by Faith Martin
Sam shrugged modestly.
‘Right then, Sam, since you’re so on the ball, have you got anything to report?’ Hillary asked, catching Jimmy’s amused eye. She knew as well as he did how it never hurt to encourage the tyros.
Sam quickly booted up his computer in search of something to give her. Jimmy thought he looked a bit like a red setter eager to give his mistress a chewy toy to play with.
‘Jimmy and me interviewed the Freeling brothers, guv,’ Sam began.
‘I’ve already been briefed by Jimmy on that,’ Hillary said with a grin. ‘From what I’ve heard, you should both be claiming danger money.’
Jimmy croaked out a gruff laugh. ‘Either that, or claim compensation for stress.’
‘Right. Well, I’ve done that background check on Mrs Landau that you asked for,’ Sam said, a bit disappointed not to be the one to relate the perils of the bike shop.
‘The landlady?’ Jimmy said, sounding interested. ‘You interested in her, guv?’
‘Not particularly. I just felt, when we interviewed her, that some youngster had given her a hard time. Sam thought it was probably her daughter who was the culprit. Apparently she had a kid then went off the rails, leaving her mother to raise the grandson on her own. Did you manage to find out anything more, Sam?’
Sam nodded, and quickly re-read his notes from the computer file out loud.
‘Melinda Stephanie Landau, only daughter of Wanda Landau. She started getting in trouble when she was in her mid-teens,’ Sam read rapidly, ‘and then convictions for shop-lifting, affray and prostitution. She had a baby boy when she was nineteen, but the father’s name is not listed. Social services were on her case right from the start, guv – although the baby wasn’t born already addicted.’
Hillary let out a long slow breath. ‘Small mercies,’ she muttered darkly.
‘Right. Melinda had the baby taken away from her when it was four months old, she went into rehab, got the child back, but was arrested a few months after that for possession. Wanda Landau started petitioning the court for custody of her grandson from that time on. Although technically the baby remained in ‘the home of the mother’ it was the house in Kebler Road, so Mrs Landau was the one who was actually looking after the baby anyway.’
Sam paused for breath, and read silently for a few minutes, then nodded. ‘I had a hard time getting any files from social services, but I did manage to track down one of the social workers who was willing to chat a bit, off the record, like. Seems the grandmother was the primary care-giver more or less from day one, and since Melinda lived with her mother, the courts were more inclined to leave the baby in situ than might otherwise have been the case. Then, when the kid was three and a half, Melinda just took off. From the reports at the time, it seems likely that she left with one Malcolm William Purdy, a known drug dealer, who had to scarper PDQ over some sort of turf war with a rival dealer.’
Again Sam paused for breath.
‘It took Mrs Landau nearly three years, all told, to be allowed legal status as the child’s guardian. She wanted to adopt, but was deemed too old, but by then the boy regarded her as his mother and was well settled, and the social services were happy with their investigations into Wanda Landau’s fitness to be the principal carer.’
‘Couldn’t have been easy, though,’ Jimmy spoke for the first time. ‘Her age was against her for a start.’
Hillary nodded. ‘But she was financially secure, had no criminal record, and was obviously able and willing to take the boy on. Have you had any luck tracking down Melinda?’ Hillary asked, getting to the point.
Jimmy’s eyes narrowed at her sudden brisk tone. ‘You think she might be a suspect, guv?’
Hillary shrugged, unwilling to have to call it one way or the other. ‘It doesn’t seem likely, no, but longer shots than this have paid off before. Say Melinda comes back and is rejected by her son, who probably wouldn’t want to know her. But she sticks around and sees all the students living in what she thinks of as her house, getting on well with her old mum, maybe even being befriended by her son, and you never know how she might react. Junkies aren’t known for their powers of reasonable thinking. Wild mood swings, jealous rages, you never know how it might go down.’
Jimmy nodded thoughtfully. ‘And from what you said, the old girl seemed to speak fondly of Rowan. He could have been a particular pet of hers. In which case, the daughter might have come to see him as a usurper. Maybe, in her own eyes, he’d taken her place, and needed to be hefted out of the nest to make room so that she could fly back to it.’
