Shadows and Sins (The Falconer Files Book 13)

by Andrea Frazer

  ‘Evidently. Go to the canteen and see if they’ll give you some ice. If you put that over it, it should freeze it so that you can remove it.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I’ll remember that one,’ said the sergeant rising from his chair.

  ‘Of course, if you never chew it again in my sight, this won’t recur.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again.’

  ‘Good! Promise?’

  The office door closed behind Carmichael’s retreating figure before he could make this all-important agreement.

  Falconer was just getting settled when his internal phone rang, and he answered it to hear the voice of Superintendent Chivers on the line.

  ‘Falconer? My office. Now.’

  Chivers didn’t waste words. The inspector’s face blanched, and he told Tomlinson he’d be back as soon as he could. Suddenly a sergeant chewing gum didn’t seem so important.

  Chivers’ office was always immaculately tidy, and had a wall full of bookshelves lined with weighty legal volumes. The carpet was thick and luxurious, and the superintendent always looked as if his wife had freshly ironed him every morning straight after breakfast.

  ‘Sit down, Inspector, and tell me what the hell’s going on?’ he barked. ‘I’ve had a call from one of my wife’s friends to say she came in here yesterday to report her daughter missing, and you don’t seem to have done anything about it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mrs Ida Jones came in to report her daughter Natalie missing. She was expecting someone to call round and take more details before starting a search for her, and yet she’s heard nothing since she visited the station. Why are you sitting on your thumbs, man? You’re a policeman, not a solicitor. We’ve already got two young women dead, and now we’ve got one missing.’

  Suddenly catching the drift, Falconer responded with, ‘Actually we’ve got two missing. The second body turned out to be someone else, and we still don’t know what happened to Suzie Doidge.’

  ‘Dear God, that’s even worse than I thought. Why have you been so inactive?’

  ‘I thought, as her mother said that Natalie was a rather shy girl, that maybe she’d met someone of, er, the opposite gender, and been too scared to let her mother know she wasn’t coming home. I thought she’d probably met a man and had gone off with him somewhere, and that she’d turn up yesterday evening looking sheepish.’

  ‘You did, did you? And did she?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, sir.’

  ‘Not to anyone else’s knowledge, either. You should be ashamed of yourself for taking the whole thing so lightly. Now, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to make a TV appeal for this girl, Natalie Jones, and put out details for the other one who hasn’t turned up. I want her details, along with those for the dead girls, on my desk as soon as is humanly possible. If we’re not competent or interested enough to find out what’s been going on then we shall have to rely on the public to do our job for us, Inspector. What do you have to say about that?’

  Falconer gulped at this furious attack.

  ‘And I hope you’re ashamed of yourself. Maybe you’d be better employed looking after a pack of Brownies as their Brown Owl. You certainly don’t seem mature and responsible, or even interested enough, to handle a complicated case like this one.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself?’

  ‘I’ll have the information we have collected up here as soon as possible, and I’ll pay more attention to detail in future. We’ve only just got a name for the second body, but we have traced the owners of the properties that the two who first went missing lived in. I’ve already contacted the landlords, and I’ve put DC Tomlinson on to tracing where the latest victim lived and worked to see if we can unearth any contacts.’

  ‘Go on then, Inspector, get to it. Don’t stand around in my office gawping at me all day long. And let me make this clear: I will not have my wife taking calls from members of the public, even if it is an acquaintance of hers, making complaints about the inefficiency of my officers. I will not be made a fool of in my own town.’ By the time he finished shouting, his face was engorged with rage and there was spittle at the corners of his mouth.

  Falconer replied in a raised voice, ‘No, sir!’ and had to restrain his impulse to salute. He knew he was not running at full capacity, and resolved to do something about it.

