The Accomplice

  There was no real conflict in her mind about what she should do. The address was thirty years old and most likely no longer valid, but it must be handed on to the police straightaway. She could under no circumstances withhold information. However, she thought as she slid her shoes on again and carried the box downstairs to her office, she did not see why she might not make Stevens pay for it. When she gave her name, she was put through to him at once.

  “Have you found the Cresacres?” she asked without preamble. She was not sure whether there was a moment’s hesitation before he spoke or whether the gap was caused by his naturally calm manner. His reply when it came was as frank as her question. There was an assumption of a shared enquiry.

  “No, nor the Gillings.”

  Zita was wondering how long DNA testing would take and whether the Cresacres might refuse to be involved. Their willingness to co-operate would depend entirely on their attitude to the police and to the death of their child. They might want to leave their grief in the past.

  “I might have something to help you. I was pursuing my own enquiries when I came across an address for the Cresacres when they left Woodham.”

  There was another pause, more pronounced this time. “That’s… fortunate. What’s the date of the new address?”

  “It’s 1962, so it’s not exactly hot. But it could be a start for you.”

  “It could,” he agreed. “It is very public-spirited of you to hand it on.”

  “You wouldn’t have expected less. But if it is…”

  “If it is what?”

  “If it is your Cresacres, I want to meet them.”

  “Go ahead. You’re the one with the address.”

  “I haven’t any status,” Zita said bluntly.

  “And I have?”

  “Precisely.”

  “This is unorthodox.”

  “It’s co-operative. This is the address: 22 Baxendine Drive, Crawley.” She heard him move a sheet of paper as he received her dictation and then he said, “Right, I’ll get back to you.”

  He rang her that evening at home. “This is unofficial.”

  “OK.”

  “If you were to make a visit, unannounced, on your Cresacres at three tomorrow afternoon, by a curious coincidence you would find me about to go in. They’re expecting me.”

  “OK. Well, thanks. I’ll be there.”

  The following morning she rearranged her day and then rang the local paper. Did they keep back numbers, she wanted to know. The archivist referred her to the library; they had no room at the paper’s offices for more than ten years’ worth of bound volumes, he affirmed, but the local studies room at the library had copies going back to 1720. What period was she interested in? Zita rang the library and asked if she could see the volumes of the local paper for 1960 and 1961 that morning. If she was to meet the Cresacres, she was going to find out what she could about the case.

  Zita drove to Crawley thinking about the papers she had skimmed over in the library earlier that day. There had been pages about the case of Eddie Cresacre, his disappearance, the arrest of Petre and, later, the trial. The parents, however, had featured little. There had been a photograph of them in one of the earliest articles, their heads together, turning as if to avoid the camera flash. They did not look young, even then.

  She stopped several times to consult her map and finally turned into a street of prim, pre-war bungalows, its invitingly straight length cut by the humps of sleeping policemen. She identified the house and drew up in front of it. An elderly Fiesta was parked outside a small garage; a curving path led up to the porch between the neat grass of a flowerless front garden. A little farther up the road was an unmarked black car which must be Stevens’. His door opened as she got out. She had wondered if they would put on a show of surprise at seeing one another, but he did not bother. He led the way down the path with no more than a nod of greeting.

  The door was opened to them promptly by a gaunt figure dressed in old flannels and a neatly buttoned cardigan and they were led through the hall to the sitting room at the back, looking onto another green patch.

  Mr and Mrs Cresacre settled themselves in armchairs on either side of the fireplace containing an electric log fire. This forced Stevens and Zita to sit awkwardly side by side on the hard bench-like sofa, between them. The parents of the murdered child were by now over seventy, Zita judged, much older than she expected. Eddie Cresacre remained fixed at seven years old, his round face polished like an apple for the school photograph which had been used time and again in the newspaper reports, and in her mind his parents had remained at the age they would have been in 1960. So it was a shock to be reminded that although Eddie would always be seven, his parents were now a generation older, of grandparental age. They were both thin and pallid, with a bloodless, fragile air. They spoke little. There was no rush of words of welcome, or of curiosity. This seemed to be due less to wariness than to habitual reserve. The house had an atmosphere of passivity and silence about it. Everything was very tidy. Although the signs of the clutter of everyday life were there: newspapers beside the chairs, letters and circulars on the table near the window, each pile was ranged with an obsessive neatness.

  They sat attentively, without showing emotion, as Stevens explained about the discovery of a child’s skeleton in Broad Woodham and his belief that it might be their son’s body. When he had finished speaking, Freda Cresacre turned her gaze from Stevens to her husband, not to see what his reaction would be, but as if confident that he would express her thoughts for her without her having to speak.

  “That’s very interesting, Mr Stevens. And it’s very good of you to come all this way to tell us about it. But from our point of view, it doesn’t really make much difference. We know his soul is with Jesus, so where his body lies doesn’t matter. Isn’t that so, Mother?”

