‘Your brother isn’t,’ Blackman said.
‘He’s clueless, as you should have worked out by now. He wouldn’t recognise a problem if it was staring him in the face. I told the uniformed lot I spoke to last night, you can ignore anything he says. It’ll all be unreliable and made up on the spur of the moment.’
‘Are you implying he might know more than he’s letting on?’
She was aware that he was watching her carefully. ‘Christ, no. I can’t stand the little toerag, but even he wouldn’t harm them in any way. He’s not that bad.’
‘At least you don’t think he is,’ added McCluskie.
‘Oh God, this is getting ridiculous. Is this the best you can do? Treat me as if I’m some kind of irrational obsessive worrying over nothing, then when you do start thinking that I might have a point, you home in on the easiest target imaginable? I don’t believe it.’ She held her head in her hands. ‘Rod is too stupid to have done something and left no clue, trust me. He’s totally inept when it comes to using his brain. In fact I sometimes wonder whether he actually has one. He doesn’t even drive. Last time he tried, he crashed the learner car into a parked van, a telegraph pole and a wall. The instructor refused to take him out again.’ She paused to gather breath. ‘And why would he do anything to them? They’re not insured for any massive sum.’
‘What about the house? Would he inherit half of that?’ Blackman asked.
‘Yes he would, but I told you. He might annoy me to bits, but he’s not that evil, for pity’s sake.’ She shook her head in frustration and looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Look, I have to start my house calls in a few minutes and I need to go to the loo first. Please take me seriously. Think over what I’ve said, and do something.’
They left and she sank back into her chair, wanting to scream.
* * *
‘You’re looking miserable, Rod. Too much of the old wacky baccy and booze last night?’
Rod Armitage stopped in his task of sanding down the old window frame and looked across at his temporary employer and uncle, Pete Armitage, a local painter and decorator. Should he tell Pete what he really thought of his job? He hated any form of systematic work with a vengeance but had always tried to hide this fact from Pete, who’d proved to be a reliable source of work when he, Rod, had ever needed some extra cash. The additional money was useful, particularly since he’d managed to rupture relations with most of the other local builders and decorators through no real fault of his own. It was just unrealistic for them to expect him to start work at such god-awful times in the morning and he’d let them know his opinion in no uncertain terms. Pete had been the only one who’d been adaptable enough to allow him some flexibility, permitting him to start an hour or two after everyone else. He even let Rod finish work early if he needed to, although even he’d been a bit grumpy about it recently. Why couldn’t bosses be more flexible? That’s all he wanted, a bit of adaptability. He despised rigidity. Take life as it comes, that was his motto. Even Pete had never understood his point of view when it had been offered. ‘Can’t run a business like that, Rod,’ he’d said. ‘When people hire me they want the work done quickly and at prearranged times. I can’t just turn up to start a job when I feel like it. My reputation would go down the pan right away and the business would fold. Good quality work, on time, quick and efficient, that’s the way I keep my head above water. It’s a cut-throat business nowadays with all the overheads being so high.’
Rod finally responded to Pete’s overture. ‘It’s that bloody sister of mine. She’s been having a go again. She’s only gone and got the police in because Mum and Dad weren’t at home when she got back from holiday. Stupid cow. They’ve obviously gone away for a few days but she can’t stand the fact that they did it without telling her. She says it’s all my fault for not keeping an eye on them. She bossed me around as a kid and is still trying to do it now.’
Pete frowned and rubbed his nose, his dark eyes glaring at Rod. ‘You shouldn’t talk about Sharon like that. She’s as much my niece as you are my nephew, and I think a lot of her. We’re all working class folk and she’s done brilliantly to get herself where she is. She’s never let me and my family down in anything. You ought to be proud of her instead of running her down. If she’s worried about your parents, then maybe you should show a bit more concern. Ted’s my brother, for God’s sake. I had no idea that he and Sylvia had gone missing.’
