Three years after Ruth left him, married Emlyn Taylor and moved to Brighton, they had met again at the engagement party of one of their oldest mutual friends, Saul. Both had been advised of their invitations and Saul had stressed to Swift that he would understand if he didn’t want to attend. Swift had decided he needed to face the test and rowed all afternoon before the party, pumping up his courage.
When he saw Ruth standing by a window, perusing the congratulations cards, he knew that he loved her as much as ever and thought he could see the same emotion reflected in her eyes when he said her name. The meeting had mirrored their first; a locking of gazes, a sudden recognition. They had stood talking for half an hour that seemed like only five minutes, while he felt a ridiculous, light-headed joy. He didn’t need the wine in his hand to feel dizzily inebriated. Her long tawny hair still had the same scent, her clear hazel eyes glinted with that humour and intelligence he missed so much. Yet she seemed subdued and distracted. Emlyn was not with her, she had said eventually, looking away; he had developed MS. The onset had been rapid and he was unable to work full-time. There was a carer with him while she attended the party. When Swift said he was sorry, she shook her head, saying that was just the way things were and they were making the best of it.
Ruth continued to work as a psychologist, mainly in Brighton but one Monday morning a month taught a class in cognitive therapy at Holborn. Before she left the party she said goodbye to him and they stood, paralysed in the hall of the house, looking at each other, oblivious to the music and laughter around them. She asked, so quietly that he had to strain to hear, if he would like to have lunch sometime? He had replied that yes — yes, he would.
Afterwards, Saul had put a drunken arm across his shoulder, saying that he’d heard about Ruth’s husband being ill. Sorry for them, but makes you feel she got her comeuppance, bet she wishes she never ran out on you, he’d commented with some relish. Swift had felt no glimmer of satisfaction at Ruth’s predicament, only shock and sadness, but he was aware that others thought he might, perhaps expected him to.
And so they had started meeting once a month. It was almost a year now since that first lunch. They always met near Victoria so that Ruth could make her late afternoon train home. They were careful with each other, talking about everything except their true feelings, which were spoken of only rarely. Sometimes they held hands or touched fingers and, if there was time, walked in St James’s Park. His irrepressible, buoyant Ruth had been replaced by a sober woman; she spoke more slowly, as if puzzled by the turn life had taken. She told him at that first lunch that she would never leave Emlyn and would understand if he didn’t want to continue meeting.
He woke early, after just a couple of hours of light, unrefreshing sleep. He made coffee and stood drinking it at the kitchen window. The day was promising with a gentle light. Next door, the neighbour was watering her plants before she left for work and he watched as she removed dead leaves and picked a sprig of herbs, holding it to her nose. He knew he needed to stop seeing Ruth, end this madness, but the thought of losing her again made his eyes mist.
* * *
He went to see Paddy Sutherland. He had expected that, like Carmen, she would live in a large house, but her address indicated a flat. He turned up a side street near Holland Park tube and found her on the ground floor of a two-storey thirties block, set on the corner of a square replete with cherry blossom.
She showed him through a small hallway bulging with coats, shopping bags and shoes, into a cluttered living room, filled with bookshelves, two sofas and an oval dining table. The floor was covered in an expensive but frayed carpet and the walls were a faded and in places slightly grubby cream. The sofas had loose threads but were deep and spacious. Swift folded himself into one with pleasure. The four large oil paintings looked like originals but were somewhat forbidding portraits of gloomy, densely bunched trees in shaded woodland. Paddy was a large-bosomed, tall woman with a fresh complexion and thinning greyish hair, wearing a pleated tweedy skirt and an open-necked shirt with plain court shoes. Her pudgy nose was redeemed by wide, candid grey eyes. He accepted her offer of coffee and looked around, thinking how much more comfortable this lived-in room was, compared to Carmen’s highly polished, trinket-strewn home. He could spy a small kitchen through an alcove, where Paddy was bustling, and guessed there was just one bedroom.
The coffee was served in delicate china. It was instant but hot and there were no biscuits. He wondered if Paddy was a woman who was asset-rich, cash-poor, and was making the best of it. On the other hand, she might just be exhibiting the natural stinginess and disregard for appearances of old money. She had a clipped voice, the kind that he thought of as 1950s BBC.
‘Now,’ she said, sitting opposite him and tucking her skirt under, ‘this business of Carmen. Completely baffling! If you’ve come thinking I can tell you anything useful, you’ll be disappointed.’
He added milk to his coffee, suspecting it was UHT, and he would regret it.
‘I understand but you never know. The smallest things can be part of a bigger jigsaw.’
‘I adore jigsaws,’ Paddy said. ‘They’re terrific, especially on winter evenings. I have one on the go at present, a view of Hampton Court; tricky but satisfying.’
He smiled. ‘How do you know Mrs Langborne?’
‘Elephants. We met . . . oh let me see, about eight years ago at a charity event at the Festival Hall and discovered we lived near each other. Got chatting a bit, established we both like bridge, so Carmen joined the little club I have here.’