  She nodded. “There was a time, straight afterwards, when I wanted a grave to decorate, to visit every week. But we came through that. And I don’t want it any more.” She corrected herself. “Of course, if it were him – Eddie – we would have to see he got a proper burial. I suppose that’s what you’ve come about. But I’m so used to thinking of him above, I don’t think of him needing a grave any more.”

  Stevens was about to speak when Jim Cresacre said, “And how can we know it is him? I can’t see how, after all this time, you can tell. He wouldn’t be recognizable, I imagine. He’d be all eaten away.”

  “Oh, Jim.” His wife’s cry of distress was involuntary.

  “This is very painful for you, I know,” Stevens said, “which is why I wanted to come myself. It’s now possible to identify people from their remains, even after thirty, thirty-two years. It’s called DNA profiling and they’ve got techniques of finding minute bits of genetic material in the bones and blowing them up until they can read the genetic code.” Jim Cresacre sat listening and nodding at what Stevens was saying, as if, Zita thought, he was already thoroughly familiar with the principle that was being described. He probably was, from having watched some science programme on television. “But, and this is where I would need your help, you have to have something to compare it with, a relative’s DNA. They can’t say who the dead person is, they can only say this dead person was or was not, most likely, related to this living one. So, if we took a blood sample of yours, Mr Cresacre, we could find out if the child was Eddie, and then, if it were, we would be able to release the remains to you for Christian burial.”

  Zita noted Stevens’ cunning use of the epithet “Christian”. But the old couple, who had begun the meeting with perfect composure, were now showing signs of unease.

  “It’s the same principle as a paternity test,” Stevens was explaining, “except with this new technique you can do it over many generations, to discover if a skeleton belonged to your great-grandfather.”

  Freda Cresacre was leaning forward in her chair now. “Oh, I don’t think we want any tests done, like that. It’s quite unnecessary. I think it isn’t Eddie’s body. Who kn
ows what that man did with it. Do you remember how he said he had left him in the Whitham Woods and they spent three days going through them, walking in lines to and fro? And again on the Guildford road and somewhere else too. I shall never forget that. Somehow I thought then if I got his body it would be getting Eddie back. It was mad. What difference does a body make? No, I don’t think we want tests.”

  “Well, Mrs Cresacre, I appreciate that for you, after all these years, finding the body doesn’t have the meaning it once did and brings up all kinds of unpleasant memories. But it would help us, you see. It would be a kind of elimination. If it is Eddie, then it’s not someone else. If is not Eddie, who is it? Why is it there?”

  “I might have known. It’s not for us that you bothered to come.”

  Jim Cresacre spoke over the top of his wife’s bitterness. “Why is it there? How would Petre have buried the body in someone else’s garden? It can’t be Eddie, it stands to reason.”

  “It would help us greatly in our enquiries if you could see your way to help us to eliminate Eddie.”

  They had reached a stand off. Stevens had clearly thought at the start that the finding of their son’s body would be pleasing to the Cresacres; once he had understood their position, he spoke of “elimination” of Eddie from the enquiries. The conversation began to turn in circles. Freda Cresacre repeated her belief that her son was “above”, rather than on earth; Stevens patiently reiterated his need for their assistance.

  Zita glanced round the room which was dim in comparison with the brilliance of the sun on the grass outside. No books were displayed in the alcoves, no photographs. A few small ornaments of little animals, their cuddly, furry aspects coldly rendered in ceramic, were ranged, widely spaced, on the lower shelves. In one corner were two telephone directories, and on top of them a compact, solid volume, unmistakably a Bible.

  Stevens was now trying a different tack, emphasizing how easy the test was. “Just a pin prick of blood would be all that’s necessary,” he was saying. “There’s no need to go anywhere special, to the doctor or a laboratory. Somebody would come and take a little drop from your thumb. It’s not complicated or painful. It’s a very common one nowadays, the paternity test, and they’re so good at it they can do it on Egyptian mummies.”

  The agitation in Freda Cresacre became more pronounced. “No,” she said. “Dad won’t do it. Why should he? He doesn’t like injections.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a blood test,” said Stevens, sounding a bit desperate by now. “Just a little swab around the mouth with cotton wool. For some reason the scientists prefer blood, but saliva’ll do.”

  Zita leaned forward, towards Mrs Cresacre. “Would you rather take the test?” she asked. Both Cresacres looked at her for their first time. They had clearly registered her as some kind of junior assistant, a secretary possibly, and her initiative seemed to surprise them. There was a long pause, which Stevens did not break.

  “I don’t know,” Mrs Cresacre replied at last. “Would it work, then, for me?”

  “Of course. And I would have said that it was a better idea myself. After all, you are his mother and that is a much more certain relationship than paternity.”

  Her comment was a statement of impersonal scientific fact. It was aimed, obliquely, at Stevens for his concentration on Mr Cresacre, his ignoring of the wife. As she was speaking she regretted what she was saying, which might be misunderstood by two people who were probably very literal-minded. The reaction she received was astonishing. Mrs Cresacre leaned back in her chair, her hands gripping the ends of the arms, her eyes closed. Her face was contorting to such a degree that Zita thought that she might be about to have an epileptic fit.