Hillary nodded. ‘We know from his character that he made it a habit to be charming. And he was the sort who liked his life to be good and easy, so keeping the landlady sweet would be an obvious step. If the dispossessed daughter was lurking around, and saw her mother giving some maternal affection to Rowan.…’ Hillary sighed and rubbed her chin thoughtfully. ‘Oh, hell, who am I kidding? That’s so thin it wouldn’t even make gruel.’
Jimmy laughed. ‘Besides, the chances are, if Melinda had been on the scene, someone would have seen her, or mentioned her presence.’
‘Any reports of Melinda Landau hanging around in Inspector Gorman’s investigation?’ Sam asked curiously.
‘No, but I doubt if he’d have been looking for her,’ Hillary said. ‘And Wanda Landau herself certainly never mentioned her. But then, if Melinda had been on the scene at the time, you couldn’t expect the girl’s mother to just drop her in it. Wanda would have known that her daughter would become a likely suspect. Any junkie at a murder scene is bound to come under suspicion.’
‘Well, she wouldn’t have mentioned it anyway, would she, guv?’ Jimmy pointed out reasonably. ‘What with the social services sniffing around, seeing how fit she was to bring up the lad, the last thing she’d want to admit was that her junkie daughter was back on the scene.’
Hillary nodded. ‘And Wanda did say that she’d been due a visit from someone from the social shortly after Rowan died. Damn, that must have been tricky for her.’
Jimmy nodded. ‘A murder in your home is hardly the kind of thing you’d want, is it, when you’re trying to convince the authorities that you’re up to taking on a kid. She must have been shitting bricks, the poor old soul.’
Hillary shook her head. ‘Sam, anything in your notes from the social about how they viewed Rowan Thompson’s murder in relation to Wanda’s petition to raise her grandson?’
Sam quickly scanned the notes. ‘Well, they liaised with Gorman’s sergeant, guv. But, of course, the case was never solved, and Mrs Landau was only ever referred to as a witness. They seemed to be more concerned about the psychological effects on the boy of having someone killed in his own home. He had a few sessions with a child psychiatrist who declared it hadn’t affected him much at all. Apparently, he barely knew Rowan Thompson, and since he and his grandmother live, by all accounts, a more or less separate life in the basement, and the murder took place upstairs, in a room he’d never even visited, it didn’t seem to upset him too much.’
‘Kids can be tough little buggers,’ Jimmy said approvingly.
‘That must have been a relief for Wanda,’ Hillary said. ‘If the boy had taken it hard, they’d have removed him from the house pretty quick.’
‘Right,’ Sam agreed. ‘But as it is, it looks as though they just dragged their feet for a bit, seeing if anything was going to break in the case, but when it didn’t, Mrs Landau pressed her petition, and in the end it was granted.’
‘Must have given her some sleepless nights, though,’ Hillary said with feeling. ‘In a way, Wanda was very nearly a victim too.’
‘So, where does that leave us?’ Jimmy asked, and Hillary sighed grimly.
‘No further forward, as far as I can see. Mrs Landau was one of the few people in that house who not only didn’t have a motive for wanting Rowan dead, but actually suffered as a result of his killing. She could have lost her grandson over it. Still, Sam, I want you to keep on the Melinda aspect of it anyway, and se
e if you can track her down. Try the rehab clinics, and coroner’s offices. And marriages. I’d like to know what became of her, just so I can rule her out. I don’t like loose ends, even tenuous ones.’
‘Guv.’
‘Right. I’d better get on.’
‘Have a nice weekend, guv?’ Jimmy asked innocently, as Hillary started towards the door. It was all over the station about her and Crayle leaving the police picnic together. And although he knew it was all a set-up, Hillary didn’t know that he knew, and in the normal course of things, he’d be teasing her about it.
‘Lovely, thanks,’ Hillary said. And meant it.
It had been a very nice weekend indeed.
