(1998) Denial

by Peter James

  Her lips tightened, and Michael could see she was quivering from her distress. ‘And the worst?’

  Michael stared at her levelly. ‘That she’s had an accident and hasn’t been found yet.’

  It wasn’t the worst and they both knew it. Teresa nodded slowly, stood up and walked over to the French windows. As she spoke, she was choking on her words. ‘Amanda used to love playing in the garden, when she was little. I had a sandpit – she liked to build imaginary film sets out of sand and put in her dolls and little cars. She’d make up whole stories around them. I grow herbs in it now. Mint, thyme, chives, rosemary, sorrel, dill. Do you like dill, Dr Tennent?’

  ‘Please call me Michael.’

  ‘Amanda taught me to cook fish with dill. She’s always been so interested in everything around her. She teaches everyone she meets things. Has she taught you anything?’

  There was a long silence during which he, too, was struggling for control, then he said, quietly, ‘Yes.’

  Teresa turned around and watched him through red eyes.

  ‘She taught me how to live again.’

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Thomas lay naked in the fine white lace-trimmed sheets in the canopied two-poster in his mother’s bedroom. Chanel perfume and the smell of her hair, her oils, her skin still rose around him.

  He watched her moving in front of him, dressed in her finery, climbing into the passenger seat of a convertible Ferrari outside the casino in Monte Carlo, while Rock Hudson held the door for her.

  ‘You look so beautiful, Mummy,’ Thomas whispered, rapt.

  Tears ran down his face.

  Three weeks and two days. In a coffin, cold and lonely, underground, in the dark.

  He reached out and pressed the freeze-frame on the remote. His mother jigged in close-up, starkly lit. He lifted the small Sony tape recorder off the side table and pressed PLAY.

  Dr Michael Tennent said, ‘The bower-bird? I don’t, no. Is ornithology one of your interests?’

  He stopped the tape, replayed it, listened again to Tennent’s voice. ‘The bower-bird? I don’t, no. Is ornithology one of your interests?’

  He stopped the tape, then picked up a second tape-recorder and into it he said, ‘Hallo, Amanda. How are you?’ He paused then said it again, a little happier with the second attempt.

  He played back the psychiatrist’s voice. Then he played back his own voice. Still not right. His mother’s face jigged on the screen. He wiped his recording of his own voice and tried again. ‘Hallo, Amanda, how are you?’

  Better! Oh, yes, much better!

  He slid open the drawer in the bedside table and removed his mother’s cream plastic vibrator and rolled its smooth, rounded surface against his nose. Still traces of her smell. He inhaled deeply, watched her face jigging away on the screen.

  ‘Hallo,’ he said again. ‘Hallo, Amanda, how are you?’

  His mother’s face jigged away on the screen. Smiling.

  Approval!

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  ‘Safe Arrival – did you ever see that?’ Ron Sutton asked, looking up at the framed production still on the wall of the passage through to Cora Burstridge’s bedroom.

  ‘With Ernest Borgnine and Walter Pidgeon,’ Glenn said.

  ‘Good film, I liked that.’

  ‘I didn’t like the ending.’

  ‘You’re right, it was crap.’

  Sutton, carrying a large black bag, was togged up in white protective clothing and rubber gloves, and Glenn, in his brown suit, felt under-dressed beside him. ‘This is where I found her.’

  Sutton stared at the bed. ‘Where was the note?’ he asked.

  ‘In the living room.’

  They went through and Glenn showed him the writing desk, where the note, which was now with the coroner, had been weighed down by the Lalique mermaid.

  ‘And what did it say?’

  ‘“I can no longer look at myself in the mirror.”’

  Sutton frowned.

  ‘It’s a quote from her film, Mirror to the Wall.’ With James Mason, and Laurence Harvey, nineteen sixty-six,’ Glenn added.

  ‘I never saw it.’

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘No, I always seem to miss it when it’s on television.’

  ‘It was on BBC 1 last month.’

  ‘I know. My son recorded something over it.’

