She’d introduced him to Francis with caution. Her brother received him with his usual suspicious reserve, but as it became apparent that Sven was going to be part of the continuing scenery, when it was obvious that he was intellectually at least Francis’s equal, his wariness gradually gave way to respect, liking, and finally, acceptance. She had, ironically, been delighted.
After that, it was Francis with them everywhere they went: she, Francis and Sven, their friend. Cycling out for tea at one of the villages, picnicking in the river meadows, the Cambridge college gardens, punting on the Cam, tennis, music at King’s ... a summer of roses and wine. And love, unsuspected by head-in-the-clouds Francis, as she’d never hoped or expected to find it. Sven, making her come alive, filling her with passion. Sven, watching her, smiling when their eyes met, Sven watching her watching Francis ...
And then, the summer was over and the days were lengthening. Something was wrong. Sven growing very cool towards Francis. Then Francis catching flu, really bad flu, so that she had to cancel the week with Sven in Prague, where he’d been invited to lecture. After which Sven had bowed out, saying, I can’t compete, and I won’t play second fiddle.’
She’d managed to reply, though she was choking, scarcely able to breathe. ‘He couldn’t help catching flu.’
‘No, but there was no need for you to stay behind with him. He wasn’t that bad.’
This time she couldn’t answer.
‘I don’t know why I’m surprised. It’s only what I should have expected. He always comes first, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he?’ His gaze had held hers. ‘He always has and always will.’
Scalded, she’d refused to think about the subtext there. It was over without argument, without the opportunity to speak in her own defence, though she would have offered none. And she’d been too proud to tell him she was pregnant. No one had ever known that, not even Francis. Well, by then, Francis had had troubles enough of his own.
She sits now in the quiet room, seeing what she has become, a gaunt, desiccated, angular spinster, nearing fifty. Motionless, the sun focusing on her clasped, ringless hands like a burning glass, allowing herself for once to think of the child – the children – wonderful bright children, like Patti Ryman and the little Voss girls that she might have had, not resolutely shutting them out of her life and thoughts as she normally does.
The head comes in to say the police are ready to see her. A woman fifteen years younger than Hope, smartly dressed, made-up, a woman whose style the girls secretly admire, in contrast to Hope, whom they pity. She has children of her own, a husband who is a captain of industry. She runs her school, her home and her family with equal efficiency. She is successful, dazzling. What a terrible thing this is, Miss Kendrick, we mustn’t let it get out of hand, though. Keep the girls busy, life must go on.
Hope gets to her feet, her shoulders sagging. She feels drained, but she must talk sensibly to the police. She follows the head to her study. Life must go on.
14
Patti had been a model pupil, according to her headmistress, conscientious and hard-working, homework always handed in on time, consistently high marks in class and in exams, popular with staff and pupils.
Her form tutor, Miss Kendrick, neither as young nor enthusiastic (and nowhere near as ambitious of her school’s position in the league tables) as the head, gave a modified version of this when she was left alone with the two police officers in the latter’s room. ‘Patti hadn’t been with me for long – I’d had her as form pupil only from the beginning of this year, but I taught her maths for the last two. She was conscientious, though she did not, in my opinion, have a first-class brain ... I wouldn’t have encouraged her to have too high expectations, it would have been unrealistic. She might have gone far – but only by overstretching herself.’
There was implied criticism of the headmistress here, and when Hope Kendrick spoke of high expectations, she was probably meaning Oxford or Cambridge, but Mayo looked at her with more interest, seeing in her an authority he hadn’t expected, and finding himself in agreement with what she’d said. He’d never seen the point of pushing children beyond their limits, either, a counterproductive act if ever there was one.
‘Well, we’re not here to assess her academic prowess,’ he said. ‘We just want to get a general impression of what she was like, to find out if anything might have been worrying her, if anything happened lately that could possibly have led to her death.’
