by Alan Beechey
Effie punched in the number for the CID. “I’m going to try and have the call traced,” she explained softly. “But it’s going to take some time.”
“All right, dear. All right,” Joan was saying, in a tone that suggested she was nearing the end of the conversation. Sam suddenly snatched the receiver from her hand.
“Christina, this is your father,” he announced. “Tell me where you are and I’ll come and pick you up. What do you mean, you—”
He stood motionless for a second. Then he slowly replaced the telephone on the hook. “She hung up,” he said incredulously.
Effie recognized the stick insect’s voice on her mobile phone, but she disconnected the line without speaking. Maybe the telephone company would still have a record of the call?
“She hung up on her father,” Sam repeated. Joan covered her face with her hands.
***
“Gawd, Effie, you don’t do things by halves,” Detective Inspector Welkin was complaining. He was less wary of antagonizing her when she was on the other end of a telephone.
Effie was parked on a double yellow line near the entrance to Plumley Central station, and she was using the time to catch up on the investigation. She had already called Tish Belfry to report that Tina was alive and clearly staying away from home of her own volition. Joan thought the call had come from a public telephone, but although the girl was coherent and intelligible, she hadn’t given any clues to her whereabouts. Effie told Tish to contact the telephone company and then continue with the afternoon’s sweep of the area between Tina’s school and her home. Then she called Welkin to ask for permission.
“I’ve just had bloody Trevor Stoodby in my office trying to get all of his mates involved your case,” Welkin continued. “Listen, Eff, I appreciate the crash course in sensitivity training, but we can’t have the entire CID out looking for a runaway on the last Saturday before Christmas.”
“Agreed,” said Effie, silently thanking Stoodby for securing her a strong negotiating position. “That’s why I just want Tish and a few uniforms—the ones who’d be on that beat anyway. You can keep the rest.”
“I suppose I can let you have Trev, since he seems so keen. Keeps bleating ‘poor little Tina’ and mumbling about his first Christmas without his mum and dad. I think he was twenty-four at the time. The others don’t seem interested. I’m going to send them up the High Street for some undercover work among the shoppers. So what do you think, is the kid going to be home in time for the Queen’s speech?”
“I hope so, but I don’t think it’ll be today. She’s scared of Dad for some reason, although he says they didn’t have any sort of argument, and he’s not aware of anything she’s done that would get him angry.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. Only she knows and she’s scared to tell him.”
“I think you’re right,” Effie agreed, noticing the man who had appeared at the tube station exit and was now standing uncertainly on the pavement. “I’ll check in again later, I’ve just seen someone I want to interview.”
She folded the phone and tossed it into her bag. Then she climbed out of the car, ran over to the man, and kissed him very hard on the mouth.
***
“Well, this is a very unexpected pleasure,” said Paul Piltdown, ushering his visitors into the manse. “Oh, perhaps not entirely unexpected in the case of Sergeant Strongitharm, since I heard the news about Tina Quarterboy this morning. Very distressing.”
Oliver and Effie followed him into the large living room where Oliver had met the deacons six days earlier. This time, he took the sofa in front of the window. Effie sat beside him.
“You two look like a young couple who want me to marry them,” said Piltdown jovially. Seeing their immediate discomfort, his face fell. “Oops, sorry. Clearly a bit premature for that sort of pleasantry. Effie, I’m sure Oliver will tell you that I’m a past master at putting my foot in it.”
“I’m sure it all goes back due to his influence in your youth,” she replied graciously. Oliver, startled, embarrassed, and now slighted, chose to look grumpy. Piltdown smiled.
“Ah good, you seem to have the measure of this old reprobate. Now, forgive me for my ignorance of police matters, Effie, but I understood you investigated murders with Oliver’s Uncle Tim? I trust this doesn’t indicate pessimism about poor Tina?”
Effie quickly explained why she was assigned to Plumley.
