by Rebecca Tope
The copse was obviously an ancient one, boasting big woodland trees that might well have been deliberately planted in the first instance. A beech spread protectively, two oaks and a handsome holly had all grown to impressive size. Between them were younger saplings, a tangle of brambles, bracken, ivy. The field was being encroached, without fencing to mark any division between it and the copse. Instead, there were signs of a shallow ditch and above it a low bank, full of gaps and burrows made by animals, perhaps even badgers. Brambles ran riot along much of the ditch, forming a natural barrier that most people would hesitate to tackle.
The smell only gradually forced itself onto her attention. It might even have first wafted into her nostrils as she emerged from the orchard, but in the country you got smells, and learnt not to over-react to them. It wasn’t until she reached the copse that she labelled it for what it was. Standing very still, she reminded herself of what she was looking for, why she was there. She had even been expecting to encounter this very stink. Of course, it was sure to be a sheep, trapped in the brambles somewhere, and dead of hunger and exhaustion. It happened all the time.
But her senses were operating independently of her mind. Closely examining the stretch of bank, and the hedges to her right and left, she noticed activity at a spot low down in one of the intact sections of bank. Darting in and out, there were wasps, hundreds of them, far more than Roma had ever seen in one place before. Cautiously, she moved closer. Despite knowing that wasps never attacked in force, it took strong nerves to approach such a mass of them. Without warning, the face of her own little brother, killed by bee stings, flashed into her mind. She hadn’t given him a thought for years, had never felt any conscious grief or guilt or anxiety about what had happened to him. She’d been stalwart in her refusal to pretend to care, causing adults to draw back from her, disconcerted by her coldness.
‘No escape,’ she muttered to herself now. ‘Everything connects.’ It had taken her a long time to accept that a person’s innermost processes operated on a level beyond conscious control, and that it was all right for this to be true. It was more than all right: it was instructive and reassuring. If her little brother’s face was in her mind now, there must be a good reason for it, if only that the conjunction of a child and insects brought a rather obvious memory to the surface.
The smell, though, needed investigation, regardless of the wasps. It did seem to emanate from the same general direction as the boiling mass of insects, and a very nasty suspicion was rapidly forming. Was it true, she asked herself, that sugar-loving insects would be attracted to a dead body? The dead lion in the Bible which contained a bees’ nest, was surely just a convenient space, the ribcage offering an ideal cavity for a swarm to set up home in? Surely the flesh wasn’t used for food?
Below the wasps was a depression in the ground, part of the original ditch, filled with long grass. As Roma approached, the smell became appalling. It flowed into her stomach and made her involuntarily retch. Before she had seen anything, before the reality was lodged in her mind, her stomach had reacted.
The body was clothed in a skimpy summer outfit, leaving plenty of greenish flesh visible. It had been placed face down, as far as she could ascertain. Light brown hair covered most of the visible portion of the head. Crazily, the wasps were clustered on a point about a foot away. Something else had been dumped, alongside Georgia, and it was this that attracted the insects in such numbers. With her hand tightly over her nose and mouth, trying not to breathe, Roma bent closer to see what the wasps were eating. A sticky glistening mass was visible, streaked and splashed with various colours – red, yellow, green, purple. At the farthest edge Roma found a clue – a melted shape lying apart from the rest, which she gingerly prodded, oblivious of the buzzing wasps. It was like semi-solid jelly. She picked it up, slippery in her fingers, and held it in the palm of her hand.
It was a green jelly baby, melted after days in the sun and rain, so the shape was distorted, but still recognisable. There had been a great many more, tipped in a heap beside little Georgia’s head, as if to offer her some consolation for being dumped lifeless in a dry ditch. The sweets had stuck together, blending their colours and sugary selves into one mass – a mass that would be irresistible to wasps, and other sugar-loving insects.
Roma backed away, without any further examination of the child. She looked around her worriedly. Had anybody seen her coming in this direction? What should she do now? No way could she go back to the house and tell the child’s parents what she’d found. She would have to locate a telephone and call the police. Or somebody.
Anybody else would have had a mobile phone, she chided herself. They’d have made the call and then waited in the field for emergency services to congregate. Helicopter, police doctor, social workers, undertakers – and then stood modestly to one side. She felt reluctantly relieved that she did not have the gadget with her. Now she at least had time to think, as she cut across the field in the direction of the farm drive, climbing over a wooden gate and hurrying back to her car.
The child is dead, she repeated to herself. There’s nothing to be done for her. No need to panic. And yet she was on the brink of panic. She looked around her anxiously, not wanting to be seen, especially by the Renton man. Not by any returning police officers, either – although she knew she must quickly inform them of her find.
She drove away jerkily, rubbing frequently at her nose, trying to expel the lingering stink that had somehow lodged inside it. Her hand was sticky from the melted jelly baby, which she had carried back with her and wrapped in a scrap of paper she found on the floor of the car. It was now on the top of the dashboard, an odd irrelevant piece of evidence. She was thinking; thinking almost to the exclusion of doing. Her head was full of the sight and smell of what she’d found, the extreme oddness of the pile of sweets; the incompetence of the police who obviously hadn’t bothered to search beyond the farmyard and its buildings; if they’d done even that much. That was surely because they were so convinced that either Justine or Penn was responsible for the lost child, and still held her, alive and well, somewhere.
