In Bitter Chill (24 page)

Sadler stared into the flickering fire as the wood creaked and sparks spat angrily up the chimney. James Lander had without a doubt been involved in the kidnapping of Rachel and Sophie. The reasons for the abduction could only be half-guessed but, given the physical resemblance between James and Rachel, he must be the man who had made Mary so keen to hide their very existence from the world. Rachel’s father. And yet, it was Nancy Price, he was sure, who was the key to the whole case. Strands were coming together but he was failing to see the whole.

So, if James Lander was the man, who was the woman? Not Penny, his wife; she’d been teaching the day that the girls were abducted. No, if James Lander was the man, then Bridget Lander must be the woman. But could they arrest her on this supposition? She was curiously protective of her brother. In this investigation the old adage, that blood was thicker than water, was taking on strange resonances. Blood secrets and family ties were intermingling to produce a kaleidoscope of possibilities.

He heard a noise. A soft knock on his door. He prayed it wasn’t Christina. Then it came again. A loud thump. He smiled. Connie. With her tiny frame and loud movements. He moved to open the door, but, just in case, picked up the poker by the fireside on his way.

As she walked in, Connie didn’t remark on the poker, although he saw her glance at it. ‘I’ve parked the car out front. I hope I’m not taking up anybody’s space. I did think about walking here; I only live round the corner, it turns out.’

‘What made you change your mind?’

‘I’m not brave enough to take the canal path in the dark. If there’s a problem I don’t fancy being stuck with a wall on one side of me and a stretch of water on the other.’

‘Very wise. Do you want a drink?’

‘Why not? One will be fine, won’t it?’

As he walked through to the kitchen she shouted after him. ‘We’re nearly there, aren’t we? On the case, I mean. We’ve nearly cracked it.’ He could hear the excitement in her voice.

‘We’ve cracked part of it.’ He came through to the living room and tried to swallow the annoyance he felt as she sprawled across his sofa. ‘I’m pretty sure I know what happened in 1978 and why.’

Impatience was rising off her like steam. He needed to slow her down. There had been too many hasty assumptions in the early days. Suppositions that had been allowed to go unchecked.

‘I can’t believe you made the connection between the photograph of James Lander and Rachel. I saw her at Richard Weiss’s house that time and I never spotted a thing.’

‘You weren’t looking, Connie. We were focusing on Penny. But Rachel has the same facial features as James Lander. A family likeness.’

Connie heard the hesitation in his voice. ‘What? What is it?’

His brain was beginning to make a connection that seemed both fantastic and logical. ‘It’s a very strong likeness,’ he said to himself.

Connie looked annoyed and responded by sinking further into the sofa. ‘Our problem is that we don’t know what precipitated the more recent deaths.’

‘Yvonne Jenkins’s suicide?’

‘Yes, for a start. Why did she commit suicide in the Wilton Hotel?’

Sadler sat down in the chair opposite. ‘The package that was handed over by Penny Lander appears to be the catalyst to the more recent deaths. For a start it was given to Yvonne Jenkins in the Wilton Hotel. The location must have had a profound effect on Yvonne. She went back there to kill herself.’

‘Yes, but why? What was in the package?’

Sadler thought back to the yellowing newspaper cutting that he had found amongst Penny’s notes and jottings.

‘A connection was made by Penny Lander that may or may not have been correct but, in any case, proved to be the final straw for Yvonne Jenkins.’

Connie grimaced.

‘We’re both childless, Con. Can you imagine what it’s like to lose your daughter? I can’t, and I doubt . . .’

Connie’s phone was ringing in her pocket. He watched as she fished it out and answered it. She listened without speaking, all the time looking at him.

‘Hold on, will you?’ She covered the phone with her hand.

‘It’s Richard Weiss. He’s concerned about Rachel. She was due to be at his house about an hour ago. She’s not answering her phone so he called a neighbour of hers – a woman called Jenny. She left in her car about ten minutes ago. He wants to know if we have any ideas where she might be headed.’

Rachel spent her professional life roughly sketching out family trees on scraps of paper: backs of envelopes, pieces of wallpaper, once even on the back of her hand. The diagram on the sheet of paper she handed to Bridget Lander looked no different from those others hastily put together. She could draw the trees freehand and this one, sketched in anger and passion, held the key to much more than family secrets. Bridget opened the paper and scanned the contents, a red flush spreading from her neck up into her cheeks. And still it continued, onto her forehead and into her hairline. For the first time, Rachel saw the suppressed emotion and wondered if, finally, she would come to harm from this woman. Bridget Lander seemed unable to believe what she was reading.

‘Is this some kind of sick joke?’

