by Bud Craig
* * *
Five minutes after I got back home, I had a call on my mobile.
“Is that Gus Keane?” asked a female voice I didn’t recognise.
“Yes.”
There followed a silence that lasted long enough for me to think she’d ended the call. I was just about to ask if she was still there when she spoke again.
“I’m Helen Witton. I believe Louise has been in touch.”
“Yes. I was sorry to hear about your husband.”
“Thank you. I think we need to meet as soon as possible and I can go through all the details. Is tomorrow OK?”
“Sure.”
“Could you come to me? I live in Timperley. Do you know it at all?”
“Oh, yes.”
I knew Timperley all right. Sadly, I remembered Marti, my ex-girlfriend, who used to live there and was now in California. That brought back memories of Debbie, an old flame I’d got involved with just after Marti went to the US. We soon found out we had very little in common. As these thoughts passed through my mind, Helen gave me her address, a few streets away from Marti’s former home.
* * *
At about eleven the following morning I turned into Larch Avenue after a fifteen-minute walk from the tram stop in Timperley. The cold wind had brought tears to my eyes and I would be glad to get indoors. At the same time, the sky was clear and there was no sign of rain. I approached a detached house along a paved garden path. At the end of the drive a blue car stood outside the garage. I had no idea what make it was, but could tell it cost a few bob. As did the house itself, close to a million at a guess. The shaved lawn with its weeping willow, the yew bushes and the rockery fitted together to make a carefully sculpted landscape. All a bit sterile, I thought.
I pulled down the hood on my warm, red fleece as Helen Witton, a woman of about fifty, opened the door. She smiled a welcome then showed me into an open plan living room that had been hoovered to within an inch of its life. My eyes were drawn to her smart casual grey trousers and pale blue fleece with an AC logo, the molly outfit Louise had referred to with such scorn. She sat me down in an armchair before going off to get tea and biscuits.
“Could we start with the day Keith went missing?” I said when she got back with a tray.
I opened my notebook as she fussed around, placing a white china teapot and matching cups on a table. Only after she had poured the tea did she answer my question.
“It was three days ago, 5th January. I was reading in the upstairs lounge. Keith was painting the skirting board in this room. Some time in mid-afternoon he called up to me to say he was going for a walk.”
Her voice was neutral with little expression and hardly a hint of an accent.
“Did he often go out for a walk?” I asked.
“No, he didn’t. With hindsight, it seems strange.”
She suddenly went quiet and just sat there, motionless.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
Something must have happened. I was wondering how I could move the interview on, when she explained.
“I haven’t seen him since. When he hadn’t come back in an hour, I tried his mobile but it went to voicemail. I texted, e-mailed – no answer. I rang The Antelope, thinking he might have gone for a pint on the way back.”
“I’m guessing he wasn’t there.”
“No, he doesn’t drink much so it was a bit of a long shot. I then tried all his friends and family and rang his office.”
“That’s Addison Crabtree, isn’t it?”
“Yes, he’s sales manager there. I’m HR manager, on compassionate leave at the moment.”
She took a moment to compose herself.
“He was on leave at the time,” Helen went on, “but he’s a bit of a workaholic so I thought he might have popped into AC. He wasn’t there, they weren’t expecting him back for four days.”
“What about social media?”
“Nothing. He hasn’t posted anything on Facebook since New Year’s Day. There have been no tweets, it all seems hopeless.”
There was a catch in her voice on the last few words.
“Did you phone the police?”
“Yes, an officer came round, but I don’t think they’re giving it too much priority.”
“Do you have children?”
“Just the one. Jake. He’s twenty, doing Marketing and Management at Durham University. He’s at home for the holidays at the moment.”
“Has Jake any thoughts about where his dad might have gone?”
She shook her head.
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“I’m not sure. He’s had some problems: depression and anxiety, it’s more common than you might think.”
Not if you’d spent twenty odd years in social work.
“He seems settled now and he’s coping with this latest crisis better than I could have hoped,” she added, “but…”
“I think it might be an idea to talk to Jake, leave no stone unturned, you know.”
She was about to say something but thought better of it. Then she seemed to come to a decision.
“Yes, OK, he’d want to feel involved. You will be careful how you handle him, won’t you, Gus?”
“Sure.”
“He’s out at the moment but I’ll talk to him later, let him know you’ll be in touch. I’ll give you his mobile number before you go.”
She sat back with a sigh, as if finding all this too much. Who could blame her? I moved on with my questioning.
“When Keith went out that day, did you see him go?”
“No, he called up to me as he was leaving.”
“Do you know if he took anything with him?”
She shrugged.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. He was wearing jeans, a check shirt, trainers. I’ve worked out he put on a jumper and a waterproof coat, but he had no suitcase or extra clothes. His wallet, phone and keys would have been in the pockets of his jeans.”
“What about his car?”
“It’s in the garage.”
That wasn’t the behaviour of a man who planned to be away for long.
“Did he receive a phone call just before he left?”