  On his trip back down the stairs he resolved to pull himself together. He would send Carmichael to go through the boxes again that Rosemary Wilson had stored in her stock room in the shop at Castle Farthing, and get Tomlinson to gather any information that he could on Melanie Saunders. Chivers would sort out the TV appeal for Natalie Jones – he did so like being the centre of media attention – then he could get on with organising a search, if necessary. The girl could still be alive, although she definitely wasn’t in hospital after an accident.

  He needed to know where she had been the evening she disappeared, and hoped that the information would come in after Chivers’ appearance on the local news. It was certainly more likely that people would remember seeing her than they would the two who had worked behind the bar at The Inn on the Green and The Fisherman’s Flies on an ad hoc basis so long ago. The public memory wasn’t as long as he would have liked it to be.

  Tomlinson got straight on to his computer and the phone, while Carmichael grabbed his coat to drive back to Castle Farthing, from whence he had recently arrived. He was glad of the chance to get back to his home village as Kerry had been suffering from lower back pain the previous evening and was extremely uncomfortable, physically. He could call in to see how she was before returning to the office.

  Mrs Wilson greeted Carmichael with a wide smile and asked him what he wanted. When he explained the purpose of his visit, she immediately showed him into the back of the shop and pointed again at the boxes that held Annie Symons’ possessions. ‘Any idea what you’re looking for, Davey?’ she asked him. ‘You’ve already had a riffle through them once.’

  ‘More photographs, an address book or a diary,’ he replied, making a stab at what Falconer expected of him. ‘Anything, really, that will give us clues to anyone she might have known. I’ve spoken to Kerry, but she didn’t know her all that well.’

  ‘Did you trace that cousin in Australia?’ the shopkeeper asked.

  ‘We don’t even have a name, yet.’

  ‘Well, good luck. She wasn’t a very chatty person, but she might have written things down.’

  Carmichael must have had a bit of the Irish in him that day. Under a flap in the bottom of the box he came across a first draft of a children’s book that the young woman had been putting together, along with some fairly naïve illustrations, and an address book that listed several numbers he thought might be connected to this literary attempt. That should give them something to work on.

  He also located a few more photographs that he thought looked fairly recent given that the little Jack Russell, Buster, who used to belong to the miserly old curmudgeon who had lived in the right-hand half of what was now his and Kerry’s home, was in the background. She was sitting on the little wall at the front of her cottage with another young woman, whom he presumed to be a friend, and the photo must have been taken by a third party.

  After loading the whole lot into his car, in the hope that there would be something else of use to them in it after it had been sifted through thoroughly, he called briefly on Kerry and found her feeling very poorly. He had to promise to come home on time, if not early, that evening so that she could get some rest. Harriet was running her ragged now she was on two feet, and his wife was clearly exhausted with her large size.

  When he returned to his desk, Falconer grabbed the photographs, and ran them straight up to the superintendent’s office. He was planning to film the appeal for the lunchtime bulletin, and so far this was the only further pictorial evidence of Annie Symons.

  He found his superior combing his hair in front of a wall mirror
; he was practising looking serious and concerned. His brisk rap on the door and entry without waiting to be summoned in must have embarrassed Chivers, because his face was red when he turned round to receive this necessary evidence of the dead woman’s appearance.

  ‘I’ll put that with the other things you brought me earlier, Inspector. See what you can find on that other woman, Saunders, and get to grips with Natalie’s disappearance, there’s a good man.’ It was amazing what a bit of being caught out preening could do to a person’s attitude.

  When he got back Tomlinson had discovered from the electoral register where Ms Saunders had lived, and gone out to pay a visit to the address, and Carmichael was bursting with conflicting emotions. The most personal one reared its head first. ‘Can I get away fairly swiftly today, sir? Kerry’s feeling very low and I want her to be able to have a nice long soak and an early night. All this extra weight is taking its toll on her.

  ‘Oh, and I’ve remembered something from when we worked on a murder case in Shepford Stacey. There was a house at the end of a road where the occupant had suddenly disappeared. I’ll have a look through my old notebooks and see if I can come across her name, but it might be another one of these disappearances.’