Very nice.
When she got back to her office, though, the first thing that she saw was the message from Sergeant Handley.
And her good mood vanished. With a vengeance. Because Handley’s beloved computers had found JOY. Or rather, they’d found a woman by the name of Judith Olivia Yelland, who had been reported missing by her friend nearly five years ago.
Hillary read the stark facts and sucked in a long slow breath.
OK. So a woman with the initials of JOY had been reported missing. It didn’t do to jump to conclusions, she knew, but already she could feel a cold, serpentine feeling snaking up her spine, and she put her hand up to the back of her neck to rub her suddenly chilled skin.
She forced herself to sit down and wait for her heartbeat to slow back to normal, and for the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach to settle. It took a few minutes. Then she booted up her own computer, typed in her password and authorization, and logged on to the MisPer records that it allowed her to access.
Slowly, she read the brief.
Judith Yelland had been twenty-five years of age when she was reported missing by her friend Ruth Coombs, with whom she shared a small maisonette in the market town of Bicester.
Judith’s photograph showed that she was a pretty woman with long blonde hair and big brown eyes. Her friend had said she was smallish, about five feet five or so, and was friendly and sociable without being flighty. She’d had a regularly boyfriend for nearly three years, but that relationship had petered out, amicably, a year or so before. Judy liked to exercise and took regular karate lessons in the Bicester Sports Centre as a way of keeping fit and for self-protection. She’d recently been seeing a married man, Christopher Deakin.
She felt she needed it, as she’d confided to her friend that someone was sending her anonymous text messages and flowers.
Hillary felt the hairs on the back of her neck start to rise again, but forced herself to carry on reading doggedly.
According to Ruth, Judy wasn’t particularly close to her family, as they’d had an unspecified falling out when she was in her late teens, and the breech had never been fully healed. Ruth had never caught sight of her friend’s stalker for herself, although Judy had been convinced on several occasions that she had been followed home from work. She had worked in a shoe shop in Sheep Street, in the town centre.
As far as Hillary could see, very little follow-up had been done, since Ruth also told the constable in MisPer that Judy had been talking more and more recently about moving away from the area to shake off her unwanted admirer, and also to start a new life generally. The relationship with her current boyfriend had left her feeling vaguely dissatisfied with her life in general, and she’d also admitted to being ‘fed-up’ with her ‘go-nowhere’ job.
The MisPer office was of the opinion that it was more than likely that Judith Yelland had simply relocated, and had done so in such a way as to make it hard for anyone to find her. This made sense, Hillary supposed, if she was trying to shake off a stalker. But Ruth had insistently pointed out that Judy hadn’t put in her notice at work or collected the wages that would have been owing to her, hadn’t packed her bags, and hadn’t left any kind of goodbye note for her flatmate either.
Hillary checked to see if MisPer had checked with Judith Yelland’s bank, and found out that they had. She had just the one current account, with a modest balance of just over £800 in it. She had not closed her account or notified them of a change of address and, at the time of the missing person’s report being filed, there had been no recent or unusual activity on her account.
So she had not drawn out a large lump sum in cash, which is what most people would do if they’d decided to leave for fresh pastures.
And Ruth was also insistent that Judy was unlikely to leave all her clothes behind – she had one or two expensive outfits that she really liked, for instance. And although she tended to wear a lot of good-quality jewellery, and could easily have sold or pawned these articles for ready cash if need be, Ruth was sure that her friend would have told her she was leaving, at the very least. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted me to worry’ was what she’d insisted to the MisPer officer at the time.
But reading between the lines of the original officer’s report, Hillary could tell that he thought Ruth Coombs had been of a rather overbearing nature, and that he wouldn’t be at all surprised if the missing girl had left without bothering to inform her. He’d gained the impression that Ruth could be bossy, and that she herself might be part of the reason why Judith Yelland had wanted to start afresh in a new life somewhere.
They had done all the usual checks with local hospitals, but she hadn’t met with any accident that had been reported. Likewise her details were circulated to the YWCA, the Sally Army, and other women’s refuges, without any result.
