Wings over the Watcher

by Priscilla Masters

  Only two years after the end of the war the horrors had been re-enacted in front of people who had thought they were as far away from violent death as it was possible to be.

  Stories and legends are an integral part of these areas.

  On the narrow lane between Grindon and Butterton she passed by a hedge, tall, hawthorn, white with late May blossom and as she rode passed she caught the scent of rotting flesh and thought the same as the farmer. Dead fox or badger, rabbit or stoat.

  We never think it could be a person.

  Joanna sped by, through the villages of Butterton and Warslow, Hulme End and Flash, back passed the Mermaid’s Pool, across the bleakest, highest part of the moor, crossing Royal Cottage and finally, through Thorncliffe and Bradnop then home for a shower.

  And then…

  She felt wonderful. Empowered.

  Ready to act.

  This time around the right words came easily, the Dear Matthew note, an honest account of events and her feelings. Not too baldly factual nor over-emotional. If Matthew did not understand her after reading this he never would. And she may as well face it. For all their attraction they were simply not compatible.

  She put the letter on the table, ready to post the following day, opened a celebratory bottle of wine and watched one of her favourite old films,

  Room at the Top.

  A story, as much entertainment is, of the cruel trick nature can play and the resulting conflict when the person you should love is not the one you do.

  As she watched the film she made another resolution. If, after the weekend, Beatrice Pennington had not turned up she would speak to her sister, and then try to contact Adrian Grove – walking holiday or not.

  She was at peace.

  Until the film had almost finished and the phone rang. Her “hello” was answered in a low, voice, female and young. One she recognised instantly.

  Eloise.

  “Hello, Joanna.”

  “Hello, Eloise.”

  “I just wondered how you were.”

  “I’m OK. How are you?”

  “Up to my neck in exams.”

  “Well, good luck.”

  There was a brief, awkward silence between them before Joanna said, “I’m missing your dad.”

  “Me too. Have you any – cases on?”

  “A missing woman. Nothing much. She’ll turn up.”

  “Oh.” Another awkward silence. Then, “Look after yourself.”

  “You too.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Joanna put the phone down. This was puzzling her.

  She sighed. Love comes in many guises.

  He’d been in her bag.

  Corinne Angiotti was pacing the room, trying not to lose her temper with her husband who was holding a piece of paper in his hand.

  “Smutty, “ he said.

  She was instantly defensive. “That it isn’t.”

  “So what do you call it then?”

  “I call it sad,” she said, stupid, traitorous tears rolling down her cheek, making her angry with herself. Their marriage was unravelling and she powerless to stop it.

  “You must have encouraged it.” The note of accusation made his voice hard and unsympathetic.

  Pointless to shake her head.

  “It’s obvious to me that you did.”

  “Don’t be so silly, Pete.”

  Peter Angiotti was not a big man. Around 5 foot 8 and quite slim. But he had some power in his manner. Perhaps power is the wrong word. Maybe the correct word is threat. Certainly Corinne did not take her eyes off him, as though if she did, he would steal a blow against her.

  It was odd that she feared him physically. He never had hit her.

  It was more the threat. Maybe she was a coward.

  She believed that he was capable of it. But he was, in fact, a weak man, both physically and psychologically, with an unfortunate speaking voice, a slight Cockney accent laced into a high-pitched tone. There was no menace in his physical appearance either. He had rather pale eyes, a slim build and sparse brown hair. When he wanted he could be funny. Very funny. Side-achingly funny. And charming too. The shame was that Pete Angiotti rarely bothered to exert this talent these days.

  Since the Wandsworth business he had fallen into the habit of complaining.

  Corinne had wanted to believe that he had settled at Westwood High School. He had been lucky to have landed the job as geography master after the fiasco of his last couple of years in London, the hearings and final disciplinary action.

  It had taken her a while to realise that her husband was one of life’s victims. The children had initially teased him – as they probably do most teachers. But the teasing had turned nasty. Dangerous even. Pete had played into their hands by involving the headmaster and then taking time off sick when he could not face going in. After the trouble it had finally become quite impossible for him ever to return to his post and he had left – the fourth job since he had graduated.

  Corinne was looking in his direction but not at him. More through him. She was wondering. Why did married life have to be like this, saturated in mistrust, a permanent competition between the two of them. Why should she feel permanently wrong-footed, or that she should apologise for being content in her life as a GP, a high-earner. When he was not even working for half of the year. He worked short hours she would love to have, had long holidays and time off sick with a multitude of small complaints. What was wrong?

  She put her hands to her face and gave a small, panting laugh. “Huh.”

  Pete looked enquiringly at her.

  “I was wondering…”

  And she realised how very pointless it all was.

  This was her husband, the man she had married.

  “Like it or lump it, my girl.”

  Her father, the military gentleman.

  And her mother?

  Her mother had departed when she was two. Departed?

  Our dear departed?

  Funeral words?

