Girl Gone Missing

by J M Gregson

  When four o’clock came, he found that he did not wish to leave the school. It was an anti-climax, this. He hung about the sixth form complex, unable to believe that even now someone would not tell him that he was urgently required. When she had first gone missing all those weeks ago, he had been the first person the police had spoken to about Alison. Yet today all these other people had been seen, had been asked about Alison, and he, who knew her best of all, had been ignored. At the beginning of the day he had felt apprehensive; now he felt both exhausted with the waiting and insulted that he should be given such low priority.

  Jamie lived only threequarters of a mile from the school, on the same side of the market town. He had no bus to catch, like those who came from further afield in the school’s wide rural catchment area. Without any deadline of this kind, he felt curiously listless and deflated. He had expected the police to provide the programme for his day, and they had let him down. For the first time, his active imagination began to toy with the idea that they had left him alone deliberately, left him to stew in his own juice, as his father put it when he became impatient with him, so that he might be more receptive to their methods, whatever they might be. It was not a pleasant idea.

  Apart from the people who stayed on after school for the various clubs, most people had left the premises by the time he wandered across the concrete acreage of the playground, swinging his heavy briefcase gently, and moved with his gangling walk through the gates and away from the school. Most pupils, that is; from an oblique angle beside the window of the staffroom, Jamie’s English teacher, Jason Bullimore, watched the tardy departure of his brightest pupil and speculated on what the lad was going through. As far as he knew, the police hadn’t questioned Jamie yet. He wondered exactly what he would tell them, when they did.

  She was trouble, that Alison Watts. Jail bait, for a man on the threshold of a fine career. He should have known it from the start, with his experience. For the hundredth time in the last few months, Jason Bullimore wished that he had never set eyes on the girl.

  Chapter Eight

  SCENE of Crime team, they called it. That was a misnomer, really: they were searching the dead girl’s room, and in all probability that was not the scene of the crime. In all probability; that was all they could say at this stage. Keep an open mind, Lambert had warned them at the meeting, and Bert Hook had added that the girl’s father seemed a dodgy character, who would stand watching.

  So Sergeant Johnson and his team searched diligently at Number One, The Lawns. Murder investigations are infrequent in a provincial force, even in today’s violent times. They carry an extra excitement, even for grizzled professionals like Jack Johnson, and most of his team were still junior enough to dream of making a reputation through the discovery of some significant item in the house that others had overlooked. Not even the laziest policeman was likely to treat a house search in a murder enquiry lightly, with the grisly example of Fred West in nearby Gloucester now built into every training scheme.

  Experience told Johnson one thing at a glance. The girl’s room was too tidy for them to expect much from it. It might be what you would expect with a girl gone missing eleven weeks ago, but it wasn’t helpful. The carpet had been thoroughly vacuumed; nevertheless, he set two of his team to work on hands and knees, working methodically over every square foot in search of hairs, fibres, any small, overlooked, and just possibly significant items of detritus from the people who had been in this room. There was always the possibility that they would find something beneath the bed or around the feet of the wardrobe, areas which notoriously escaped the attentions of the upright vacuum.

  A moment’s careful inspection of the bed linen showed that it had been thoroughly laundered in the weeks since the girl’s departure. No chance of semen traces, no prospect of sweat or hair dropped in the extremes of passion. But they parcelled the blankets and sheets up for the forensic boys to inspect. With the advent of DNA testing, science could work new wonders. And it was a fair bet that the blankets at least had not been washed.

  Robert Watts stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watching their actions with a grim smile which developed into a sneer as they proceeded. Many officers would have asked him to withdraw. The experienced Johnson was happy to see him there. Whilst apparently ignoring him, he watched for any reaction which might reveal more than the man realised. Watts might be just anti-police, as he had seemed from the moment when they had come into the square, cheerless house. But he might be a man with things to hide, a man who knew more about the disappearance of his stepdaughter than he had chosen to reveal. It was a bonus to have him under observation as they inspected the place where the girl had spent most of her hours in this house.

