by M. J. Trow
Jacquie drew in a sharp breath. She had seen sights like this many time, but repetition never took the edge off it. The girl’s face was almost unmarked, aside from the signs of decomposition. Crabs had eaten away the visible ear and had started work around the nostrils and lips but it was clear that if this girl was known to you, you couldn’t help but recognise her. She had a simple gold hoop in one ear-lobe, hanging there by a thread of skin. Her pale hair was pulled back from her forehead and her eyes were closed, Jacquie suspected with packing behind the lids, to hide the fact that the sockets were now empty. She glanced to one side and saw the ivory profile of the solicitor beside her. Before she could speak, the woman nodded her head, just once and turned away.
Jacquie nodded to Donald, who replaced the sheet and pulled the curtain back across the window. ‘Is that your half-sister, Mrs Morton?’ she asked.
The woman took a deep breath through her nose and dipped her chin, clearing her throat. ‘Yes,’ she said, quietly. ‘Yes, it is Mollie.’ She turned to look at Jacquie and there were tears in her eyes but they didn’t fall. ‘Can we… can we go somewhere quiet? I think we need to talk.’
‘Well?’ Jim Astley looked up as Donald came into the room, slamming the door behind him. ‘Did the police get the name right?’
‘Yes.’ Donald turned and busied himself in the corner, cleaning things already clean, stacking things already stacked. His back, so huge it blocked out the light, was eloquence itself.
‘Problem?’ Astley was eating a sandwich and had no mouth free for niceties.
Donald turned and struck a dramatic pose, hands behind him on the edge of his desk. ‘That sister! What a piece of work. She was rude to me, she was rude to… Jacquie.’ Donald always paused before he spoke the Detective Inspector’s name. He was like a kid on his first crush. Astley wondered what his current significant other looked like. On past showing they had all had a touch of Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell about them, but seen in a funny mirror. No one who really looked like her would live with Donald.
‘Ah.’ Astley waited but there was no more. ‘But it is the right girl.’
‘Yes,’ the big man agreed. ‘She did have the grace to go a bit white round the gills. But… well, solicitor, what you gonna do?’
‘What indeed, Donald.’ Astley returned to his sandwich. ‘What indeed?’
Jacquie had taken Caroline Morton into the grubby little room at the foot of the stairs which was up for grabs whenever anyone wanted a quiet word. It had once been a lunch-room for the smokers and it still bore a faint whiff of tobacco even after all the years that had passed since the last puff had been puffed and the last dog-end had been ground underfoot. Jacquie wondered occasionally whether there was a smokers’ room in a police museum somewhere, looking just as quaint as the photographs they used to take of dead peoples’ eyes, looking for the reflections of murderers. It was only a matter of time. Caroline Morton looked around with a wrinkled nose before finally choosing the least vile chair.
‘Would you like a coffee?’ Jacquie asked. ‘Tea?’
The woman shook her head, to the DI’s relief.
‘I’m sorry you had to see your sister…’ Jacquie began but the solicitor raised a hand to stop her.
‘I asked for it,’ she said. ‘I have no one to blame but myself. My husband did tell me not to come. He…’ she lowered her head for a moment, ‘he offered to come instead, but I stopped him. I was so sure it wasn’t Mollie. So sure that it was… well,’ she sniffed and looked at Jacquie with a rueful smile on her lips, ‘someone else’s kid. Some other poor soul who would get the knock on the door. Some might say it served me right. For thinking it couldn’t happen to me.’
‘I’m sure no one would say such a thing,’ Jacquie said, automatically.
‘You seem a nice woman,’ the solicitor said, unexpectedly. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t say it, but I would. I have. And I expect I will again. However,’ and she sat up a little straighter and pulled her skirt down over her knees, ‘we’re not here to talk about me. You want to know a bit more about Mollie, I expect.’
‘Please.’ Jacquie wished she had a recorder here, or someone to take notes. But this woman was in the mood to talk now and who knew when she would feel like this again. She would have to trust to her memory.
