Weep a While Longer

by Penny Freedman

  She handed the card to Mike Arthur. ‘Why has no-one written anything else? You see all these cards – people write the sort of thing Malcolm wrote. Why nothing here?’

  ‘Could it be they wouldn’t pass her on to the director so she didn’t talk?’

  ‘No. Because we’ve got her phone records and she was on for between five and fifteen minutes each time.’

  ‘So they did pass her on to the director and she didn’t fill in the card?’

  ‘Looks like it. Why? And why is the card hidden here?’

  ‘We’d better ask her,’ he said, moving towards the door.

  ‘Hold on a minute.’ She took the card back from him and sat down with it. ‘Let’s see if there’s an innocent explanation – if only because that’s what she’ll come up with and we need to be ready for it.’

  ‘OK.’ He came and sat down beside her.

  ‘Suppose,’ she said, ‘that they did pass Karen on to Estelle Campion every time. Karen was desperate: she had this secret and it scared her. She was frightened for herself and for Lara, and she was sure that it could all be solved if Estelle would just pass her information to the police, but Estelle wouldn’t do it. So they had these conversations and no doubt Estelle would have been doing the right thing in refusing – it’s not what the Samaritans are about – but she felt bad about it. Did Karen tell her what the secret was? Who knows, but she wasn’t going to write on the card for all the volunteers to see, was she? And apart from that, some of the volunteers would have thought that she ought to help Karen, wouldn’t they? It might be against the rules but these are people who give up their time to help. They would think she ought to help.’

  ‘So she writes nothing on the card and then, when Karen dies, she feels bad and she hides the card. Why didn’t she destroy it like she said she had?’

  ‘People are funny about destroying evidence. They know that the cover-up is often worse than the offence – look at all the phone-hacking stuff.’

  ‘OK. So that’s the innocent explanation. What’s the guilty one?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Let’s go and find out.’ She took an evidence bag out of her pocket and slipped the card into it.

  Estelle Campion went for a third way: denial. Fortified during their search by caffeine, nicotine and the application of more lipstick, she sat opposite them in the small interview room on the first floor and faced them wide-eyed and smiling in astonishment at the forensic precautions of gloves and evidence bag. She had hidden the card because she knew it would upset her volunteers to come across it; it was a very emotional business, the murder of a young woman and a child, and initially she had thought that Karen might have done it herself. No, she had never spoken to Karen; it was an absolute rule that callers could not pick or choose who they spoke to. Whoever picked up the phone was their Samaritan for that moment; that was the way it worked.

  ‘So why, then,’ Paula asked, ‘did none of the people who spoke to her write anything on the card? I’ve seen how the other cards are filled in. This one is odd, isn’t it?’

  Estelle reached out a hand for the card but Paula held it back. ‘We can’t contaminate the evidence,’ she said, and held it for her to read.

  ‘You get patterns set up on these cards,’ Estelle said with an air of professional detachment. ‘The first person records in a particular way and everyone follows suit. Especially if they’re inexperienced.’ She squinted at the card. ‘These are all quite new volunteers.’

  ‘But the last entry – Malcolm’s – that’s different.’

  ‘Ah, Malcolm’s an old hand.’

  ‘But one of the other entries is Malcolm’s too, isn’t it?’

  She glanced again at the card. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said casually.

  ‘And it’s just coincidence that on that last occasion you were unavailable?’

  ‘Just coincidence.’

  ‘And you never spoke to Karen?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘You’re quite sure?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Well, of course we shall need to talk to the volunteers who did speak to her.’

  ‘You try to do that,’ she said, leaning forward so that her face was very close, ‘and I shall speak to the chief constable.’

  Paula leaned forward too. ‘You do that,’ she said.

  She got up to leave, but Mike Arthur, getting to his feet, asked, as he took the card from her, ‘As a matter of interest, Mrs Campion, were you in the building when Karen made those calls and asked for you?’