“I see,” Piltdown said thoughtfully. “And you wanted to ask me if I knew where Tina was. I should warn you that even though the United Diaconalists do not practice formal confession, I would have to regard any conversations between myself and Tina as off-limits. Fortunately, that’s not a problem in this instance, since I didn’t know she’d run away until Sam came to see me this morning, and I have absolutely no idea where she is now. Or should that be ‘unfortunately,’ because if I did know, I would beg her to go home to her parents. Tea?”
He slipped from the room to put the kettle on. Piltdown had struck Effie as personable, with an open and appealing face that fell slightly short of being attractive. He was clearly at ease with women, although she could see that no woman under sixty had had any influence on the decoration of the manse, which clearly pre-dated Piltdown’s arrival.
“I like him,” she murmured. “He’s a bit like a pious, overgrown teddy bear.”
“Being virtuous goes with the job,” Oliver replied. “I told you, he’ll be very cooperative. You don’t need me here as an excuse for interviewing him.”
“But would you have come all this way if I’d said I just wanted to see you for a couple of hours?” she asked, squeezing his hand tenderly.
“Of course.”
“Good boy. Now I won’t have to break your fingers after all.”
They snatched their hands apart guiltily as Piltdown returned with a tea tray, trying to hide his amusement at their reaction. He put the tray on a small table and sat down on a stiff-backed chair.
“I wanted to offer you some biscuits, but I seem to have run out. Liquids only, I’m afraid. I could have sworn that there was an entire packet of Jaffa Cakes in the pantry the other day. Alas, Oliver knows my housekeeping is not all it should be.”
“He leaves his vests in the pantry and his pants in the vestry,” Oliver murmured. The others ignored him, and Piltdown busied himself with the tray.
“It’s sad to think that Tina herself was playing mother in this very room last Sunday evening,” he commented ruefully. He paused, and tea slopped from the teapot into a saucer.
“Something occur to you?” asked Effie.
“Something ironic, I suppose,” Piltdown answered. “Tina was ‘playing mother,’ as the expression goes, by pouring the tea for everyone. And she should be playing the mother of God right now in the children’s Nativity play. They’re rehearsing next door, even as we speak.”
“Were they rehearsing last Thursday evening?”
“Oh no. All the rehearsals to date have been during Sunday School. But since the performance is going to take place in the church as part of the carol service on Christmas Eve—goodness, that’s this Wednesday, how time flies!—they’re meeting now while the building’s empty. Barry Foison is the director, writer, and composer. He says it’s going to be a Nativity for our time. Frankly, I’m dreading it.”
“There was no other church event that Tina may have gone to after school on Thursday?”
Piltdown shook his head. “That was the evening I met you, wasn’t it, Ollie?” he asked casually, passing Oliver a cup of tea on a mismatched saucer.
“That’s right,” Oliver answered. “You’d been to see Nigel Tapster. Hey, how did the church meeting go last night? Did you cast the Tapster out into the desert?”
Effie knew the answer, but she let the minister respond. It might be informative. Piltdown rubbed his hands together nervously.
“Nig
el was elected as a deacon,” he answered. Oliver whistled his surprise.
“How did that happen?” he asked.
“He won enough votes, of course,” Piltdown answered blandly. “I told you, Ollie, we’re a democracy. Nigel must have been sneakily doing the rounds of church members, persuading them to put a fresh face on the diaconate. And with Sam and Joan AWOL, he managed to squeak by, by one vote.”
“So Sam’s lost his daughter and his seat, all in twenty-four hours?”
“No, Sam’s all right. Our deacons are of the old school. They’ve been brought up to believe it’s not cricket to vote for yourself. They arrange to vote for each other. Patience votes for Dougie, Dougie for Sam, and so on.”
“Who’s the unlucky devil who should have received Sam’s vote?”