‘Mollie was my half-sister, my father’s daughter by his other wife. That’s what we always called her, my mother and I, his other wife, although in fact he was married to her for longer than he was to my mother. They were very young when they had me, in fact they got married because of me and it was not going to work from the start. I was only four when they separated, six when he married Mollie’s mother. He was always good to me, though, and so was she. My mother remarried but she always bore a grudge. Anyway, I had left school when Mollie came along. My father and Mollie’s mother tried for years, miscarriage after miscarriage, before they finally had Molly. So they were delighted, of course, and I was made her godmother at her christening, which was lovely of them.’ She looked at Jacquie and dabbed at her eyes. ‘Could I have some coffee, do you think? Black, one sugar.’
Jacquie was surprised. The ice-maiden seemed to be thawing. She got up and went in search of a machine that worked and when she came back, Caroline Morton was on the phone.
‘Yes. Yes, thank you. That’s kind. Please ring my secretary and she will reschedule. Mm hm. Yes. ’Bye.’ She slid the phone into her bag. ‘I don’t feel like case conferences this afternoon, as it turns out,’ she said, with a watery smile. She reached out and took the coffee, lifting the lid and peering in.
‘It looks a bit murky,’ Jacquie said, ‘but it tastes all right.’
‘Thank you. I was just checking by habit. My husband always seemed to have difficulty in believing I really take it black. Anyway,’ with a skill born of long practice, she was straight back into the story, ‘once I was at university, I didn’t go home to my mother’s house much. She was on other husband number three by this time and it was all a bit much. He was a piece of work and I haven’t seen him since she died.’
Jacquie made a sympathetic face.
‘Two years ago now. We hadn’t really spoken in years, although to be fair she tried to keep in touch. I see more of my second stepfather than any other member of the family, as a matter of fact. Mike’s a nice man, he… anyway, he’s not really part of the story. I tended to go home to my father’s house when I went home at all, so I saw quite a lot of Mollie as she grew up. She was a sweet little thing. Then, about two years ago… no, a bit less, because my mother had just died… Eileen, Mollie’s mother, found a lump in her breast. She ignored it. It killed her. Just like that. About a year ago.’
Jacquie found she was almost holding her breath. This woman who looked so cool and sophisticated had a shell that she had had to grow to keep the world away, not through choice, but for self-preservation.
‘My father couldn’t cope. At the funeral, he was like a zombie. He asked me to look after Mollie for the night and went home and shot himself.’ She bit her lips and then took a swig of scalding coffee. ‘Just like that. At least he had the decency to make sure Mollie was with me and my husband. Mark. He’s known Mollie since she was born, more or less. We have been together since university and… well, he’s always known her. And she’s been with me ever since. I went back to the house and brought all her things away. We sold it and the proceeds have been invested to give her an income…’ She took another gulp and carried on. ‘And to send her to school. She was going to start boarding at St Olave’s in September.’
‘St Olave’s?’ That rang a bell.
‘Yes. She was in some little tin-pot private thing when she came to us and we left her there for a while, although it was quite a drive each day to get her there and back. But she needed some stability, you see. She was going to St Olave’s one day a week last term, just to get used to it. We wouldn’t have sent her there if she didn’t like it.’
‘And did she?’
‘What?’
‘She had made a few friends, as far as you can in one day a week for seven or eight weeks. But she was looking forward to it, yes. She was a bit young for her age, we always thought. We thought that boarding would be good for her. Stand her on her own two feet.’
Jacquie thought back to the shoes, the boob tube and the micro-mini, all bagged up waiting for the eager attentions of Angus at the main lab and wondered where her sister had got that idea from.
‘That’s why… why we couldn’t believe it was her. Not in those clothes. Do you think that the… murderer… dressed her like that? You hear such things. Hell,’ she suddenly shouted, ‘we’ve got clients who would do that.’ She looked at Jacquie and smiled. ‘I wish I still smoked,’ she said with a hoarse laugh.
‘We don’t think she was dressed after death, no,’ Jacquie said, carefully. ‘When the lab really get to work, we will know more. But the weeks of immersion, if you don’t mind my speaking frankly, have done us no favours. Much of what was there has now gone, in the sense of fingerprints, DNA, fibres, hairs. I don’t have to tell you, I’m sure.’