“If his mobile rang I might not have heard it. Certainly nobody rang the landline.”
“Who is he close to?”
“Well, he is pretty self-contained and it’s hard to get close to him. Our relationship is… well, we’re not all lovey-dovey with one another.”
Another pause for thought.
“Brendan is the nearest he’s got to a best friend.”
“Brendan?”
“Brendan O’Toole. He works for Chataway, the mobile phone people. He was at school with Keith. They’ve always got on, often play golf together. They play darts nearly every week in The Antelope and re-live their lost youth.”
It would definitely be worth talking to Brendan.
“Have you got a number for him?”
“I’ll let you have it before you go.”
“What about friends at work?”
She shrugged.
“Well, he gets on with people at work but he likes to keep his professional and private life separate. The best person to talk to at AC is Isabella Norton, his secretary.”
“Around the time Keith disappeared did anything unusual happen?”
“I was thinking about this before you arrived. On the day Keith went missing, just before he left home, I noticed a man out jogging. He stopped across the road from our house. He was there for several minutes. Of course, he could have been just taking a breather, but in view of what happened, well, you think all sorts, don’t you?”
You do indeed, Helen.
“Strangely enough he looked a bit familiar,” she went on, “but I couldn’t really see his face because he was wearing one of those hoodies and standing at an angle to our house.”
“Even so, can you describe him?”
“A couple of inches shorter than yo
u, I’d say, dark hair. He looked a bit out of condition, overweight, you know. I remember thinking there’s someone trying to keep their new year’s resolution.”
“How old was he?”
“Ooh, it’s hard to say. Maybe late thirties.”
“I’ll try and follow that up. How had Keith been that day?”
“Much the same as usual. He’s the cheerful type, too cheerful at times, if you know what I mean.”
I knew all right. Keith sounded like my son in law.
“Had he ever talked about being depressed or anxious?”
“No, never. I keep thinking there might have been something and I’d missed it.”
Poor Helen, this was the only hint she had given of how she was feeling. Guilt, anger, and self-blame were only just below the surface.
“He’d been in a particularly good mood since December,” she said. “We went to the Isle of Man for a few days before Christmas, you know. We have friends there.”
“Could Keith be there now?”
“No, I checked.”
“What about family?”
She pulled a face.
“His parents are dead. There’s only a brother in Hull; they hardly see one another. I did ring him but he couldn’t help.”
I felt as if I’d been scratching the surface and needed to dig a bit deeper.
“Look, Helen, I hate to ask this but could he have been involved with another woman?”
“Of course not.”
The words came out too quickly in a half-shout. She hung her head and sighed.
“To be honest, it’s one of the things I’m afraid of so I suppose it’s a fair enough question,” she said, “but I just can’t imagine it. God, this is such a bloody nightmare.”
The swear word, mild though it was, took me by surprise. She couldn’t know for sure if he was involved with somebody else, as I knew from personal experience. If she had suspicions, it might help find him but it wasn’t a real explanation. If he were planning to go off with someone, he could still have told his wife, even if it was after the event.
“Oh, I’m not saying ours was a match made in heaven but… well, we had a secure life. I think he was happy with that.”
There were two possibilities here: he wasn’t happy with his life or something had happened to stop him getting back home. Helen carried on airing her thoughts.
“He wasn’t looking for adventure, he likes his home comforts. Well, he is in his fifties. He is a cosy kind of bloke. Once he got home from work, he’d settle in front of the telly. It was all I could do to get him to go on holiday even.”
I left soon afterwards with a promise to get back to her.
* * *
The next day around noon, I organised the piles of paper in my so-called office, then checked my e-mails. Paul had sent his first report:
On 8th January 2016 I waited outside Adam Jennings’ house in Whitefield from 7 a.m. He came out at 7:15 and got into a black Audi A8. I was expecting him to drive to Piccadilly railway station, but before I knew it we were heading down the M60, following signs to the airport. I assumed he had decided to fly to London. He turned off for the Airport Hotel, four miles from the airport and went in the car park. I parked up and watched him go into the hotel. He wore jeans, trainers, an anorak and a woolly hat. Twenty-five minutes later he came out of the hotel wearing a grey suit and shiny, black shoes, pulling a kind of briefcase on wheels. He got straight onto the airport shuttle. I drove after the bus.
As the shuttle dropped him off outside terminal three, I found a space in the short stay car park. I walked into the departure lounge and caught sight of him in the queue for the Isle of Man flight. I crept as close as I could, noticing he was now clean-shaven, which changed his appearance quite a bit. When he’d finished at the check-in desk, he walked over to a stocky guy with white hair sitting at a table in Delice de France. He wore glasses with pale blue frames and a navy- blue suit. As AJ approached, he stood up and they shook hands. The other guy addressed Jennings as ‘Peter’. As they walked off, I noticed Jennings’ colleague had a distinct limp. I followed until they went past a sign that said: PASSENGERS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT.
POINTS TO NOTE
AJ had no bag with him when he got out of his car but had one when he came out of the hotel.
