Life Sentence

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Including looking at the CCTV tapes for the umpteenth time?’

  She raised the hand, the ball-point scrawl still visible. ‘Exactly so. So what I’d like is for him to be asked to do just that, to look for what I asked him to look for and then return to the Elise case, unless, of course, he can be truly useful in your investigation. Thanks.’ She nodded to both men and withdrew.

  By the time she’d returned to her office, having gone via the loo, there was a cup of coffee waiting for her, sitting on a scrawl from Tom: Checking video. T.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Elaine said, waving her chopsticks in surprisingly elegant emphasis. ‘You really like this man who happens to be your boss, he’s an old friend of yours, you fancy him like mad, he’s single – OK, a widower, and you say falling in love is inconvenient. What planet are you on, Fran?’

  ‘This one, more’s the pity. I have to go down to Teignmouth as soon as I work out my notice. And I go down there practically every weekend as it is. How can I possibly make space in my life for falling in love?’

  ‘Won’t wash. You made space for Ian, in the middle of your PhD, in the middle of a huge case here.’

  Fran dropped her gaze, and then lifted her eyes again. ‘There was a future in that. We planned to live the rest of our lives together.’

  ‘Are you saying you should only love someone as a long-term investment? Not a lot of romance there, Fran. Hey, looks as if we’d better open that other bottle.’

  ‘If I have another drop I shall be asleep with my head in all these little plastic trays – neat, aren’t they? You can wash them, fill them with your own food for the freezer and microwave them.’

  Chopsticks now suspended over a choice king prawn, Elaine regarded her with pained exasperation. ‘You weren’t always like this, Fran. What’s gone wrong?’ She put them down and opened more wine regardless.

  ‘I was always like this. It’s just that it shows more now I’m middle-aged. I can’t eat late at night, drink as much, stay awake as long. Where’s all the fun?’

  ‘With this Mark, by the sound of it. What does the poor man say about being dumped before he’s even started?’

  ‘He hasn’t been dumped. We just haven’t quite… He was going to give me a lift to Devon last weekend only this missing child case blew up and we both stayed to help.’

  ‘A lift? Doesn’t sound very romantic.’

  ‘Nothing about Devon is very romantic. Not the part I go to anyway. But we were due to go out to dinner with some friends of his. Hence the hairdo.’ She tugged at it.

  ‘Which he has seen. And remarked on?’

  ‘Briefly. Well, we worked right across the weekend with hardly a break.’ But he could have said something more. Other people had. When she had bumped into him at the supermarket even that loathsome Pitt had said it with his eyes. ‘Any more?’ She looked in something like despair at the food congealing in all those microwavable plastic dishes.

  For answer, Elaine got to her feet and shot off, returning with the kitchen bin, into which she swept everything, chopsticks and all.

  ‘Hang on – I told you, I wash and recycle—’

  ‘Bugger recycling! For God’s sake, Fran, how many little plastic boxes do you need?’

  ‘A lot. For my parents’ meals.’ She explained.

  Elaine snorted, but made no effort to retrieve the boxes, instead grabbing the bin and disappearing. ‘Let me get this straight too,’ Elaine said, as she returned. ‘You work your socks off here and then every weekend you drive some two hundred-odd miles to Devon where you slave full-time and then drive two hundred-odd miles home – or, if I know you, straight into work, where for five more days you toil before setting off to Devon.’

  Fran nodded. That summed it up, didn’t it?

  ‘No wonder you’ve no time for this Mark character. So he decides to make a bit of time with you – well, they get big jams on that route – by offering you a lift. And back?’

  ‘He didn’t suggest I thumb a lift. Actually, he’s been extraordinarily kind these last few weeks. Patient, tolerant. We’ve had dinner—’

  ‘A good snog afterwards?’

  ‘You’re incorrigible! But today, when I had a stand-up row with another officer, one who, incidentally, referred to me as a “superannuated old whore”, presumably because everyone except Mark and I seems to think we’re an item—’

  ‘Hang on. Did this bastard say that in front of Mark? I’m losing the thread. I must have had too much wine.’ Elaine inspected the bottle and poured another glass each.

