The Comforts of Home

by Susan Hill

  It was only when he was walking over to the shop to pick up some supplies that Simon thought Douglas could perfectly well have asked him to help out with the fencing. But he hadn’t and it made him prickle with resentment.

  Five

  She wore a headscarf and very few women wore headscarves these days, except the Queen – which is what passed through the desk sergeant’s mind as the woman came into the station.

  ‘Good morning. It’s Mrs …’

  ‘Still. Marion Still.’

  Yes.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mrs Still?’

  ‘You know what, Sergeant. Nothing changes. I’m here to see the Detective Chief Superintendent.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re out of luck, Mrs Still – the Super is on extended leave.’

  ‘That’s what you told me the last time. You or your colleague.’

  ‘Well, it was true then and it’s true now.’

  ‘He’s still on holiday?’

  ‘He’s on sick leave. And I have no idea when he will be back, but it won’t be tomorrow. Best I can do is see if anybody’s free in the CID room and can come down –’

  The woman burst into tears. Looking at her body, sagging slightly forward, as if she were carrying something heavy, at her grey face, with its deep lines of worry, the sergeant felt real sympathy. He knew why she was here. She had been trying to see the Super for a while now.

  ‘Mrs Still … you can sit there a week for all it bothers me, I don’t mind, but you’ll be wasting your time because we don’t know when the Super is coming back. If you won’t talk to anyone else …’

  ‘It needs to be someone senior, and Mr Serrailler is the best, isn’t he?’

  The telephone rang, and two uniforms came through the doors with a young man between them, in handcuffs. Mrs Still took a step back from the counter, but made no other move to leave.

  And then the Chief Constable’s car drew up outside.

  There were three ways to deal with someone like Mrs Still, Kieron thought. He could spend the rest of his days avoiding and evading her. He could fob her off onto someone else, with an instruction not to waste too much time on her.

  Or he could see her himself.

  On the following Wednesday afternoon, his secretary ushered Marion Still into his office at Bevham HQ, to which she had been fetched by a comfortable but unmarked police car. Kieron wanted her to feel that she had been given every possible attention, and a full and proper hearing. He had taken the files home with him and read them carefully. He had also called up a wide selection of press reports on the case, from the day after Kimberley had gone missing to the last time the press had referred to her. In general, as was always the way, media reports had thinned out and dwindled in number only a few months after the event. Kimberley Still was officially a missing person but so were hundreds of others and the media could not keep any one of them on the front page, though the cases of missing children usually got continued coverage.

  ‘I am very grateful to you,’ she said. There was tea. There was coffee. There were chocolate biscuits.

  Kieron was not sitting behind his desk but in a chair beside hers.

  Poor woman. There was nothing else to think about her, as there never was about people who had gone through years of distress, bereavement that was not yet bereavement, alternating hope and despair, who had woken every morning sick to the stomach. He had seen the look in the eyes of people like Marion Still so often. Every copper who had been in the job longer than a couple of years knew the strange deadness and sadness which clouded every spark of life and energy.

  ‘Mrs Still, I have brought myself right up to speed with this case. As you probably know, I wasn’t in this force when Kimberley went missing so I had to read it in detail for the first time – which is a good thing. I’ve brought a fresh pair of eyes to it. I’ve been able to give it deep thought and perhaps I can now ask some new questions. I hope so anyway.’

  ‘Do you mean you’ll start again, try and find out what did happen and where he took her, where he … where she is? I know who “he” is, Mr Bright, we all know. It’s just that nobody seems to think it matters.’

  ‘Of course it matters. I’m not going to pretend I can solve this, Mrs Still. Please understand. There were a great many people involved in looking for Kimberley, trying to discover what happened to her. A great many man hours were spent over a considerable period of time. Nobody gave up lightly, I can promise you.’

  ‘I know that. I know. I don’t have to say how grateful I am again, do I?’

  ‘Of course not. It was, it is, your right. It was owed to Kimberley and to you that we all did our best and then some. What I mean is that, even if there were a new investigation I can’t promise you a result. How could I? There isn’t any new evidence – not so far as I am aware.’

  She put down her cup and looked directly at him, and for a second, he did see something in her eyes. A desperation, and a determination? No. A conviction. A terrible, fixed conviction. He had seen it before occasionally, in the mad and the obsessed.

  ‘Listen, he did it. Lee Russon. I can hardly bear his name in my mouth, it’s like a foul taste I want to spit out. He did it. I think he somehow got her into his car and then he drove off with her and then … then he did whatever he did. And I know he’s in prison for life, only not for my Kimberley. For those others. Those poor girls. You say there’s no new evidence but there is evidence … there always was.’

  ‘Yes. But when that evidence – and it really wasn’t very strong – was put before the Crown Prosecution Service, who are the people who make the final decision, it was found to be too flimsy. They advised that Russon should not be tried for this as well as the other murders because the case was so weak that it would be thrown out. And at that point, Russon might have asked for leave to appeal against the other convictions, as being unsafe, and that could – it’s unlikely, but it could – have led to those being overturned and Russon walking free.’

