Missing Believed Dead (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tears blurred his vision and, although Paul stared at the business card, he was unable to read what was on it. The policewoman’s words whirled round his brain but they didn’t make any sense. Jade couldn’t be back. It was impossible. It had been too long.

He removed his spectacles and scrubbed his eyes with a dirty handkerchief. Jade had been the love of his life and he would give anything to have her back. A faint hope fluttered in his chest, perhaps by some miracle Jade had returned. Fresh tears gathered in his eyes and he rested his head on the computer desk, remembering the good times they’d had together and how she could wind him round her little finger.

‘Who do you love most of all?’ He always asked the question because he wanted to hear her reply.

‘You, Daddy. I love you most of all.’

The edge of the desk bit into his cheek and he sat back in the chair remembering that last morning, when Jade had left the house giggling and happy. They’d argued the night before, a silly argument about a boy, and he wanted to resolve things with her, so he followed her out. Emma had gone on ahead and Jade was alone. When he caught up with her she’d said, ‘Not now, Daddy. I’m late for school.’ He’d insisted she stay and listen to him but she’d shaken his hand off her arm and run off.

Maybe if they hadn’t argued she would still be here, but he knew the flicker of hope that fluttered briefly in his chest was wishful thinking. He, more than anyone, knew Jade would never return.

However, something was going on, he wasn’t sure what, but it all centred round Diane. When he’d left, her mental state hadn’t been good. Maybe she’d flipped and was imagining it, or maybe someone was playing a trick on her. The urge to find out was overpowering and he hurriedly left the flat.

Wind whistled along the walkway whipping open his unbuttoned coat. He scurried along to the shelter of the stairwell before buttoning it and pulling the hood over his head.

‘You seen my Megan?’

Paul jerked round. He hadn’t heard Mrs Fraser coming up behind him. She was remarkably silent for such a big woman. Her hair fanned out round her face, whipped by the wind into a flaming halo.

‘Why would I have seen your Megan?’ he muttered, turning away from her. He pulled the hood closer to his face and scurried down the stairs. Stupid woman always seemed to be watching him.

‘I’m keeping my eye on you,’ she shouted after him, her voice echoing eerily in the stairwell.

* * * *

The housing estate was vastly different to the area where Diane lived. To her it was a different universe. Despair seemed to be etched into the stonework of the buildings, while the rubbish-strewn concrete walkways gave the appearance of barriers, rather than access, to the dismal looking flats. Everything stank of poverty and dereliction. At the end of the street a gathering of youths huddled together, their outlines forming a menacing backdrop to the unprepossessing scene.

Diane drove into the car park in front of the block where Paul had his flat. It was deserted and dark, and the cars parked in it were dilapidated and dirty, while over in one corner was the burnt out shell of a van. She took one look and drove back out onto the street, parking at the kerb. Luckily the youths had moved further down the street and appeared to be making their way to an assignation elsewhere.

All the same, she didn’t feel safe here and didn’t want to get out of the car. However, she braced herself and, clutching her handbag in vice-like fingers, she got out, turning to make sure the car doors were locked before entering the dark cavern of the stairwell.

Reaching the top of the stairs, she hesitated, then turned to her left. But the numbers were going the wrong way. She retraced her steps and found Paul’s flat at the end of the walkway.

When no answer came to her knock, she knocked again and tried the handle, but the door was locked.

‘He’s out. You’ve just missed him.’

The voice made Diane jump. She hadn’t heard anyone come up behind her and her nerves were raw simply being here. She half-turned towards the woman and, pulling her hood closer round her face, sidled past her. She couldn’t avoid seeing the woman’s eyes staring at her, though, they seemed to pierce the hood and see right through her.

‘I’ll come back later,’ she muttered, scuttling along the walkway to the stairs.

‘You want me to tell him you were here?’

‘No.’ Diane’s voice echoed up the stairwell as she hurried down to the safety of her car.

* * * *

By the time the bus deposited Paul in Strathmore Avenue, he was frozen. He dug his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders and hurried round the corner into Johnston Avenue.

The house was unchanged. It even had the same curtains and he had the odd sensation of having stepped back in time. He stood at the opposite side of the street, reluctant to cross and enter the house he had left five years ago. How would Diane react? Would she be pleased to see him, or would she scream at him? Anything but screaming. He couldn’t tolerate that.

Diane had screamed at him when he left. ‘You’re a useless piece of shit. No good for anything.’

