In Bitter Chill (8 page)

Rachel looked through fuzzy eyes to a blur at the end of the track. She could see objects hurtling past and her soft, woolly brain tried to identify the name for them. Cars. It was cars that were rushing past at the top of the track. She frowned slightly. Cars sounded bad to her. Her mum didn’t have one, so they had to ride on the bus wherever they went. No, the thought of cars gave her a bad feeling in her chest. But cars contained people, didn’t they? And people usually could help. And that was what she needed right now. Help.

She stumbled up the track, even though she could hear a shout behind her. And a car starting. They were after her. She’d lost both her shoes now and one of her socks which was slowing her down, the imbalance made her want to plunge headlong into the soft ground. She pulled off the other sock and started to run. But she had always been a terrible runner and today was no exception. A pain was now starting in her fuzzy head. It was getting bigger and bigger and she could feel a huge pressure behind her nose. She concentrated on the opening at the top of the track and not the sound behind her. Those blurry cars held the key to her rescue.

The roar entered her ears as the car came up behind her. Rachel felt her stomach lurch but her legs propelled her on. She was nearly there and, as she arrived at the road, she waved her arms in the cold air. She sensed the car behind her slow and turned, in consternation, at the dulling sound. But another car, speeding around the corner, saw her and braked. A man in a blue suit got out.

He ran over to her. ‘Are you all right, love?’

Rachel turned and briefly caught a glimpse of a woman’s sunglasses before the white car that had been following her sped away. She pointed at the retreating vehicle, but the man was crouching down beside her.

‘Is everything OK?’

Rachel felt the cold enter her and stared at her numbed feet. She lifted her head and looked into his concerned eyes.

‘Where’s Sophie?’

Following a nod from the pathologist, Connie followed Sadler under the crime scene tape and towards the white tent. When she had told Sadler about Penny Lander’s connection with the two schoolgirls she had seen something in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before – a spark of interest. At the entrance to the tent, he turned to her.

‘You don’t need to follow me in, Connie.’

‘It’s not a problem, sir.’ She thrust a mint into her mouth as soon as his back was turned.

Inside the tent, Sadler crouched down and examined the body. The woman was about Yvonne Jenkins’s age but there the resemblance ended. She was dressed in a round-necked fern green sweatshirt and brown cords and had hiking books on her feet. Her face was turned away from them and Connie moved slightly to catch a glimpse of the woman’s features. She wished she hadn’t.

‘Can you confirm cause of death?’ Sadler stood up and looked at Bill Shields.

The pathologist was packing up his bag and seemed tired. ‘It looks like strangulation – there’s a rope-like ligature still around the neck. But I need to have a good look back at the mortuary. There’s something a bit strange I want to check.’

Connie watched Sadler make a face of distaste as he looked at the body. ‘Strange? Anything relevant to the investigation when you say strange?’

The pathologist shut his bag with a snap.

‘It might be nothing. Let me have a good look when I’m out of this tent. She’s been dead about two days. She was most likely killed here and her body left where she fell, judging by the ground around the victim. It looks like leaves and branches were used as a form of covering for the body. Then, of course, the snow came. Today’s thaw seems to have caused the makeshift grave to move, exposing the body so she was visible to anyone passing this way.’

‘How quickly can you do the PM, Bill? I know you made an exception for Yvonne Jenkins and now I’m going to ask you to do so with this one.’

Bill Shields frowned at Sadler. ‘You think they’re connected?’

Sadler shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

They stared at each other for a moment.

‘I’ll talk to you again tomorrow,’ said Sadler. ‘I don’t think there’s any point us being present when you do the PM. Give Connie a call if anything interesting comes up.’

Connie watched the pathologist massage his back. ‘You normally send someone along, Francis. This one not to your taste?’

Sadler shook his head. ‘Resources. I need the team out in the field. You know how it is.’

Bill Shields looked sympathetic and glanced at Connie. ‘I’ll miss our cup of tea.’

Connie flushed. Since their first meeting, when she had turned up late for an autopsy, she and the pathologist had got into the habit of having a cup of tea together in his office after he had finished with the body. An informal affair, Connie had struck up a useful relationship with the doctor and knew that she was his preferred detective at autopsies. She could feel Sadler’s eyes on her back.

She smiled at Bill. ‘Perhaps I’ll pop in after work. See how you got on.’