Pete asked more questions about the missing couple but Rod had become even surlier. Suddenly he put down his sander, turned tail and stalked off. Pete was left scratching his head in bewilderment. His nephew was fast becoming totally unemployable. He’d only agreed to take him on as a favour to his sister-in-law, who was worried that her son’s life was disintegrating into a shambolic mess of drink and drugs. His standard of work was, at best, mediocre and his attitude was often surly and uncooperative, as it had been this morning. Well, if Rod didn’t return before the morning was out, that would be his job over. He’d walked out once too often, leaving Pete in the lurch. He looked at his watch. Maybe he should give Sharon a call to get the facts. It wasn’t like Ted and Sylvia to wander off without telling anyone.
* * *
Back at the local police station the two detectives investigating the disappearance of the Armitage couple were checking flight records and ferry bookings. So far nothing had shown up but it was early days, and they’d only examined details for fairly local points of departure: the airports at Bournemouth, Southampton and Bristol, and the ferry terminal at Poole. Even so, Phil McCluskie, the older of the two, was mildly surprised. He was midway through checking recent departures from the larger airport at Gatwick and still nothing had shown up, nor had there been any car park bookings made in the couple’s name. He would have expected something by now if they had gone abroad. If nothing showed up at Gatwick, then that really only left London’s main airport at Heathrow, and the daughter had assured them that her father would never fly from there, having had luggage vanish on a trip some decades earlier, never to be seen again. It tended to point to his original feeling, that they’d gone for a short break within the UK.
His boss, the wheezing Detective Sergeant Stu Blackman, thought otherwise. ‘Abroad,’ he’d stated, as if it was a concrete fact. ‘Or an internal flight. The passports are missing. It’ll be one or the other. Trust me.’
McCluskie sighed. Trust in the judgement of this overweight joke of a DS who temporarily headed up the unit? Who was he kidding? Christ, he needed a drink. He imagined the warming bite of whisky trickling down the back of his throat. He’d have to do something soon, maybe see a doctor. He’d noticed the way Sharon Giroux had looked at him when they’d spoken to her earlier at her surgery. She’d probably spotted the signs and had already written him off as a waste of space. No wonder she’d seemed angry. Two detectives assigned to the case, one with a drink problem and the other as mentally sharp as a pigeon. He turned back to the job in hand, completing the Gatwick check. Nothing.
* * *
Sharon Giroux opened her front door, entered, dropped her keys onto the nearby shelf and her bag on the hall floor. ‘Hi,’ she called. ‘I’m home.’ She sniffed the air and the welcoming smell of her husband’s chicken casserole.
‘In the kitchen,’ he replied. ‘Cup of tea ready for you, my sweet.’
She walked through and hugged the tall, dark-haired man wearing a crimson apron. ‘Pierre, you’re the perfect man to come home to after one hell of a day.’ She kissed him on the lips. ‘I love you madly. The children?’
He waved a spoon in the direction of the doorway to his left. ‘In the study, doing their homework. At least that’s what they claimed to be doing when I checked last.’ He set the spoon down and poured out two mugs of tea. ‘Any news?’
Sharon shook her head. ‘Nothing. Two detectives came to interview me this morning and when they went away I felt more despondent than before. To say I was unimpressed by them would be an understatement. Let’s hope they’re
more thorough and open-minded than they appeared to be.’ She sighed and sipped her tea. ‘Uncle Pete called me this afternoon. Rod had told him about Mum and Dad, and he was worried. He agrees with me. It’s just not the kind of thing they do, disappearing like that without telling anyone. With me not around, one of them would have told him, that’s what he says. He saw them the day after we went on holiday, apparently. He called round with some paint that Dad had asked him for. They never mentioned the possibility of going away to him. In fact, the exact opposite. Dad told him how much he wanted to get done in the garden before the weather gets too warm. All his bedding plants were ready to go out, he said. I think I might go round again tomorrow afternoon to check on that, to see if he’d transplanted them. He wouldn’t have gone away and left them, not Dad. You know how keen he always is to have the best flower display in their street.’
