In Bitter Chill

by Sarah Ward

  There were also plenty of news reports about the role Rose West had played in abducting the girls selected by her husband. She had allegedly been in the car with him when he’d picked up his victims, her presence reassuring the wary, which in Connie’s eyes was a heinous crime. Both had been accomplices of men though, so perhaps a man had been behind the 1978 kidnapping. The woman with the sunglasses in January an accessory to a more devilish personality. She wouldn’t get far looking at the Internet. Sadler was interviewing Rachel now – she needed help from another direction. Psychologists bored Connie. They would give her some waffle about women dominated by men and she’d be no nearer finding a solution. Connie preferred tangible facts to wishy-washy imaginings.

  She went hunting for the tea chests that she’d found in Yvonne Jenkins’s attic. They’d been shoved into the corner of an empty office, a breach of procedure that cheered her up. It seemed that recently everything in this station was about adhering to correct policy and scrutinising your methods of working as part of the drive for standardisation. It made for dreary detective work. But, as Sadler had rightly pointed out, in 1978 with their more primitive policing the team had still done a half-decent job. They hadn’t solved the case, admittedly, but still, Connie envied the freedom the team must have had compared to today.

  There were two large chests, with no lids, made of pale plywood with metal rims, going slightly rusty. Both were covered with tartan blankets which had been pushed around the contents. She felt for the one that she had rummaged through in the attic, with the child’s shoes on top. But the contents were disappointing. A collection of children’s clothes from the 1970s, including dresses that Sophie must have grown out of by the time she’d been kidnapped. Yvonne Jenkins had obviously kept some items for sentimental reasons.

  The second chest initially looked as hopeless, filled at the top with soft toys and a doll with hard brittle limbs. But at the bottom were two photo frames, made from moulded wood with gilt edging. The photos inside showed a family of three people. Yvonne Jenkins, as Llewellyn had indicated, had been a very attractive woman, although her large eyes had stared confused at the camera in both shots. Then there was little Sophie Jenkins. In the first portrait she looked, to Connie’s inexperienced eyes, about two years old. She had been a chubby child, with her pale hair parted into two neat bunches. By the second photo, she had lost most of the baby fat and was a serious child, about school age, although Connie was now struggling to guess her exact age. But in any case, she was more interested in the man standing in both photographs, wearing the same beige suit. In the earliest photo, he looked resigned. In the second, angry. This, presumably, was Peter Jenkins.

  She was about to put everything back when she noticed something screwed up in the corner. She reached into the chest and groped for it. What emerged was a grubby child’s sock, its shabbiness a startling contrast to the pristine neatness of the rest of the chest’s contents. It had been scrunched up and thrown into the corner of the box. Connie stuck her head into the chest to double-check she hadn’t missed its pair but the chest was completely empty. Slowly, Connie unfurled the sock. It would probably have been knee high on an eight-year-old child. She could remember wearing similar styles made out of knobbly white material with small flowers snaking down one side. Connie weighed it up in her hand and wondered.

  Chapter 15

  Outside Rachel Jones’s cottage, Sadler’s mobile phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. He looked at the number. Christina. Plus five missed calls. She wasn’t going to be happy.

  Christina was married to a Greek businessman who had decidedly traditional views on marriage. This meant that he dallied with the occasional lover while she was remunerated handsomely for her role as homemaker and mother. Christina, whose paternal grandmother had taught her a few things about how this arrangement worked in practice, had met Sadler at a party about six years ago and they had become lovers. He thought about ignoring the call but she seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to being given the brush off.

  ‘I’m in the middle of something.’

  ‘Morning to you too,’ said the voice and Sadler reluctantly smiled. ‘Are we still on for later?’ Christina’s deep, slightly masculine voice had been one of the first attractions for Sadler. Now that she was cross with him, it had lost that rich depth.

  ‘Yes, six o’clock,’ he said looking at his watch. ‘There’s no reason I should be delayed.’

  ‘Well, ring me if you are. I’m not sitting in that pub for half an hour like last time. If you’re going to be late, call me.’

  ‘Of course, Christina. Bye.’ He cut the connection and wondered. He’d heard the sounds of breakfast being eaten in the background. How much did her family know about their meetings?

  Sadler looked at the group of reporters huddled together and went across to the patrol car that had recently drawn up outside the house. Inside were two uniformed officers he hadn’t seen before. They were both listening intently to the police radio. Sadler rapped on the window.

  ‘Sorry about this. You just need to keep an eye on the reporters. If you see them peering in the windows, warn them off. The woman inside needs to be able to go about her business.’

  ‘Of course.’ The officer in the passenger seat nodded at the car radio. ‘Something’s going on over the other side of town. Any idea what that’s all about?’

  Sadler frowned and listened to the disembodied voices coming across the airwaves. There was an urgency about the responses which the two professionals in the car had picked up on.

  ‘What was the initial call?’ he asked.

  ‘A hysterical woman dialled 999 saying she had found a body. The dispatcher couldn’t even get a location from her to begin with as the woman was in such as state.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘They’re heading towards Truscott Fields, behind the woods.’