She turned and walked out of the tent, Sadler following her. If she had expected him to comment on the conversation she was going to be disappointed. He had listened to her exchange with Bill with watchful curiosity but was, for the moment, going to be keeping his thoughts to himself. Once more Connie wondered what passions lay behind the calm mask that Sadler wore. He was looking towards the car park.

‘If Bill is right and she fell where she was killed, what made her come into the field? There’s a footpath into the woods from the car park and one straight across this field. What would she have been doing by the fence?’

Connie followed Sadler’s gaze. The woman’s body was about eight metres from the footpath running down the scrubby field.

‘Perhaps she saw something?’ said Connie. ‘Or someone.’

Sadler nodded. ‘The car was left in a hurry. That suggests some urgency. We need to get an estimated time when the car was driven here. Go to the house, Connie, and speak to the car’s registered owner, James Lander. It’ll be interesting to hear what he has to say for himself.’

The BMW was registered to an address in Stephenson Crescent to the west of Bampton. It was one of the newer parts of the town; good-quality 1960s housing built using the same limestone that had been used for Bampton’s older residences. It looked slightly incongruous in the carefully landscaped cul-de-sacs that had been all the rage in the post-war period but the houses were sought after by families who needed a garden and a respectable Bampton address.

As Connie drew up to the large detached house, there seemed to be no evidence of occupancy. The grass in the front garden was slightly overgrown, that late-winter messiness that has diligent gardeners itching for the first dry day of spring. Connie walked up to the front door, made of solid oak by the look of it, and after searching for a bell, rapped hard with the brass knocker. She could hear the report echo through the house, the reverberation of an empty space. Definitely no signs of occupancy. She moved to the front window and peered into the gloom. She could see a large living room, stretching the full length of the house with patio doors the other end, leading, she presumed, to the back garden. The curtains were half-drawn, pulled in a way that suggested haste. On the coffee table she could see a cup full of liquid sitting next to a magazine. Not good. She rummaged in her bag for her phone and called for backup. There was no way she was going to heave her small frame through that sturdy front door.

She turned and surveyed Stephenson Crescent. The houses that ringed it were of a similar design but with enough individuality to ensure that the street couldn’t be described in any sales particulars as an ‘estate’. She was looking for the proverbial twitching of a lace curtain but of course times had moved on. TV programmes such as
Crimewatch
had given concerned citizens permission to take an active interest in what was going on in their neighbourhood and most people were now willing to interrogate strangers hanging around empty properties. A man at the house directly opposite had opened his door and was standing at the entrance with his arms folded. Connie, stifling a twitch of annoyance, smiled and walked down the path and across the road towards him. He watched as she approached. Up close, he was younger than his V-necked pullover and grey trousers suggested, probably early forties. She pulled out her warrant card and watched his expression change from suspicion to open curiosity.

‘I’m looking for a Mr James Lander. I believe that he lives at number twelve.’

‘James? He died last year of a heart attack. It happened in the front garden one Sunday. I saw him fall over and by the time I had reached him he was gone. Nothing could be done.’

Something in his tone made Connie frown.

‘I’m a doctor, a paediatrician at St Crispin’s. I tried to help with CPR for about ten minutes but nothing doing. He was gone. It was a massive coronary according to the post-mortem.’

‘And his wife?’

The man frowned. ‘Penny? I presume she’s gone away, the car’s not there. She has a daughter in Kent. I assume she’s visiting there.’

‘When did you last see the car, Doctor . . . ?’ Connie got out her notebook.

‘Stephen Graham, look has anything happened? We’ve all been a bit worried about Penny since James died. All of us neighbours in the street, I mean. We all look out for each other and keep an eye on each other’s houses.’

Connie looked behind her as the patrol car turned up and two hefty-looking constables emerged, one hitching up his trousers. She turned back to Doctor Graham.

‘Worried in what way?’

‘It’s just that she shut herself off from us. We’re a pretty sociable street; we often go to each other’s parties and so on. Penny retired from the school she was teaching at just after James’s death and we never really saw her. She seemed to retreat inside the house. Has anything happened?’

Connie shut her notebook. ‘We’ve found a blue BMW registered to the address and we’re making our normal enquiries. Is that the car Mrs Lander normally drove?’

The doctor seemed incapable of speech as his eyes went to the two policemen, one of whom was carrying a small, one-person ram that would be used to force open the door. He managed a nod with his mouth slightly open. Seeing she had lost his attention, Connie left him standing in the doorway and hurried across the road. One of the policemen grinned at her.