‘You meet how often?’
‘Fortnightly. That’s how I knew something was wrong when she didn’t turn up. Carmen never missed it, and if she was going to be away she told me so I could make up the numbers. That idiot stepson of hers, saying she’d probably made a mistake in her dates . . . complete rubbish.’
‘Would you say you know her well?’
Paddy sipped her drink; he was amused to see that she held her little finger in the air as she grasped the cup.
‘Not well, no. Carmen likes to chat about charities, news items, TV programmes, just light talk. I don’t know much about her except she was widowed. I met Rupert, the stepson, once when I was dropping something off to her. Struck me as a bit bombastic, self-opinionated. I tried once to get her interested in becoming a magistrate, after Neville, her husband, died. I sit on the bench and I thought it might be a new interest for her but she didn’t respond.’
She paused. Swift swallowed his disgusting coffee, which became more tasteless as it cooled.
‘I don’t know if I should say this, in case something dreadful has happened to her but I never thought that Carmen really liked me. I felt that she was interested in me because my cousin is a viscount and vaguely related to the royal family. She’s very keen on people’s station in life, you see.’
Ah, thought Swift, I was right about old money. ‘A social climber?’
‘Well . . . that’s a crude way of putting it but yes, perhaps.’
‘Did you attend her suppers?’
‘Yes, a few. Again, I felt they were held more for show than because Carmen really liked the company. Oh dear, I hope I don’t sound bitchy.’
‘Well, what you tell me tallies with some other views. Did you ever form the impression that she might have a gentleman friend?’
Paddy picked up a cushion and smoothed the fabric, giving the question careful consideration.
‘No, I don’t think so. But you see, as I’ve said, she’s quite a closed person, gives very little away. Always polite and a bit formal, perhaps even guarded at times.’
Swift thought he knew why: if, like Carmen, you were an emigrant who had risen from the lowly status of dental receptionist and managed to break through the class barrier via marriage, you would always harbour a lingering anxiety about your origins and the possibility of committing social solecisms. You would watch your step and especially so after your passport into your new world had left you on your own
. Paddy was a pleasant woman but she was clearly secure in her class and station in life; her frayed furnishings spoke volumes about her confidence in her social position. He could imagine Carmen visiting here from her immaculately kept home, never quite being able to put her finger on how this effortlessness was achieved.
‘I really have no idea what can have happened to Carmen,’ Paddy continued. ‘Have the police got nowhere?’
‘Not so far. Do you know why Mrs Langborne might have written WP and Haven in her diary?’
‘As in appointments?’
‘Probably. She wrote them on the day she went missing.’
Paddy shook her head. ‘No idea. Sorry I can’t be of more help.’
As he left, Paddy coaxed him to buy a raffle ticket for Spiny Friends, the hedgehog sanctuary she supported. He parted with a pound and saw as he walked to the bus stop that the first prize was a visit to the sanctuary; he couldn’t wait. His phone rang as the bus trundled past The Albert Memorial and he heard Dr Forsyth.
‘Hi, Mr Swift, how are you doing?’
‘Fine, thanks. You?’
‘I’m fine too. You said to call if I remembered anything. Well, I was soaking in the tub last night and I thought of something. You know, the way you get a random memory?’
Swift had a sudden image of Dr Forsyth’s elegant limbs stretched out in her bath and blinked. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Last autumn, September, I believe, Mrs Langborne took herself off to stay in a residential facility for a couple of weeks. She was convinced she needed to convalesce after a virus. A few long walks would have done her more good, but there you go.’
‘You mean like a home for old people?’
‘Sure. An upmarket one, I should think. A hotel in the sun would have been just as good but I guess a home for elders with uniformed staff at the call of a buzzer played more to her idea that she was feeling frail and needed looking after.’
‘Do you know where she went?’
‘Afraid not. She asked me if I could recommend anywhere and when I couldn’t she made her own arrangements. That’s all I know.’
‘Okay, thanks. I’ll look into it. You didn’t tell the police this?’
‘Like I said, I only just remembered. Should I have?’
‘Oh yes, they need to know.’
He rang off and called Ronnie Farley.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said, ‘I’m just at Mrs L’s now, feeding the hungry horde.’
He explained about Dr Forsyth’s information. ‘Presumably you know about this, as you’ll have been in to look after the house and cats?’
‘Aye, I recall that now. She’d had a bad cold and chest infection and she reckoned she needed to recuperate. Would it be of any significance? That was months ago.’
‘Probably not but I might as well look into it. Do you know where she went?’
‘Hang on a minute. I put it in my phone calendar. It was a fortnight, as I recall.’
Ronnie whistled softly. The bus driver was arguing with a woman who wanted to board with a buggy. There were already two by the crowded stairwell and he said he couldn’t allow any more. The woman raised her voice and her baby started bawling. They were nearly at Victoria and Swift was early so he hopped off the bus, leaving the argument in full swing.