  Sadler’s heart gave a lurch and yet his brain was struggling to make a connection. Body meant recent. Not the old bones they would be looking for. He reached for his phone that had been vibrating in his pocket during the interview with Rachel Jones and accessed his call log. Four of the five missed calls were from Palmer, the other from Connie.

  ‘And have they found someone?’

  ‘Body of a woman, apparently. First response is saying it looks like she was strangled. And recently.’

  Sadler looked back at Rachel’s house. ‘I need to get down there. Can you stay here and keep an eye on things? Although, once the news gets out my guess is you’ll be watching an empty street.’

  *

  Truscott Woods was an ancient site, the remnants of a great forest that had once cut a swathe over the lower parts of the Derbyshire Peaks. The area that remained was about a square mile in size, and Sadler could remember his father being fascinated by the patch of woodland with its ancient history. He’d tried to instil the same awe in his young son and Sadler, anxious to please his usually unemotional parent, had accompanied him deep into the forest, along the overgrown pathways, to get a sense of what had once been.

  But if he’d been given a choice, Sadler would have joined the thousands of visitors who ventured no further than thirty metres or so from the wood’s entrance in the car park off the Bampton Road. The outer pathways were well maintained by the council and regularly used by dog walkers and families at the weekend to lark about amongst the trees. But as you went deeper into the woods the paths, although still well kept, became boggy and the trees denser. The sense of claustrophobia was enhanced by the profusion in this area of birch trees, their thin silvery trunks masking the sturdy branches leaning towards each other to form a canopy. Next to the wood’s entrance stood Truscott Fields, common land enshrined in a charter dating back to 1415. Nothing was allowed to be done to change the nature of this piece of land. Over the years, groups of parents had petitioned the local authority for a play area to be erected near the car park but to no avail. An ancient edict was a law to be obeyed, however much time had changed, and no
leeway was to be given, even to accommodate the voting public.

  Few who came on a summer’s day to wander along the paths or to exercise their dogs knew the dark history of the place. As thirty miles to the west the regeneration of Hattersley was sweeping away traces of the material lives of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, in Truscott Woods emphasis was given to its ancient existence and mediaeval importance. The discovery of a shivering girl in 1978 had been eradicated from the wood’s history although the case had made Bampton infamous throughout the country. However, Truscott Woods was about to stake a claim for notoriety in the twenty-first century, judging by the hive of activity in the distance. Pulling up at the car park, Sadler glanced into the entrance of the woods. Perhaps, somewhere in that dense woodland, the body of Sophie Jenkins lay undisturbed.

  Connie padded over to meet him in floral wellingtons, her face scrunched up against the cold. He’d spotted the boots in the back of the car but this was the first time she’d worn them. The crude red poppies dabbed gaudily on a white background seemed out of place in the bleak scrub of this setting. She was bursting to tell him something and pulled against his arm in a proprietorial manner.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ she hissed, pulling him away from the entrance to Truscott Fields where he could see the familiar white tent erected. ‘The SOCOs are working there now. It’s going to be another couple of hours at least before we can get anywhere near it.’

  ‘Did you get to see anything?’

  Connie leaned closer to him. ‘I arrived not long after the patrol car called it in. Either the death is very recent, I mean as in today, or the cold weather helped preservation. Because the victim isn’t in that bad a state, considering that she has been exposed to the elements.’

  ‘Any sign of cause of death?’

  ‘There’s a kind of cord around her neck. A piece of thin rope, it looked like to me. Still left in sit​u.’

  ‘ID?’

  ‘It looks like her handbag had been slung over the fence from the field into the woods. It was easy to find. The killer obviously made an attempt to get rid of it. Probably couldn’t take the risk of being seen leaving with it.’

  ‘And any ID inside? Come on, Connie, answer the question.’ Sadler was looking at the white tent, where he noticed the pathologist Bill Shields heaving his body under the tape.

  ‘Credit cards in the name of Mrs Penny Lander. Didn’t mean anything to me. But the old boy in the patrol car says a Mrs Lander in St Paul’s primary school used to teach his daughter before she retired.’

  ‘St Pauls?’ asked Sadler. ‘Wasn’t that where . . .’

  ‘Yes, where Sophie and Rachel were pupils in 1978. We think we’re on the right track as there’s a car in the car park registered to a Mr James Lander. The blue BMW over there.’

  Sadler looked at where Connie was pointing. A dirty dark blue BMW was parked at an angle in the car park. It looked like it had been put there in a hurry, taking up two spaces.

  ‘Hadn’t anyone noticed it sitting there?’ asked Sadler.

  ‘We’re checking now, but we don’t think there have been any reports of a missing car.’ She looked up at him. ‘You think there’s a connection to our case?’

  Sadler thought back to Rachel Jones, whom he’d left sitting disconsolately on the sofa. First Yvonne Jenkins and now Penny Lander.

  ‘Do you believe in coincidence, Connie?’

  She didn’t even pause to think. ‘In this job? Never.’