  ‘No.’ She meant to answer Elaine’s question, not decline the wine, though she should have done. She got up to fetch mineral water but before she could leave the room Elaine continued her cross-examination.

  ‘In front of anyone else?’

  ‘A roomful of interested ears. So—’

  ‘And has he been had up for a disciplinary? Fran, why ever not? You really aren’t yourself, are you? Anyway, this row later in front of him – did Mark take your part?’

  ‘No. I actually put my hand on his arm to stop him. It was my row and I didn’t want him chipping in.’

  ‘He’s your senior officer, Fran: he’s entitled to chip in.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t. Afterwards, I rather expected him to summon me to his office or come round to mine. Or phone. Or something. Even though I wanted to be here to welcome you – Elaine, this sounds awful – I hung round doing my filing and checking my emails for ages, just in case he made contact. But he didn’t.’

  Elaine pulled a face. ‘On the other hand,’ she added, ‘if he’s senior to you he must be a very big wig – mightn’t he just have been busy? Why don’t you phone him?’ She tossed over the handset. ‘Go on, phone him – while I go and have a pee. Heavens, is that the time? I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn to get that train!’

  ‘What shall I say?’

  ‘Well, you could tell him you’re both being bloody fools pussy-footing around, but I don’t suppose you will. Listen, Fran. Life isn’t a dress rehearsal, so far as I know. So what if you and this guy have only a few weeks together? If it doesn’t work out then a few weeks is quite long enough. If it does, then you’ll just have to find some way round the Devon problem. OK?’

  Fran let the handset fall into her lap. She retrieved it and replaced it on the phone, which she switched to answerphone mode. Kitchen next: she had to lay breakfast things for Elaine.

  ‘Now what are you up to?’ Elaine stood, hands on hips, in the doorway.

  ‘Breakfast things.’

  ‘I thought you always ate at work? And I shall be having a champagne breakfast on the train, thanks very much.’

  Fran nodded. Switching on the dishwasher, she asked idly, ‘What are you doing in France this time? Selling a load of anti-ageing pills?’

  ‘Better – doing the shops, buying more than I can afford, eating at the best restaurants.’

  ‘I wish I could come with you.’

  ‘Next time maybe. This time I’m doing what you should be doing: I’m meeting my lover.’

  Had Elise ever had a lover, if not, of course, in the physical sense? A gentleman friend, then? Awoken early despite Elaine’s efforts to be quiet, Fran arrived at work when the night shift were still keeping the search for Rebecca ticking over.

  To her amusement, the whiteboards continually updated with developments now bore the words Road works? Workmen’s shelters? Where had they got that from, eh?

  The gloom of the early morning was clearing to reveal a bright sunny day. She might just be magnanimous in victory and lend Tom Arkwright to the other team, and make herself scarce, doing the basic gumshoeing she’d started to enjoy again. Elise, aka Miss Marjorie Gray, had lived in St Mary’s Bay. Why not give herself a trip to the seaside? She could doorstep the neighbours as well as Tom, better, probably, given the likely age of the people she wanted to talk to. She might even find a nice seafront café for breakfast. When had she l
ast seen the sea? It seemed it was possible to spend an infinite number of weekends in Teignmouth, English Riviera resort par excellence, without even seeing it, and certainly without feeling the spray in your face.

  In the absence of any communication from Mark – she had checked both her pigeonhole and, less hopefully, her desk, she resolved to set out at once. St Mary’s Bay wouldn’t compete with Paris and a lover, but it would have to do.

  Would the rest of her life consist of things that would have to do?

  Leaving a note for Tom, confirming he was to report to Henson, but not for Mark, she straightened, pulling her shoulders back and looking as bright as she could. She would stride through the outer office as briskly as if she were meeting the Home Secretary himself.

  With luck, she could vacate her car park space before Mark arrived.

  Or would it be even better luck to come face to face with him? To be forced to do what Elaine had advised – confront the issue face on.

  There was another way he might have communicated. She switched on her computer and scrolled through her incoming emails. Nothing.

