Girl Gone Missing

by J M Gregson

  Lambert said drily, ‘If I’d had the evidence, we’d have made an arrest, Mr Murray. But it’s only a matter of time. This is merely a telephone number.’

  Again, there was apprehension as well as enquiry in Murray’s face. This time he could not even attempt irony as he said, ‘A significant telephone number?’

  ‘We don’t know, yet. But I think it may prove to be so, and so does Sergeant Hook.’ He paused. He had been about to tell Murray about Cotswold Rendezvous, to see if it brought any reaction from the man while he had him squirming. But he couldn’t reveal the information, if they were going to send in Rushton to test out whether the singles agency was merely a front for something darker. Instead, he said, ‘We have been told that Miss Watts went off into Gloucester or Cheltenham on Friday evenings, and sometimes at the weekend as well. Do you have any idea where she might have gone on these occasions?’

  ‘No. Why should I? Are you sure that she went to those towns? And why shouldn’t she anyway? Why should there be anything dubious about her visits?’ His speech was jerky, unnatural, reflecting the desperate improvisation of his thoughts.

  ‘You didn’t see her yourself in either of those towns?’

  ‘No. Never. Is there any reason why I should have?’

  ‘No reason at all that we know of, Mr Murray. But it’s sensible for us to ask.’ But he hadn’t denied that he might have been in the same area, they noticed, as a wholly innocent man might have done. ‘We shall go on asking people about those visits of Alison’s, until we find someone who knows what she was about, you see.’

  ‘Yes. I see that. Well, I can’t help you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We’ll leave you, then. Thank you for your help.’

  They saw his white face watching them from the window as they drove away, as it had earlier watched their arrival. Neither of them thought that Thomas Murray, MA, FRSA, Headmaster of Oldford Comprehensive, would get much sleep on that Saturday night.

  *

  ‘I — I’ve drafted this out,’ said Rushton diffidently. He handed John Lambert a half-sheet of paper covered with neat handwriting, watching hard for any sort of amusement on the Superintendent’s face. It was a requirement, apparently, that you wrote up yourself and your requirements for this damned agency; Cotswold Rendezvous took the standard details of age, height and so on, but they wanted to know ‘how you see yourself and your aspirations’. Load of bloody nonsense: he wished he’d never got involved, but it was too late now. The idea of planting him had been approved by the police hierarchy with uncharacteristic speed.

  Lambert hadn’t seen Chris Rushton’s handwriting for a long time. Normally all his communications were via his computer; perhaps he did not want to leave any possibility of this effort being preserved or reproduced for other eyes. While Rushton cringed, Lambert read aloud, ‘Frank Lloyd. Professional man, early thirties, polite and active, no ties. Seeks female company, initially for outings to cinema and theatre.’ He looked across at Hook and shook his head sadly. ‘Not a trend-setter, is he, our Frank?’

  Hook shook his serious, experienced head, pursing his lips in thought to avoid any suggestion of a smile. ‘Not quite the kind of entry I’d thought of. We want quick results, don’t we? So I think we need to sell our very promising candidate a little harder.’ He produced his own effort, staring hard at the paper, knowing that if he caught the eye of either Rushton or Lambert he would dissolve into helpless and indecorous laughter. He took a deep breath and read, ‘Raunchy male, early thirties but with the stamina of a younger man, seeks leggy, curvaceous younger woman with no inhibitions and lots of invention.’ He looked up at the wall above Rushton’s appalled head and kept his gaze steadily upon it. ‘Short and to the point, I thought. As you said, sir, we need to get things moving if our man is to test whether there are knocking shop possibilities in this.’

  ‘Yes, I see what you’re getting at.’ Lambert turned to Rushton. ‘I think Bert is right — you need to sell your undoubted attractions a little harder, Chris.’ He turned back to Hook. ‘Do we need to stress that he’s heterosexual, do you think? We don’t want to land him in any embarrassing situations.’

