by Granger, Ann
‘And do you both live there? Or where do you live?’
‘Oh, yes, we share a room in the attic.’ She pointed upwards. ‘But it is a big room. It runs almost the whole length of the building and there is a little shower room up there for us. It’s really quite nice.’
‘And when did you last see Miss Zelená?’
‘On Thursday morning, last week, before breakfast. It’s her day off, Thursday, so she got up very early and told me she would go to Cheltenham. I asked her how she would get there. The Foot to the Ground is what you call “miles from anywhere” and there is no bus!’ She looked indignant.
Looking indignant, Morton thought, seemed to come naturally to her. Nevertheless he felt he had to apologise for the inadequacy of rural bus services. ‘Like that everywhere now, I’m afraid.’
‘She told me she had a lift. Someone she knew, who lived not far away, was going to Cheltenham. She would walk down to the corner at nine o’clock and this person would pick her up. The Foot to the Ground is in a very narrow road but it joins a bigger road, which goes to Cheltenham. There is a –’ She held up the forefinger of her left hand and put the forefinger of her right hand across the tip of it.
‘A T-junction,’ supplied Morton. ‘Yes, there is. I know the spot. Yes, I have been to the Foot to the Ground. Not recently. I haven’t seen you there.’ And he hadn’t recognised the dead girl in the barn. But he hadn’t been to the Foot to the Ground for at least six months. Neither of these two girls would have been working there then. Pity he hadn’t been more recently. He might have met Milada when she wasn’t so stroppy.
‘This person,’ Milada was saying, ‘would also bring her back in the evening to the bottom of the road. But she didn’t come back and Mr Westcott is very angry. He says she has buggered off. But I know she has not buggered off!’
‘Mr Westcott?’
‘He owns the pub. I told him, she most definitely has not buggered off because she would tell me, if she wanted to leave. Anyway, she left all her clothes and—’ Milada rummaged in her shoulder bag and produced a small book with a flourish. ‘She has left her passport! She would not go without passport!’
‘Ah, now!’ said Morton, taking it. ‘That is interesting. Czech Republic. That’s where you come from, too?’
She nodded.
He opened the little passport and studied the photograph. It could be the dead girl, but it had been taken in happier times and the dead face he remembered had been distorted and discoloured.
‘If you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘We’ll keep this. I’ll give you a receipt for it and if your friend turns up, you can give her the receipt and she can come in and claim it back, all right?’
‘Keep passport!’ she said impatiently. ‘She can’t use it now! She’s dead so she won’t come back!’
‘Going off for a few days without warning is one thing,’ argued Morton. ‘Being dead is another. Does she have a boyfriend?’
Milada pursed her lips and made a side-to-side motion of her head. ‘Perhaps. I think so, yes. But I don’t know his name or who he is. She didn’t say. But several times, when she had time off, she went to the corner, to this T-junction, and this person picked her up.’
‘You saw the car?’ Morton asked eagerly.
‘Only once. I was outside the Foot to the Ground and I looked down the road towards the corner, just to see if Eva was still standing there, because it was starting to rain. But then a silver car went past; I mean it crossed the end of the road where the Foot to the Ground is. There were two people in it but I couldn’t see the driver. I think the passenger was Eva.’
‘What kind of car?’ Morton pressed. ‘Have you any idea of the make?’
‘No, I don’t know cars. Only Skoda.’
‘BMW? Renault? Mazda? Toyota? Mercedes . . . ?’ Morton lingered on the last name, aware he was leading a potential witness but there wasn’t a judge here to hear him.
She shook her head and his hope was dashed. ‘They are foreign,’ she said. ‘I only know Skoda.’
‘Big car? Little car?’
‘Not very big.’
Damn. That didn’t sound like the mystery Mercedes they were looking for. But seen from several hundred metres away, it might have appeared smaller to Milada who, by her own admission, didn’t recognise makes of cars.
‘Why,’ he asked, ‘do you think Eva didn’t talk about her boyfriend?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She was a quiet person. It was her business.’
