The Calling

by Alison Bruce

  Ruth blinked, bewildered for a second, but then she obviously remembered, and Goodhew knew he had found a second witness. ‘Oh, God,’ she breathed.

  ‘Gawd? Is that the only bloody useful thing you can say? Is the display copy still up?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll take it down now and you can take it with you, Mr Goodhew.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll get some details from Zal here and come back to you afterwards, is that OK?’ he asked, as she whipped a tissue from her sleeve and sniffed into it.

  Zal led him through the museum, past a display of soap powder and chocolate wrappers, to the gift shop. ‘That’s the item,’ she announced, pointing to a reproduction tin advert showing a radiant blonde in a sunny-yellow, two-piece swimsuit, climbing up towards a diving board. ‘Bile Beans, the medically tested laxative, that gives you health, grace and vitality,’ she read. ‘Charming, eh?’

  Gary lifted the advert off its hook. ‘Do you know whether she bought anything else in here?’

  ‘Sure. She bought a book, Good Housekeeping in the 1940s, and a birthday card from the main shopping centre. You’d better check with Ruth, though, in case she can remember anything else.’

  ‘I will, but I’d like to go back over to the café first.’

  ‘Good idea. I left it locked up and Adolf Armitage will be on my back if I’m not careful.’ Zal led the way back into the courtyard, ‘You met her at the tourist centre, I suppose?’

  ‘Teresa Armitage?’ queried Goodhew.

  ‘Goat dressed up as mutton.’ Zal pulled the waitress hat out of her pocket. ‘All 3-D make-up and up her own arse. Owns shares in the café, manages the tourism centre. She’s not the real manager; just covering for a long-term sick leave, and now she’s pissed off because he’s almost better. The only way she’d have cracked a smile was if she’d had the chance to donate to his funeral flowers.’ She yanked the hat over her hair and tucked up the worst of the stray strands. ‘Right, what do you want to know?’

  ‘Firstly, where did Kaye Whiting sit?’

  Zal pointed over to the windows. ‘She sat at the corner table, by the plants, and she kept looking out all the time.’

  ‘OK, let’s sit over there, then.’ Goodhew sat down in Kaye’s seat, with the windows on his right and the doorway straight ahead. ‘What did she order?’

  ‘Hot chocolate. We do it in glasses in holders, floating with fresh cream. I think she had two.’

  ‘At the same time?’ asked Goodhew sharply.

  ‘No, one after the other. Both for her, but she was thin enough to take it. Unlike some of us.’ She grabbed the excess flab on her stomach and wobbled it. ‘When diet food comes out of a packet as fast as a Mars Bar, that’s when I’ll lose weight.’

  ‘And how did she seem?’ Goodhew asked.

  Zal paused and gazed into thin air, as if remembering. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fine? Not at all ill at ease?’

  Zal shook her head; again she was quite sure. ‘You don’t drink hot chocolate if you’re not in the mood to indulge yourself, do you? But I think she was waiting for someone.’

  Gary’s gaze locked into hers. ‘Who?’

  Zal smiled apologetically. ‘I didn’t see anyone, I’m afraid. I asked her if she wanted anything else, and she said she wouldn’t have time, but then she sat here another twenty minutes. Well, I think she was waiting for someone, and that someone was bloody late picking her up.’ She pointed back to the counter. ‘I was over there the next time I noticed her, but I think she spotted whoever it was, because she suddenly gathered up her bags and called thanks, and said she wasn’t stranded after all, or something like that, and she left.’

  ‘And when exactly did she show you what she’d bought?’ he asked.

  ‘Between hot chocolates. She got chatting when I cleared the next table, so I stopped with her for a couple of minutes. Adolf would say that’s idleness, but I think it’s part of customer care, don’t you?’

  Gary nodded. ‘And is there anything else at all that you can remember?’

  The woman shook her head.

  Gary was now keen to leave for Cambridge but he still had a statement to take from Ruth Collette at the museum. He fought the desire to rush and scanned his notes in case any other questions jumped out at him. Nothing did, but he needed to be thorough, so he asked, ‘Do you mind if we run through it one more time?’