  Hook shook his head. ‘I’ve studied the adverts in the paper carefully and I don’t think it’s necessary, so long as you mention girls and imply that you’re a stud.’ He looked for the first time at Rushton. ‘Of course, if there is real corruption and these people are supplying sex for money, it might bring it into the open more quickly if you were prepared to say that you were interested in young men or boys. But we couldn’t really ask you to —’

  Rushton suddenly found the tongue which had been paralysed with disbelief. And it shouted, ‘You’re not saying that! Or anything like it! Or any of these other things!’

  Lambert intervened, his face resolutely serious and anxious. ‘All right, Chris. We all know you’re a sensitive, caring chap. But it may not pay to stress that. We need to get things moving, as Bert says. You’re probably too reticent about your virtues. I’ve looked at these adverts in the Meeting Point columns of our local press, and the men seem to have no modesty. They proclaim themselves as ‘hunks’, looking for curvaceous women who ‘want to be shown a thing or two’; then they say in the next phrase that they have a good sense of humour — seems contradictory to me.’

  Hook was enjoying himself, he hoped not too visibly. ‘But we do need to state what Chris has to offer, and what he is looking for in a partner. Or partners.’

  Rushton said desperately, ‘What he purports to be looking for. Don’t forget that this is all play-acting. In the line of duty.’

  ‘Oh, strictly in the line of duty,’ said Bert. ‘But… rumpety on the house! Nice work, if you can get it. And I expect you probably will.’

  In the end they compromised. ‘Frank Lloyd’ was to be a handsome professional man in his early thirties. Divorced and without any ties. And looking for attractive female company ‘with no holds barred’. It took them some time to get Rushton to agree the last phrase; he eventually sanctioned it, reluctantly, on the grounds that it was much less offensive than the other phrases he was offered in the same vein.

  They left Chris Rushton looking thoroughly uneasy and managed not to laugh outright until they were safely out of the station.

  *

  On that early autumn Saturday, the night fell in early and chill after a perfect day. At six-thirty Barbara Bullimore switched the central heating on in the quiet house for the first time since spring and agreed with her brother that winter could not now be far away.

  Physically as well as mentally, they were an ill-assorted pair, this brother and sister, whose parents had been prosperous working class in the palmy sixties days of full employment. Barbara had been a bright, lumpy girl at the all-girls grammar school. They had not meant to hold her back, had meant to do their very best for both of their children. But a place at the Institute of Librarians College had seemed a splendid achievement, for a girl. And when they were told that her bright, handsome younger brother might even make Oxford or Cambridge, that had seemed so dazzling a prospect that he had naturally received all the attention and all the encouragement, from his loving older sister as well as his astonished parents.

  And Jason had made it to Oxford. It had been more expensive than any of them had anticipated, even with the student grant which was supposed to cover most things but didn’t. And the golden boy had done well in that strange, hot-house environment, justifying all the sacrifices of his doting family. Barbara had done well, too, passing out third in her year at the College of Librarianship. But that was when Jason was completing his first year at Oxford, and her success, though registered, had been celebrated only in a modest way within the family.

  Barbara did not mind. She was a self-effacing girl, devoted to the family and taking as much vicarious delight in her more extrovert brother’s successes as anyone. When her beloved parents had died within a year of each other, it had seemed natural that she would set up house with Jason, who welcomed t
he arrangement in his elegant, easy-going way. Now that his parents were gone, he missed the unquestioning affection and admiration they had bestowed upon him; Barbara, though she often mimed the disapproval of a watchful older sister, supplied that gap in his life.

  Barbara enjoyed her job and she was good at it. She was not gay, but she was happier working with women than with men. Her formidable physical appearance meant that she had few male sexual advances to contend with, and she had long since decided that she liked life that way. Jason might behave stupidly sometimes, but he was bright and interesting. She smiled proudly over his progress and indulgently over his faults. He might be a young fool at times, but he was her young fool.