He’d kept walking, anything to get away from her voice.

‘What about the kids,’ she’d shouted after him. ‘They’re your kids as well.’

But he’d had enough of Diane’s moods, Emma’s sullenness and Ryan’s tears. There was a limit to what he could stand and he’d passed that limit some time ago. He had to get out.

‘Don’t think you can come back when you feel like it,’ she’d screamed after him, ‘because once you’ve gone, that’s it, there’s no coming back.’

‘No coming back!’ All these years later the words still echoed through his brain.

He leaned against a lamp post, remembering, and knew there was no way he could cross that road and knock on the door. But still he stood staring at the house, hypnotized by the light in the window of an upstairs room, sending a welcoming glow into the street.

How long he stood he had no way of knowing. It was as if time had frozen and he was encased in a bubble, remembering the past and dreading the future.

The sound of a car reversing up the drive woke him from his reverie, and he pulled his hood closer to his face so Diane wouldn’t see him. He watched her get out of the car and enter the house. When the door closed he released the breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding, and with a sigh of regret he walked down the street in the direction of the bus stop.

* * * *

‘Where have you been, Mum?’ Ryan clattered down the stairs from his room. Emma stood at the top watching.

Diane shrugged her coat off and draped it over the banister. ‘I went looking for your father.’

‘Why would you do that?’ Emma descended the stairs. ‘He opted out of this family a long time ago. We don’t want him back now.’

‘Nor do I.’ Diane smiled at her daughter. ‘You don’t have to worry on that score.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I thought he might know where Jade was.’

‘And did he?’ Ryan sounded concerned.

Diane wanted to pull them both to her and hug them, but they were adults now and they had never been a tactile family. ‘He wasn’t at home. I didn’t see him.’

‘Thank goodness for that. God only knows what would have come out of it. Promise me you won’t go back.’

‘Don’t frown, Emma, and don’t worry about me.’

‘But I do worry and you haven’t promised you won’t go back.’

‘And I don’t intend to promise anything. Don’t you see I have to find out where Jade is.’

‘Jade is nowhere. We keep telling you she’s gone. She’s not coming back.’

‘But the card, and the bead.’

‘Tell her Ryan. She won’t listen to me. Tell her Jade’s never going to come back.’

‘Emma’s right, Mum.’ Ryan’s voice was softer and more compassionate than his sister’s. ‘How did you know where to find him anyway?’

Diane rummaged in the pocket of her coat for the piece of paper. ‘I got his address from your gran. I went to see her because I knew she’d still be in touch with him. He’ll never be able to escape from that old bat.’

‘Gran?’ Emma’s voice was incredulous. ‘You went to see Gran?’

‘But you don’t get on.’ Ryan stared at her with disbelief. ‘You almost tore each other’s hair out the last time you saw her.’

‘Well I succeeded this time.’ Diane laughed. ‘Her hair was swinging from the branch of a tree when I left her.’

Diane slipped the piece of paper inside the telephone directory on the hall table, planked her car keys beside it and turned towards the kitchen. ‘We’ll eat in about half an hour,’ she said, ‘and tomorrow I’ll go back to see your father.’

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘Any developments?’ Kate shrugged her coat off and threw it into her office.

Sue looked up from tidying her desk. ‘We’ve narrowed down the CCTV, but I’m afraid it’s inconclusive. We can’t get a clear look at the face of the person accompanying our John Doe. But we’ve had a stroke of luck. The forensic guys examining the van found a laptop in a hidden compartment in the floor and it’s being examined. Hopefully by tomorrow we’ll be able to get an identity for him.’ She stuck files in a filing cabinet and turned the key. ‘Oh, and Jenny has enhanced that photo of the jade necklace for Bill to have a look at.’

‘Where is it?’ Bill asked.

‘It’s on your desk. If you hadn’t come back I would have put it in your filing cabinet.’

Kate wondered if that comment was aimed at her, in recognition of her run in with Bill about security.

Bill sat down and grabbed the photos. ‘They’re a match,’ he said to Kate. ‘Look.’

Kate looked at the photos of the jade necklace, trying to remember what the beads in the John Doe’s eyes had looked like. ‘I think you might be right,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to follow that up tomorrow.’

‘I could do it now.’

‘No! We have to cut back on overtime. Orders from above.’ She raised her voice. ‘Team meeting at nine tomorrow. Don’t be late.’

Kate was last to leave the office. She looked round the room and realized she was starting to feel a sense of belonging.