  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t send him one. What would it say? For a start, that she was leaving the building and might be away till lunch or longer. At her level there was no need to give an account of herself, not in any formal sense, but she had always instilled in those she trained that being off on a job was no excuse for keeping management in the dark about their movements. Why not add something else? A simple invitation for supper would do. A repeat of last night’s meal, without the references to little plastic boxes – though Mark, with his recycling tendencies, would probably thoroughly approve.

  There. It was done and sent. Not so very hard. The hard part would be waiting for his response. It was a good job she had St Mary’s Bay to occupy her thoughts.

  Miss Gray had lived in a cul-de-sac of bungalows in a pseudo-Spanish mode, all with names like Hacienda or Casita. There was, if not a forest, then a plantation of For Sale signs, about half with Sold tacked across them. She rang the bell – the chime was incredibly protracted – of Buena Vista, Miss Gray’s former home. No one responded. She applied her eye then, on impulse, her nose to the letterbox. There was nothing to see, but the smell of old people seeped unmistakably back. She recoiled as if from the stench of decomposition itself.

  The houses to either side of Miss Gray’s bungalow still had their curtains drawn. Perhaps knowing there was nowhere in the immediate area that opened its respectable doors for breakfast before ten encouraged oversleeping. Fran’s stomach rolled plaintively for the canteen meal she’d ignored. So where were the signs of life? At last a Passat shot into the close, swinging stylishly on to the drive of the house opposite Buena Vista, missing the For Sale sign by inches, and parking with precision two inches from the garage door. From it emerged a middle-aged, track-suited couple, she opening the front door while he dug in the boot for a multi-racquet tennis bag. This house had no name in curly wrought iron letters affixed to the wall. A distinctly sub fusc sign by the For Sale sign conceded the house was Hermosa. Fran found herself liking the couple before she’d even met them.

  They didn’t, however, respond to her ring immediately. After a few moments’ interval, she applied her thumb again, and the door was answered by a man possibly in his later fifties, maybe early sixties, wearing a bathrobe.

  She flashed her ID. ‘Chief Superintendent Fran Harman. Kent CID. May I have a very few minutes of your time? I’m making enquiries about one of your neighbours.’

  ‘I was just about to have a shower.’

  It sounded as if the woman was already doing so.

  ‘I could wait,’ she said mildly.

  He nodded her in, and led the way to the living room, a room decorated in a spare modern style that Fran warmed to immediately.

  ‘If you really don’t mind, Chief Superintendent, I’ll go and change.’

  ‘Take your time, Mr – er? If you want to shower first, that’s fine by me,’ she said expansively, surprising even herself.

  ‘Drayton. Neil Drayton. My wife Julie will be with you in a moment. I’m afraid we don’t have long. We’re meeting some friends in London for lunch, then a gallery. Can’t miss the train.’

  ‘Don’t worry – I’ll be as quick as I can.’ She sat on the sofa and looked round: prints, china, a lovely piece of coloured glass – the Draytons had the knack of homemaking.

  Mrs Drayton appeared, her white, cropped hair still wet. ‘Time for tea or coffee, Chief Superintendent? We usually have coffee but—’

  ‘Coffee’s fine, thanks.’ Fran got up and followed her hostess into a kitchen labouring under the impression that it was in some mythical prairie farmhouse, all dark wood and curlicues. ‘As I told your husband, I really need some information about one of your neighbours, one who may have left the area about two years ago.’

  Mrs Drayton pulled a face. ‘We’ve not been here much longer. There’s a very brisk turnover rate in Death Valley.’

  ‘Death Valley?’

  ‘This close. Look at the For Sale signs. Deaths, all of them. Except ours. Retirement’s one thing, but hanging round for the undertaker’s quite another. That’s why we’re leaving. We thought we’d fit in, but we don’t. Moral: when you reach retirement age, settle with a load of youngsters – much more fun. Well, not the very young: they need babysitting. But people in their forties and fifties – people your age, still active and interesting. And whatever you do, don’t even think of retiring to a seaside resort. In the summer you can’t park and in the winter you don’t want to. Sea views! Have you ever watched the sea in the winter? It makes you suicidal.’ She made instant coffee in mugs, and, apparently as an afterthought, tipped Waitrose biscuits on to a plate. The hands were those of a much older woman than Fran had expected from the face and figure. So how old was her hostess?