‘Just happened to have it in the boot. There was a drugs raid last night and I haven’t got round to signing it back in yet. We were round the corner on the way back to the station. Don’t tell the boss.’

The battering ram was the modern type. As soon as the cylinder hit the solid wood, a piston fired, giving added momentum, and the right side of the door caved in. The policeman used a gloved hand to manoeuvre the lock and soon Connie was inside the living room, staring at a half-eaten sandwich and what looked like a cup of tea. She looked around the room, which had the air of a well-kept family home. Three large photos sat on a sideboard, one a graduation picture of a girl with long fair hair and the other two family shots. Connie pulled out her iPhone and took a snap of each of the photographs.

She could hear the policemen searching the rest of the house and finally the one with the smirk stuck his head round the door.

‘There’s no one here. Do you want us to stay?’

Connie looked at the remains of someone’s last supper and shook her head. ‘I’ll make the call. Thanks, guys.’

Some years ago, a psychologist friend of Rachel’s had tried to make a link between her choice of career and the 1978 kidnapping.

‘You’re transferring your inability to discover what happened that day in 1978 onto your profession,’ she’d told her. ‘You’re determined to discover the undiscoverable, know the unknowable.’

Rachel had as little time for psychoanalysis today as she’d had in 1978. The attempts to pick at the past when some things just couldn’t be brought to light. The therapy sessions that followed her abduction had brought her little respite and no answers. Perhaps part of the problem was her. She hadn’t really wanted to remember. The minute she had stepped into that car, a seismic change had occurred and she hadn’t wanted to go back. Survival had meant forgetting. Even if that meant leaving Sophie in the past.

But her aversion to therapy didn’t mean she wasn’t interested in unpicking others’ secrets. Although there were some truths that were for ever locked in the mists of time, other mysteries could be unravelled through persistence and diligence And the people who chose to search out their ancestors were a source of fascination.

Pam Millett was one such example. She sat opposite Rachel, her face heavily made up, beneath a photograph of her family. The picture must have been taken in the early 1980s judging by the style of the clothes and gelled hair.

‘He always went on about the war, did my granddad. It was a joke in the family, “Don’t mention the war,” we used to say, as it would set Granddad off. And the thing was, my grandmother hated the subject. She lost two brothers in the First World War so it was a painful subject, but Granddad, good God, you couldn’t get him off the topic.’

So far, so predictable
, thought Rachel. Pam Millett wanted to find out a bit more about the origins of her grandparents and there wasn’t anything strange in that. And yet Rachel had gone to school with Pam’s son Graham. He’d dyed his hair using peroxide at the age of fourteen, probably just after the photograph over the mantelpiece had been taken. Shaved his head at fifteen and had a drug habit by seventeen. Remarkably, he was still alive, confounding everyone’s expectations, but when Rachel had asked after him, Pam had confided that she had not seen him for years. ‘I assume he’s still living in London.’

Graham Millett had been named after his paternal great-grandfather, who’d fought in 1917 in Arras with what had then been called the Sherwood Foresters. The Nottingham and Derbyshire Regiment. He was hardly a credit to his great-grandfather, yet his mother could see no irony in spending a significant amount of money on tracing back her roots while the next generation casually abused their bodies to the point of extinction.

‘It’s not about the sins of the present, is it? It’s the achievements of the past I want to celebrate. And their sins if necessary.’ She winked at Rachel. ‘You got any servicemen in your family?’

Rachel liked Pam’s irrepressible style. ‘I’ve hardly any men in my family, full stop.’

Pam had stopped smiling and was eyeing Rachel up and down. ‘I heard about the suicide of Sophie’s mum. I’m sorry to hear of it.’

Rachel rustled in her handbag for car keys. ‘I’m sorry too, but I hadn’t heard from her for years. My only memories of her are as a child.’

‘I work in Sainsbury’s three times a week and she sometimes used to come in. I recognised her, of course, but I never let on.’

Rachel stopped fumbling in her bag and looked at her client. ‘What was she like? Later on, I mean.’

Pam picked at a thread on her trousers. ‘It’s funny but I would have said that she was doing all right. She was a bit old-fashioned. I mean, I don’t think she’d updated her hairstyle since the seventies, but she was friendly enough.’

‘You were surprised she committed suicide, then?’