After struggling through the rush hour traffic, home was an oasis of peace. Her spirits lifted when she saw Gavin’s car parked in front of the house. He hadn’t said he would be finished early today, but she was glad he was.

Gavin was in the kitchen, bending over the cooker. The oven door was open and the smell of goulash was irresistible. ‘I defrosted a casserole from the freezer,’ he said, without looking up. ‘Hope that’s OK.’

‘Smells good.’ She hung her shoulder bag on the doorknob and unbuttoned her coat. ‘Thank goodness I’m finished,’ she said.

‘Bad day?’ He closed the oven door and straightened up.

‘Actually, it wasn’t too bad. I took DS Murphy out on a couple of interviews and it went all right. I think the team might be starting to accept me.’

Gavin grinned at her. ‘You cut him a bit of slack then?’

‘I suppose you could call it that.’

‘I told you that would work. After all the guy must have experience or he wouldn’t be in that team. He’d be plodding the beat somewhere.’

‘You didn’t have to say, I told you so.’

‘As if,’ he said, wrapping his arms round her. ‘Come here you. We haven’t had much time for each other lately.’

‘The casserole!’

‘It can wait.’

* * * *

‘I could easily have followed up on that jade bead. Might still do it,’ Bill said, as he and Sue waited in the corridor.

‘Are you really determined to annoy the DI?’ Sue pinged the lift button again. ‘Where is that damned lift?’

‘She wasn’t so bad today. At least she involved me in the interviews instead of making me watch the CCTV footage.’

‘So, you reward her by defying her orders?’

Bill shuffled his feet. ‘It’s the overtime she’s worried about. If I did it in my own time surely she’d understand.’

‘I doubt it. I think she’d see it as defiance.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’

‘At last,’ Sue said, when the lift arrived. ‘I was beginning to think we’d be here all night.’

‘You didn’t tell me Louise was back,’ Bill said, following her in.

‘How did you find out?’

‘She was at the crime scene yesterday, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to her.’

The vestibule was empty and the officers on duty behind the glassed in reception didn’t look up. ‘Why didn’t you tell me she was back?’

The staccato click of Sue’s high-heeled boots on the tiles quickened, and when she reached the doors she hurried through into the chill March air. ‘She didn’t want me to.’ The words were snatched away by the wind, seeming to float in space before impacting on Bill’s ears.

He grabbed her arm and swung her round to face him. ‘Why?’

Sue sighed. ‘The Templeton Woods fiasco, that’s why. It took a lot out of her, although she didn’t show it at the time. She’s still having nightmares about it.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘If you want my opinion I don’t even think she should be back on duty, but she’s stubborn. She said that when she thinks of you it reminds her of that terrible night.’

‘What if I went to see her?’

‘Don’t. Give her time. Maybe she’ll feel differently in a few months.’ Sue prised his fingers off her arm. ‘Take care, Bill.’ Her voice was gentle, and she patted his arm before turning and hurrying in the direction of her car.

Bill watched her go, glad in a way, because if she’d stayed she would have seen the tears in his eyes. He dashed them away with his sleeve and hurried down the steps towards his own Ford banger. His life was deteriorating at a fast rate and he wasn’t sure what to do about it.

Turning the key in the ignition, he drove to his flat, a place that had lost its soul and no longer felt like home.

* * * *

Paul had been standing at the bus stop when the call came. ‘Calm down,’ he said, ‘I’ll come and see you.’ He stuck the phone in his pocket and took the bus to the city centre where he hailed a taxi.

‘What’s happened to you?’ He stared at his mother. She looked small and shrivelled, not the confident, glamorous woman he was used to.

‘Oh, Paul! I’m so glad you’ve come.’ She threw her arms round his neck, tucked her head into his shoulder, and sobbed.

‘Shh, shh.’ Paul stroked her head which was covered by a silk scarf. He pulled his fingers back when he realized there was no hair under the scarf. ‘What’s happened to your hair?’

‘It’s up in that tree.’ Patricia pulled away from him and pointed. ‘That horrible woman you married threw it up there.’

‘Diane’s been here?’ He couldn’t keep the astonishment out of his voice.

‘Yes, she’s been here, and she was horrible to me. But you’re here now and you’ll look after me.’ She snuggled back into his arms.

‘Of course I will. You know I’m always here for you.’