  ‘I think it’s her best. I can’t believe you’ve never seen it, man’, Glenn said, chidingly.

  But Sutton was barely listening. He was looking around, thoughtfully. ‘Seems a little strange, to quote from one of your own films in a suicide note.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Barry Norman was talking about Mirror to the Wall last night on television – I caught it half-way through, some tribute to Cora.’

  ‘I recorded it, haven’t seen it yet – I went to bed early.’

  ‘He was saying there was a lot of controversy about that picture.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Gloria Lamark was originally cast in the role. Then something happened and she got bumped.’

  Glenn nodded. ‘That’s right. There’s some stuff about it in one of Cora Burstridge’s biographies. They used to go around slagging each other off in public, and one time Gloria Lamark threw a glass of wine over her at some royal première – The Ipcress File, or something around that time – right in front of one of the royals.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe you never saw it. Shit – that was the film that made Cora Burstridge’s career. That was the film she got an Oscar nomination for.’

  Sutton walked through the hall to the front door. He opened it, examined it, closed it, then opened it again. ‘This has been fixed since you broke in, presumably?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So if someone had entered via here, you effectively destroyed that evidence when you kicked the door open.’

  With mock-contrition on his face, Glenn said, ‘Sorry about that.’

  Sutton looked happier when he saw the mess inside the kitchen broom closet. He removed a brush and a tin of powder from his bag, and proceeded to brush dust carefully on the walls directly beneath the hatch, and on the entrance to the hatch itself. Then he took an ultraviolet floodlight from his bag, switched it on and examined the area he had dusted.

  ‘Footprint,’ he said.

  Glenn could see it also, a clear impression, the front half of a shoeprint.

  Sutton photographed it. ‘Size thirteen. What size are you?’

  ‘Me? Eleven.’

  ‘Anyone else from the force been up here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Big man,’ Sutton said. ‘Tall.’

  ‘How do you know it’s a man?’

  Sutton gave him an odd look. ‘Ever met a woman with size thirteen feet, Glenn?’

  ‘Nope. But there’s always a first time.’

  ‘I go for smaller builds myself.’ Sutton studied the hatch surround. ‘That’s clean. Give me a leg up.’

  Glenn bridged his hands, and hoisted Sutton up. Then he followed him, switching the light on and getting a smirk out of Sutton’s start when he saw the mannequin towering above him.

  ‘The Lady is Out,’ Glenn said.

  ‘The one with the size thirteen feet?’

  ‘No, prat, her film, with Tony Perkins.’

  ‘That was a good film. Scary.’ He eyed the mannequin with the same wariness Glenn had on his previous visit. ‘So which way’s the fire exit?’

  Glenn pointed, then followed him across the joists. ‘There’s a strip of –’

  He stopped in mid-sentence. The scene-of-crime officer had already spotted the cream cloth hanging from a nail in a rafter.

  Sutton shone his torch on it. ‘This hasn’t been here long,’ he said. ‘No dust on it.’

  Glenn’s spirits lifted. He hadn’t wanted Sutton to think he’d wasted his time coming here. The footprint in the closet had been a good start, and his reaction to this cloth was encouraging. �
��Can you tell what it’s from?’

  ‘Not without analysis. Looks like linen. Could be a jacket, trousers, skirt, anything.’

  ‘It’s five and a half feet off the ground, Ron, it could hardly be trousers or a skirt.’

  ‘Could be your woman with her size thirteen feet,’ he said drily, carefully unhitching the strip and dropping it into a small plastic bag, which he handed to Glenn. ‘Hang on to it, keep it safe.’

  They progressed slowly across the loft, checking all the rafters in turn, and the gaps between the joists, then finally reached the fire exit door. Sutton dusted the inside and surround for prints, but found nothing. Then he opened the door and blinked against the brilliant mid-afternoon light that burst in. The sky was clearing and the sun was out. It was going to be a fine evening.

  They went on to the fire escape. Glenn looked around at the rear of the neighbouring buildings. Such beautiful old houses from the front, but the backs were all bleak and ugly, scarred with fire escapes like the one they were on.