‘Teachers, I assure you, are the last to be told if anything’s worrying children! I can only say that she didn’t appear to be worried. I always found her a cooperative girl, lively in class, not half asleep as some of them are from staying up too late watching television – not even from getting up early to deliver those papers. I saw her collecting them from Patel’s yesterday as we passed.’ She softened the implicit disapproval by adding in a low voice, ‘Poor child,’ yet flushed as she did so, almost as if embarrassed to show compassion.
‘What time would that be?’
Quickly recovering herself, she gave the time as twenty to eight, or thereabouts, which agreed with the time her sister Imogen had given. She was absent-mindedly fiddling with the cap of a biro she’d picked up from the orderly array set out in a tray on the large clutter-free desk, and staring at Mayo in a slightly puzzled way; when she saw he’d noticed, she looked away, confused. ‘I left earlier than usual, though I had a couple of free periods first thing. I was driving my brother to Birmingham New Street to catch the eight fifteen to London.’
My brother. Three syllables, with a wealth of undertone. He remembered the way Hope’s eyes had followed Francis, on the evening of the party, as he stepped over the windowsill from the crowded, chatter-filled room into the silence of the rose-scented garden. That damned tune began re-echoing through his head again, ‘Alice Where Art Thou?’, the measured notes tinkling like drops of water, sweet, melancholy, maddening.
‘I’m afraid I haven’t been much help,’ she apologized, still fiddling with the pen. The plastic clip finally snapped off. ‘I was ... fond of Patti – she was a sensible girl, if a little immature for her age in some ways – though in my opinion that’s no bad thing. They’re grown up before they’ve left the cradle, these days.’
He’d heard she was a bit of a martinet, and could well believe it, suspecting that she was respected, if not liked. She was more at home here, mistress of her own environment, than she had been in the party scene, when she’d been tense and uneasy, out of place. But she wasn’t comfortable, being questioned. Something odd and unaccountable about both her and her brother remained lodged as a question in his mind.
‘As to what Patti did, or what she was like out of school,’ she said finally, ‘I don’t know, you’ll have to see her friends for that.’
A bubbly personality, Patti, ready to have a go at anything, according to her friends when spoken to, some of them in tears, all of them subdued, overawed by having the make-believe horror of the telly made real, brought so abruptly into their own young lives.
Anything? Well, anything for a laugh, nothing heavy.
Not, according to her special friend, when Abigail and Mayo drove off to talk to her at her home, anything forbidden. Patti liked fun, but knew where to draw the line, said Gemma Townsend severely, a tall and self-possessed girl, neat and conservative with long, smoothly combed, silky dark hair. A direct contrast to Patti, little and fair, liking fun clothes and fun hairstyles. Patti certainly wasn’t into drugs. Boyfriends? Gemma shrugged. Nobody special, though a lot of boys fancied her. She and Patti had decided they weren’t going to get themselves seriously involved. They wanted to get good A levels, and the two didn’t mix. Neither was all that interested in boys, anyway.
‘I see,’ Abigail said, non-commitally, wondering if the two girls had gravitated towards each other subconsciously, each seeing the other as a foil. Where Patti had apparently seemed young for her years, Gemma appeared much older than hers, very controlled, though her dark eyes still r
evealed a bewildered and youthful misery when she spoke Patti’s name.
‘More coffee, anyone?’ asked Gemma’s grandmother, graciously.
‘Thank you, no, Mrs Sinclair.’
The grandmother, a slightly flustered, faded woman with faraway eyes who lived with her daughter and granddaughter, seemed to be regarding this visit of the police as some sort of social occasion, the rules of which they were transgressing by asking questions not quite in the best of taste. Gemma was actually being seen at home because she was allegedly suffering from a heavy cold, though there were precious few signs of it, apart from the fact that she was extremely pale. A diplomatic cold, perhaps, because she couldn’t face school and all the fuss and melodrama and emotional hoo-ha among the other girls over what had happened to Patti. Abigail felt some sympathy with that.
‘Think about the last few days. Gemma. Did Patti mention anything that had upset her, anything unusual?’