Pierre frowned and shook his head. ‘I took a walk around there this afternoon. There are no summer flowers out in the front garden yet, just the spring ones.’ He put his arm around his wife. ‘This is a puzzle. You are right to be worried, ma chérie.’
* * *
George Warrander, the uniformed officer who had first called on Sharon the previous evening, slid his mobile phone back into his pocket. He’d just called the missing persons unit and was disappointed that the inquiry seemed no further forward than when he’d first logged the disappearance with the official channels. He walked across to Rose Simons who had just appeared in the station foyer, ready to go out in response to a reported pub brawl.
‘There’s still no information about that missing couple, Sarge. The tecs haven’t found anything yet.’
Rose turned to face him. ‘Will you just give it a rest? I told you to leave it to the unit, and I meant it. We’ve handed it on to CID and they make the decisions now. It’s not our problem anymore, so forget it, will you? You, Georgie Warrander, need to learn when to let go. Now, let’s go out and catch us some lowlife.’ She pretended to sniff the air. ‘Bad moon rising. Hang on to your six-shooter, deputy. This could be a real showdown.’
Warrander smiled weakly and followed her bulky form outside to the car.
CHAPTER 3: Crushed
Wednesday, Week 1
Phil McCluskie scratched his head and frowned. He’d spent the morning combing through road traffic accident reports for the previous ten days but had got nowhere. Lots of RTAs had been reported, but none recorded the involvement of the Armitages’ small, dark green Ford Fiesta. He’d started with just Dorset but had soon widened the search to include the neighbouring counties of Wiltshire, Hampshire, Somerset and Devon. Still nothing so he’d opted for the whole of the south of England, to be followed at last by a countrywide search. He leant back in his chair and yawned, running his hand once again through his thinning hair. He looked up to see the lumbering bulk of his boss, Stu Blackman, approaching. He shook his head slowly.
‘Nothing?’ the detective sergeant asked.
‘Nope. Not the proverbial sausage. You?’ He was aware that his boss had made a start on contacting the A and E departments of the region’s main hospitals.
‘Same. Nothing. It’s a puzzle and a half, isn’t it?’ He perched on the corner of McCluskie’s desk. ‘Maybe we’re on the wrong track. Maybe that pain-in-the-neck daughter was right after all. Maybe something has happened to them. Know what I mean?’ He paused. ‘Who would be your bet?’
McCluskie didn’t hesitate. ‘The son. He’s a right waster and I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. Should we get him in?’
Blackman smiled slyly. ‘My thoughts exactly.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But let’s leave it till after lunch. Pub?’
A look of rapture crept across McCluskie’s reptilian face. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
Rod Armitage wasn’t brought in for questioning that afternoon. By the time McCluskie had finished his third whisky chaser and Blackman his second plate of cheesy chips, the urge to confront the younger Armitage offspring had dissipated.
‘Let’s leave it until the morning,’ Blackman suggested, ordering another round of drinks. ‘We’ll be fresher then.’
‘You’re the boss,’ his assistant replied, knocking the whisky back in one gulp and licking his lips. ‘Maybe a bit more cogitation is called for.’
‘Good one, Phil. Cogitation before confrontation. Like it.’
* * *
Sharon Giroux usually arrived home before her husband on Wednesdays. She should have been back by two o’clock at the latest, since Wednesday was her designated half day in lieu of the Saturday morning surgery she ran most weekends, but she invariably spent several hours catching up on paperwork and usually didn’t arrive home until well after three.
She’d called in at her parents’ house on her way home, hoping that they would be at the door, cheerfully waving to her as she walked through the gate, but the bungalow was as dark and silent as on the previous two days. Pierre had been right, there were no bedding plants out. She let herself in and walked through the silent house to the back door, then out into the garden. The lawn looked ragged, as if it hadn’t been mowed for several weeks. She made her way to the greenhouse and her heart sank. There were her father’s prized trays of summer bedding plants, dried up and drooping, forlorn in the warm, dry atmosphere. They clearly hadn’t been watered for well over a week. She filled a watering can and gave the trays a soaking. Was it any use? Some of the plants, so carefully tended by her father since being sown in early March, looked dead already, stems and leaves wilted to a dull brown colour.