  ‘You’ll find nothing here,’ he said truculently, as the two young constables got up from their floor search with nothing but a paper clip and two tiny pieces of gravel in their small trays.

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Johnson equably. ‘But you wouldn’t forgive us, Mr Watts, if we weren’t properly thorough, would you? Not when we’re looking for something which might lead us to Alison’s murderer.’

  Watts stared at him suspiciously. It seemed to dawn on him that a different, more helpful attitude would be appropriate in these circumstances, but he had little idea of how to present it. ‘You won’t find anything that helps you here,’ he said. ‘You want to look in other places than here, instead of wasting all this time.’

  ‘Like where, Mr Watts? We’re open to suggestions.’

  ‘Well, like around the town. Start with the people who taught her. And have a go at that tosspot of a boyfriend of hers, I should think. But you’re the ones who’re supposed to know. You’re the clever buggers who’re supposed to have a routine for these things.’

  ‘Yes, we are. And yes, we have. And the routine begins here, Mr Watts. With you, if you like. Have you any reason to suspect that the people you’ve just mentioned were involved in Alison’s death?’

  Apprehension flashed for a moment across his face before it turned surly. ‘Your job, that is, not mine. All I said is you should be getting on with it.’

  ‘And someone is, Mr Watts. Be assured of that. Just the same as someone saw your wife this morning. The routine you mentioned is in operation.’

  He had started at the mention of his wife. He did not ask where she was, though. He must have known that she was at the refuge all along, though he had denied that knowledge to Bert Hook when he had come to this house to tell him that Alison had been murdered. Now he was merely surprised that they had got to her so quickly. Johnson looked round the small, rectangular room where Alison Watts had slept. ‘Very bare, for the room of a teenage girl, this is,’ he said. It wasn’t clear whether he was addressing his staff in the room or Watts in the doorway. ‘Usually the walls are covered with posters. Pop stars for girls, footballers for boys.’

  ‘Took ‘em down, didn’t we?’ said Watts. He was chewing now. Johnson was sure he hadn’t unwrapped any gum. He must have had the stuff in his mouth all the time, but only renewed his chewing when he began to feel confident. Or wanted to look confident. Johnson nodded at the girl in his team and she began to work her way methodically through the drawers of the dressing table. There was a pass book for Barclays Bank, with few entries. The account showed a credit balance of just over nineteen pounds.

  All the clothes in the drawers were neatly folded. Everything was clean. Blouses, sweaters, tights, underwear. A bright suntop and blue shorts, neatly pressed, reminding them that it had been summer when she disappeared. A methodical girl, this, before her abrupt departure. Or methodical parents, after it.

  And in the bottom one of the three long drawers, the posters they had expected, still with the strips of sellotape which had attached them to the walls sticking to the corners. Johnson looked at the picture of a pop group with shaven heads, thrusting four pelvises at the camera, oozing a phallic aggression. He took a pace and looked at the wall. ‘No sign of where the posters were stuck to the plaster,’ he sa
id thoughtfully.

  ‘The master detective strikes again!’ sneered Watts from the doorway. He was smiling when Johnson turned to face him. ‘Decorated the room last month, didn’t I? Looks all the better for a lick of emulsion, don’t you think, Mr Plod?’ He snorted an open contempt for the futility of their actions. ‘Be downstairs if you want me. I’m not paid to waste public money, like some.’ They heard him tramp heavily, dismissively, down the stairs and throw himself into his chair in the lounge. The television sound blared up at them; then its volume was increased, as if even that could be turned into a kind of insult.

  Johnson found that the young constable was looking at him to see if he was rattled. He grinned at her and shrugged. ‘Takes all sorts, don’t it? Never stop ‘em talking: they give away more about themselves than they ever learn from us.’ He shut the bedroom door hard, so that its closure would be registered even above the noise from the television. People, even prats like Watts, imagined all kind of things were going on when they had to use their imaginations. ‘Take your time over the wardrobe. Then we’ll be off; the boys have almost finished downstairs.’