  Chapter 16

  20 January 1978

  Rachel looked through fuzzy eyes to a blur at the end of the track. She could see objects hurtling past and her soft, woolly brain tried to identify the name for them. Cars. It was cars that were rushing past at the top of the track. She frowned slightly. Cars sounded bad to her. Her mum didn’t have one, so they had to ride on the bus wherever they went. No, the thought of cars gave her a bad feeling in her chest. But cars contained people, didn’t they? And people usually could help. And that was what she needed right now. Help.

  She stumbled up the track, even though she could hear a shout behind her. And a car starting. They were after her. She’d lost both her shoes now and one of her socks which was slowing her down, the imbalance made her want to plunge headlong into the soft ground. She pulled off the other sock and started to run. But she had always been a terrible runner and today was no exception. A pain was now starting in her fuzzy head. It was getting bigger and bigger and she could feel a huge pressure behind her nose. She concentrated on the opening at the top of the track and not the sound behind her. Those blurry cars held the key to her rescue.

  The roar entered her ears as the car came up behind her. Rachel felt her stomach lurch but her legs propelled her on. She was nearly there and, as she arrived at the road, she waved her arms in the cold air. She sensed the car behind her slow and turned, in consternation, at the dulling sound. But another car, speeding around the corner, saw her and braked. A man in a blue suit got out.

  He ran over to her. ‘Are you all right, love?’

  Rachel turned and briefly caught a glimpse of a woman’s sunglasses before the white car that had been following her sped away. She pointed at the retreating vehicle, but the man was crouching down beside her.

  ‘Is everything OK?’

  Rachel felt the cold enter her and stared at her numbed feet. She lifted her head and looked into his concerned eyes.

  ‘Where’s Sophie?’

  Chapter 17

  Following a nod from the pathologist, Connie followed Sadler under the crime scene tape and towards the white tent. When she had told Sadler about Penny Lander’s connection with the two schoolgirls she had seen something in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before – a spark of interest. At the entrance to the tent, he turned to her.

  ‘You don’t need to follow me in, Connie.’

  ‘It’s not a problem, sir.’ She thrust a mint into her mouth as soon as his back was turned.

  Inside the tent, Sadler crouched down and examined the body. The woman was about Yvonne Jenkins’s age but there the resemblance ended. She was dressed in a round-necked fern green sweatshirt and brown cords and had hiking books on her feet. Her face was turned away from them and Connie moved slightly to catch a glimpse of the woman’s features. She wished she hadn’t.

  ‘Can you confirm cause of death?’ Sadler stood up and looked at Bill Shields.

  The pathologist was packing up his bag and seemed tired. ‘It looks like strangulation – there’s a rope-like ligature still around the neck. But I need to have a good look back at the mortuary. There’s something a bit strange I want to check.’

  Connie watched Sadler make a face of distaste as he looked at the body. ‘Strange? Anything relevant to the investigation when you say strange?’

  The pathologist shut his bag with a snap.

  ‘It might be nothing. Let me have a good look when I’m out of this tent. She’s been dead about two days. She was most likely killed here and her body left where she fell, judging by the ground around the victim. It looks like leaves and branches were used as a form of covering for the body. Then, of course, the snow came. Today’s thaw seems to have caused the makeshift grave to move, exposing the body so she was visible to anyone passing this way.’

  ‘How quickly can you do the PM, Bill? I know you made an exception for Yvonne Jenkins and now I’m going to ask you to do so with this one.’

  Bill Shields frowned at Sadler. ‘You think they’re connected?’

  Sadler shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  They stared at each other for a moment.

  ‘I’ll talk to you again tomorrow,’ said Sadler. ‘I don’t think there’s any point us being present when you do the PM. Give Connie a call if anything interesting comes up.’

  Connie watched the pathologist massage his back. ‘You normally send someone along, Francis. This one not to your taste?’

  Sadler shook his head. ‘Resources. I need the team out in the field. You know how it is.�
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  Bill Shields looked sympathetic and glanced at Connie. ‘I’ll miss our cup of tea.’

  Connie flushed. Since their first meeting, when she had turned up late for an autopsy, she and the pathologist had got into the habit of having a cup of tea together in his office after he had finished with the body. An informal affair, Connie had struck up a useful relationship with the doctor and knew that she was his preferred detective at autopsies. She could feel Sadler’s eyes on her back.

  She smiled at Bill. ‘Perhaps I’ll pop in after work. See how you got on.’

  She turned and walked out of the tent, Sadler following her. If she had expected him to comment on the conversation she was going to be disappointed. He had listened to her exchange with Bill with watchful curiosity but was, for the moment, going to be keeping his thoughts to himself. Once more Connie wondered what passions lay behind the calm mask that Sadler wore. He was looking towards the car park.

  ‘If Bill is right and she fell where she was killed, what made her come into the field? There’s a footpath into the woods from the car park and one straight across this field. What would she have been doing by the fence?’

  Connie followed Sadler’s gaze. The woman’s body was about eight metres from the footpath running down the scrubby field.