‘It’s the reason that my mother was preventing your brother, or should I say adopted brother, from having contact with me.’

Bridget Lander stared at the paper, clearly horrified.

‘Did he know he was adopted?’ asked Rachel watching the angry flush fade.

The woman’s head shot up and she looked at Rachel, her eyes two pins of hatred.

‘Of course he did. We were both adopted. So what? We were both babies and we never knew anything other than the family our parents made for us, for better or worse.’

‘And he never expressed any interest in who his natural parents were?’

‘What for? It’s not like today where everyone wants to know the ins and outs of everything. Employing people like you. We didn’t care then. James and I were like any other brother or sister. It didn’t make any difference at all.’

‘And he never thought to find out his true origins?’

‘There was no need. Our parents brought us up as true siblings and neither of us were interested in finding out where we came from.’

We. Whenever Rachel asked about James, Bridget responded as ‘we’. Rachel wondered how truly united they had been as siblings, and what her father must have thought about the events that had occurred. And what had she meant by her comment that they were a family, for better or worse?

She walked over to Bridget Lander and jabbed at the A3 paper that the woman was still puzzling over.

‘Those are his origins. He was the son of Nancy Price and a soldier she had a one-night fling with. The date of birth of your brother tallies with the date that Nancy had her baby in hospital. I think he was given away to your parents by Mair, his grandmother and my great-grandmother.’

Bridget was shaking her head.

‘And that should have been the end of it. Bampton’s a small town but there was no reason why he should come into contact with his real family. Nancy was working class and your parents lived much more affluent lives. But that isn’t what happened.’

‘He met your mother.’ Bridget’s voice was calm now. Too calm. ‘He met that woman who decided that he would never see his daughter.’

‘She must have found out,’ said Rachel, almost to herself. ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense. Why else would she break it off like that?’

Nancy, today, was convinced that Rachel’s mother hadn’t known that she had a half-brother and, yet, what other reason could there have been for the break? If Mair was the only family member who had known what had happened to the child, then it was Mair who must have told her granddaughter Mary that she’d been sleeping with her half-brother.

Rachel, who days earlier had panicked at the thought of a close family relationship with Richard Weiss, could well imagine the dread her mother would have felt. Had she also known she was carrying his child? Perhaps. But she’d gone on to have the baby anyway and had set off a train of events that would result in the death of little Sophie Jenkins eight years later. And then the death of Yvonne Jenkins over thirty years after that. But perhaps this was where it would all end. Could there possibly be more reverberations?

‘The question I want to know is – why kill Mrs Lander?’

‘Penny? She found out. Threatened to go to the police with what she’d found.’

‘But how? How did she find out?’

For a moment, Bridget looked stricken. ‘James died suddenly. It was a shock to us all but Penny started to clear out his things straight away. She discovered a package that James had kept. The photo, the one of you at the fete. He kept it for some reason. And your sock, the one you left behind in the car. He put the two together in a package and hid it.’

Bridget was looking directly at her and Rachel held on to the curtain as the room began to spin. ‘My sock. The one I lost that day. It was you, wasn’t it? In the bungalow. I climbed out of the window but you’d come to get the sock back.’

‘Penny told me she’d met Yvonne and handed over the sock to her, thinking it was Sophie’s. I didn’t want the police to find it.’

‘It’d link you to the kidnapping.’

Bridget took a step closer to Rachel. ‘It was never about me. Don’t you see? I’m trying to protect your father’s reputation. It wasn’t his fault. I suggested to him that we take you for a day so you could get to know him.’

Rachel felt the cool fingers at her throat. It would be a funny way to die, with these strong hands around her neck. Rachel had always seen herself as a survivor and, during the unravelling of the case, she realised that her mother Mary, grandmother Nancy and great-grandmother Mair had passed on the survivor gene to her. But all the genes in the world couldn’t negate the twin forces of desperation and opportunity. She’d arrived at this house in her usual blasé way and she would now face the consequences.

She wanted to live very much, she realised, and the reason for that was Richard Weiss, the casual friend she’d grown to love. Someone who was prepared to accept the person she’d become, even if it had been moulded by her history. Because, as she’d gradually realised over the last few weeks, there was nothing she could change about what had been done to her then. But by trying to take ownership of past she had jeopardised her future.

There was a new generation inside her, and when she’d guessed and then checked, with that thin blue line which confirmed everything, she’d been glad. And she didn’t care if it was a boy or a girl. Because, unlike her mother and great-grandmother, she liked men. Nancy’s influence had given her that legacy. Nancy, the flirt who even after years of marriage to Hughie had been able to turn men’s heads. Well, she hadn’t inherited Nancy’s beauty, but the child inside her would be loved whatever its gender.