‘But was she dressed like that?’ her sister said. ‘They weren’t her clothes.’
‘Did she have pocket money?’ Jacquie asked.
‘Yes… well, not pocket money. An allowance.’
‘Have you checked how much of it she was spending?’
‘No. It was hers, to do with as she wanted.’ Caroline Morton suddenly saw the point. ‘Do you think she was buying clothes like that to go out with… men. Well, boys.’
Jacquie shrugged with a gentle smile. ‘She was fourteen,’ she said. ‘She had lost both parents, she had moved house, she was moving school. I’m sure she loved you and your husband, but you must see that she had gone through a lot. Perhaps she just wanted some company where no one knew her history. Where people didn’t try to be kind and thoughtful all the time. It is possible to love someone too much. To wrap them in too much cotton-wool.’
‘The Brighton police didn’t tell me much… I don’t know how to ask…’
‘She wasn’t raped, no,’ Jacquie said.
‘But?’ This woman was good.
‘I really don’t think I ought to tell you any more,’ Jacquie said, edging forward in the chair, prior to getting up. ‘If we need to speak to you…’
‘Rubbish,’ the woman said, crisply, suddenly all professional. ‘You haven’t asked me about when she went out that last night. About whether she went out a lot. Who with. All that kind of thing. I want to tell you.’ She was almost shouting and Jacquie sat back down, resigned.
In a monotone, Caroline Morton told Jacquie everything about Mollie’s last weeks. How she had been excited about changing schools. How they had gone out shopping for uniform, for new underwear, sports wear, shoes. Not for boob tubes and micro-minis. Not for fuck-me shoes. Just hockey sticks and big pants. Sometimes tears trickled down her cheeks. Sometimes she smiled or even laughed. But at no time in the story did she tell of Mollie having sex on the beach, of coming back with sand in her hair and a guilty look in her eye. The story was of a virginal little girl, who had one night got dolled up like a working girl and gone out and got herself killed.
CHAPTER FIVE
Maxwell teased the lock of chestnut hair away from his lip. He had already nearly choked to death on a mixture of Titian and Southern Comfort and he was anxious not to repeat the experience. His wife lay along the sofa, her head on his chest, the cat on hers. Neither of them would be going anywhere anytime soon if Metternich had his way. Nolan was in bed, bathed and cherubic, looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. The Maxwells should have both been on holiday, but that was not the Maxwell way. Duty was calling and they couldn’t turn a deaf ear.
‘Results tomorrow, then,’ Jacquie said, easing Metternich so that his leg was not sticking into her rib. He rewarded her with a low growl.
‘Helen says they should be good,’ Maxwell said. ‘Hector’s a good teacher. His kids back home were very well taught.’
‘That’s good.’ She sighed a small sigh and waited.
‘I might see Bernard tomorrow,’ he said, casually.
There it was. Finally, he had let fall the second shoe.
‘I mean, he usually comes in for results. Unless he is still on gardening leave of course.’
She kept up her masterly inactivity. He reached round and put his cold glass on her forehead.
‘Jacquie? Dearest? Do you hear me?’
‘I can’t look round, because of the cat.’
‘I don’t want to see you – oh, any more than usual, I mean, which is a lot, of course – I just want to hear you tell me that Bernard is now a free man.’
‘In that case, I’m afraid you will just have to want, Max. I can’t lie to you, he is still very much suspended. Legs rang Henry up today to ask what he should do for the new term.’
‘But surely… he didn’t have anything to do with this other girl, did he?’
‘The other girl is still a bit of an enigma. She is much more complicated than we thought. Her sister knew nothing of what we have to call her secret life, although that sounds a bit True Movie for my liking. Henry is trying to get Brighton to take it back, but they rightly say that just because she set off from there doesn’t mean she met her murderer there. In fact, her murderer is more likely to come from Leighford. Who else would know about that landslip in Willow Bay?’
‘Where does Bernard fit in, though?’
‘His lack of alibi is still there, like the elephant in the room.’