‘Ten to one, he’s married,’ said Morton a little later to Jess. ‘He’s a furtive blighter, at any rate. He meets her at the end of the lane when he could easily drive up to the pub and pick her up outside. Even when it’s coming on to rain, she has to go down to the corner and meet him. He didn’t want anyone to see him and you can bet he told her not to tell anyone his name.’
Jess was studying the passport photograph of Eva Zelená. ‘Nineteen years old,’ she said. ‘It’s about the right age and it does look like her. But probably a lot of East European girls look a bit like this. We’ll have to get someone who knows her down to the morgue to identify the body. Would Miss Svobodová be willing to do that, do you think?’
Morton looked worried. ‘Couldn’t we ask this bloke, Westcott, who owns the Foot to the Ground? He was her employer. It wouldn’t be nice for Milada, Miss Svobodová, to have to go and look at a dead body, especially if it is her mate. They shared a bedroom. Just imagine, switching out the light tonight with that empty bed alongside yours and an image of a corpse’s face in your mind.’
It was rare for Phil to be so thoughtful about the difficulties of others. Perhaps Milada Svobodová was like Penny Gower: one of those fragile-looking women (in reality as tough as old boots) that men want to protect. Stop being sour, Jess!
‘Hm. I’ll have to go out there and talk to Westcott and anyone else there who knew the missing girl. But she hasn’t been missing long and despite the resemblance to this . . .’ Jess waved the passport. ‘And despite what our informant tells us, she could yet turn up. If she does have a boyfriend, he might have suggested they drive into Wales for a couple of days and off she goes.’
‘Not if he’s married,’ pointed out Morton.
‘So his wife is away visiting her sick mother or something like that. There could be a dozen reasons why he has an unexpected opportunity to take off with his girlfriend. Yes, the girl in this passport does look like our victim. But that could still be coincidence. The other possibility is the sex trade. She’s young, she’s pretty, and she’s a visitor from abroad with no family here. Someone could have struck up an acquaintanceship with her with bad intentions. She wouldn’t be the first foreign girl forced into prostitution. Anyway, I’ll drive out to the Foot to the Ground and see what’s going on.’
‘I could go,’ offered Morton. ‘Milada has to get home somehow. She’s still downstairs, having a cup of tea. She got a lift here with a delivery van driver, who’d dropped off supplies to the pub’s restaurant, but she’s got to find her own way back.’
‘I’ll talk to her first,’ said Jess, standing up. ‘And then I’ll run her home.’
Morton looked disappointed.
‘I want to see where the missing girl lived and talk to her other co-workers and this chap Westcott. Cheer up, Phil. I’m sure you’ll see Milada again.’
‘This is the Foot to the Ground!’ declared Milada in proprietorial fashion. She waved grandly at the low rambling building.
It was an old place, sitting atop a high point in the hilly landscape and gazing out over grassy slopes and clumps of trees. In the distance more trees clustered thickly on the skyline like an invading army strung out along the ridge. The road on which the pub stood was little more than a lane now but was probably once the main highway. It was a quiet area, certainly, but on the way they had passed a scattering of stone cottages and one or two older houses, mellowed into the landscape and sitting behind high walls and wrought-iron gates. Just before the pub sto
od another row of terraced cottages in grey stone. Beyond them an abandoned, shuttered building that looked like a Nonconformist chapel built some time in the mid-nineteenth century was now crumbling away in isolation. It was surprising no one had bought it up cheap and turned it into an expensive unique residence. It showed a community had flourished here once. There still was one, of sorts. But Jess wondered how many of the cottages were second homes, weekend boltholes. She noticed little sign of any life.
Like so many other old pubs the Foot to the Ground had been added to and altered over the centuries. The different sections didn’t match yet made a chaotic but attractive whole. An architect, thought Jess, would have fun picking out the medieval parts or the Georgian ones; and what even she could see was Victorian or Edwardian exterior plumbing.
‘Our food is very good!’ insisted Milada, doing her bit for her employers.
Jess had quickly decided that Phil’s desire to spare Miss Svobodová’s feelings was not based on the young woman’s fragility. Her manner suggested not so much the clinging ivy as the women’s rights campaigner. Watch your step, Phil!