  Her mother was not dead. Yet it was the word her father invariably used when referring to her mother’s absence. It had never struck her as strange before. But now she wondered. How abnormal is it to abandon your two-year-old daughter and never attempt to make contact?

  Her father had given her no explanation. The military are like this. Hard. In permanent denial of their emotions.

  But her mother was not military. She had been a secretary. And that was all she knew about her.

  She had one photograph that had escaped her father’s destruction. Of a plain, dumpy woman with anxious eyes who stared into the camera and held on to her baby as though she was frightened someone would take it from her.

  But it had not been like that but the other way round. Hadn’t it? Hadn’t it?

  When Corinne had been a teenager she had often stared into the mirror. Not to search for spots or blackheads or perceived ugliness but to stare at her mother’s eyes and wonder whether she looked like her and where she was now. And something in Beatrice Pennington had struck a chord. She and her mother had been of the same type.

  “I don’t even think you’re listening to me.”

  It was an earth-shattering realisation. Enough to numb her. She was vaguely aware of her husband talking in the background.

  “I am, Pete,” she said firmly. “But I don’t think you’re being fair. I didn’t invite this sort of attention. I found it embarrassing and tiresome. Besides.” She grew suddenly fierce. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that this could endanger my job? Relationships between doctor and patient are scrutinised by the Medical Council. If there is the slightest hint of impropriety…(how strange and old-fashioned a word – impropriety’) it will be rigorously investigated, I can tell you. And the General Medical Council seem to come down hard on the patient’s side. No one will believe me. As you don’t.”

  She spoke the last sentence more vehemently than she had meant to. She had meant it to be an appeal. Not a challenge. Her husband reacted as he usually did. B
y growing pale and quiet and thoughtful. Pete at his most dangerous.

  “I see,” he said softly.

  And he reminded her even more of her father so she wanted so scream out at him. Or appeal to him to be kind, show some emotion. Affection.

  She smothered her mouth with her hand.

  We are all damaged goods.

  Grandparents? Paternal grandparents had seemed in awe of their son, slightly fearful. She had never met her mother’s parents. They must have known of her existence because they sent her money at Christmas and birthday time and even when she set off for university. Her father had thrown the cards at her with a growl and now there was not so much as a note or a card. They had made no attempt to make contact for years and had not been invited to her wedding. Her father’s choice. She knew only that they lived in Reading.

  Nothing else. And her father never spoke about them.

  Peter Angiotti scrunched up the letter into a ball of paper. “And you keep them,” he sneered. “How touching. How very touching.”

  Corinne stared at him, thinking bitter thoughts.

  Saturday morning dawned bright and hot. Joanna woke and within seconds was out of bed, throwing back the curtains and staring up at a Wedgewood blue sky.

  Perfect.

  She would ring Pagan and Pat and they would plan a long ride through the moorlands, ending up at a country pub.

  But we cannot always plan our lives so.

  The telephone ring was insistent – and early.

  Her heart skipped once, twice.

  Matthew?

  But it wasn’t. It was Caro. Caro, her journalist friend, who had married Tom, a local solicitor, before scurrying back down to London. They had an apart marriage, she had haughtily said to Joanna, before laughing and saying that was the only way Tom could stick her – part-time – and then told the truth. That they would spend what time they could together, knowing that their separate jobs meant they must spend most of it apart.

  “Where are you?”

  “With my husband.” Caro sounded light-hearted and happy. “Can’t stick London in the summer so I’m here for the weekend, in Cheddleton. And Tom wants to know if you can come across so we can do the canal walk and then have an evening at the pub. OK?”

  “What do you think?”

  So the day was spent differently from how she had planned. But none the less perfect. Joanna smothered a smile as she greeted her friend. Caro looked so much the London weekender in her pale cotton trousers and designer t-shirt with pink loafers. And Tom. How little he had changed from the early days. However casually he dressed – in a polo shirt and chinos – he never looked anything other than a country solicitor. Maybe it was the glasses, Joanna reflected as she hugged them both.

  “It seems ages.” Caro adopted her London-talk.

  “It is ages. You haven’t been up for months.”

  “Blame the West End,” she said, shrugging her thin shoulders. “There’s so much going on. I’ve bought a flat which has room enough to swing two cats at a time. So Tom has been coming down a lot.”

  She linked her arm through Tom’s while he grinned good-naturedly. “You’ve got an open invite,” he said.

  “In fact, I’m trying to persuade him to come down and join me permanently.”

  Tom gave a mock shudder. “No way,” he said. “London’s OK but here is better.”

  And Joanna agreed with him.

  Caro waited until they were on the towpath, almost at Cheddleton Flint Mill, before she asked about Matthew. “Have you heard from him?”

  And suddenly Joanna had had enough of the shadow hanging across her. “Look,” she said. “I’m sorting it out. OK? There’s a lot to explain and so on. I’ve written to Matt and posted it on the way here. He’ll get it middle of next week.”

  “Why didn’t you ring him?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  Caro was a typically tenacious journalist.

  “Someone else answered his phone and I didn’t really want to talk to her.”