Gemma looked down at her feet, neatly shod in well-polished tan leather, smoothed her carefully pressed skirt over her nyloned knees. Her clothes looked as though they’d been bought by her mother at Marks and Spencer. On her slender middle finger, oddly, gleamed a cheap little brass ring, decorated with a skull and crossbones. ‘She was going to ask to be given a different paper round. She didn’t like the one she had.’
‘She’d had it for some time, hadn’t she?’
‘Yes, but it was a pain having to lug that great heavy bag halfway up the hill from the paper shop. And she said some creepy old man in one of the houses was watching her all the time. It was a rush to get to school on time, as well.’
‘OK,’ Abigail said. ‘Let’s talk about last Saturday night. Gemma, Saturday the second.’
A wariness in Gemma’s eyes. ‘What about it?’
‘Patti was here, with you, wasn’t she?’
‘Oh dear, poor little Patti! She so enjoyed the lemon pudding I made for supper!’ Mrs Sinclair interjected, dabbing at her eyes, as if the news had just struck home.
There was an awkward pause, during which nobody seemed to know what to say. Mrs Sinclair smiled vaguely and picked up her knitting. Abigail began again.
‘Yes, well, you – er – had supper, then she left in a taxi,’ she stated again. ‘What time would that be?’
Gemma glanced sideways at her grandmother. ‘About quarter to ten, I think. I’m not sure.’
‘Mrs Sinclair?’
‘Oh, don’t ask me!’ the grandmother answered vaguely. ‘I went to bed early with a migraine.’
Mayo wondered who was supposed to be keeping an eye on whom, when Gemma’s mother wasn’t here. ‘Which firm did you ring, Gemma?’ he asked.
She was smoothing her skirt again. ‘I don’t remember, not really. I think we got it from the Yellow Pages.’
‘If we looked at the Yellow Pages now, would it jog your memory?’
‘It might.’
But the book couldn’t be found. ‘I expect my mother has it in the surgery, and she always locks the door before she goes out.’
It was a group practice, two other doctors besides Amanda Townsend, housed in the one half of a pair of large Edwardian semis, with the Townsends living in the other half. The receptionist had gone home, and neither of the other two doctors were in.
‘We always used Woodruff’s when my husband was alive,’ Mrs Sinclair remarked inconsequentially as they left. ‘A very reliable firm. We never had any trouble with them.’
‘Very cool, our Gemma,’ remarked Abigail, as they left the doctor’s house.
‘Telling lies, what’s more. Can you see her not remembering the name of the taxi firm? Well, we’ll find out, it’ll take us a bit longer, that’s all; there aren’t that many taxi firms in Lavenstock. Though my guess is, for some reason Patti didn’t go home in a taxi. But I can’t see any way of making Gemma tell us why.’
‘There’ll be a boyfriend in it, somewhere,’ Abigail said, not believing Gemma, either. ‘If Grandma hadn’t been there, she might’ve told us.’
‘If Grandma hadn’t been there we couldn’t have interviewed her, at her age, could we? Not without breaking all the rules in the book.’
A man known to Mayo, Chief Inspector Uttley of the Hurstfield Division, a colleague of long-standing, was in charge of the investigation there into the murders of the two little girls, and the disappearance of the third, all of which had fallen within his jurisdiction.
They’d made arrangements to see him and went in Mayo’s car, which he allowed Abigail to drive. Mindful of the honour, she reciprocated by not talking, leaving him to enjoy the music he preferred when driving but which, truth to tell, sometimes got on her nerves. Hers not to reason why. Twenty miles, and a good deal of Shostakovich’s Ninth later, they arrived at Hurstfield Police Station, where Uttley was waiting for them with coffee and sandwiches.
‘A right bugger, all this,’ he greeted them, shaking his head, waving a hand like a ham in the direction of the several fat files in readiness on his desk. Fred Uttley was an old sparring partner of Mayo’s, a big, solid man whose belly strained the waistband of his trousers, a tough copper of the old school. But, handing the bulging folders over, knowing what they contained, his usually genial face took on a greyness. ‘Help yourself to what you want from them, but I warn you, it won’t be much.’