‘Are you working part-time in a nursery?’ Ronnie asked.
‘Not likely. Found anything?’
‘Aye. She went to a place called Lilac Grange in Kingston upon Thames on September fifth for two weeks. Shall I text you the number?’
‘Please. How was she when she came back?’
‘Fine. Said it was very nice, lovely food and service. It seemed to have done her good.’
‘Ok, thanks a lot. Give my best to the cats.’
‘They miss her. I can see they’re disappointed when they realise it’s only me again.’ Her voice lowered. ‘Don’t forget to call by for a coffee some time, Tyrone.’
Swift walked along Buckingham Palace Road, zipping up his leather jacket against the breeze, thinking that it was only the cats who truly needed and missed Carmen; for the people in her life, her disappearance was a worry or an inconvenience but they didn’t miss her. He had begun to feel a tug of sympathy for her and an understanding of how isolated her husband’s death must have left her.
* * *
He and Ruth always met in the Evergreen, a small pub tucked away off Ebury Street. It was quiet on Mondays, and by now they were on first name terms with Krystyna, the waitress. Ruth was there when he arrived, sitting at their usual table by a side window decorated with stained glass. She was reading and twisting a strand of hair around a forefinger, just as she had been the first time he ever glimpsed her in the British Museum café. He had sat opposite her with his coffee, she had moved her bag to make room and smiled at him and that had been that; six years together and then the day she had been waiting for him when he came back from Lyons. He had run up the stairs to their flat in Dulwich, anticipating the sight of her. She had kissed his cheek, made him a coffee, offered him his favourite almond pastry and told him in a tight voice that she had met someone else. Since Ruth, there had been no one significant, no one he could imagine wanting to go home to.
She looked up and saw him, smiled, tucking her hair back. He sat, sliding his jacket off.
‘Hi. How are you?’
‘Okay. The class this morning was a bit oversubscribed but went well anyway. You?’
‘Fine. You look a bit tired.’
‘Emlyn had a broken night, that’s all. But he’s managing to do some work today, so that’s good.’
They ordered drinks and food; Ruth had become a vegetarian, as Emlyn was, and opted for a mushroom ravioli. While they ate, Swift told her about his new case and how he’d made little progress.
‘Don’t you find it frustrating sometimes, after the Met and Interpol,’ she asked, ‘working on your own with no backup?’
‘Rarely and I can always contact old colleagues.’ He laughed and told her about Rachel Breen’s insults.
‘Sounds like you got involved in a domestic there.’
‘The unwitting fate of the private detective.’
‘But what can have happened to this woman? Surely if she’d been murdered, a body would have been found?’
‘You’d have thought so. Maybe it’s well hidden.’
‘You do hear about skeletons being found behind walls and fireplaces. Her family must be so worried.’
‘Hardly. I’ve yet to meet the stepson but there seems to be no love lost.’
They had coffee. She knew far more of his world than he did of hers, being familiar with his extended family. He updated her on Cedric and told her about Mary having a new partner. She spoke of her work and her plan to study for an MSc. Then they were silent for a while. There were only two other customers, men in suits with laptops, discussing sales margins. Krystyna polished glasses and bottles at the bar, making busywork for herself on a slow day. There was usually a point like this, when it became too painful to talk.
‘We’re like secret agents,’ Ruth said at last. ‘Regular clandestine meetings, walks in the park, lives compartmentalised.’
He nodded, touching her hand. ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘Yes. I never stopped loving you, Ty; I temporarily misplaced the love, lost my way. And I am so fond of Emlyn and I married him. We both go through so much pain and I’m the cause of it. If it’s of any comfort, I feel it too, every day. But regrets are pointless. I keep hoping that one day you’ll email me to say you’ve found someone special and you need to say goodbye. Then I could stop tormenting you and myself. I could stop feeling guilty, selfish.’ She rubbed the back of his hand gently.
‘We both know that I would need to say goodbye for myself, for my own reasons alone, and that I probably won’t be able to focus on anyone else until I do.’
She nodded. ‘Then you should, you should.’
They had time for a short walk under the trees in the park before turning back fo
r the station. He walked her to the ticket barrier and kissed her forehead. He could feel her trembling and backed away, holding up a hand in farewell. He walked through back streets as far as World’s End, hardly noticing his route, where he caught a bus to Hammersmith. Closing his eyes, he dwelled for some moments on Ruth’s face, bathed in the lemony light from the stained-glass window, thought of the roughened skin on her fingers, from where she had been sanding a door. Then, annoyed with himself, he rubbed his head vigorously and raised and lowered his shoulders three times, causing a woman sitting opposite to give him a strange look. He took out his phone and rang Lilac Grange. He asked for the name of the manager and was told it was Maria Berardi. He asked to speak to her and after a brief wait he was put through and explained his reason for calling.
‘I don’t see how we can help you,’ Ms Berardi said, her voice rising and falling with Italian inflections. ‘Mrs Langborne only came here once.’
The Lady Vanished Page 6