  ‘He did it.’

  ‘I’m inclined to agree with you, having read everything. And the senior investigating officer at the time –’

  ‘Inspector Wilkins.’

  ‘Yes … he said that the police were not looking for any other suspect. The presumption was that Kimberley had been murdered, and possibly by Lee Russon. But without finding Kimberley’s body or indeed any trace of her at all, Russon –’

  ‘Who lied and lied and lied.’

  ‘Who denied that he’d had anything to do with it – or indeed that he’d ever been in or near Lafferton, let alone on that date – had no case to answer.’

  ‘I don’t believe they really wore him down. If someone’s guilty, they can be worn down all right – they can be made to confess eventually.’

  That was not always true, the Chief thought. But there was no point in saying so to Mrs Still, firmly convinced that Russon was guilty and that someone could eventually break him.

  Six

  It had been too hot to sit in the garden even in the shade of the trees, but as he turned out into the lane, Richard Serrailler saw that the dashboard gauge showed an outside temperature of 26. At two o’clock that afternoon it had been 30. With luck it would be cooler still by the time he got to the cafe. There were some clouds building in the west, which probably meant a storm later, and a break in the weather.

  He would pick up his copy of The Times, have the usual cold beer, followed by a second, and then decide if he wanted to eat the plat du jour or go home and wait for Delphine, before having a late supper with her on the terrace.

  She flicked a smile in his direction as he arrived, but the place was packed, and she was carrying trays of drinks and food in and out, throwing a greeting and a quick word to tables on either side. She would have little time for him now. There was a seat at the far end, just outside the awning. He nodded to a couple of people, shook one man’s hand, but then bent to his paper. He liked to be pleasant. Friendly. He liked the French who lived locally, the old m
en who played evening boules under the horse-chestnut trees, and dominoes on Thursday and Friday afternoons at ancient stone tables. His French was reasonably good. He had spent a year in the country as a young man, and come for holidays almost every year since. And then he had moved out here, renting a small stone farmhouse. He was neighbourly to the others who lived in his hamlet, all of them French. They helped him out if he needed it, he helped back, usually with medical advice – it had not taken them long to learn his profession.

  The expat community he avoided. He did not like their clubbiness, their determination to speak English even more loudly than they did at home, their overfamiliarity with the cafe proprietor and the shop owners, calling out ‘Delphine! More of the same s’il vous plais.’

  They had tried to include him when he had been coming here for a few weeks, pulling out a chair at coffee time, so that he could join their extended table. He always smiled and then went to sit alone. They no longer asked, only glanced at him sometimes and, he knew, talked about him the moment he left.

  Delphine was twenty-five. He was seventy-four. Some days he flattered himself that he looked ten years younger.

  The ice-cold beer was set down in front of him, not by Delphine but by the new young waiter, Olivier. She was sensitive to any suggestion that she favoured Richard by serving him out of turn, and as often as not gave his order to her assistant.

  He had learned, after talking to her on visits to the cafe at quiet times, that she had spent three years in London, spoke fluent English though pretended not to, and was as intelligent and good-humoured as she was pretty.

  Occasionally he wondered if she would wake up one morning, see him as the older man he really was, and disappear, to resurface later attached to a handsome young Frenchman. He was not in love with her, but he enjoyed being with her, her conversation and her easy affection. Her youth. It was a pleasant arrangement that had lasted almost six months. She earned a relatively poor wage but received good tips and would accept nothing from him. She was certainly better company than his family. Cat was preoccupied with her new husband, her children and her job, Simon had not been in touch with him for a long time. Simon. Had he recovered? Had he retired from the police force? Where was he and who with? Richard would have denied that he ever wondered about any of it. But, when he was alone and had too much time on his hands, he thought about his son, as he thought about his grandchildren. And Judith, his ex-wife. Judith more than anyone.

  Delphine brought his second beer, now that many of the diners had been served.

  ‘It’s magret, salad and frites. Sorry, chéri.’

  Richard disliked duck, which was the mainstay of every restaurant in this part of France.

  He made a face.

  ‘The steak frites is good, the langoustines look excellent.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll have this and go home and wait for you. I’d like that … late supper in the warm evening.’ He touched her hand.

  ‘I won’t be finished until maybe ten thirty, eleven, OK?’

  ‘Of course. I want to watch a programme about post-mortems.’ It was Delphine’s turn to make a face, before swishing off to attend to a table of newcomers. Her dark hair was tied neatly back and pinned with a barette, showing off her long neck. She wore black leggings and a loose top, showing off the rest of her figure. She was slender. She was delightful. He sipped more of his beer and turned back to the English news. Everything seemed very far away and of less and less relevance to his life here. His surprisingly settled and enjoyable life.

  He sat in the garden, drank another cold beer, watched the moths batting against the lamp, and after a while, fell asleep in the deckchair. When he woke, it was five to midnight and Delphine was not home. He went inside, checked the phone, looked for her moped in the lean-to. Nothing. He rang the cafe but got voicemail.