‘Phil, Sergeant Morton, tells me it’s expensive.’
A desire to talk up the business struggled with natural Slavonic thrift on Milada’s face.
‘English people pay a lot for everything,’ she said, unanswerably, ‘so I think it is not a lot for them to pay for a really good meal. You pay a lot of money in England for a bad meal.’
Also true.
‘Fair enough,’ admitted Jess.
Milada ran a professional eye over her. ‘The fish is particularly good and always fresh.’
‘And you’re a very good waitress,’ said Jess. ‘Do you think Mr Westcott is here at the moment?’
Milada glanced at her wristwatch. ‘The bar is open. He is here. I should also be here, half an hour ago. You will explain to him it’s not my fault I’m late?’
Inside the Foot to the Ground it was dark. Already a couple of wall lights had been switched on to brighten up the gloomier nooks. The floor was paved with uneven slates, a century or two old, and most of the furniture looked as if it had been there a few years. But everything gleamed with wax and brass polish. It looked welcoming, and despite the official nature of her visit Jess found her gaze wandering to the blackboard on which was chalked ‘Today’s Specials’.
A tall thin man with a moustache appeared from behind the bar and looked at Jess apprehensively.
‘He is Mr Westcott,’ hissed Milada for Jess’s benefit. More loudly, and for her employer, she declared, ‘The police!’ She accompanied the pronouncement with a sweep of her arm towards Jess, rather like a magician producing a rabbit from his top hat.
‘Oh, no, what have you done now, Milada?’ groaned Westcott. ‘You’d better come into my office, er, Officer?’
‘Inspector,’ Jess told him.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Westcott.
He ushered Jess into a tiny cluttered room and pulled out a Windsor chair for her.
‘I knew Milada was going to the police,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry she bothered you. I tried to talk her out of it.’
‘Did you? Why?’ asked Jess.
‘Of course I did. Load of nonsense. Milada’s got it all wrong. Look here, this dead girl they found at one of the farms around here, that’s not Eva, can’t be.’ Westcott squeezed himself into a corner, perching on a wobbly bar stool that had probably been relegated here in case some customer fell off it.
Jess could already guess why Westcott was so determined the dead girl wasn’t his missing waitress. Bad publicity. He didn’t want the police all over the place, questioning his customers. That’s what would happen if the girl did turn out to be Eva.
‘I appreciate your difficulty,’ she began carefully. She didn’t want to antagonise the man. Not yet, at least. She’d give him every chance to be cooperative. ‘I understand it’s a worrying thought for you. But Eva has gone and she has left her passport behind, and all her clothes, Milada says.’
‘Oh, she’ll send for them, or turn up to collect them when she feels like it. She’s got herself another job, most likely.’
‘Didn’t she like it here?’
‘She was paid well and the work isn’t that hard!’ said Westcott hastily. ‘But the place is a bit out of the way and she didn’t have her own transport. She grumbled about that a lot. Ten to one, she’s working in Cheltenham. She’ll roll in here, calm as you please, in a week or two, and pick up her stuff. You know what these youngsters are like.’
‘I believe,’ Jess told him, ‘that she was regularly collected at the end of the lane, down by the T-junction, by someone who possibly drove a silver or metallic grey car.’
‘The girls scrounge lifts off anyone. I’m always running them into Cheltenham.’
‘Some of your customers might have given either of the girls a lift on occasion?’
Caution crossed his face. ‘Ah, well, I wouldn’t know about that. Frankly, Inspector, I don’t fancy you quizzing them. People drop in for a quiet pint or a nice relaxing meal. They don’t want to be asked a lot of personal questions, some of them sounding a bit, well, as if something dodgy was being suggested. My wife and I have worked hard building up a good reputation for the restaurant. We’re doing quite well now and the last thing we need, begging your pardon, is a load of police officers going round the tables asking diners where they were at such and such a time.’
‘If it’s murder, I have to ask everyone the same questions, Mr Westcott. And we do our best to be tactful.’
‘I keep telling you, it’s not murder!’ he insisted. ‘That’s just a bee Milada’s got in her bonnet. She’s bloody obstinate, is Milada. You can’t argue with her.’