  ‘I seem to remember something about that. You sort out a name and I’ll follow it up. And, as to your going home early, I don’t really think so, with so much to be investigated, but I certainly won’t keep you late. If anything happens to Kerry, you’ll miss a lot more work than if I let you go and look after her.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I’ll go and hunt out that old notebook straight away.’

  While he was gone, Falconer could hear the sound of feet on stone steps and the inane chatter of a crowd of reporters, all intent on a good story so that maybe, just this once, they could shout, ‘Hold the front page’. He heard the babble enter the building and head for the conference room where, no doubt, ‘Jelly’ Chivers was preening himself for the approaching publicity: yet another chance to have his likeness beamed into innumerable homes and directly to address his public. Sometimes he took his role as public protector seriously, at others, he just wanted to lick the boots of more senior officers in the hope of some house points and the possibility of promotion.

  Boy was he going to be smug after this, with other senior officers phoning him to congratulate him on his handling of the media – or at least the superintendent hoped that was how it was going to be, and that he wouldn’t goof-up, make a laughing stock of himself, and end up with egg all over his face.

  Carmichael returned to the office half an hour later with an expression of triumph on his face. ‘Fanny Anstruther,’ he announced. ‘Copse View on Blacksmiths Terrace. It was assumed that she’d gone into a nursing home, but nobody knew for certain. Do you want me to follow it up?’

  ‘Did you find out who’d told us that it was thought she’d gone into a home?’

  ‘The vicar’s wife, Ruth Lockwood, sir.’

  ‘I’ll give her a ring and ask her what she remembers about the house and woman. Her number should be easy enough to find if she’s married to the vicar, although I’ve probably got it on file somewhere.’

  Before he could pick up the phone, however, it rang and he found Tomlinson on the line. ‘I’m in Carsfold at the address we had for Melanie Saunders, and I’ve spoken to the neighbours. They said she had an interview through an employment agency for a job as a live-in just before she went away. They just assumed she’d taken the job and moved, although they couldn’t recall her moving her stuff out – but as both of them work, they thought she could easily have picked up her possessions while they were out. What do you want me to do next, sir?’

  ‘Give the agency a visit, Tomlinson, and well done. If we can find out where and when the interview was, we can at least get an approximate time for her disappearance.’

  ‘Will do. It’s in Market Darley, so I’ll come straight back and let you know if I’ve got anything.’

  As he ended the call, Falconer could hear the sound of chairs being scraped in the conference room, prior to being stacked and stored along the back wall, and he knew he would soon hear the sound of Chivers’ feet trotting up the stairs after his moment in the limelight. A moment of unintended schadenfreude had him hoping that the man had made a fool of himself and been ambushed by a barrage of unexpected questions for which he hadn’t rehearsed, but this passed quickly, as he didn’t want to think that the case had been hindered by his superior’s handling of the press.

  Before he had time to think of anything else, the phone rang again, and he found Honey on the line.

  ‘I was just following up from last night. When do you want us to meet again?’ Now, this was a reasonable question, considering how their relationship had been going, but Falconer was thoroughly unsettled, and had momentarily forgotten his contrition of the morning. He reacted to a gut instinct.

  ‘I don’t think we should see each other for a while. I’ve got a very complicated case at work which is going to occupy the whole of my thoughts for some time. Maybe we could just cool our relationship off a little. Just until things are more under control. Only for a short time. Not very long …’ His words died in his mouth.

  As he spoke, he listened to his statements as if they were the ramblings of a stranger, but knew that he was doing the right thing. Work was going to take all his time until this case was wound up, and the misgivings he had been experiencing suddenly solidified in his head. He wasn’t as happy as he’d thought he was. He still couldn’t entirely forgive this lovely woman, nor could he forget about her infidelity … it would be best if he didn’t see her for a while. Maybe it would be for the best if he didn’t see her at all, if he was more concerned with the disappearance of his pet than he was about upsetting his girlfriend, but he wasn’t going to say that just at the moment. Better not burn a bridge until he knew whether he’d have to cross it again.