Paul kept his arms tight round her but looked up at the wig fluttering from a tree branch. ‘It’s not too high up,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I could get it down and then you’d look respectable again.’

‘Would you? I hate you seeing me like this.’

‘Wait here, I’ve got a ladder in the potting shed. I’m sure it’ll reach.’

Once he left the garden and entered the wood the darkness closed around him, but he didn’t need a light to find his way to the potting shed. Patricia had insisted he build it out of sight of the house. ‘I don’t want to look out at that ugly thing,’ she’d said, although how she knew what it would look like was beyond him. But the shed suited him being here, it was a place where he could relax, where he could keep his tools and where no one interfered with him.

He fished the keys out of his pocket and unlocked the padlock. The inside of the shed was pitch black and smelled of earth mixed with a tinge of ammonia. But he was an organized man, and knew exactly where everything was inside, so he knew the ladder was leaning on the wall to the right of the door. He reached in and grasped the metal frame which creaked when he pulled it from its resting place. A slight rustling and faint whisper over in the far corner broke the silence. He stared into the darkness for a moment, but then closed the shed door and padlocked it again. He would come back tomorrow and deal with the source of the noise.

Patricia was waiting in the doorway and when he appeared with the ladder she walked over to him. ‘You were a long time, I was beginning to worry,’ she said.

He extended the ladder and propped it against the tree. ‘I know you don’t like going into the woods, but you don’t need to worry about me. I’m used to them.’

‘But there’s a fox. It raids my bins and I’ve seen it in the garden after dark.’

He started to climb the ladder. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow and lay traps, but you’ll have to stay clear of the wooded areas. I don’t want you getting caught in them.’

Easing himself off the end of the ladder onto the branch, he inched along it until he could see the wig. Strands of hair fluttered in the breeze. His fingers closed over the hair but the wind whipped it out of his grasp. The branch swayed under his weight and for a moment he thought it might break, but a gust blew the wig back towards him and he grasped it before the wind changed direction again. Holding the wig, he wriggled back to safety.

Patricia vanished inside the house clutching the wig. Paul followed, poured himself a brandy from the crystal decanter in the drinks cabinet, and made himself comfortable on the white leather sofa. He sipped, savouring the flavour of the drink, and studied the painting of his mother. Patricia had been beautiful in her heyday. She never stopped telling him about her stage career and what she had given up for his father. Then, after his father’s death, how she had made the ultimate sacrifice for her Paul. He often wondered if she would have been able to make a comeback, but he accepted her sacrifice as his due.

She returned to the lounge and slipped onto the sofa beside him. ‘I feel a lot better now.’ She patted her hair. ‘It’s windblown but better than nothing.’ She scowled. ‘That odious woman, promise me you’ll have nothing more to do with her.’

‘You haven’t told me what Diane came to see you about?’

‘She wanted your address. I wasn’t going to give it to her, but she got violent, and I had to.’

‘Why would she want my address? We haven’t been in touch for years and the last time I saw her she was adamant she wanted no contact.’

‘Something to do with Jade. I don’t know. Promise me you won’t take up with her again.’

‘Of course I won’t. You’re the only woman for me now.’

Patricia placed her hand on his thigh. ‘You’ll stay the night?’

‘Not tonight, Patricia.’

She had been Patricia to him for as long as he could remember, mother had been a taboo word. When he was a child she’d insisted he tell everyone she was his sister, and when he got older, his girl friend.

She pouted. ‘I don’t want to be alone tonight.’

He pulled her close to him and kissed her on the lips. ‘Tomorrow,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’ He eased himself out of her embrace. ‘Can I borrow the car? It’ll save me getting a taxi and I’ll have it back to you first thing tomorrow.’

She nodded her assent, but he could see the tears welling in her eyes. ‘Tomorrow,’ he whispered, kissed her forehead and left.

* * * *

The scrape of a key in the lock woke Megan out of her stupor.

She’d thought he would never return, but he was there, a dark shape standing in the doorway. The time had come and she wasn’t sure whether to dread what was going to happen to her, or be glad, because it would all be over and maybe he would let her go.

A cold breeze wafted round her legs, and her shivering increased. That awful shivering that never seemed to stop.

She wished he would say or do something to put her out of her misery, but all he did was stand, look and listen.

‘Please,’ she whispered through cracked lips. Her tongue felt swollen and her vocal chords weren’t working as well as they should.

But he turned away from her, grasped something that clanked, and went out, shutting and locking the door behind him.

She was alone in the dark again.