  “The sins of the past rise up and cry out against me. There’s no cheating God. You can live a righteous life for very nearly forty years – Eddie would have been thirty-nine this year – but the sins of your past come back to haunt you. You try to forget…”

  Her husband lurched forward from his chair, trying to release the grip of her hands, stroking her forehead. “There’s no crying out against you, Freda. You can do the test, if they insist. There’s no need to go through all that again. The past is dead and buried.”

  It was an hour later when Zita and Stevens got back into their cars. As the front door had closed on them he had said, “Let’s go somewhere for some tea.” She had nodded in agreement. He led the way and she saw he was taking them back to Woodham. She followed docilely, thankful for a period of isolation in her car after an afternoon of emotion.

  They were approaching the outskirts of the town. Stevens turned off the ring road one roundabout early into an estate of modern houses whose unfenced front gardens gave the area an American atmosphere, as if the inhabitants were all saying, we have nothing to hide, no secrets here, we’re all upfront. He swung the car into a driveway in front of a double garage.

  “We really need a drink after all that,” he said as he waited for her to join him. “But it’s too early and I’ve still got work to do. So it’ll have to be tea. Come in.” He unlocked the glass front door and waved at the room straight ahead. “Go on in,” he said. “I’ll bring it through.”

  Zita had made no protest, not even a conventional one; she was curious to see him at home. Houses concealed as much as they revealed: her own said that she had a handicapped son and not much more. Yet there was something to be learned, nonetheless. This one was arranged for ease and comfort over elegance or style. It was tidy without the obsessiveness of the Cresacres. There were books in a bookcase against one wall interspersed with a run of CDs and another of videos. It defined itself openly as middle of everything, middle class, middle aged, middle brow. Yet there were incongruities that jarred, not violently but insistently, with the bland surface. The flowers on the coffee table were a huge arching bunch of white scented lilies. On a side table, under a lamp, was a gathering of photographs, not the family snapshots that might have been expected, but stiff, signed black and white portraits, dating from the twenties or thirties, of the kind that are seen standing on the cashmere shawl thrown over a grand piano in a great house. There was a woman in a trim little suit and a hat with a feather, again in a white ballgown; an army officer wearing jodhpurs and a curious little forage cap; a be-medalled old buffer with mustachios and white hair cut en brosse. Zita had only time to glance at them before Stevens came in carrying a tray with a pot of tea, two mugs and a plate of chocolate digestives.

  “Well,” he said, after a moment or two. “I’ll have you sit in on an interview, any time. You really know how to punch below the belt.”

  “You got what you wanted, didn’t you?” Zita said disagreeably. “She’s going to do the test for you.”

  “I told you they beat up Petre, didn’t I? No names were ever mentioned, but we all knew who’d done it. It wasn’t just the lads, the PCs. One of them was my boss. He wasn’t much good as a CID officer. He had no understanding of psychology at all. But, by God, he could kick your head in with the best around. You remind me of him.”

  “Don’t tell me that you saw it all, understood it all, and had decided to say nothing,” Zita said furiously, “because I bloody won’t believe you.” She never swore; she never found it necessary to swear. What was happening to her? “I said it as a statement of fact. I didn’t know the result it would produce.”

  “So that’s it now. No skill involved, just chance. No admiration required.”

  “Well, did you guess?”

  “No. That’s why I was speaking to him. I thought in these old-fashioned godly families, it’s the man who is in charge. You can’t undermine him by addressing the wife. I hadn’t even worked out that it really had to be the mother who had to take the test.”

  In the face of this admission, Zita said, “I suppose I guessed something when they were both so anxious for him not to take the test, but I spoke before I had time to work out the implications. Oh hell.” She put the heels of her hands into her eyes, to blank out what she had seen. “Wh
at a mentality. Thirty years of thinking a child died as punishment for your sin. And if I understood properly from all that self-abasement, it was one drunken, adulterous fling.”

  Throughout the hour of painful, unstoppable confession that Zita and Stevens had endured, Freda Cresacre had paradoxically never lost control. She had raved, tugged at her own hair, literally beaten her narrow chest with her fists. Yet all the time Zita had the impression that she willed her behaviour. She wanted to confess and she was determined to do so. She may have played the same part on several previous occasions. Certainly, her husband had known that Eddie was not his child before the disappearance. Afterwards, she had become convinced that the child’s death was a punishment for what she had done; her self-reproach must have reached the proportions of near-madness. To have precipitated and witnessed such an outburst had left Zita ashamed and depressed, angry with Stevens and with her own success. She did not altogether want the test done. Even if it were Eddie Cresacre, Stevens would be a long way from arresting Yevgenia for murder, but things would look a great deal worse for her.

  “How long will it take, the test?” Zita asked.

  “Not long. The old one used to take about six weeks, but they’ve got a new one now which is still under trial. It amplifies the DNA from the old bones. You really need marrow and there’s not much of that left after thirty years, but they can now isolate DNA from the smallest scraps and enlarge it. The difficulty is with the old stuff, of course, not the new. It’s not as precise as the old test, but it’ll certainly tell us if the body was Freda Cresacre’s son.”