‘I would’ve been if I hadn’t seen her that last time.’

Rachel stared at Pam. ‘Why? When was the last time?’

‘It must have been last week. I saw her at the till and she looked dishevelled and dusty. Like she had been down in a cellar. And distraught. I was really shocked and I would’ve said something, but the queue behind her was a nightmare, so I just let it go. And a few days later she was dead.’

‘Dusty? Mrs Jenkins was dusty?’

Pam was now defensive. ‘I don’t know. It was the impression I got. I’m sorry I mentioned it.’

Rachel left the house and sat in her car for a moment. Dusty? She turned on the ignition and drove up the hill to her cottage, checking to see how many reporters she’d have to push her way past. The street was empty. The journalists who’d huddled against the Bampton cold on the pavement opposite her front door as she left the house that morning had disappeared. Unable to believe that she’d got off so lightly, she parked the car and walked round to the back of the house, fully expecting to see them waiting at the gate at the bottom of her small garden, having decided to change position. But there was no one there either. Only the lone patrol car was sitting by the side of the road, the man in the passenger seat reading a tabloid.

She crossed over to the car. ‘Everything OK, Miss Jones?’ asked the driver.

‘Fine. But was it anything I did? They all seem to have disappeared.’

‘Something more juicy on the other side of town. A body’s been found up by Truscott Fields.’

Rachel felt her world spin and the policeman must have noticed too – and remembered who he was talking to.

‘Not a girl, love. A woman. And a recent death,’ he said hastily. ‘Nothing to concern yourself with. Just be thankful they’re not pestering you any more.’

Incapable of speech, Rachel backed away and looked at her small cottage. She couldn’t bear to go back in there. But her notebook was still in the house. She could go nowhere without it.

The policeman was looking at her with a concerned expression while his passenger had put down his newspaper with what Rachel thought was annoyance.

‘If they’re gone then there’s no need to keep an eye on the house any more.’

‘Sorry, miss,’ said the policeman at the wheel. ‘We stand down when the DI tells us to.’

Rachel turned and walked to her house, feeling the eyes of the two policemen on her.

Back in her living room, she sat at her desk and reached over to the radiator for her notebook. She opened it and with shaking hands began once more to copy out her maternal family tree, an act that never failed to soothe her. She had plenty of computer programs that would have done the trick but something in the act of writing by hand anchored her to both the present and the past. She started on the left-hand side of an A3 sheet of paper and inside a small box wrote her date of birth. She then wrote an ‘m.’ and put a long underline against it. No husband. And none in the offing, which was OK as in genealogy terms this maternal line would be coming to an end with her.

She thought about adding a ‘d.’ and leaving another line but decided that it was a horrible mixture of wild optimism and morbidity. When she died at some point no one would be likely to be filling in the date themselves. But at the bottom of the box she added ‘occ.’, wrote ‘family historian’ and smiled. Then, drawing a connecting line, she added another box and put in her mother’s details. Birth, marriage and death. Mary Jones who briefly became Mary Saxton but had changed her name back to Jones before Rachel was born. Occupation – dental nurse. It had been an unremarkable life made remarkable by that one life-changing event in 1978. Next, her grandmother Nancy Jones, still alive and fighting. Here Rachel felt her usual pang of regret that her sweet grandfather Hughie wouldn’t be making it onto the tree. The affable Hughie who had thrown her into the air as a child, giving her that strange exhilaration of flying that she’d so loved.

Nancy had a more interesting past, mainly because of her work as a land girl in the Second World War. She’d worked on the great Needham estate, picking cabbages, but there’d been plenty of time for dancing and chatting, if Nancy’s stories were anything to go by. And Nancy had learned to smoke during those years too, a habit that, despite the family’s exhortations, she’d refused to give up. Even in the nursing home, a smoking room that had been little used before Nancy’s arrival was the place you were most likely to find her these days. Cigarette in one hand and, in the other, a pack of playing cards. According to one of the carers, even the most fervent anti-smokers of the residential home were willing to make an exception for a hand of rummy with Nancy.

Another line and there was her great-grandmother Mair, who’d died when Rachel was four. Spoken about with acerbity by Nancy, as the mother who didn’t like men and would be willing to see off anyone who wasn’t good enough for her daughter. Rachel’s own mother had been less willing to discuss her headstrong grandmother and when pressed by a teenage Rachel had simply said, ‘she was good in a crisis’ and left it at that.