by John Harvey
He came back again later still and then again the next day.
There was porridge to eat, lumpy and half-cold, and water to drink and wash in. A scrap of torn towel to wipe herself dry. Once or twice, she thought she heard a second voice, another man's, though she was never absolutely sure. From time to time the dog whimpered and scratched at the outside of her door.
On the morning of the third day, she was blindfolded and bundled back into the van and driven for no more than forty minutes or so—less than the length of a lesson at school—before being pushed out of the back of the van, still blindfolded, and left.
From there she had walked to the farm.
The man, she told the female police officer who questioned her, was not specially tall—'fair hair, not dark, fairer than mine'—dressed in old work clothes that smelt, what of she didn't know. 'Not young. Sort of old. But not granddad old. 'Bout like my dad, I s'pose.' He didn't have a proper beard, she said, but needed a shave; his face had been rough against her skin.
'Did he sound like he came from around here?' the police officer asked.
Janine thought he did.
She was unable to identify him from photographs; an attempt to assemble an identikit picture using a police artist floundered and was then abandoned. Two men were arrested and later released without charge; Janine had failed to pick out either one at an identity parade.
The inquiry remained open, the case unsolved.
Thirteen years ago. Janine Prentiss was now Janine Clarke, married with children of her own.
Christine Fell was an only child. Her father was a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, specialising in Cell and Molecular Biology and Genetics; her mother a freelance translator from Swedish and Norwegian. When Christine was seven, they bought an old farmhouse close to Chatteris Fen, an area of largely agricultural land, spectacular sunsets and vast, vaulting skies, separated from the city of Cambridge, where David Fell worked, by the Hundred Foot Washes and the River Ouse.
Christine went to a private preparatory school in Ely, where she worked hard and was popular both with teachers and with her fellow pupils. Her mother, Alice, spent a great deal of time driving Christine to music lessons and drama club, as well as to the houses of friends, some of whom lived in Ely, though others were scattered far and wide. Since she worked mainly from home, this was possible and a small price to pay, she felt, for the lovely house they were slowly restoring and the near-idyllic surroundings in which they lived.
Both of them hoped that, when she was thirteen, Christine would transfer up to the King's School, where, in addition to the usual range of subjects, she would have the opportunity of studying Ancient History and Classical Civilisations, Latin, Greek and Chinese. David Fell foresaw a time, not so many years hence, when he and Christine would make the journey into Cambridge together, she as an aspiring young undergraduate, and himself a professor, highly respected in his department.
In June 2000, a light, early summer evening, Alice Fell dropped her daughter off at a friend's house in the village of Little Downham, north of Ely. Her friend's twelfth birthday; Christine was still eleven.
Christine was wearing a new blue dress and yellow cardigan, matching blue shoes. Alice promised to pick her up at half past eight, no later, but a phone call from a publisher for whom she was doing some translating went on longer than expected and it was almost eight-thirty before she finally left home, having phoned ahead and spoken to the parents of the girl whose party it was: Tell Christine not to worry, I'll be there.
Most people having already left, Christine decided to walk to the end of the lane, just as far as the junction with the main road, and meet her mother there.
She never arrived.
Three days later she was found tied to an old Massey Ferguson square baler inside a disused barn some twenty miles north, close to the village of Wiggenhall St Mary the Virgin. She was still wearing her blue shoes.
31
Janine Clarke was wearing a black suit that could have come back from the dry cleaner's that morning, a small silver brooch in the shape of a flower on her lapel. American tan tights, black shoes with a slight heel. Her hair was worn in a neat bob; two rings, wedding and engagement, make-up tastefully applied.
She held Will Grayson's hand for no more than a moment; slender fingers, long and cold. They had arranged to meet close to the building society where she worked.
'It's good of you to see me,' Will said.
Janine smiled: the same smile, courteous and professional, she gave to customers fifty times a day.
'Do you want to walk, or should we find somewhere to sit?'
'I really don't mind.' She glanced down at her watch. 'I haven't very long, that's all.'