  ‘High summer,’ Ron Sutton said. ‘Someone came up into the loft and now they’ve come out through this door, and there are no fingerprints. Not many people wear gloves in summer unless they don’t want to leave prints lying around.’

  ‘Or get their hands dirty,’ Glenn added.

  Sutton was examining the area around the broken hatch. ‘This has been opened from the inside – much the same way that you got into the flat – with a good kick.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Glenn asked, a little flatly. It would have been much better if Ron could have shown that someone had broken in from the outside.

  ‘No marks on the outside. If you’d wanted to break in from the fire escape you’d have had to lever the door open, and any tool you used would have scored the jamb or the door itself.’

  Glenn nodded; he could see it plainly. ‘So, we have a shoeprint and a strip of cloth. I’m sorry, Ron, I hope you don’t feel I’ve wasted your time.’

  ‘People have been hanged on less evidence, Glenn.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s enough to convince Digby. Not yet. Half a footprint and a strip of cloth that could be from a suit or a skirt.’

  ‘You have a lead now, Glenn. You have a woman with size thirteen feet doing handstands in a loft.’

  Glenn gave him a cautioning look.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ron Sutton said. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  Chapter Seventy

  The National Missing Persons Helpline is housed on two floors in an anonymous, squat low-rise above a Waitrose supermarket in a bustling high street in Mortlake, a few miles west along the Thames from the Sheen Park Hospital. Visitors are discouraged. Its business is more effectively carried out by phone. Michael discovered this when he stood outside the entrance, the damp pavement steaming in the strong afternoon sun, and listened to the woman’s voice through the entryphone. She was pleasant but firm.

  ‘If you are reporting a missing person, we would prefer you to phone us. We have no facilities for seeing visitors.’

  Michael was tired and fractious, fresh from a row over his mobile phone with DC Roebuck at Hampstead Police. The detective had told him that so far he had made no inquiries. Perhaps Michael would care to call him again later in the week?

  It was four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon. Amanda had been missing now for over two and a half days. In three hours he was due on air at Talk Radio, and – although he didn’t intend telling his producer in advance – he was going to give out a description of Amanda on that. Why not? What did he have to lose?

  On the drive up from Sussex, Michael had retraced the route that Lara reckoned Amanda would have taken back to London on Sunday evening from her house. Several times, during the first part of the journey, which had been along rural roads, he’d stopped on bends where there was dense foliage or undergrowth that could have concealed a crashed car, and taken a look.

  His shoes were muddy and his hands and face scratched from brambles; he was glad there was just an entryphone and no closed-circuit television camera looking at him. He stared into the metal grille of the entryphone, and played his strongest card, hoping it would appeal to them. ‘Actually, there’s something I want to discuss. My name’s Dr Michael Tennent. I’m a psychiatrist and I have a radio show on Wednesday nights. I could give your organisation a mention.’

  There was a pause, then her voice again, reluctant. ‘Please come up to the second floor.’

  Michael could see what she meant when he pushed open the door at the top of the stairs, and walked through into a long, open-plan office. Some forty desks, he guessed at a rough count, ranked down either side. On the left were windows looking out onto an urban landscape, and on the right a wall covered, floor to ceiling along its full length, with missing-persons posters printed in bold red, blue and black lettering.

  Almost every desk was occupied. People on the phone, or tapping on computer keyboards. A quiet air of activity and a much deeper, underlying sense of urgency. It was a diverse group of people behind the desks, male and female, mostly middle-aged, mostly white.

  A stern, fair-haired woman of about forty, smartly dressed in a blue suit, came up to him. She eyed the state of his clothes with distaste and gave him a doubtful look. ‘Dr Tennent?’

  ‘Yes, look, I’m sorry to bounce in on you.’

  ‘I’m Caroline Nelson,’ she said, frostily, ‘duty coordinator. I have actually listened to your show.’