‘But you tried?’ Jess imagined the scene.
‘I told you I tried. She was going to rattle your cage – sorry – she was going to trouble the police to no purpose. Wasting police time, that’s an offence, isn’t it? Eva isn’t dead. She’s cleared off for her own good reasons.’
‘What reasons?’ Jess demanded immediately.
Westcott clutched his brow. ‘I don’t know, do I? You see? As soon as you – the police – start asking questions, even the simplest answer gets jumped on and twisted and made to sound as if, well, in my case, as if I’m hiding something. But I’m not. No one here is. How do I know what goes on in a nineteen-year-old waitress’s mind?’
‘Did she speak good English? Milada speaks good English.’
‘Yes, she spoke good enough English. They all do, enough to do the job here, at any rate. She was bright. I seem to remember she told me once her father was a schoolmaster or a professor or something like that back home, something educational, at any rate. She’d come to the UK to improve her English. But they all say that. They come to earn good money.’
‘You pay them well?’
‘Yes, we do by current standards. But you’ve got to remember that what seems a modest wage here, seems a lot to them. They’ve come from a different economy.’
English people pay a lot for everything . . .
‘Could I see her room?’ Jess asked suddenly.
Westcott looked relieved that she seemed to have switched her interest from him. ‘Course you can. Milada’s stuff is up there too. They shared.’
‘I’ll ask Milada if she minds,’ Jess said, getting up and making it into the bar ahead of him, before he could get there and speak to Milada first.
Milada had found time to change. She wore navy pants and a navy T-shirt emblazoned with the name of the pub.
‘I take you up there!’ she said immediately, abandoning her post at the bar and running up a narrow staircase at the rear of the room.
‘Oi!’ yelled Westcott after her, ‘What about your customers?’
‘I come back! You can mind bar for only three minutes!’ called back Milada, obviously not in any awe of her employer.
Had Eva been equally self-assured?
The room was, as she had described to Phil,
a converted attic space, running the length of this wing of the building. The ceiling was low and raftered. But the laminated pine flooring had been installed not so long ago and still looked new. There was plenty of room. The two beds weren’t very close together and two small built-in wardrobes fitted under the eaves.
‘This is mine,’ said Milada, pointing at one of them. ‘This is Eva’s. You see?’ She threw open the door with a flourish. ‘All her clothes, everything!’ She darted across to one of the beds and scooped up a framed photograph from a small bedside cabinet. ‘Look! Her parents, she left her parents’ photo.’ She jerked open the little drawer in the cabinet. ‘See? She left earrings, bracelet . . .’ As she spoke, Milada was picking up the items and displaying them for Jess’s benefit. ‘She left pills.’
‘Pills?’ Jess moved quickly to take the little pack.
Birth control pills. Eva had been in a relationship. Or given to casual sexual encounters. Jess preferred the first explanation. The pills had to be taken regularly. She hadn’t just left on a whim, as Westcott wanted the police to believe. These pills would have gone with her, as would her jewellery and probably her family photo. Jess picked it up and was poignantly reminded of the picture of her own family she’d been looking at so recently in her own flat. Suddenly the missing girl was real, not just a name. And if she was the girl found at Cricket Farm, this worthy kindly-looking couple, smiling at her from a photograph, were about to have their lives devastated.
‘I’ll just look round, if you don’t mind. You’d better get back down to the bar,’ she said. ‘I think Mr Westcott is already a little upset.’
‘I handle it,’ said Milada serenely. But she left and could be heard noisily running down the uncarpeted wooden stair.
Jess looked round the room and went to a door at the far end. It opened on to a small shower cabinet, toilet and washbasin. On a shelf stood a jumble of make-up items: several little bottles of nail lacquer (all of them in shades of pink), shampoo, hairspray, and Velcro hair rollers. All the sort of stuff you’d expect to find: a snapshot of a teenage girl’s life. She wondered how much of it was Eva’s. There were a couple of glasses with a toothbrush in each. Using a tissue, Jess turned them in the light. The blue brush head gleamed with moisture. It had been used that day: Milada’s. The other one, pink, was bone dry: Eva’s.