In the marketplace, they found a bench in front of the church. Sheltered from the wind, Will unfastened his jacket; Janine kept hers fully buttoned.
'It's probably the last thing you want,' Will said, 'having to think back to what happened.'
'No, it's fine.'
'If I didn't think it might be important ...'
'Really, it's fine.' Her words were clipped and sharp and she sat staring out, avoiding his eyes.
'I've read your statements, of course, what you had to say at the time. The man who took you, I just wondered if there's anything you've thought of since...?'
The smile was even more fleeting than before. 'I rarely think about it, I'm afraid. That whole business—it was such a long time ago. It's as if it happened to somebody else.'
Will took the photographs from an envelope and placed them on the bench.
'Do you recognise this man?'
Was it his imagination, or did her body tense?
She lifted one of the pictures with nicely manicured hands and held it in her lap. 'You think this might have been him? The man who ... who took me?'
'I think it's possible.'
He watched to see if her grip would waver, but her hand remained steady.
'No. I don't recognise him at all. I'm sorry.'
'These were taken some years later. He's older, clearly.'
Shaking her head, she set the photograph back down. 'I'm sorry.'
Will didn't immediately say anything; didn't move.
'The reason you're showing me, this man, he's done something similar?'
'Yes.'
'Another girl?'
'Yes.'
'Young?'
'Twelve years old.'
She turned her face away.
'I think there might have been others,' Will said. 'If he's allowed to remain at liberty, I think there might be still more.'
She looked quickly down at the photographs again, then turned them face down, one by one, on the bench. 'I have to be getting back.' Smoothing down her skirt, she stood.
After another moment's hesitation, Will slid the images back from sight.
'I'll walk with you, if that's all right?'
There were quite a few people about now, shoppers busy in their lunch hour, people carrying take-out food and cups of coffee, grazing as they walked. A pair of young women, steering their buggies against the tide.
'Your little girl,' Will said, 'how old is she now?'
'Don't!' Halting in her tracks, she swung fast towards him. 'Don't do that. Don't you dare!'
'Do what?' Will said, innocently.
'Use my child. Use her to make me feel guilty. Tell you what you want to hear.'
'I'm sorry,' he said, taken aback. 'I apologise.'
They walked on in silence until they were almost level with the building where she worked, a blown-up technicoloured picture of the perfect family in the window, mum, dad and two kids, smiling ecstatically outside their perfect new home.
'Thank you,' Will said, holding out his hand. 'Thank you for your time.'
She didn't take his hand, but turned smartly away and pressed the buzzer to be admitted through the door.
The journey on from Huntingdon to Chatteris Fen was no more than a dozen miles, the road snaking b
etween gravel pits as it wound north, straightening momentarily before rising through a series of narrow bends and running in places above the land, which spread out, dark and anonymous, on either side; not a house in sight, no dwelling, no tree. And then at the last minute, off to the right, Will saw a narrow track, unmarked, and beyond that a pair of double chimney stacks and the beginnings of a pantiled roof.
Alice Fell was waiting for him in the garden at the front of the house, seated inside a wooden structure that looked to Will like an overlarge, open-fronted birdcage, laptop on the table before her, books stacked high on either side.
When she saw Will she saved what she had been working on and rose to greet him. An even-faced woman with short hair sensibly cut, medium height, she was wearing a faded blue quilted jacket and loose, comfortable trousers tucked down into rubber boots. More dressed, Will thought, for gardening than writing.
'Inspector Grayson?'
Unlike Janine Clarke, the edges of her hands were rough, only the fingertips smooth.
'Or should it be Detective Inspector?'
'Either is fine.'
'I was going to have a cup of tea. You'll join me, I hope. I've been putting it off till you arrived. Concentrating on chapter twenty-nine instead.' She inclined her head back towards the table. 'Detective fiction—I don't suppose you read very much of it yourself. Too much of a busman's holiday.'
'Too far from the truth. What little I've read.'
