didn’t remember my brother as a baby, but I could remember playing with him when he was toddling, that would make me four. And then there was the wasp sting. The wasp sting in a kitchen that was very unlike the one which housed the shoe box chocolates and wall frieze. I must have been much, much younger. I touched my upper arm. I could remembered the sting vividly. But it was images. I wasn’t sure I could have drawn the kitchen. But if I was hypnotised, perhaps I could have remembered more. Those memories could still be there, hidden, buried underneath new memories.

  “It was very brave,” Irene told her. “To go to the police after all this time. You really think she did it?”