She returned to the house, sat down in the lounge and phoned through to the number left by the detective sergeant the previous morning. There was no answer, so she tried the mobile number, given as an alternative. The phone was answered on the fifth ring but she had trouble making out what the voice on the other end was saying.
‘DS Blackman, is that you?’ she asked. ‘It’s Sharon Giroux. Are you there?’
The voice speaking to her was still unclear. She could only make out about one word in three. ‘Look, I can’t hear what you’re saying. Can you phone me back, please? Maybe we’ll get a better signal with a second attempt.’
She closed the call and sat for a while, trying to analyse the sounds she’d heard on the phone. The voice had been indistinct but she was sure that she’d picked up other sounds in the background fairly clearly, including what had sounded like the clinking of glasses. Surely they weren’t in a pub, drinking? She waited a further ten minutes but no call came through, so she called again. This time there was far less background noise.
‘Why didn’t you call me back as I asked?’ she said.
‘Out on investigations,’ came the reply. His voice was slightly slurred.
‘What have you discovered?’ she probed.
‘Early days still,’ he replied. ‘Be in contact at end of week.’
With that he’d ended the call, not giving her a chance to explain about the plants. Sharon began to cry, and she sat in her parents’ kitchen for several minutes until the tears subsided. Finally she rose, dried her eyes on a paper tissue and poured herself a glass of water. The bastard. He’d been drinking, she was sure of it. She locked the front door behind her, returned to her car and drove home, her sadness giving way to frustrated anger.
* * *
That evening she called the number George Warrander had left on Monday evening, asking him for help. Within half an hour the concerned young uniformed officer was at her front door, although he looked tense. She asked him inside and started to tell him of her increased worries following the discovery of the dying plants in her father’s greenhouse.
‘Yes, Dr Giroux, I can see why you are still concerned. But your parents’ disappearance is in the hands of the CID. There’s very little I can do to influence things. Have you told them?’
Sharon told him of the afternoon’s phone calls.
‘They may have been interviewing someone in a pub, Dr Giroux. I’m sure they wouldn�
�t have been drinking, not heavily anyway, not during an investigation. Look, I’ll email this latest information to them when I get to the station first thing tomorrow morning. I’m on early shift. I’ll also ask them to contact you later tomorrow. Can you suggest a good time?’
He left the house and nervously scanned the street before stepping out onto the pavement. He couldn’t afford to let his sergeant know that he’d called to see the Armitage daughter. Rose Simons would hit the roof if she found out. He turned the corner onto the main road and instantly slowed. She was facing him, leaning with her back against her squad car, her face white with anger.
‘You, my young friend, are in deep shit. Do you think this is the way to get on in my friendly and supportive little empire? Ignoring every instruction I give you? Who do you think you are? Some kind of go-it-alone maverick?’
‘She called me because she was totally frustrated, boss. She phoned the unit this afternoon with some new information and she reckons those two detectives were drunk in a pub. They didn’t listen to her.’
‘Maybe they’ve already sussed her out as a timewaster. And so she’s sucking you in. And you, fool that you are, fell for it.’
‘Boss, with all due respect, I think you’ve got her wrong.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Anyway, my shift finished twenty minutes ago. I was in my own time.’
‘But in uniform, so still under my command. Don’t try and worm your way out of this, you little creep. I’ll remember this. Don’t you ever go near that woman again. Do you hear me? Not unless I tell you to.’
She climbed into her car, slammed the door and drove off, leaving Warrander feeling humiliated and crushed. Was his career in the police already over, when it had only just begun?
CHAPTER 4: Uppers and Downers
Thursday, Week 1
Sharon caught sight of her uncle as she walked through the surgery’s reception area in order to collect a form from one of the secretaries. He waved as he saw her.
Detective Sophie Allen Box Set 2 Page 27