  ‘No problem, as long as it’s over some hot chocolate.’

  CHAPTER 21

  THURSDAY, 31 MARCH 2011

  Gary dumped the carrier bag of videotapes on to the passenger seat and pulled a reporter’s notepad from the glovebox. The front sheet was covered by a spider’s web of words and phrases that he’d jotted randomly across the sheet. He’d circled some of the words and then linked some of these with lines and arrows.

  Ruth Collette’s statement had added nothing to Zal’s but between them the two women had provided a key piece of information.

  In an empty corner of the page he wrote ‘Woodbridge’ and ran an arrow from the heading ‘Last Sighting’ to point at it directly. He doubted the victim had made it back to Cambridge, because somehow, between a happy afternoon in Woodbridge and home, she’d been abducted and abandoned.

  After a few minutes he paused, resting his gaze on the water. He couldn’t imagine how she would have been abducted by anyone other than the person she’d been waiting for in the café. Had she unwittingly stepped into the car with the killer’s plans already made, or had she fallen out with her driver – or companions – somewhere along the journey home?

  If the driver or any fellow passengers weren’t connected to the killer, why hadn’t they come forward? Perhaps he or they were protecting someone else.

  Goodhew next wrote ‘Who gave Kaye a lift?’ and went over the question mark several times until it made a heavy black indentation on the page. He stared alternately at the words ‘caller’ and ‘killer’. Were they one and the same?

  Gary quickly ran through some possibilities. If the person or persons who had given her a lift had killed her, then it was almost certainly someone she knew.

  What if the anonymous caller had given Kaye a lift? Perhaps Kaye was seeing the mystery caller’s husband or boyfriend, and perhaps the other woman had found out. But then Kaye wouldn’t have gone shopping with her; she would have gone with her lover instead. And was he now protecting his spouse? No, that theory didn’t quite work, but …

  Gary tapped the paper impatiently with his fingers as if he was trying to nudge the correct answer on to the sheet.

  But what if Kaye was stealing this man away from a friend?

  What if Kaye thought her friend didn’t know? She would be happy to take a lift from her, then.

  Was the mystery caller this same friend? If so, how did Peter Walsh fit in? Was he the cheating boyfriend?

  Had the caller made the abduction just to scare Kaye … or to scare Peter? Perhaps she hadn’t intended Kaye to die.

  Too many permutations. He buckled up his seatbelt and started the engine. He drew one final line leading from the heading ‘Woodbridge’ out to a new query: ‘Where are the presents?’ He then dumped his notes on the passenger seat.

  He headed out of the town on the same road that he’d come in on. The breeze from his slightly open window caused the top sheet of his pad to quiver slightly, then ripple and lift to reveal the blank second page. He stopped at the next roundabout and reached across to toss it back into the glovebox. The last words he’d written suddenly jumped out at him from the page.

  ‘Oh shit,’ he groaned and swung the car back towards Woodbridge.

  Zal Pearson beamed widely when she spotted him crossing the café floor. ‘Didn’t expect to see you back so soon. Fancy another hot chocolate already?’

  Goodhew shook his head. ‘I forgot to ask you. Could you show me which birthday card she bought?’

  Zal wiped her hands on a tea towel and removed her apron. ‘I don’t know if I’d actually recognize it, but we can have a go. I think
it was in a Fantasia bag.’

  She locked the café for a second time, and they crossed the Thoroughfare and headed into the crammed gift shop. Zal scanned the rows of cards, then picked out a handmade one with rough-cut paper shapes mounted on a square of ribbon. She ran her fingers across it thoughtfully; something about its texture seemed familiar, but it wasn’t the one. She dropped it back into its pigeonhole. ‘I don’t know,’ she groaned. ‘I only saw it for a moment.’

  Gary was standing beside an upright display stand. He spun it through one hundred and eighty degrees. ‘How about these?’