But behind and through and over all these impressions and suppositions was one big idea; so big and loud that it made everything else seem shadowy and evanescent. This idea was the reason she had turned and run, as if away from a piece of knowledge that could be left undisturbed. This idea arose inescapably from a memory of how Justine had always loved jelly babies far beyond any other kind of sweet. The idea was that Justine had, after all, quite obviously killed Georgia Renton.
She didn’t phone the police when she got home forty-five minutes later and found Justine fast asleep in the spare room; she phoned Drew Slocombe. His second funeral of the day was barely over and he’d been indulging in a cup of tea and a bucketful of self-congratulation. He was entirely unprepared for what Roma had to say.
‘Drew, I’m going to ask something terrible of you,’ she began. ‘Something I have absolutely no right to even suggest. But I can’t carry it by myself, and there’s nobody else but you who’d even hear me out.’
‘Go on,’ he invited warily.
‘The little girl’s dead. Been dead for days. Past any help from anybody. I found her an hour ago.’
She could hear him gulp, and try the find something to say. All he managed was a croak of astonishment.
‘I’ve implicated myself dreadfully, leaving footprints and fibres and God knows what, so if the police are called out, they’ll soon know I was there.’
‘But they’ll know your traces are more recent than when she died,’ he said, having got his voice back with difficulty.
‘Will they? Actually, that’s not my main worry. The thing is, Drew – I’m convinced that Justine is going to be even more under suspicion than she is already. There’s nothing about the body that would exonerate her, as far as I can see. And, Drew, I don’t think I can be the one to make the phone call that might incriminate my own daughter. I realise it’s stupid – that it’s not going t
o make any difference in the long run. Not unless I’m planning to move the child and make a better job of hiding her once and for all. The thought did occur to me, I don’t mind admitting, but I can’t face it. She’s very decomposed.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Call the police.’
‘Not the Rentons?’
‘Would you be able to cope with that?’ she wondered, before remembering his profession. ‘I suppose you would. It doesn’t matter which. That’s up to you. I do understand what I’m asking of you – that you’re sure to get much more deeply involved than you’d like. The police won’t understand why it’s you making the call, when up to now you’ve had no link with the missing child. I have absolutely no right to make such a demand on you.’
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I understand. You’d better tell me where she is, then leave it with me and I’ll try and work out the best way of informing them.’ When she’d described the location, he snorted. ‘Why on earth haven’t they already searched all the fields? Wouldn’t you think that’d be the first thing they’d do? How far is it from the house?’
‘I would guess about a quarter of a mile.’
‘Could Georgia just have wandered off on her own, and got lost? She might have died of exposure.’
Roma thought of the wasps, and the path through the long grass, the stile and the orchard. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget, the parents thought they knew where she was. The father waved her off with Justine. The mother cheerfully assumed she was with her granny on the Isle of Wight.’
‘And nobody knows when Penn last saw her,’ Drew said darkly. ‘It’s only looking so bad for Justine because nobody believes what she says about Penn.’
‘Do you believe her?’ Roma demanded.
‘I’m not sure,’ he replied carefully. ‘Do you?’
‘I did,’ she said. ‘Until this happened.’
Detective Sergeant Den Cooper knew he was making a hash of the whole case. He was going through the motions, but not according it his full and undivided efforts. When he thought about the small girl, missing now for a week, he should have been wrung out with concern for her. He should be meeting with the DI every few hours, pressing for assistance from other forces, or else handing the whole thing over to Exeter. He felt a strong disinclination to take it any further, wishing Drew Slocombe had never chosen Okehampton to report the missing Justine in the first place.
When Carlos Pereira had shown up, shouting for his daughter, maddened by the bland unconcern of Philip Renton, it had thrown everything into even greater confusion. The uniforms had dragged him off Renton and taken him to the station. The forensic team had almost simultaneously finished bagging up their gleanings from the Metro and followed closely behind. Den and Bennie had been left unsure what to do, until Hemsley had ordered them back to base for yet another debriefing.
He wished it would all just stop. He didn’t want to search for a missing child; he didn’t want to find her dead and have to watch the wretched Rentons disintegrate. He would much rather never have heard of Justine Pereira or Georgia Renton. Except then of course he would never have met the delightful Maggs. And meeting Maggs was the only bright moment in a long spell of gloom.
Carlos Pereira was clearly not a fully functional person, although once in police custody he did calm down considerably. He could not coherently explain exactly why he’d driven down to Devon from his home in Derbyshire and launched an attack on the unsuspecting Renton. He would only say that he’d known something like this was coming. Justine had not been in touch as regularly as usual; she’d sounded depressed the last time she’d phoned him and laughed bitterly when he’d asked if she had boyfriend trouble.
‘That’s not quite the same thing as accusing her landlord of harassment,’ Den observed mildly.