For the next hour or so, Hillary let her fingers do the walking, and talked on the telephone to several people, some of whom were helpful, and others who needed some gentle persuasion. But at the end of it all, the picture was clear: if Judith Yelland had got a job somewhere else, she was not paying any taxes.
If she was using a bank account, it was not her old account, which had not been accessed by Judith or anyone else in the five years that she’d been gone.
If she’d been ill, she hadn’t been registered with any other GP surgery, and her own doctors had no record of her attending their clinic since she was reported missing. Likewise, her dentist hadn’t seen her in five years either, but if she’d registered as a private patient elsewhere, there was no way that Hillary on her own, and using her own humble computer, could find out where and with whom.
She hadn’t married, or registered a birth, nor had she changed her name by deed poll. There was no record of her death or burial.
Judith Olivia Yelland, whether of her own volition or not, had succeeded in vanishing.
Hillary printed off all the relevant data, and placed it in a file. Then, retrieving the bagged-up wooden cross, she walked, poker-faced, down the corridor to Steven Crayle’s office.
She knocked, waited for his summons, and walked in.
He looked up at her from his desk and smiled at her warmly. And the weekend they’d just spent together was suddenly in the room with them.
Her heartbeat picked up a notch.
Steven got up from his desk and walked towards her.
‘Everything all right?’ he asked softly, and she nodded, because she knew what he was asking.
Was everything all right between them now? It was, as far as she was concerned. They’d had a nice time, with no strings attached. And she was not about to start trying to attach strings now.
After leaving the picnic they’d gone back to Thrupp, where she’d cast Mollern off her mooring and, at a sedate 3 m.p.h., they had glided northwards along the khaki-coloured water. Amid much laughter and bank-banging, she’d taught him how to navigate the canal, and then use a lock, and then turn the boat. When it grew dark, they’d moored up miles from anywhere beneath some willow trees, and then spent the night together in her narrow bed.
It had been good.
Very good, in fact.
The next morning, she’d taught him the trick of the two-minute shower in very cramped and hilarious conditions that had, nevertheless, had its interesting moments.
A
frugal breakfast, and back behind the tiller, until they’d pulled up at The Rock of Gibraltar pub on the canal, where they’d had Sunday lunch, and a stroll in the nearby woods, that were just beginning to lose the blue haze of the fading bluebells.
Back on the boat, and a more leisurely bout in her tiny bed, then on to Thrupp. When he’d left her, just as it was getting dark yesterday evening, they’d been relaxed, but largely uncommunicative.
It was as if neither of them had wanted to discuss what had happened, or put a label on it, or attach a timetable to it, or in anyway do anything that might jinx it. It had, for the both of them, been like an episode out of place, a time just for them, and one that didn’t really touch the sides of the life that they lived from day to day.
So now, here they were, back in the real world, and he was asking if she had any regrets, or worries.
And the answer to that was no.
She saw him smile and nod, then held up her hands. She wasn’t aware of it, but her face had gone remote and blank.
Instantly, he felt himself tense. He looked at her offerings. ‘What’s this?’
She showed him the bag first. ‘I found it on my desk last Friday.’ Briefly, she described what it was, then what she’d asked Handley to find out. She handed him the paperwork in silence, then paced his office quietly as he sat behind his desk and read it.
From time to time, her eyes wandered over his face. During the weekend, he hadn’t been able to shave, and when he’d left her, he’d had the beginnings of a stubble. Now he was clean-shaven and she could just pick out the tangy citrus tone of his aftershave. His hair had been washed that morning and looked soft. She felt once again the impulse that she’d been able to indulge during their weekend together, to run her fingers through the dark, thick strands at his temples.
She carried on pacing, unable to settle her mind, which kept jumping from thoughts about the fate of Judith Yelland, to a desire to sit on Steven Crayle’s lap and kiss him, to the increasingly nagging feeling that she should know who had killed Rowan Thompson and why, if only she could force herself from all the other distractions crowding in on her and think clearly.