  ‘Probably,’ she said. ‘They were daytime calls. I’m usually here.’

  ‘But you were unavailable at ten past five on 17th July, shortly before Karen was killed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where were you, Mrs Campion?’

  *

  ‘You don’t really think she could have killed Karen, do you, Mike?’ Paula asked as they walked back to the car.

  ‘Well, it’s a funny coincidence and she’s hiding something. I thought it would do no harm to rattle her cage a bit.’

  ‘Attending a reception for representatives of the voluntary sector at the town hall is a pretty decent alibi, though.’

  ‘So you think she couldn’t have slipped out and done it?’

  She laughed. ‘Not without getting a lot of blood on some very expensive clothes.’

  Her phone rang.

  *

  By 11.00 Scott was back from the university and heading to the canteen for a cup of coffee when he heard feet pounding behind him. Steve Boxer, in uncharacteristically animated mode, was pursuing him.

  ‘Have you got a moment?’ he panted.

  ‘Yes. Have you got something?’

  ‘I might have. Two things, actually.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  He turned and followed Steve back to the incident room.

  ‘You asked me to find Jamilleh Hamidi’s address,’ Boxer said, sitting down at his computer. ‘She lives in Keswick Rise,’ he said, pointing to the screen.

  ‘And that sounds like Eastgate estate – whatever possessed the town planners to call those streets after Lake District beauty spots?’

  ‘A sense of humour? Anyway, Keswick Rise is a bit different. It’s on the edge of the estate, backing on to that bit of copse that runs between the estate and the university campus. The university owns several of those houses. Not many people took up ‘Right to Buy’ on Eastgate, but people in Keswick Rise did, and the university has bought them up as they’ve come on the market.’

  ‘OK. But it’s the other end of the estate from Karen Brody’s house in Windermere Road, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s just round the corner from Leanne Thomas’s flat in Kendal Way. A stone’s throw.’

  ‘Is it indeed?’

  ‘So, if the killer thought that both Karen and Jamilleh might recognise him, isn’t it likely that he lives somewhere nearby?’

  ‘Or regularly visits somewhere nearby. First thing is to talk to Leanne again. We were pretty sure she knew more than she was telling.’

  ‘She may be scared too.’

  ‘So we’ll need to make her scared of us. You said you had two things?’

  ‘Yes. The other one is pretty random and it may be just coincidence.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Well, when I’d found this link between Jamilleh and Leanne I thought I’d just play around and see what I got, so I got the names of everyone we’ve interviewed so far in this case and I got all their addresses. What I found was that Estelle Campion, the Samaritan director, used to live next door to the Thomas family – Karen and Leanne and their parents – in Albert Road.’

  ‘That doesn’t fit Paula’s account of her. Dripping money, Paula said.’

  ‘That’s recent. She was Estelle Hodge in those days. She lived there first with her husband, Keith Hodge, and then after they got divorced, she lived there alone. She lived there from 1995 to 2008, and then in 2008 she married Bruce Campion and went up in
the world, to The Gables, Lower Shepton.’

  ‘This is good stuff, Steve.’ Scott leaned over his shoulder to look at the screen. ‘So she was the Thomas family’s neighbour from the time Karen was eight until she left home. Does she have any children?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So she could have been quite close to the girls – babysat for them, maybe. I wonder how long she’s been a Samaritan. No – no point in doing a search on that – that you won’t find on any database you have access to. I bet, though, that it was she who told Karen about the Samaritans passing on bomb warnings. Good work, Steve. Inspired.’

  Steve bridled with pleasure at the commendation, like a small boy getting teacher approval. ‘What now?’ he asked.

  ‘Keep digging.’

  He went to his office and phoned Paula. ‘Are you still at the Samaritans?’

  ‘We’ve just left,’ she said.

  ‘OK. Never mind. It can keep.’

  ‘What can?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in a bit. I need you to come with me to Leanne Thomas. Can you come back to the station?’