  It was a double wardrobe, occupying all of one of the narrow walls of the rectangular room. It was full of clothes: dresses, formal and informal, winter and summer; trousers and jeans; shirts, blouses and things that Johnson could identify only vaguely as ‘tops’. There were at least a dozen pairs of shoes on the floor of the wardrobe. The girl went through everything slowly, methodically, inspecting the labels, turning out the seams.

  She seemed to work more slowly as she went along the rail, and eventually Johnson, who could see little that was unusual about the collection, said, ‘Come on, Rosie, there’s no need to impress me with your thoroughness. If there’s nothing there, let’s be on our way.’

  ‘Nothing specific, sarge. But it’s strange, all the same.’

  ‘What’s strange? Too old for her or something, are they? Perhaps they’re not all hers. We can —’

  ‘No, it’s not that, sarge. I’m sure these are exactly the kind of thing a girl like Alison would like to have. I’m a few years older, but there are things here I’d kill for myself.’

  ‘Unfortunate choice of phrase, that. Good job the sensitive stepfather is safely downstairs. You mean this is good stuff?’ He walked over and fingered the sleeve of a silk blouse.

  ‘And how! There are single dresses in here that you wouldn’t touch under a couple of hundred pounds. And look at the labels. Gucci, Armani. Nothing in here has come cheap. The shoes are the same. Best part of a hundred quid a pair for most of them.’

  Jack Johnson picked up some of the shoes, inspecting the heels. ‘Scarcely worn,’ he said, his excitement rising despite himself. ‘They haven’t been here very long, have they?’

  She shook her head. ‘Bought in the last year, by the look of them. The same applies to the clothes. You can tell from a fashion point of view that most of them must have been bought in the few months before she died. There’s two or three thousand pounds’ worth in here, I’m sure.’

  They took the clothes down the stairs in large polythene bags. ‘We’re taking these things away. I’ll give you a receipt for them. Do you know where they came from?’ Johnson said to the clearly surprised Watts.

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  ‘No reason. They’re expensive. Was she given them, by any chance?’

  ‘Don’t know, do I?’ And wouldn’t tell you if I did, his demeanour indicated.

  ‘We shall find out, soon enough, I’m sure. It’s easier with good clothes, you see, and these are very good. There aren’t too many shops sell makes like these.’

  They left him standing worried at the front door of the house. ‘Perhaps the bugger’s just mad he didn’t sell the stuff off while he had the chance,’ said Johnson. But somehow he felt Robert Watts had more worries about the death of his stepdaughter than that.

  *

  Jamie Allen was a Roman Catholic. At least, he came from a Roman Catholic family. He was not sure about himself, these days. Not since Alison.

  He lived in an Edwardian house, high-gabled, with most of its dark bricks covered in ivy. An eminently desirable gentleman’s residence, an estate agent would have said. To Jamie it seemed dark and forbidding, particularly with twilight approaching on this October day. He was relieved to see that both of his parents were still out. He could not face his mother’s quizzing about the events of the day at school, her speculation about why the police had still not interviewed him about Alison.

  He opened the heavy front door with his own key; he was glad he had fought the battle to win that. Possession of your own key was part of being an adult. And he was certainly that now; in another ten days, he would be eighteen, able to vote, and to die for his country in battle. He had used that argument when he had fought for his key, and his father had smiled at him and conceded. He walked straight past the little image of Christ with the tiny glass of holy water at its base which hung from the wall near the front door. He never dipped his fingers in the water and signed himself with the cross now, as he would once have done automatically when he entered the house. What a load of bollocks all that was! Jamie enjoyed the coarse vigour of that dismissal, the slight hint of blasphemous daring that the thought gave him.

  He made himself a mug of tea and took it up the stairs and along the wide landing to his own room at the end of it. He threw his case on to the armchair and lay back on his bed with his eyes closed for a moment, feeling suddenly very tired. When he had drunk his tea, he would get his books out and start making notes for his History essay. Oliver Cromwell: a fascinating figure, flawed but powerful. Not the ogre his Catholic parents had painted for him, because of his campaigns in Ireland. He was quite looking forward to the reading for the essay. But he knew he wouldn’t get much done tonight. Not immediately, anyway.