  Zal shrugged. ‘You don’t want much, do you?’ she began, but then her eye fell on the bottom row of cards, each adorned with slivers of paper curled into leaves and petals. ‘Quilling – that’s it!’ She grabbed a handful of about fifteen cards and flicked through them; each was slightly different. ‘They’re all of them one-offs, but I’d say this is the closest.’

  She passed it to Gary. He frowned as he read the message on the front. ‘Except it said “Happy Birthday, Grandmother”, I suppose?’

  He passed it back and she held it on top of the others, concentration wrinkling her forehead. Finally she flicked through the pile again and pulled out a second card. She passed them both back to Gary. ‘I remember now, she bought two. A Happy Birthday, Grandma card similar to that one, and definitely this one too.’

  Gary bought the two cards, thanked her, and headed back towards Cambridge. He cut easily through the miles, losing them under the wheels. Once in a while he glanced at the card on the passenger seat. It was pink with a raised spray of fuchsia and cream paper flowers beneath the words Happy Birthday, Mother.

  CHAPTER 22

  THURSDAY, 31 MARCH 2011

  The junction at the top of Station Road in Cambridge is almost triangular. The war memorial stands in the middle, and anyone overtaken by the desire to admire it or watch the endless stream of traffic, or even study the mundane elevations of the nearby offices, would have the choice of standing in a doorway or sitting at a café window or making the short walk to the Flying Pig and sitting at one of its pavement benches.

  The girl with the scarred wrists sat between an American tourist and a traveller with his collie dog.

  She gazed down between her thighs and through the slats of the wooden bench to the concrete below. The heels of her scuffed shoes shook as the balls of her feet reacted to uncontrollable nerves.

  She found a penny that had landed in a bare patch between pink and taupe splodges of dried-out chewing gum. See a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck.

  She didn’t pick it up though, just wondered whether she should.

  I can’t be bothered, she decided, and pushed her knee down until the shaking stopped. She gulped a few deep breaths before climbing to her feet. The lack of oxygen made her feel queasy and she panted a little as she pushed open the door and entered the bar, waiting at the counter.

  The landlady glanced at her and smiled, as she finished pulling a pint for the man in front, then pulled a stubby pencil from her pocket and jotted his food order on to a small pad. And the whole time she continued to smile, almost to herself as if there was a joke in her head.

  Who does she think she is? the girl wondered.

  She pretended she hadn’t noticed and turned away. Her gaze slipped on to the front page of a Cambridge News lying on the closest table. She tore her gaze away again; she didn’t want to see that face any more either.

  She studied the customers, and finally the landlady too. No one looked at her now. They’d be staring at me if I really looked like her.

  She checked her watch: 11.55.

  Above the heads of the customers and through the plate-glass windows she could see the main entrance of Dunwold Insurance. ‘Peter,’ she whispered, and her heart surged as she felt his name on her lips. He was nowhere to be seen, but he’d come out soon. She needed to be at her seat by the window, ready for what she called her next fix, the moment that would satisfy her addiction to him for another day.

  With a start she realized that the landlady was now waiting for her. She’d already put an empty cup and saucer ready, and was killing more time in sharpening her pencil over the bin. ‘Drink?’

  ‘Coffee.’ She scowled. The woman was like a bloody Cheshire Cat. She handed over the correct money and tried not to ask herself if and why she was being laughed at. Over-analysis was bad; she knew that, and had been taught to remember it.

  She settled in her usual seat and waited.

  Come on, Peter, where are you?

  She looked down and across the square outside. She scanned the groups of pedestrians, looking for those familiar bobbing heads, but there was no sign of either Peter or Paulette.

  She began an argument with herself: I couldn’t have missed him, could I? The butterflies flew faster in her stomach and she shivered again. Why can’t I forget him and get on with my life? she wondered.

  Because you’re obsessed by him, you stupid girl. Get some help. It’s gone on too long.

  I tried, didn’t I? Anyway, who would understand? She continued to argue with herself and stared down at the table top as ugly tears threatened to screw up her face. She pinched the fleshy skin next to the knuckle on her index finger and watched it redden around the twin dents left by her nails.