  “Oh.”

  And for once her dainty mouth closed – and stayed closed for a few minutes.

  Tom, always quiet, and supportive, merely smiled at her. “It’s great to see you, Jo. It really is. I can’t tell you how much I miss having you for a next-door neighbour.” “I can imagine.”

  She felt at home. Among friends.

  June days are long. It was very late when she finally let herself in through the door. And the first thing she saw was the answering machine winking at her. One message.

  As always she hoped it would be the one message she wanted it to be.

  But it never is, is it?

  PC Hesketh-Brown’s stolid voice delivered his message. “Really sorry to trouble you, Ma’am, on your weekend off but I thought you’d want to know Arthur Pennington’s been ringing the station every half an hour. We’ve told him you’re not in till Monday, but he’s really makin’ a nuisance of himself. We’ll fend him off if you like. Enjoy tomorrow. I’ve heard it’s goin’ to be a scorcher.”

  She replaced the phone slowly, wishing she had not been so curious as to pick it up.

  Because now, despite the hot weekend, the perfect weather, the two friends with whom to go cycling, her mind was firmly fixed on Beatrice Pennington again.

  She met Pagan and Pat in the market square in the centre of Leek early on Sunday morning and mentioned the disappearance of their cycling buddy. Like her they smiled and joked.

  Beatrice was with her lover.

  They could relax.

  It was a day when everyone seemed to be enjoying the Staffordshire moorlands. Even so early the roads were busy. Not so good for cyclists so they headed out towards Flash, taking the smallest lanes and cycling fast. They stopped for drinks beneath the Winking Man. Inevitably the conversation turned towards the strange disappearance of Beatrice Pennington.

  They were two widely different women, with different life experiences. But they both came down firmly on the side of Beatrice Pennington. They liked the thought that she had gone to find a new life – somewhere.

  But it reminded Joanna too much of the end of the rainbow. Where was Beatrice?

  Somewhere else.

  Simply not here. But always in another place. Somewhere else.

  For some reason the idea frightened her.

  Chapter Eight

  Monday, June 28th, 8.30 a.m.

  The cycle ride in had exhilarated Joanna but as she entered the station she knew perfectly well what would be lying in wait for her on her desk. Two things, to be precise. One, a summons from Superintendent Arthur Colclough of the bulldog jowls and the piercing eyes. Surely he should have retired by now!) But Colclough was a typical old-fashioned copper, married to the job. Liked to have his fingers in every single pie and was as nosey as a net-curtain-twitcher.

  Two – a memo left by the weekend desk sergeants detailing every single telephone call from Arthur Pennington.

  She was right on both counts. The only thing she hadn’t guessed at correctly was that Korpanski was late in. His chair was still neatly tucked underneath the desk with no jacket hanging over it; all the papers were cleared and the final giveaway – his computer was turned off.

  Joanna smirked. She loved it when Korpanski was later then her, even though he lived in the town and drove in while she had to cycle in from Waterfall and she had to shower and change out of her cycling things which delayed her by at least ten minutes.

  She dialled Colclough’s extension number first and he barked nicely down the line. “Ten minutes, Piercy. I want you here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It doesn’t do to argue with senior officers when you’re in the police force. Better to buckle under.

  Her second phone call of the day was, of course, to Pennington, who provoked the usual mixed feelings of pity and exasperation.

  He was, initially, aggressive. “Didn’t you get my messages?”

  “They’ve all been delivered
to me this morning, Mr Pennington.”

  “But I’ve been ringing all weekend.”

  “It was my weekend off.”

  There was a brief, pregnant silence before Pennington finally exploded. “But you knew my wife. She wasn’t just some stranger to you. And she’s missing, for goodness sake. Anything could be happening right at this moment. Don’t they care? Don’t you care?”

  “Mr Pennington, as I’ve explained, there isn’t any reason to believe that something sinister’s happened to your wife. We’re not worried about her. She’s a grown woman, in good health. Able to make free choice.”

  “What exactly are you saying? You think I’m dreaming that she’s gone?”

  “I’m saying that we’re not concerned for her safety.”

  “You may not be concerned.” Pennington’s tone was definitely chilly. “But I am. I’m very concerned. This is not in her character therefore I can only come to the conclusion that she has been abducted against her will.”

  The pompous words should have sounded funny. Possibly sad. But they struck a chord deep inside Joanna. And the chord was in a minor key. She was beginning to realise that this case was going to stick by her side as close as a shadow. It was cornering her. Why?

  Nothing. No reason. Except that Beatrice Pennington’s disappearance was untidy, full of loose ends and anomalies. It felt wrong.

  She drew in a deep breath. “Mr Pennington. I thought I’d speak to your wife’s sister later on today and then I do have a lead I intend following up.”

  “Oh – right.” The wind was nicely snatched out of his sails.

  Korpanski had entered the room. Grinning broadly with a good-natured wave. She smiled back at him, twitched her shoulders in half a shrug, meant to inform him who was on the other end of the line.