  He lay quietly for a moment in the darkening room, sipping his tea, trying to calm the mind which raced ahead of him with thoughts of Alison and what he would tell the police. Then he sighed, switched on the light and drew the heavy curtains across the high sash window. The big portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the wall opposite his bed seemed more oppressive than ever. It would mean a row with his mother, a big one, to get rid of it, but he would take that on, once all this business was over. She meant well, did Mum, wanted the best for him, he supposed. But she would have to be shown that he was his own man now.

  Then he saw it. Saw that she had been in here again, changing things, when he had asked her not to, had thought he had secured her promise not to. And not just moving things around. Altering the most important thing of all. The photograph of himself and Alison, arms twined round each others’ waists, hair blowing in the summer breeze, faces smiling breathlessly at the camera, had gone. It had been removed from its position in pride of place on the narrow mantelpiece of the metal fireplace in the corner of the room.

  In its place was the cheap plaster statue of the Virgin and Child which a pious great aunt, now dead, had brought to the house from Rome when he was a small child. He had taken the crude effigy from here months ago and consigned it to the obscurity of the box room, amidst the dusty furniture and the suitcases which came out once a year for the family holiday. Now here it was back, with its cheap, sentimental smile on the face of the Madonna and its absurd two-year-old head on the shoulders of what should have been a baby. And in the place reserved for his Alison!

  All Jamie’s anxiety and frustration were suddenly concentrated on that ridiculous statue. It blazed at him intensely, for the ceiling spotlight he had installed himself last year was trained precisely upon this spot. He had to be rid of it, and for good. He opened the curtains, flung up the sash window. Then he seized the plaster effigy, drew back his arm as far as he could, and flung the statue far out into the darkness. He heard it shatter on the terrace below him, as he had known it would. He stood for a moment, breathing heavily, waiting for the divine retribution his upbringing still half-persuaded him should fall
upon such an act.

  But there was no thunderbolt, no admonitory voice from heaven. He went across to the bottom drawer where he knew it would be, drew out the silver frame with its picture of the smiling duo, and restored it to its proper position of eminence upon the mantelpiece. He smiled down at the photograph, then stooped to place his lips for a moment against the cool, unresponding glass. ‘Back in your place, my darling!’ he murmured softly.

  As if he had triggered it with this action, the phone rang in the hall below him, startling him in the empty house. He ran down the stairs, stopped for an instant to compose himself before he picked up the instrument and said, ‘Oldford 2910. Jamie Allen speaking.’

  ‘The very man! This is Detective Sergeant Hook, from the CID at Oldford. We need to have a word with you, Jamie. You probably know what about.’

  It was happening, then, at last. But at least the Sergeant had called him a man.

  *

  They didn’t like you going out in the evenings, when you were at the refuge for battered women. There were no rules to say so, but the group pressures were strong. Unity is strength, they said. Don’t isolate yourself, keep the team around you and you won’t be in any danger.

  Kate Watts waited until five minutes into Coronation Street, then stole softly down the stairs and through the big door. Almost all the women watched that: it was a kind of group ritual, uniting the bright and the dim in that strange place. She’d have to think of something to explain why she hadn’t been there, but she could say that she’d fallen asleep on her bed. People did that often enough, making up for lost time and the disturbed domestic nights which had driven them here.

  She walked into town, feeling no danger, enjoying passing men who scarcely even noticed her. She found the café easily enough. A modest enough little place, definitely a snack-bar rather than a restaurant; not unlike the one Gail Platt ran in the soap she had just left behind. It did a brisk enough trade during the day with workers and shoppers, but it was almost empty now. A tired woman was wiping the table tops in a ritual which had long since become automatic, wishing away the half hour which was all that was left until closing time. Kate ordered a cup of tea she did not want and sat at the table furthest away from the window.