They leafed through the material while they drank the coffee, but what they read choked the bread in their mouths, and in the end the sandwiches were left uneaten and curling up at the edges.
It was seven months, in January, since the first child, Nicola Marchant, aged eleven, had been found, raped and brutally battered, lying in the snow. She’d been out tobogganing one Saturday afternoon with her friends, on a hill not a hundred yards from her home, and had left them at three-thirty, as instructed, before the winter afternoon began to get dark. She had never reached home. Her body, with her long blonde hair cut off at the roots, had later been found tossed into the ditch by the roadside, her sledge thrown on top of her. Snow had fallen intermittently all that day, until well into the evening, obliterating any tracks or traces the killer might have left.
Rachel Williams, thirteen the day before she disappeared in April, was on her way home from school when she was killed. She’d waved goodbye to her friends on the school bus, turned down the country road on which she lived and was never seen alive again. She hadn’t been found for six weeks, when council workers using a mechanical hedge-flail had come across her, dumped like discarded rubbish in the ditch below, six miles from her home, and, like Nicola, her fair hair had been hacked off. She too had been raped and repeatedly bludgeoned with a heavy instrument.
‘A hammer,’ Uttley said. ‘Same bloody hammer in both cases, or identical ones. The bastard probably saved it to use again.’
The MO had been similar in all respects. DNA tests confirmed it was the same man responsible in both cases. There had as yet been no trace of the third missing child, Tracey Betteridge. A few weeks ago, she’d gone to visit her grandmother who lived just around the corner from her own suburban road, and hadn’t been seen since. Her disappearance might, or might not, be connected to the other two.
A lifetime of police work had rendered Uttley not insensitive, but not easily upset, either, yet these events had shaken him to the core. He had grandchildren of his own and obscurely and needlessly blamed himself for not yet having got to grips with the situation. ‘I shan’t sleep at nights, and that’s a fact, until we’ve put the scumbag that’s responsible where he can’t do any more harm. Preferably pinned to the floor by his balls.’
But his turned-down mouth suggested his hopes weren’t high, snatched at random as the children appeared to have been, with nothing at all to give a clue as to their abductor, not a shred of evidence, anywhere. Appeals, reconstructions on Crimewatch, miles of foot slogging, knocking on doors, hundreds of hours of tireless questioning, thousands of witnesses, yards of computer print-outs, nothing had come of it.
If Patti’s death had inde
ed been linked to these other murders, it was a depressing prognosis for the apprehension of her killer.
Uttley was bitter. ‘The only way we’re going to catch him is if little Tracey turns up and he’s made some mistake.’ His eyes boded no good for whoever was found to be responsible. ‘Or if it turns out he’s made one with your Patti.’
‘But they’ve nothing to do with Patti, have they?’ Abigail remarked in an unusually dispirited voice on the way home. During the last couple of hours, she seemed to have lost some of her resilience. ‘If we’re looking for a pattern, we’re not going to find it there.’
Mayo, chin sunk into his collar, thinking over the last depressing session, didn’t think so either. Serial killers were creatures of habit, apt to keep to more or less the same modus operandi, and Patti’s murder was unlike the ones they’d been reading about, in almost every respect. The full autopsy report on her body had confirmed Timpson-Ludgate’s original opinion that she hadn’t been raped, for one thing, and for another, it had been a single blow which had killed her – wielded with enough savagery and strength to shatter her skull, to be sure, but she hadn’t been senselessly and repeatedly battered, as the other two girls had been. It wasn’t a hammer belonging to the assailant which had been used, either, but the first weapon that had come conveniently to hand. Nor had she been abducted and taken somewhere else to be killed. All the victims had in common, in fact, was their fair hair – hardly conclusive proof of any connection. And Patti’s hair hadn’t been cut off.
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