  And tonight he had cooked the meal for them. It was only a casserole, and in truth he had followed her recipe. But he had bought the ingredients himself that morning, and she had kept out of the kitchen while he had busied himself like an enthusiastic child over the preparation of the various items and their consignment for the rest of the day to the slow cooker. She had busied herself with the thorough digging and weeding of the new rose bed they had planned for the back garden. When she came down from her shower, he was setting the casserole dish proudly on its mat in the middle of the table.

  They had eaten for several minutes with no more than the briefest of small talk when Jason said, ‘They were thorough this morning, that superintendent and his sergeant. The fuzz aren’t all Mister Plods, after all.’

  It was the first time he had been prepared to talk about the exchange. He had been non-committal when they left, and she had not pressed him. She had been dying to know what they had said, how far they had pressed him, how much they already knew, but the weight of her role in this partnership had been too strong for her to push him. Now she said, ‘Pried into everything, I expect. Well, it’s their job after all. When there’s been a murder, you’d expect it.’

  ‘Yes. They seem absolutely sure it’s a murder. I suppose the forensic people will have confirmed that for them. I don’t know much about the details.’

  Not for the first time, she wondered just how much Jason did know about the death of this wretched girl. And how much of that he had revealed to the police. ‘Did you find out whether they think it was someone who picked her up on that night — someone who hadn’t seen her before?’ She had seen his face wince at the idea of Alison Watts being a casual pick-up for some man. He still cared something for the girl, this vulnerable, intelligent, but stupid brother of hers. ‘I tried to find out the way they were thinking before you came back from the shops, but I didn’t get very far.’

  ‘No. They’re much better at gathering information than at dishing it out, those two. They — they knew all about me, Sis.’

  He only addressed her like that when he was prepared for conversational intimacies. Normally she warmed to the term; tonight it sent a chill into her blood. ‘You mean they knew about the trouble you had in Wiltshire?’ They had never mentioned the school by name since he had left, as if such detail might make the memory even more painful and embarrassing.

  ‘Yes.’ He turned a piece of shin-beef over on his plate, then impaled it violently upon his fork.

  ‘It wasn’t from me. I didn’t tell them.’

  ‘No. No, I know you wouldn’t have told them, Sis. But they knew, from somewhere. They’d gone back into my records, I think. Or someone had told them about it — I don’t know who. I suppose the headmaster knows about it, but I didn’t think anyone else did.’

  You poor, benighted boy, she thought. How can you be so clever, and yet so ignorant of the way people behave? Scandal travels far faster than any other disease among bored people. Barbara knew that. She heard the women she worked with, women she liked in other respects, passing around titbits of gossip whenever they were to hand. She would have wagered that most of the staff at Oldford Comprehensive knew the circumstances of Jason’s arrival there, by now. She said quietly, ‘Did they press you about it?’

  ‘Not much, no. They were more interested in my relationship with Alison Watts.’

  It was his way of telling her that they knew about his affair with the dead girl, about that awful mess which she had found out about at the time, when he had thought he would be able to keep it secret from her.

  Barbara tried to sound deliberately low-key; in the months after her disappearance, Alison Watts had never been mentioned in this house; it had suited her that way. ‘And how much did they know about you and that girl?’

  ‘Everything. Well, I think everything.’ For the first time, Jason wondered if the officers had not really known as much about the affair as he had supposed, whether he had really needed to reveal the sexual details of his short-lived passion for Alison Watts. ‘They asked me all about it, and I thought it best to tell them.’

  ‘But Jason… that must make you a suspect, in their book.’

  ‘Yes. They more or less said that. But there didn’t seem to be any way round it, Sis. They aren’t fools, those two. I thought it best to let them have the truth.’