“Cedric Potiphar. Hardly a devil. It’s the first time in nearly a hundred years that a Potiphar hasn’t been a deacon in Plumley, and the first time in forty that the Potiphar hasn’t been Cedric. He was devastated to point of catatonia. I’m not sure he’s really taken it all in.”
“Why didn’t you just postpone the meeting when you heard about Sam and Joan?”
“Some members made that suggestion, but others stated that church rules should prevail. We had a quorum, so the election had to take place. There’s no requirement that all the current deacons be present, or the church secretary. Or the minister, for that matter.”
“And was Nigel Tapster himself one of the people insisting on the letter of the law?” Oliver asked slyly, hoping to see a crack in Piltdown’s stony facade. He had always sensed a much deeper resentment of Tapster than his friend had revealed.
“What do you think?” was Piltdown’s reply. “Of course, if I’d known the true reason for the Quarterboys’ absence, I would have made a stronger case for postponement. But they had merely called in sick. Sam has his pride, apparently, and Cedric has paid the price for it.”
“Just out of curiosity, who did you vote for?”
“We’re getting a long way from Tina and the reason for Effie’s visit,” Piltdown said pointedly, shifting noisily on his chair. He turned to Effie. “Can I help you with anything else?”
Effie had been glancing through her notebook. “Who were Tina’s friends at the church?” she asked. “Who would she have confided in if she had any problems at home?”
“I’d like to think she might have confided in me. She used to be friendly with Patience’s son, Billy, but I rather feel they’ve spent less time together since he became one of Nigel Tapster’s circle. The other girls in Tapster’s group are a little older—old enough to regard young Tina as a different species. You might talk to some of the other kids in the Sunday School, but since Tina was older than most of them, her role was more one of mother hen than boon companion.”
“That was Billy Coppersmith at Tapster’s house last Thursday?” Oliver asked.
“That’s right. He and Heather were having a rather noisy rehearsal for the Nativity play.”
“We’re trying to track Tina between the time she left school at about four o’clock and the time she got home two hours later,” Effie informed him. “Where were you at that time?”
“Gosh, am I being grilled?”
“It may jog your memory.”
Piltdown ran a hand over his untidy hair. “Let’s see, I was here until about a quarter past five, which is when I set out to walk to the Tapsters’. It takes ten minutes or so. I stayed for about quarter of an hour with them. Well, with Nigel—Heather and Billy kept up that infernal piano and guitar music all through our meeting. So it must have been about a quarter to six when I left and ran into Oliver. And you say Tina is accounted for at that point?”
“Until sometime during the night, when she ran off,” Effie told him. “There’s no chance that she might have gone to the Tapsters’?”
“I didn’t see her there that evening.”
“I meant during the night.”
“The Pied Piper of Plumley, I think you called him, Ollie?” Piltdown said, collecting the cups and saucers. “No, I’m fairly certain that Tina wouldn’t have sought sanctuary with the Tapsters.”
“She wouldn’t have run off to join Nigel Tapster’s cult, despite her parents’ attempts to keep her away from his influence?” Effie asked.
“Or because of them?” Oliver added.
Piltdown looked from one to the other. “There is no ‘cult,’” he said quietly. “We admittedly have some theological differences among church members, even among deacons, but that’s a family affair, nothing that we need the police to sort out for us. Just as I’m sure that when Tina turns up, we’ll be able to address her problems within the Diaconalist family.”
Oliver sensed that the interview had turned inexplicably icy, and while he knew that he had hardly uttered a word since their arrival, he felt responsible. He cleared his throat.
“Paul,” he began tentatively, “as my girlfriend, Effie’s naturally heard my opinion of Nigel Tapster’s mission and the tension he’s been causing within the church. As a police officer, she’s only concerned with bringing Tina home safely to her parents. You can trust her to keep the roles separate.”
“Of course,” Piltdown replied. He grinned self-consciously. “Sorry, Effie, that little speech came out much more harshly than I intended.”
“That’s all right, Paul,” she said, closing her notebook and slipping it into her handbag.