‘Something was upsetting her,’ said the man stubbornly. ‘I begged her to tell me what it was, so that I could come and lend a hand. She always used to come to her Dadda when she had problems.’ Pereira’s Spanish accent was unmistakable, but he seemed to have complete mastery of the English language. His daughter was very like him in looks and Den wondered whether she’d inherited some of his instability as well.
‘Well, sir, you’ve shown up at a highly critical moment,’ Den told him, with a touch of exasperation. ‘As you probably realise, we’re in the process of investigating the disappearance of Mr and Mrs Renton’s three-year-old girl. There’s a strong possibility that your daughter is somehow implicated in the matter.’
Pereira stared wildly at him. ‘Little girl? No, I know nothing about that.’ His face contracted at a sudden painful thought. ‘Justine wouldn’t hurt a little girl. Not after losing her own baby.’
Den was slow to react. ‘Pardon?’ he said. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Five years ago,’ the man supplied, his eyes sunken into dark shadow. ‘It was terrible. A tragedy. Little Sarah, the light of our lives, the best darling child in the world. She died.’ He clutched his heart dramatically. ‘It was like the ending of the world. Poor Justine. She went wild – we both did – and then she started her pottery and calmed down, and took those rotten pills the doctor gave her and seemed to be getting better. I telephoned her every week and wrote to her and went to see her a few times. But now …’ He sighed heavily, and rubbed his broken knuckles where he’d punched Philip Renton.
Even operating on autopilot, Den couldn’t miss the obvious. ‘How old was Sarah when she died?’ he asked.
‘Three. She was just over three. The same age as this child you say is missing.’ He stared desperately at Den, the same thought quite legible on both faces. But then Pereira banged the door shut on it. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s a coincidence. Justine would never do anything to harm a little girl.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Den, unconvinced.
Drew asked for Detective Sergeant Cooper when he telephoned. He’d rehearsed various ways in which to give Roma’s message, but they all sounded weak at best and positively obstructive at worst. Roma’s behaviour – driving home, leaving an hour’s interval between finding the body and reporting it – seemed almost culpably careless. This family – Justine, Penn and Roma – were rapidly seeming more and more strange. Disturbed, dysfunctional, devious: epithets rolled round Drew’s head as he imagined the police reaction to his information.
He was, after all, an undertaker. He knew that there was a profound human need to gather up and protect the mortal remains of a deceased person. When it was a child, this need was all the greater. The image of a week-old body lying in a ditch, exposed to weather and animals and birds, was deeply distressing. The time between replacing the receiver on Roma’s call and lifting it again to do her bidding and tell the police was little over two minutes. And even that felt much too long.
By some telepathic magic, Maggs came into the office just as Drew pronounced the name of Cooper and flew to his side, her eyes firing questions at him. In the wait for the policeman to be located, he refused to tell her anything, waving a finger across his face to indicate the need for patience. Finally they were connected. ‘Cooper,’ came a tired-sounding voice.
‘Drew Slocombe. Listen, I’ve got some very serious news for you. Roma Millan – Justine’s mother – went to Gladcombe Farm earlier today and found the body of a little girl. She’s in a ditch, about a quarter of a mile from the farmhouse and seems to have been dead for some days. Roma’s too upset to speak to you herself, so she asked me to do it.’
‘All right,’ came the steady response. ‘Is she there now? Will she show us the place?’
‘No, she went home again. I think she just acted instinctively. It came as a horrible shock to her.’
‘Must have done. Tell her we’ll collect her right away, take her back there and she can show us what she’s found.’
‘Can I come?’ Drew surprised himself by the question. ‘Me and Maggs. You’ll need someone to remove the body anyway.’
‘Steady on. That won’t be until after the team’s done its bit. Doctor, SOCOs, photographer – all that stuff.’
‘I know. And I have urgent work here for another half-hour or so. But we can’t help feeling involved, especially since Roma asked me to call you. I think she might need someone like me to be there. Somebody who understands her.’ He wondered at his own temerity, his acute sense of wanting to protect the woman who everyone saw as so in control and domineering.
‘I can’t stop you if you decide to be there. Now, I’ll have to go. This is going to need all available hands, in the house as well as outside. Sounds as if it’ll be messy.’
* * *
Sheena Renton was home by five-thirty, a sudden surge of emotion sending her foot down on the accelerator, for no conscious reason. She arrived to find the farmyard so full of vehicles that she had to leave her car on the approach drive. Philip was standing by the house, the lowering sun shining full on him like a spotlight. As she ran to him, she saw that his face was bruised and swollen, giving him an appearance both sinister and pathetic.
‘Have they found her?’ she gasped breathlessly.
He met her eyes. ‘We tried about fifty times to call you. Where have you been?’
‘Driving. Just driving. What’s happening here?’ Her voice felt rough, emerging from a constricted throat. She stared around at the knots of people filling the yard, none of them quite looking at her. She recognised the tall detective and a short middle-aged woman with him who had the square shoulders of a police officer. There were at least four uniformed officers standing about.