  ‘Where are you moving to? Somewhere nearer your children?’

  ‘Why on earth would we want to do that?’ Mrs Drayton seemed genuinely astonished. ‘We’re going to try out Exeter. That’s supposed to be vibrant and full of life. We’re only renting, so if we don’t like it we can move to Birmingham. Or Nottingham. Or wherever.’

  Mr Drayton, hair also still wet, bounded into the living room a moment after their return, depositing himself on the sofa and stretching long legs. His age? The fashions in the photos of them on top of the TV suggested they must have been in their seventies. No, surely not. Did people still play tennis at that age? Without the photos she’d have put them in their mid-sixties. Somewhere they’d found a fount of protracted, if not eternal, youth.

  She produced the old e-fit of Elise. Miss Marjorie Gray.

  ‘Imagine her with dark hair – greying, at least. Could she possibly have been a neighbour?’

  ‘Not that nice quiet woman, what was her name?’ her husband joined in.

  ‘You do know her, then?’

  ‘Well, it’s not a very good likeness, if it is her. Mind you, we hardly saw her.’

  ‘She kept herself to herself, you mean?’

  ‘She did, but that wasn’t what I meant, is it, Julie? I meant we’re hardly ever here to see her. We’ve just got back from the Galapagos Islands, Superintendent. Hey, are you sure you’re a chief superintendent? On TV it’s always a couple of detectives, usually a DCI and a constable or sergeant.’

  She held up her ID again. ‘We rarely do more than flash them, I’m afraid. And I’m afraid the TV’s wrong – it’s usually one constable, two at most, that you get, but this is a one-off case and I just fancied keeping my hand in.’

  ‘Better than being behind a desk on a day like this,’ he agreed, nodding out of the window.

  ‘Assuming it might be Miss Gray, do you have any idea what happened to her?’

  ‘There was talk that she sold up and moved away as soon as her parents died. There was a rumour,’ Mrs Drayton added, leaning closer, ‘that she sold the house for cash for far less than its asking price. And she tried to throw
carpets and furniture and curtains in as well.’

  ‘Really? Now why should she want to do that?’ Fran wondered aloud.

  ‘A clean break, she said. She was making a clean break and going back up north,’ Mr Drayton supplied.

  ‘You’ve no idea where up north?’

  He shook his head. ‘There’s a lot of it, isn’t there? So if you were trying to trace her…’

  ‘In fact,’ Mrs Drayton said, ‘I have an idea that the purchasers demanded she completely empty the house. The smell,’ she added delicately. ‘A bit musty. You know how it is.’

  Mrs Drayton looked discreetly at her watch; Mr Drayton was far more open. ‘Our train, Superintendent. We can only stay another five minutes.’

  ‘You’ve been more than helpful as it is,’ Fran said swiftly. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t recall which estate agent dealt with the property?’

  ‘A local one. Burgoynes, I think. Or Butterfield. You see so many signs, Chief Superintendent.’

  ‘So I see. Now, I’ll leave you to enjoy what I hope is a wonderful day. But – before I do – perhaps I could ask you one more favour? No, it’s not urgent. Could you possibly identify the person we think this is?’ She tapped the e-fit.

  ‘A body!’ Both recoiled. ‘If it’s our duty,’ he conceded.

  ‘Not a body at all,’ Fran said reassuringly. She added, more honestly, ‘Actually, it may be even more upsetting.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Waving her energetic hosts goodbye, Fran tried another couple of Elise’s possible neighbours, now, according to their curtains, ready to tackle the world. One old lady, apparently as sane as Fran when she invited her in and offered her tea, declared with total conviction that Elise was the Prime Minister, and if only she could remember her name she wouldn’t have to go into a home, would she? The other neighbour, a man so old his skin was reptilian, laboured under the impression that Fran was there to check his colostomy bag.