  You must make it stop. You can’t spend the rest of your life like this.

  I won’t, she promised and squeezed her eyes tight shut, pressing her face into her clasped hands. A tear still escaped and ran on to her thumb. I’ll stop him. Everyone will see it was him that’s mad and not me. And then he’ll be gone and I’ll be OK again.

  You’ll never be OK again. She shook her head, and continued to shake it as she replied to herself.

  Don’t say that. She rocked gently in her seat until she felt calmer. I’ll phone again. I’ll do it now.

  As she left the Flying Pig, she immediately noticed how busy the streets had become, the pavements in particular. She hurried towards the city centre, watching for a safe route through the crowd. She felt as though she was suffering from tunnel vision. Around the periphery a kind of nothingness, and in the middle, in over-sharp, over-bright detail, face after face. She stumbled on, watching for Peter. Looking into strangers’ faces. Trying to find someone staring back into her own.

  And what if someone recognizes you? she taunted herself. You won’t have the guts to grab them and demand to know what they’re staring at, will you?

  They’d think I was crazy. She carried on watching, though, but nobody even glanced at her. I’m the only one who thinks I look like Kaye Whiting, aren’t I?

  Perhaps you don’t at all. It could all be a terrible mistake, then you’ll pay.

  I know. I know. She thought of the sleeping pills she’d been taking since she’d first seen Kaye’s picture in the paper.

  She decided to use one of the call boxes in the row beside the newsagent’s. There were eight of them, and plenty of people around, so she hoped no one would notice her.

  She picked up the receiver, began to tap out the numbers and, when the call connected, she recognized the same female voice from the last time.

  ‘I rang before with some information about Kaye Whiting’s disappearance.’

  ‘Can I have your name please, caller?’ asked the police woman.

  ‘No, listen. I rang on Tuesday. I told you she was going to die if you didn’t stop Peter Walsh. Well, you didn’t and now she’s dead.’

  ‘What else can you tell us?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Do you have any evidence?’

  She knew that the officer was trying to keep her talking. ‘No. I don’t have anything for you. I’m sorry.’ She hung up then and pushed her way out of the call box, forgetting to hold the door open for the pensioner waiting outside.

  She felt no better. The emptiness she had carried for three years swelled to form a vacuum. She stumbled into a jog and ran towards her office, with one hand closed
tightly around the landlady’s pencil sharpener.

  She would unscrew its sharp little blade, if she had to.

  Anything to stop the pain.

  CHAPTER 23

  THURSDAY, 31 MARCH 2011

  Goodhew and Gully sat facing one another across the table. Their hands, resting on the polished surface, were almost touching.

  A lock of hair fell forward from behind her ear; she tucked it back again and ran a self-conscious hand across the crown of her head. He didn’t look up and her cheeks flushed as she tried to hide her desire to flirt with him.

  But, working or not, she couldn’t overlook the fact that they were alone and she was enjoying his complete attention. Well, sort of. She waited for him to speak. ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Gary?’ she asked, and immediately cringed at the accidental double entendre. Silly cow.

  His gaze met hers for a moment. ‘You could get yourself into trouble with questions like that, Sue.’ He smiled, but his tone was too matter-of-fact to be flirtatious and she knew he hadn’t even noticed her deepening blush.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she retorted, and banished the impulse to find out how it would feel to squeeze his hand. This was one of the only times in her life that she’d found her constant blushing to be a blessing.

  Having a crush on your rescuer; Gully knew there had to be a medical name for it, just like she knew that idiopathic craniofacial erythema was the correct term for her involuntary blushing. She’d been searching for the phrase on every diagnose-it-yourself website she could find, and had terms like transference, Inverse Stockholm Syndrome and the worryingly titled Erotomania thrown up as possibles. All were incorrect.

  Besides, putting a name to it wasn’t the same as finding a cure, and she guessed the slightly juvenile reaction she felt every time Goodhew was somewhere within one hundred paces would eventually fade of its own accord. And the sooner the better.