  ‘I’ll ring again in a couple of weeks,’ responded Honey, with a chirpy note in her voice, not giving in that easily. ‘I’ll just keep my eyes on the local news and work out when everything’s in hand. OK?’

  ‘No problem.’ Why had he said that? His over-cautious side exerting itself, again?

  He left the office for an early lunch, leaving the contacting of Ruth Lockwood to later. He’d nip home and see if Monkey had reappeared, thinking he had no idea how badly he’d react if it was a family member who had seemed to disappear off the face of the earth if he felt this way about a cat.

  And what was wrong with him with regard to Honey – or was it just that he was trying to recapture a relationship that had already run its course? He’d been so excited when he and the psychiatrist had been reunited over a case the previous year, but he evidently hadn’t been as content as he’d thought he was. He granted that she was very beautiful, but he’d previously seen beyond that beauty and sadly found a person he didn’t think he could trust thoroughly.

  Feeling rather miserable about this gradual realisation, he drove home and found the house empty. Not one of his pets was indoors. Going out into the back garden he called the cats fruitlessly for some time, then went inside to get himself a sandwich. When he’d eaten, he took another few minutes outside, calling to his missing Abyssinian, then gave up. The animal clearly wasn’t anywhere close by. If she had been, she’d have come bounding back at his call. Monkey really was very intelligent and that was why, he thought, that he missed her presence so much.

  When he got back to the office, he had determined to have a last look through Annie Symons’ things, but was immediately distracted by the ringing of his telephone. It was Tomlinson again, to inform him that he’d gone to the employment agency and discovered that they had set up an interview for Melanie Saunders as a live-in member of staff with Jefferson Grammaticus at The Manse. The man hadn’t mentioned that when they’d visited his establishment when the body had been discovered. But then, if she hadn’t turned up for the interview, and the woman wasn’t known to be missing, why would he �
�� except for the fact that her body had been found in the grounds of his hotel. Had he actually known her and was covering up?

  He’d have to go back, and he’d take Carmichael with him again. Grammaticus was a slippery customer, getting up to all sorts of tricks with his staff, as they had found out when they originally met him. Although he didn’t think he’d resort to murder, it had to be checked out. While he waited for his sergeant’s return, knowing that he would take his full lunch break as he was going back again to Castle Farthing to see how Kerry was feeling, he made that call to Ruth Lockwood.

  The vicar’s wife remembered him from his investigation in Shepford Stacey and greeted him cordially. ‘Surely not another murder in our little community?’ she asked.

  ‘Not at all. I’m just making enquiries about a loose end we didn’t tie up when my sergeant and I were there before. The woman who lived in Copse View who wasn’t in residence at the time: have you got any firm news of where she had gone?’

  ‘How funny you should ask that. The property’s just been sold. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just checking up on her welfare,’ he replied without a sliver of guilt in his conscience. ‘I don’t suppose you happen to remember the name of the estate agents?’

  ‘It was a Market Darley agency. Leavitt and Quitte, I believe, but I’m afraid I don’t know who was responsible for its sale.’

  ‘That’s OK. I can pop in there myself and get any information I need. Thanks for your help, Mrs Lockwood.’

  ‘Anytime, Inspector. Nice to hear from you. You will let me know, won’t you, about anything you find out? I’m a real nosy parker.’

  ‘Mrs Lockwood, you are a mine of interesting and useful information.’

  ‘How kind of you. Good day.’

  He ended the call as Carmichael breezed back in to his desk. ‘That was the vicar’s wife from Shepford Stacey,’ he informed the sergeant. ‘Fanny Anstruther’s house has just been sold,’ he explained, then added, as an afterthought, ‘How is Kerry?’ He was really hopeless at other people’s personal lives, as well as his own.