  He couldn’t tell from her expression whether she liked it or not. But it was a good sign at least that she knew who he was. He smiled. ‘They’re always chucking the ratings figures at me. Nice to know that at least one of the listeners is genuine!’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not a regular listener,’ she cautioned. ‘Just occasional.’ She glanced down at his shoes, then peered more closely at his face. ‘Are you all right? Have you had an accident?’

  ‘I’m fine. You’ll have to forgive my appearance, I’ve been looking for someone – and I fell into a ditch.’ He could see from her expression that the explanation had not gone down well, and he made a bid to retrieve the situation. ‘Look, I’m sure you are inundated with people, but I’m not a crank. Someone I know has gone missing and I don’t seem to be able to get the police to take this seriously. I’m going on air in three hours time and I could maybe say something useful if I was given guidance – and perhaps say something about your Helpline. I’m sure you need all the publicity you can get.’

  ‘Can I offer you some tea? Coffee? Squash?’

  ‘Tea, thank you.’

  Caroline Nelson led him through into a small staff rest room, brought him tea in a plastic beaker, and sat down. She remained cold and wary. ‘We get two hundred and fifty thousand people reported missing each year, Dr Tennent. If we let people come and make reports in person we’d have a queue to the end of the high street and back ten times.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I’m making an exception for you. Just promise me you won’t put out our address on the radio, only the phone number.’

  Michael smiled. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Good.’ She thawed a fraction. ‘Now, tell me what on earth has happened to you.’

  Michael told her the full story. When he had finished, instead of looking at him with sympathy, she looked at him testily. ‘You didn’t have a fight with her, Dr Tennent?’

  ‘No! Absolutely not.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Of course. We – we had –’

  ‘You didn’t threaten her?’

  ‘Not in any way. We were having a warm, loving time.’

  ‘With no disrespect, that’s something a lot of men say.’

  ‘I’m not a wife beater. I don’t have a dark side.’

  ‘Even though you’ve come in here looking as though you’ve been in a pub brawl?’

  She was starting to irritate him, and he had to make an effort to remain cool. ‘I told you, I was retracing Amanda’s steps and fell into a ditch.’
>
  She watched his face and said nothing.

  Uncomfortable under her scrutiny, he stared out of the window. Two starlings sat on a television aerial. Amanda was somewhere out there, beyond that window. Where? Oh, my darling, where are you?

  ‘You have to appreciate that we get men contacting us all the time, telling us their girlfriends or wives have gone missing, and the reason usually turns out that they had a fight and the woman ran off, terrified, either to a hotel or to a safe-house with friends.’

  ‘It was nothing like that. Absolutely nothing like that. We had a perfect, beautiful day, we were walking arm in arm. She went off to her niece’s birthday party and we were going to talk later. It was magical. We were two people in love. And it’s not just me she’s vanished from – she hasn’t turned up at work, she’s missed important business meetings. This is absolutely not like her. Her staff are extremely worried.’

  ‘You were in love. You are assuming she was.’

  ‘If she was faking it, she was a great actress.’

  She drank some tea. ‘You barely know her. It’s quite possible she has a secret life that she’s keeping from you.’

  Michael put down his cup and stood up, clenching his fists in anger and frustration. ‘Jesus!’ He looked at her. ‘What’s with this screwed-up world? I’ve told you, I’ve been through it all. Even if she does have a secret life that she’s keeping from me, she wouldn’t have kept it from her assistant. Lulu was her confidante. Amanda’s in trouble, she’s in really terrible trouble – God forbid, she may even be dead. Am I the only person in the whole sodding country who cares about her, and who’s trying to help her?’

  Caroline Nelson raised her hands. ‘OK, please calm down! We’ll help.’

  Michael turned away and watched the starlings again. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Do you have a photograph of her?’

  ‘Several.’

  ‘We’ll make up a poster and circulate it, see if we can get some television stations to put out an announcement. All right?’

  ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘Anything. Thank you.’

  ‘If it’s any encouragement to you,’ she said, ‘the majority of missing persons turn up within thirty-two days.’