Pinned down as he was, Maxwell couldn’t react to the pachyderm remark. Usually, he would fling cushions hither and yon, looking for the pesky creature and priming his invisible twelve-bore. He settled for flicking her on the top of her head.
‘Ow. I know, no elephant. But you get the general drift. If what he told Sylv is true, why won’t he tell us where he went? He just says it’s private.’
‘Well, sometimes it just is.’
‘I agree,’ she said. ‘But when you are a suspect in a murder case, two murder cases, pretty much, you would think that he would tell us. It wouldn’t go any further. It’s not as if we would let the world know where he had gone.’
‘He might worry you would tell me.’
‘I wasn’t here when he was pulled in. For all he knew, we wouldn’t be back for months.’
‘True.’ Maxwell took another sip of his drink. ‘I have known Bernard Ryan for more years than I care to remember, but in fact, you know, I don’t know him at all. I don’t even know where he lives.’
‘Across the Dam.’
‘Swish. Married?’ He answered himself. ‘No, I know that one. He’s single.’
‘Correct.’
‘Parents? Siblings? Cat? Dog? Significant other? Nothing. He’s just a pain in the arse who works at Leighford High School. That’s it.’
‘He teaches Business Studies.’
‘Allegedly. I have never known a man more adept at avoiding actually having anything to do with kids.’
‘And yet,’ she pointed out, ‘he did tutoring.’
‘Yes,’ he said, tapping his glass on his teeth. ‘Why did he do that?’
Jacquie bridled and put her hand down to restrain the cat. ‘Don’t do that, Max. Metternich doesn’t like the noise. And I don’t like the claws.’
‘Sorry, both. Did you check Bernard’s bank records?’
‘This is sounding very much like you finding things out that you shouldn’t know,’ she remarked smoothly.
‘I could always ask Bernard,’ he said.
‘You don’t even know where he lives,’ she said.
‘Thingie would tell me. Up at the school. She knows everything.’ He sounded terribly like Violet Elizabeth Bott.
‘Possibly. Yes, we did check his bank statements. He is very well off, thank you very much. Why aren’t you a deputy head? I could become a lady of leisure.’
‘I can see you doing that,�
� he laughed, pulling the errant lock of hair gently. ‘So, he gets a big salary. That doesn’t mean he is comfortably off.’
‘It does, actually,’ she said. ‘He goes on holiday once a year, although to fairly fancy places. Usually at Christmas, somewhere hot. He has the occasional weekend away, again somewhere quite swish, but he can easily afford it. Plus the money he gets from tutoring. He puts it all in the bank, with a note to identify it. All above board.’
‘On Law and Order they have credit card slips.’
‘Come up to date, you old dinosaur,’ she said, reaching down and patting his leg, the most she dared do with Metternich poised on her chest. ‘It’s all done with swiping and heaven knows what. And it does look as if Bernard uses cash quite a lot, for shopping and whathaveyou.’
‘Something to hide!’ Maxwell said, triumphantly.
‘Prefers cash,’ she returned. ‘People still do. You for example.’
‘Does he have an alibi for the second girl?’
‘Who knows? We’re not sure when it would need to be for. And anyway, Max, can you really see Bernard as a serial killer? As a predator of young girls?’
Maxwell pursed his lips and looked up at the ceiling, whistling silently. Bernard Ryan had been a thorn in his side for years, handing out risk assessments, creating paperwork and forms to be filled in in triplicate for the slightest reason. Legs Diamond he could work with; even Dierdre Lessing, God rest her evil soul, had had her good points, but Bernard Ryan was not a nice man. He always saw the worst in people and Maxwell was a great believer in the theory that people who only saw the bad only had bad within themselves. But, a serial killer and predator of young girls…?
‘No. No, I can’t.’
‘Precisely. Neither can I. But he’ll have to come up with an alibi for the first murder if he is ever to get back to school. Or wait until we find the real killer, of course, which could be never.’ She lay there for another moment or two and then asked, ‘Max? Can you do me a favour?’
‘Anything, dear one. What can I do to help, oh fount of my being?’