  She could see him twenty years ago as a nine-year-old in short trousers, confessing the facts of some small sin, expecting inwardly to be praised for telling the truth like a good, honest boy. He always had been praised, too, in those days. Perhaps that was what had made it so hard for him to come to terms with the dangers of real life, in an adult world. When you confessed things there, forgiveness wasn’t automatic, and there was a price to pay. She said only, ‘I expect you’re right. They’d have found out for themselves, from someone, even if you hadn’t told them.’

  She felt a little pang of irrational jealousy that these strangers, the police, might know more than she did about what her beloved brother had done with that young minx. But she had never wanted to know the full, squalid details of what Jason had done with that pretty, vapid creature. Men had needs, and Jason had his instincts like the rest of them. But she didn’t want to picture what happened when he indulged himself like that.

  Jason said, ‘I told them it had ended long before she disappeared, and I think they believed me.’ There was no use telling her that it hadn’t been just a sordid little tumble, that he had hoped that he and Alison might one day get married. She wouldn’t understand, and it would only annoy her. Barbara’s contempt was not to be undertaken lightly.

  She said, ‘Do the police have any idea yet of exactly when she died, or who killed her, do you think?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. But they don’t say much. I think they believe she died shortly after she disappeared, but they don’t have a time and a place. At least, if they do, they weren’t telling me. I suppose it could still be someone we don’t even know.’

  It could. But Barbara didn’t think the CID men thought that. Jason was too sanguine, as usual. She wondered just how deeply the police suspected her bright and vulnerable brother.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE inquest on Alison Watts was conducted on Monday morning. It was routine stuff, save for the evidence of identification being by means of dental records. The Coroner expressed his sympathy with the bereaved parents, though only Kate Watts was in court to hear the verdict of Murder by Person or Persons Unknown. Lambert, by prior arrangement with the Coroner’s Officer, gave only the briefest account of the present progress of the police investigation into the crime. No need to put a chief suspect on his guard. Or in this case, no need to reassure an unknown killer that there was as yet no chief suspect.

  Lambert lunched at home, because Christine’s part-time teaching post now left her free on Mondays. He was so preoccupied with the case that he did not notice that his wife was unusually quiet over their soup and sandwiches. He talked a little about the investigation to her, as once he would not have done. Perhaps that was because she had known the girl when she was much younger, or because of the school environment which surrounded this victim. His teacher wife answered him mainly in monosyllables.

  He had forgotten that his wife had been to the hospital that morning.
He did not even ask her about what the specialist had said. Christine had been all ready to tell him that the mastectomy she had undergone six months previously had been a complete success; that there was no sign of the cancer recurring; that she now did not have to attend the hospital for a whole year. But John Lambert had forgotten that it was today that was her big day. It was like the old times, when he was young, when she had not seen him for days when a case was developing, when he had scarcely seen his babies growing into toddlers, and their marriage had almost foundered on the CID rocks.

  Nothing like that would happen now, she consoled herself bleakly. She tried to smile at herself, to find it reassuring that the old John Lambert that she had married and loved was still not too far beneath the surface. And at four o’clock, he rang, as she had known he would eventually. He was full of apologies, full of relief that her news was so good. She told him it did not matter that he had forgotten it at lunch-time, and settled down with the crossword and the television to wait for him to arrive home with the penitent bunch of chrysanthemums.

  *

  Detective Sergeant Christopher Rushton was prim. That is an adjective not appropriate for many policemen, but for him it was undoubtedly accurate. Primness did not prevent him being an effective officer. Indeed, in an era when too many policemen were busy cutting corners, his primness often manifested itself as a virtue. Chris played things by the book. If there was a rule, however obscure, he knew about it. Officers at the crime-face find red tape frustrating, and Chris made sure that others as well as himself did not end up in its coils. He was conscientious, and he knew his way round the police system. Although imagination might not be his strong suit, he was intelligent, and he had made himself something of an expert in the labyrinth of criminal law. His combination of qualities was a recipe for success in the modern police force, and in due course he would become a superintendent.