  ‘OK.’

  She seemed to be waiting for something.

  ‘Did you get anything?’ he asked.

  ‘Karen’s index card.’

  ‘Good. Useful?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in a bit,’ she said.

  *

  At 11.35, Darren Floyd passed Scott and Paula as he drove to the university. An interview with nursery staff, he thought, was hardly his style, but one or two of them might be fit. He would see what he could make of it. The nursery staff, however, having experience of small boys rather too big for their boots, proved more than a match for him. Caroline, thirty-something and attractively maternal, looked at him with pitying amusement.

  ‘Do you really think, DC Floyd, that there are any circumstances under which we would not have reported to the police immediately any suspicion we had about a loiterer?’

  ‘People don’t always. You’d be surprised.’

  ‘But we’re not just people, are we? We’re childcare professionals, and the safety of the children is an absolute priority, above everything else. Hence the high fences, the locked gate, the safety bars, the soft flooring, the sand under the swings and the climbing frame, and so on and so on.’

  She sat back and smiled patiently at him, reducing him to child size.

  He got up and squared his shoulders. He’d left his jacket somewhere, he realised, the leather one. No wonder he had failed to impress this irritating woman. He felt a surge of spite.

  ‘Fences are all very well,’ he drawled, ‘but I suppose you realise that you let a man into your cosy little nest, disguised in a burqa.’

  ‘What?’ She stood up too.

  ‘Yes. The one who got attacked by a dog in your garden. Seems the dog was better at spotting a predator than you professionals were.’

  He swaggered out, and it was only as he was getting into his shiny new car that it hit him that his gibe had been confidential information and he had probably set himself up for serious trouble.

  *

  At 11.45 Sarah Shepherd arrived at Marlbury Hospital and found her way to Jamilleh Hamidi’s room. She had been told, when she phoned, that Jamilleh would be going down for assessment that morning, and would not be back in her room until twelve, but she found a uniformed officer guarding her door who told her that she was in there.

  It was not a good time, though, she realised. The nurse who was settling her back into bed looked disapproving. ‘She’s very tired,’ she said. ‘She’s been having tests. She really needs to sleep. Can’t you come back?’

  Sarah hesitated. It was a perfectly reasonable request but it felt weak to give up on a job she had been sent to do. She gave the nurse a smile. ‘Just two minutes?’ she asked. ‘And then you can throw me out.’

  ‘Is that all right with you, Jamilleh?’ the nurse asked. ‘Just two minutes?’

  Jamilleh nodded and Sarah seated herself by the bed. ‘I just wondered,’ she said quietly, ‘whether you have remembered anything more about the man who attacked you.’

  Jamilleh’s head went from side to side on the pillow, ‘I didn’t see,’ she said.

  ‘But his eyes. You saw his eyes?’

  Jamilleh’s eyes clouded. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No eyes.’

  ‘You didn’t see his eyes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘Nothing. I saw nothing.’

  She was trying to shake her head again and the nurse laid a restraining hand on her. ‘You need to keep your head still,’ she said, and glared at Sarah.

  ‘The person in the niqab, though,’ Sarah persisted. ‘You saw his eyes, didn’t you?’

  ‘No. I see nothing. Nothing.’ Tears seeped out from under her long, dark lashes.

  ‘Right. That’s enough,’ the nurse said. ‘You’re upsetting her. Enough.’ She ushered Sarah to the door.

  ‘We are actually trying to find out who attacked her,’ Sarah said as she was hustled out. ‘I’m not just doing this for fun.’

  ‘And we’re trying to make her better. Which do you think matters more?’

  *

  At 11.35, Scott picked Paula up from the station. As they drove through steady drizzle to Leanne Thomas’s block in Kendal Way, Paula asked, ‘So what have you got?’

  ‘It turns out Jamilleh lives in Keswick Rise, which is, as you might guess, just round the corner from Kendal Way.’