When he left home, he was wearing jeans, an anorak and a hat. He looked like he had been growing a beard for a week to ten days. When he came out of the hotel, he was clean-shaven and had changed his clothes.
He was flying to the Isle of Man. Why? Did his partner know he was going there?
His companion at the airport called him Peter.
There was no sign of Erin Duckworth. In any case, he would hardly have arranged to meet a woman when he was travelling with someone else. (I’m assuming the guy he was with was a work colleague.)
He could of course have had a quick shag in the hotel room before rushing off to catch his flight. Call me old-fashioned, but it doesn’t sound very romantic, does it?
Later on, I went back to the hotel. I approached the reception desk and that was when I had a bit of luck. I’d been at school with the woman on duty, Ida Laverne. We got chatting and I told her I was in the hotel on business. She asked me what business I was in.
I told her I was under cover, looking for someone. When I showed her the picture of Jennings, she said, ‘Oh, that’s Mr Goodall.’
I soon had the full story out of Ida. Every so often Jennings/Goodall books a room for a couple of nights. He leaves clothes in the room, but doesn’t stay there and picks up the gear the next morning. She couldn’t tell me any more about him – he comes and goes with hardly a word.
Having printed Paul’s report, I took it, my Kindle and the Guardian into the kitchen and sat down. Within seconds I had managed to spread everything over a fair-sized area of table. I went through the report carefully, making notes in the margin. My stomach rumbled, telling me it was getting near lunchtime and distracting me from working out what the bloody hell was going on with Mr Jennings aka Mr Goodall. Who was Peter Goodall and why should he go under a false name? I decided to forget about it until I had worked out a way of dealing with this new information. That could mean never, I thought, when I heard a knock at the door.
“Hi, Dad,” said Rachel when I opened the door to her and a striking looking woman with dark, curly hair. “We thought we’d come and see you and scrounge some lunch.”
Both were a bit windswept, huddled in winter coats. Rachel made a half-hearted effort to tidy her long, dark hair. With her blue eyes she looked superficially like me, but I’d always thought she was like her mother in other ways.
“We’re worn out from a morning of retail therapy,” said the friend.
Both of them were weighed down with bags from shops I’d never heard of.
“Come in.”
They followed me into the kitchen and sat down, spreading their shopping around on the floor. Rachel’s companion looked familiar but I couldn't place her.
“Have you met Janice, by the way?” asked Rachel.
“Er…”
“She’s the guitarist in the band.”
“Ah, I remember now.”
I thought back to Boxing Day at The Park Hotel, music filling the room, Janice strutting around the stage.
“You play a mean guitar, Janice.”
“Thanks.”
“I enjoyed your singing too, nearly as good as Rachel’s.”
“Praise indeed.”
“Anyway, I’d better see what I’ve got in for lunch.”
I searched the fridge then got on with warming up some left-over chicken and veg risotto, which I thought could be eked out between the three of us with a bit of salad. Rachel went off to the loo so I was left with Janice.
“Rachel tells me you’re a big music fan, Gus. How did you get into it?”
Once again I was struck by her Lancashire accent, which was different from the Manchester or Salford variety.
“My sist
er was responsible for my early musical education,” I told her. “She’s quite a bit older than me. When she baby-sat me, she played me a selection of 45s, fifties and early sixties stuff, you know. I was allowed to listen to three as long as I went straight to bed afterwards.”
“That’s dead cool.”
Rachel came back at this point and the three of us talked about our possible Desert Island Discs. We all had great difficulty in narrowing our choices down to the eight allowed. The only song I was definite about was Stop, Stop, Stop by the Hollies, the first record I ever bought. I had no idea what it was about at the time, which was just as well as the story of a bloke being chucked out of a strip club was hardly suitable for a ten-year-old.
“Anyway, lunch is ready,” I said. “I’d better clear all my clutter from the table.”
“I’ll do it,” said Janice. “It’s the least I can do after inviting myself without warning.”
“That’s nice of you. If you could just take it into what passes for my office – second on the right – and dump it all on the desk. I’ll sort it out later.”
When Janice returned I served up the nosh and we carried on with the musical conversation.
When Rachel and Janice had left, I decided to make a start on the search for Keith Witton by giving his son, Jake, a call. He suggested I come over straightaway as his mother was out. On the tram to Timperley I rang Keith’s friend, Brendan O’Toole, on my mobile. He wouldn’t be available that day but agreed to meet me on Monday night. Things were moving.
* * *
When I arrived at Helen Witton’s house, a skinny, young man in a Jess Glynne t-shirt, straight leg jeans and hefty brown boots opened the door.
“You Gus?” he asked.
“Yeah, you must be Jake.”
We shook hands and went in the house.
“So, you’re looking for my dad, are you?” he said when we sat down on the living room settee.
“Yeah.”
“I guess I should, like, wish you luck but I’ll pass on that one.”
I didn’t respond to this cryptic remark.
“I think I might need it, luck, I mean, but maybe you can help me.”
He shrugged, concentrating on his hands.