“And as I said,” Piltdown continued, “I have no idea where poor Tina is right now. More tea?”
“Thank you, but we have to go,” Effie claimed, jumping to her feet. Oliver, who wanted more tea, followed loyally.
“Oh Paul,” she asked at the front door, “would it be possible to look in on the Nativity play rehearsal? You never know, one of the children may have heard something about Tina.”
“Of course. You’ll need to go down to the side door of the church. Partly my fault, I seem to have mislaid my set of the church keys, and Barry Foison only has a key to the side door. Oliver, you met Barry on Sunday, so he’ll know you aren’t the drama critic for The Guardian or some other interloper.”
He closed the front door instantly. Oliver and Effie walked through the manse garden and into the street. A small break in the clouds allowed watery afternoon sunlight to wash the classical facade, giving the stonework a silvery finish. The rotting notice board in the shallow forecourt included a bright, homemade poster announcing the Christmas Eve carol service, with a child’s painting of an angel blowing a long trumpet.
“You know,” said Oliver, looking back along the street, “you jogged my memory about Thursday evening. Paul and I were walking back to the manse, and we were just about here when I caught sight of a girl hovering by the manse gate. She turned away when she saw us.”
“Could it have been Tina?”
“Not sure. It was dark, and there are no streetlights by the gate. If forced to guess, I’d say no. This girl seemed a little bigger than Tina and I had an impression of long red hair, whereas Tina’s is dark.”
“What time was this?”
“Just about seven o’clock.”
“If Joan is right about the time Tina got home—and I think she is, because she’s a mother—then it couldn’t have been her. Did Paul see this girl?”
“If he did, he didn’t react. I suppose that’s odd, in retrospect. The girl was fairly conspicuous and seemed to be waiting for him. Even if he didn’t recognize her, he’d surely have made a comment about a possible visitor.”
They turned into the church’s small car park and Oliver lead the way past Effie’s Renault toward the overgrown path that ran beside the building, parallel with the manse’s garden.
“So you’re changing your mind about my old friend?” he asked.
“Not at all. I still think he’s very nice.”
“Even after it turned a
wkward over that Tapster business?”
“Paul wasn’t awkward because he was being unpleasant. He was awkward because he was lying to us and he felt bad about it.”
“He was lying?” said Oliver, aghast. “A man of the cloth?”
“You think every word a priest says is true? In and out of the pulpit?”
“What did he tell us that wasn’t true?”
“Nothing. But I’m sure he didn’t tell us the whole truth, even though I sense he really wanted to.”
“So he knows where Tina is?”
“No, he would have told us or the Quarterboys if he knew that. It’s more that I think he knows why she ran away. But as he said, that’s really a family matter. Your intervention at that point was very welcome, incidentally. I was just starting to feel like smacking him, dog collar or no dog collar.”
“Ah. And my wise comment helped you recover your professionalism.”
“Sort of. Your ‘wise comment’ was just patronizing enough to make me want to smack you instead,” she said sweetly.
***
The side door to the church was old and warped, and Oliver had to push hard before it opened with a shudder. Effie stepped ahead of him into the darkness, and immediately found herself in front of a spiky-haired, leather-clad biker with a harsh seven o’clock shadow and sunglasses. She stopped, noticing that his dirty jeans were unzipped and hanging around his hips. He stared at her, his tongue protruding a little between wet red lips.
“Do you want some help with those?” she said gently, indicating the biker’s jeans.
“Yes please, miss,” the biker whispered, pulling up his leather jacket and T-shirt to reveal a white belly above underpants with a Wallace and Gromit pattern. Effie dropped to her knees and pulled the boy’s jeans up firmly to his waist.
“I had to go to the toilet, but the zip’s too stiff for me to do up,” complained the six-year-old. Effie finished tidying his clothes and leaned back, looking at him critically.
“You look very scary,” she confirmed. “What’s your name?”
“Kurt, Miss.”