  ‘Which means we have a possible link between Jamilleh and Karen – other than the nursery.’

  ‘And if Jamilleh’s attacker thought she might recognise him then there’s a chance that he lives round there.’

  ‘So, are we doing a house-to-house?’

  ‘A job for you for this afternoon. For the moment we’re going to see what Leanne says about the coincidence and if she’d like to tell us more about what was worrying Karen.’

  ‘Not to mention all the security on her front door.’

  ‘Right.’ He paused and glanced at her. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I … we … got Karen’s card.’

  ‘So you said.’

  ‘Well, first of all, we found it on its own in a locked drawer in the director’s desk. Second, there’s what’s on it. They’re like file cards, these things. The Samaritan who takes the call writes the date and a brief sentence or two about the caller’s problem, and then signs it. Karen’s card has five entries. The last one is Malcolm’s but the other four just say Asked to speak to the director.’

  ‘And what does she say?’

  ‘That she never spoke to Karen.’

  ‘So, here’s my other piece of news. Estelle Campion was Karen and Leanne’s neighbour all the time they were growing up.’

  ‘No! I wouldn’t have put her in Albert Road.’

  ‘She married up a few years ago.’

  ‘Did Steve get all this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bless his heart.’

  ‘So do we think Karen knew Estelle was the director when she asked to speak to her?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s high profile, Estelle – all that fundraising. Karen would have known.’

  ‘But she says she never spoke to Karen. Did she give a reason for hiding the card?’

  ‘Didn’t want to upset the volunteers.’

  ‘Where’s the card now?’

  ‘Back at the station.’

  ‘Good. This afternoon we tackle Estelle Campion again and talk about fingerprinting her volunteers.’

  ‘She threatened me with the chief constable if I tried to even talk to her volunteers.’

  ‘Hah!’

  ‘Her husband knows him.’

  ‘We’ll take the risk.’

  The light from the sullen sky did the flats in Kendal Way no favours, Paula thought, taking in the concrete’s adornment of rusty streaks from blocked gutters before they pushed through the outer door into the scabby lobby.

  Leanne Thomas took a long tim
e to open the door, possibly because the belting music playing in the flat drowned out their hammering on the door, possibly because she was getting dressed. If the latter, she had made no more effort, Paula thought, than the last time she had seen her. Her unbrushed hair was scraped into a scrunchie, old mascara gave her pale face panda eyes, her feet were bare and she was wearing a T-shirt and shorts that might have been pyjamas. The sitting room, when they were eventually admitted to it, was much less tidy than when Paula had seen it previously – verging on the chaotic, in fact. Was this the effect of doing without Karen’s support, Paula wondered?

  ‘Is Liam at home, Leanne?’ she asked.

  ‘I thought you were police,’ Leanne muttered. ‘You social workers too, are you?’

  ‘Just taking an interest, Leanne,’ Paula said breezily, and stood watching her, eyebrows raised, waiting for a reply.

  ‘Well, he’s at nursery if you must know.’ She flung herself down on the sofa as though exhausted by a day’s work. ‘My … friend took him,’ she added as if feeling a need to explain in view of the bare feet and unbrushed hair.

  Scott stood looking out of the window. ‘Do you know the Hamidi family?’ he asked.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Jamilleh Hamidi. Young mother, four-year-old son. Lives just over there in Keswick Rise.’

  ‘The Arabs, you mean?’

  ‘She’s not Arabic, in fact. She’s from Iran,’ Paula put in.

  ‘Same difference.’

  ‘She’d tell you otherwise.’

  ‘Wears one of them burqa things, doesn’t she?’

  Scott froze. ‘There’s a woman living over there who wears a burqa?’ he asked quietly. ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘This burqa. What colour is it? What’s the face part like?’ Paula asked.

  Leanne eyed her contemptuously. ‘There’s nothing over her face,’ she said. ‘It’s one of those headscarves, and the dressing gown thing.’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘I dunno. Grey, I suppose.’