'Yes, well. This fellow I'm translating now—Norwegian—he's not bad on that account. Not bad all told.'
The kitchen had been refashioned with new quarry tiles on the floor, stripped pine cupboards, a large butler sink, solid oak surfaces inches thick; copper-bottomed pans hung from an iron girdle near the Aga. A scrubbed wooden table stood towards the far end, with flowers in a vase.
A tortoiseshell cat had scooted out of the room the moment they'd walked in.
'You found us without any difficulty?'
Will smiled. 'Only just.'
'We did have a sign made. A friend of ours painted it. It was rather beautiful. After two weeks it was pulled down. Vandalised.' She shook her head. 'Even here ...'
At her suggestion, they took the tea back outside; good strong tea in thick china mugs. Alice Fell pulled out a folding chair for Will from behind where she'd been sitting and set it down close to the edge of the lawn, then moved her own near to it. Behind them a wall of yellow brick could just be seen through a profusion of shrubs and flowers.
'I like to sit here in the afternoons. Catch the last of the sun. Once you reach this time of the year, the nights start drawing in.' A small shudder ran through her, as if, Will thought, watching, someone had just walked over her grave.
He leaned back in his chair and waited, mug held in both hands. The silence around them was almost total. 'Christine,' he said. 'She must be what? Eighteen? Nineteen?'
'She'll be nineteen in a month's time.'
'It's been difficult, I know. You explained.'
Several years in a special school that catered for children with behavioural problems had been followed by an attempt to ease her back into mainstream education that had failed. Christine would sit through lesson after lesson, not speaking, not really following, ignoring those around her until some incident, some stray word, would set her off and then she would unleash such a torrent of anger, every filthy word spat out, arms flailing, that it took at least three adults, frail-seeming as she was, to hold her down. One day she bit one of the teachers, quite badly, in the hand; on another occasion, she stabbed a pupil, a girl, repeatedly, in the arm with a pen.
For a short time after that, she was admitted as an in-patient to the Darwin Centre in Cambridge, since when she'd been attending the Newtown Centre in Huntingdon, where she had regular sessions with a therapist; there was also a community psychiatric nurse who visited her at the house.
'When she wasn't at the centre,' Alice Fell said, 'she used to just sit upstairs. She wouldn't read or do anything. I tried to get her interested in helping me with the garden, but it wasn't really any good. Then this last month or so, since the summer really, she's been working in a charity shop in Ely. As a volunteer. A couple of afternoons, that's all so far. But it's something, a step forward.'
'Is that where she is now?'
Alice Fell hesitated. 'No. She's home. In her room.'
'I'd like to...'
Alice Fell was already shaking her head. 'I'm sorry. I thought about what you said, about showing her some photographs. David and I talked it over this morning and we don't think it would be right. Not to stir all that up again.'
'But if she could identify ...'
'If she could identify the man who abused her, can you imagine what effect that might have? What it would do to her? Forcing her to go through all of that again?'
'I know,' Will said. 'It's a risk, I know. But if this is the man and Christine identifies him, he can be arrested and made to pay for what he's done. Not just to Christine, but to others too.'
Alice Fell set her mug on the ground. 'I can see why it's important. But it's a risk I'm not prepared to take, not on Christine's behalf.'
'What if she were asked? She could always say no.'
'And if she said yes?' She shook her head. 'I'm sorry, Inspector, but I've seen my daughter very gradually edging back towards a point where she might have a real life again. I'm not prepared to jeopardise that, not for anything. If the man in those photographs is the one who hurt my daughter, you're going to have to catch him some other way.'
She walked him to his car and politely shook hands. The cat was in the garden now, curled up between the books on her work table. It was time she collected everything together and brought it all in. She would make Christine some hot chocolate or Ovaltine and take it up to her room. She expected David would ring soon to say he was on his way and she would open a bottle of wine, something full-bodied and cheering, against his return. They might have a fire tonight in the drawing room; it was time.