  He found her sitting beside her moped on the verge, a mile from the house. His headlights picked her out of the blackness. She was leaning forward, her head on her knees.

  The bike had a buckled front wheel and a missing fender. It lay on its side, and he managed to drag it towards the hedge before helping Delphine into his car. Her face and hands were covered in blood but she was conscious and, so far as he could tell in the half dark, she had not broken any bones or been knocked out. The bleeding came from her nose and one hand which was badly gashed.

  ‘A car came down very fast on the wrong side of the road.’

  ‘Idiot.’

  ‘Yellow car.’

  ‘You recognised it?’

  ‘Not really. It was over in a flash and I was in the verge and he’d gone.’

  ‘Idiot and bastard. But let’s get a proper look at you first. You might need the hospital.’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine.’

  Her nose had swollen and was extremely tender but not broken. At the house Richard bathed her face and arms and dressed the gash, which was deep and he thought would need stitches the next day but he said nothing for now, just dosed her up with painkillers and put her to bed in the room that faced the side of the house and was shaded by trees.

  ‘Oh, what about the bike?’

  ‘I’ll sort that out in the morning. Now lie down, try and sleep, tell me if the pain gets worse or you get a bad headache. Stupid idiot driver. When you leave England for any country where they drive on the right you don’t leave your brains behind. You have to remind yourself all the time – on the right, on the right. He must have been going far too fast round that bend by the recycling bins.’

  ‘Yes.’ Delphine had turned her face away. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  There was something in her voice. He sat on the bed and took her hand.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing, don’t worry. I’m just a bit shocked, I think.’

  ‘Of course you are – but it isn’t that, is it?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Nothing else. I’ll be fine when I’ve slept.’

  ‘You’ll be sore and your nose will hurt a lot, so will your arm. Don’t expect to get up and go off to work, Delphine.’

  ‘I’ll be –’

  ‘No. You won’t be fine. Are you feeling any pain relief yet?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, it’s much better. Thank you, mon chéri. I think you must have been a very good doctor.’

  He closed the door quietly, and went to pour a glass of wine. It was still very warm outside. Warm. Still. The darkness touched by flitting ghost-white moths. A screech owl. Nightjars churring.

  He was not tired and he thought over what Delphine told him about the accident, trying to construct a picture in his mind. He was uneasy.

  His phone buzzed and the screen lit up.

  Hi Dad.

  Cat, an hour behind in England.

  Just finished supper. Hannah rang an hour ago to say she has a part in the new musical, sharing the lead role with two other girls. She’s in a fizz of excitement. See you have a heatwave. Here, not. Hope all well with you. C x

  He read the message over twice. Cat, her family, the farmhouse. Lafferton. Another planet. Going back was out of the question. He liked his life here. He had Delphine. But he felt strangely unattached, as if his real self and his real existence were as they had always been, at home, at Hallam House, first with Meriel, and then with Judith.

  He had often tried to picture himself back at home. The house was still there, let to tenants but his within a couple of months if he wanted to return. The family was there. Nothing had changed other than the usual fact that life moved on, people grew up, grew older, married, died. New houses were built and old buildings demolished. New roads were constructed changing routine journeys. Nothing more. Or less.

  He could not go back. Perhaps in a year or two, not now though – he pushed the recollection away if ever it threatened to surface – not when he had almost been charged with rape. Almost. Because, of course, he had not raped Shelley, she had pushed herself at him, and he had been weak and stupid, in a few blurred moments. That was all. The rest had
been a trumped-up charge and vindictiveness. He knew that. Others knew it too. Nevertheless, he was still tarred with the ‘rapist’ brush by those who knew and people had long memories. False ones, but long nonetheless.

  He had no idea whether Shelley and her husband still lived in Lafferton but wondered occasionally if he should find out. If they had moved away he could go home from time to time, though he doubted if he would ever want to live in Lafferton again.

  He looked in on Delphine before he went to bed. She was asleep, her face swollen and red, her breathing strained through the congested nose. Her gashed arm was outside the covers and blood still seeped a little through the bandage. He touched her hand gently, feeling as protectively towards her as towards an injured child. She stirred slightly, but did not wake.

  He lay for some time, taken aback by the feelings her accident and seeing her just now had aroused in him, feelings of great tenderness and …

  And he did not know. He only knew that this was something unfamiliar, new and disturbing.

  Seven

  Wookie growled, a low rumble of a growl that seemed to come from his stomach rather than his throat, but he did not stir or open an eye.

  Thirty seconds later, Kieron’s car turned into the drive. Wookie growled again.

  ‘Silly dog.’ Cat had her feet up on the sofa, and had almost finished reading Flaubert’s Parrot, the book group choice, to be discussed later that week.

  ‘If you’d been five minutes later I could have given you my full attention, only now you’ll have to wait because I’m on the penultimate page.’

  He came over and kissed her forehead. ‘I’m saying nothing. Drink?’ She nodded, turning the page.

  Wookie went on grumbling. Kieron brought two glasses of wine, put them on the low table, and sat down next to Cat. The terrier got up and moved away to the far side of the sofa, still grumbling.