The fog in Rachel’s head cleared. The baby. Of course, the baby. Wasn’t it time that a child had a chance to live?

The power of Bridget Lander surrounded her. Her resolution to do Rachel harm and her experience of violence felt too much to overcome. With all the strength she could manage, Rachel struck out at the woman and twisted her head so that her neck felt less exposed. For a moment, Bridget faltered. Rachel grabbed hold of Bridget’s head and pushed her body against her. Together they toppled over and hit the floor hard.

The impact stunned Rachel and her arm wrapped protectively around her stomach. What had the jolt done to the baby? It was a moment of weakness that Bridget Lander had been looking for. Once more, two hands grasped at her neck and slowly Rachel’s eyes began to dim.

Connie jammed the accelerator to the floor of her small car, which was struggling to keep up with Sadler’s. He’d insisted on separate cars in case Rachel wasn’t at Bridget Lander’s house and they needed to split up to look for her. Procedurally it made sense of course, but she was wasting precious time when they both knew full well where Rachel would be. She was following his grey Audi, although she didn’t recognise the route that they were taking to Bridget’s house. For someone who had been brought up in Bampton he was literally going around the houses. He decelerated suddenly and, sick of following him, Connie swung her car left and sped through the back streets.

They’d suspected that Rachel might reach the same conclusions as them but hadn’t anticipated that she’d strike out and act on her own. The problem was that Connie wasn’t sure which one of those women would be doing harm to the other. She scrolled down her contacts list and tried Rachel’s mobile, which still went on to voicemail.

She threw the phone onto the passenger seat and it squawked alarmingly. Frowning she picked it up and saw an incoming call again from Richard Weiss.

‘Yes, Mr Weiss?’

‘Where are you? Do you know where Rachel is?’

‘We’re heading towards an address is Baslow Crescent. Stay where you are and I’ll call you when we have more information.’ The line went silent. Connie looked in alarm at her phone. They were still connected. ‘Hello?’

‘Baslow Crescent? I can get there before you.’

The phone slipped from Connie’s hand and she made a grab for it. ‘I need you to stay where you are. Rachel might still be making her way towards you. Leave this to us.’

‘You’re kidding! I think Rachel has discovered something. And you’re asking me to just sit here?’

Anther silence. But this time the connection had been cut. Connie squinted at her phone. There was still reception; it had been Richard who’d ended the call. This spelt trouble: a civilian was making his way towards the house, and she’d told him the street, if not the exact address.

Negotiating a left turn with just one hand on the wheel, she dialled Sadler’s number.

‘We’ve got another problem.’

She was the first to arrive at the house, screeching up to the front gate so fast that for a moment she thought she would career into the low garden wall. The lights were on in the living room but a dark tree was shadowing most of the window. As she shot out of the car door, she saw Richard Weiss arrive and park, leaving the engine running as he dashed across the road. Where the hell was Sadler?

‘Stay there,’ she shouted, but he ignored her and for a big man reached the front door with a surprising speed. It was shut and in desperation he started to heave his shoulder against the hard plastic, which failed to give.

‘I need to look through the windows.’

The garden was well kept and Connie stepped over a low hedge, cursing as the spiky branches snagged at her new trousers, catching a small thread which she tore at with her fingernails. The house had a large picture window, presumably the living room as the kitchen, where Connie had last seen Bridget Lander, was at the back of the house. The large tree blocking her route presented a problem, but her small frame was able to squeeze behind it to give her access to the window where the curtains were undrawn. Balancing on one foot, she held on to a branch and peered in through the glass.

Sadler arrived in time to see Connie’s bottom half go through the front window. For one moment he thought he was watching a break-in until he realised that it was his detective constable, who’d managed to reach the house before him, squeezing herself through the window. He ran towards her and, seeing large shards of glass poking alarmingly towards her legs, he used his tie to pull them towards him. They splintered as they hit the concrete path in front of the window. But Connie was in and he watched as she hurled her small frame at the pair on the floor.

She went first for Bridget Lander, seizing the woman’s grey hair in her hands and yanking back her head with such force that Sadler thought her neck had snapped. He had created enough gap in the window to heave his tall frame through, although he felt a sharp pain in his thigh and blood begin to trickle down his leg. He ran over to the group and seized Bridget Lander’s hands, still clenched around Rachel’s neck, despite Connie’s efforts. As he pulled the fingers from Rachel’s throat, he saw suddenly that she wasn’t breathing.

‘Call an ambulance.’ Sadler heard the sound of the front door giving way and Richard Weiss came into the room. He knelt down in front of Rachel and gently lifted her head in his hands.