32
It had been put off long enough. Ruth could no longer find a legitimate reason for not taking the train into Cambridge with Beatrice in order to shop. Jigsaw, H&M, Topshop, Miss Selfridge, Monsoon; River Island, Gap, Oasis, French Connection. And not forgetting Tammy Girl. Or the hours—it seemed to Ruth like hours—spent lovingly examining small sparkly items in Accessorize.
'Do you recognise this?' the police liaison officer had asked.
A gold chain with letters spelling out Heather's name.
'She bought it, in Penzance' Pauline Efford had explained. 'With her pocket money. She thought—she thought it was lovely'
Ruth kept it wrapped inside a cream all-in-one Heather had worn as a baby, folded now at the back of the drawer in which she kept her own gloves and scarves and a few other of Heather's things: a T-shirt with an embossed Minnie Mouse, a red dress from when she was four, a pair of dungarees.
'Mum,' Beatrice said suddenly. 'Look. Look at these. Aren't they cool?' She was holding up a pair of earrings: spirals of silver that caught the light.
'Beatrice,' Ruth said, wearily. 'We've been through all this before. You're not having your ears pierced and that's an end to it.'
'That's stupid.'
'No, it's not.'
'Everyone else's got their ears pierced and not me.'
'I'm not sure if that's true. And besides, you know perfectly well you're not allowed to wear earrings to school until year ten, so there's no point.'
'Sleepers? I can wear sleepers, yeah?'
'Beatrice, I don't want to have this argument again. Not here.'
'Don't then.'
Ruth closed her eyes and tried counting to ten. She had been in and out of so many shops, stood patiently outside so many changing rooms; admired, demurred, discouraged, reluctantly approved, finally produced her debit card on so many occasions that her head felt as if it was made from cotton wool. Or worse. And her feet were starting to ache. Calves, too. She wanted nothing more than to catch
the bus to the station, get on the train and go back home.
'Here,' she said, taking a ten-pound note from her purse. 'Go ahead. Get them. And don't forget the change. I'll be outside.'
'Ruth,' someone said, as she stepped out through the door, laden down. 'Ruth.'
It was Simon.
'Ruth, hello.'
'My God, Simon! What are you doing here?' She lowered her parcels to the ground. 'I hardly recognised you.'
And it was true. Always thin, he seemed to have become even more so; his face was gaunt, cheeks sunken in, and his clothes—a mismatching jacket and trousers—hung off him in a way that emphasised his awkward, angular frame. Just the eyes, only the eyes were alive.
'I moved,' he said, breathlessly. 'I thought you knew. Some time ago now. London wasn't ... wasn't doing it for me any more. All those people, all that noise.' He laughed, a high, nervous trill. 'You were the sensible one, eh? Got out when you could. Up here, the country, you can breathe. And think. Think.' He came closer, an odd little shuffle, head dipping towards hers. 'I've been wanting to talk to you, you know. Hoping I'd bump into you. Now that we're living so close.'
Close, Ruth thought. Close?
Before she could reply there was Beatrice, hair brushed away from her face, holding up the small Accessorize bag, coins close to spilling from her other hand.
'Mum, here's your change.'
'Thanks, darling. I...'
'You must be Beatrice,' Simon said, smiling, holding out his hand.
Glancing at her mother anxiously, Beatrice took a step back towards the glass.
'Bea, this is Simon. He ...'
'Your mother and I were married,' Simon said. 'A long time ago.' He let his hand fall back by his side. 'I've wondered ... I've often wondered what you'd be like.'
Beatrice looked away.
A couple, arms around each other's shoulders, pushed between them, oblivious.
'She's lovely, Ruth. Lovely.' Smiling.
'We really should be going,' Ruth said, collecting the bags strewn around her feet. 'The train...'
'Of course, of course.' He moved closer, the same dip of the head, quick like a bird's. 'Some time,' he said in a lowered voice, 'we should talk. There are these groups, support groups. People who understand. Understand what you've been going through. What we both have. I think they could help.'