The Various Haunts of Men (5 page)

‘Oh yes, she
is
an employee. She works for me, it just
sounded a bit bleak. I have a good relationship with all my staff.’

‘I understand – official forms. OK, let’s start again. Tell me everything about Angela Randall … but before you do, can I get you a hot drink? I’m afraid it will have to come out of the dreaded machine.’

She will go far, Carol Ashton thought, stirring
the tea round with the plastic stick that bore no resemblance to a spoon. At least I hope she will. I hope someone doesn’t see her as too concerned and too relaxed … too – yes, too interested. DS Graffham leaned back in her chair, arms folded, looking straight at her, waiting. She did indeed seem genuinely interested.

‘I run a care home for the elderly demented.’

‘Alzheimer’s disease?’

‘That
pretty much covers it.’

‘I hope you know how needed you are. My grandmother died with it last year. The care she received was disgraceful. Where is the home?’

‘Fountain Avenue. The Four Ways.’

‘And Mrs Randall works there with you?’

‘Miss Randall. Angela. Yes. She’s been with us for nearly six years and on permanent night duty for the last four. She’s the sort of person you only dream of,
frankly – hard-working, caring, reliable, almost never been off sick or for any other reason, and being single without any dependants she’s been quite happy to do nights all the time. That’s rare.’

‘When did you last see her?’

‘Well, I don’t always of course … different shifts and days off for everyone, we could easily go a week without seeing each other. But of course I’d always know she’d
been on duty. There’s the report book and another
member of staff on with her. But actually, I did see her the last time she was at work. She’d rung me in the middle of the night and I came in. I only live four doors down. Some of the patients got a nasty sickness bug and I was needed. Angela was there then.’

‘How did she seem?’

‘Rushed off her feet of course, we all were that night … we didn’t
have much time to chat. But she was much the same as ever … very calm and dependable.’

‘So you noticed nothing unusual about her?’

‘Oh no. And I would have noticed.’

‘And she didn’t come in the next night?’

‘No, she wasn’t due. She had a weekend and then four days off. It goes like that, so every member of staff gets a good long break occasionally. They need it. So Angela wasn’t due in for
a week and then I was off for a couple of days. When I got back there was a report that she hadn’t been into work for four nights and hadn’t rung in sick either. That was just completely out of character. I’ve had staff who would just not turn up and not let me know and I’ve got rid of them. We simply can’t function like that. Our residents don’t deserve it. But Angela Randall would never behave
like that.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Rang her – several times. I kept on ringing. There was never a reply and she hasn’t an answering machine.’

‘Did you go round to her house?’

‘No. No, I didn’t.’

‘Why ever not?’ DS Graffham looked at her sharply.

Carol Ashton felt uneasy – guilty in fact, though she was sure she was not. But the young woman had such a clear, steady look, searching her out,
getting to her. She wondered how long a criminal would hold out against it.

‘Mrs Ashton – I can’t help you – and I want to – if you don’t help me.’

Carol stirred and stirred the tea dregs. ‘I don’t want to … to make it sound wrong.’

The detective waited.

‘Angela is very private … a self-contained sort of person. She is unmarried but I have no idea if she is widowed or divorced – or just single.
It may sound strange that I’ve never discovered that in six years but she simply isn’t the sort of person you could ask and she never talks about herself. She’s perfectly friendly but she doesn’t give anything away and you can easily overstep the mark with her. You might ask a question or make a remark anyone else would respond to without a thought, but she can just – close up, you know? You
can see it in her eyes … a warning. Don’t go there. A sort of portcullis seems to come down. So I’ve never been to her house and as far as I know nor have any of the other staff. And – well, I just wouldn’t call on her. Telephoning was as far as I liked to go really. That sounds ridiculous.’

‘It doesn’t actually. There are people like that. In my experience they make life very lonely for themselves.
They also give the impression that they’re hiding something – maybe some dark secret, but they very rarely are, it’s all a smokescreen. Do you know of any family she may have?’

‘No. She’s never mentioned any at all.’

‘Had she a history of illness … of depression?’

‘No. She’d certainly never been ill – maybe a bad cold a couple of times. I encourage staff to stay at home then. Our residents
are very vulnerable.’

‘Nothing that would cause her to be taken ill suddenly – diabetes or a heart condition?’

‘No. I’d know that because of her work. There’s nothing.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Fifty-three.’

‘You’ll already have gone over this in your mind, but is there anything you can think of that was different or strange about Miss Randall in the last few weeks … couple of months, say?’

Carol
hesitated. There was something. Or was there? Something and nothing. The room was very quiet. DS Graffham did not fidget or write anything, she simply sat, looking steadily, unnervingly at Carol.

‘It’s really hard to explain …’

‘Go on.’

‘Nothing was ever said … you have to know that … This is just … just a hunch. An impression I got.’

‘Those are often very important.’

‘I don’t want to make
too much of it … it’s so vague. But once or twice I’ve thought she just seemed a little bit … distant? Distracted? I don’t know … as if she was miles away. I’d never noticed it about her in the past. She’s always very on the ball. Look, please don’t make too much of this … it was just once or twice, I’m not implying she was behaving strangely, of course not.’

‘You think something was worrying
her?’

‘No. It wasn’t that, or I don’t think it was … Oh, I don’t know. Forget I said it. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘I think it does.’

‘I should have gone to her house, shouldn’t I? What if she’s been taken ill?’

‘Well, presumably she has neighbours. You’re not to blame.’

‘What will happen now?’

‘We’ll get someone round there to check.’ She stood up. ‘But don’t worry … missing people have usually
gone somewhere of their own free will for all sorts of personal reasons. They either turn up again as if nothing had happened, or they get in touch. There are very, very few who have come to any sort of harm. Especially not sensible middle-aged ladies.’

‘Thank you for that.’

‘It’s the truth.’ The young woman touched her arm. ‘And …’ she smiled suddenly, so that Carol Ashton saw that she was
not merely pretty, she was striking – and beautiful. ‘You came here. You did exactly the right thing.’

‘You have sixty seconds to explain why we should take this one beyond the routine, Freya.’

DI Billy Cameron splayed himself back in his chair, hands held behind his head, and swivelled round and round, a hairy, overweight, sweating bear of a man. Impress me, his stance said, convince me.

Freya Graffham was not intimidated. She had been at Lafferton CID for only a few weeks, but recognised the DI for the sort of policeman the Met had had an abundance of when she had first joined – large and tough-talking with soft centres. By the time she left, most of them had retired and had not been replaced by their like. The new ones were a very different breed. She knew she would not find it easy
to twist DI Cameron round her little finger but there would be ways of getting round him.

For his part Cameron saw a young woman who was tougher than she looked. But Freya Graffham had left the Met voluntarily after twelve years, for a cathedral town, and he wondered why she had lost her nerve.

For now, though, she was setting out to prove herself.

‘Angela Randall, aged fifty-three, a woman
who lives as predictable, orderly and methodical a life as you could imagine, no family, no close friends … has never let her employer down once. She’s not ill and as far as we know has never been depressed. Uniform found the house neat as a pin, car in the garage, table laid for breakfast, eggs in the saucepan, bread in the toaster. She had made a pot of tea and drunk a cup and there was a banana
skin in the otherwise empty pedal bin. The laundry basket had her uniform in it.’

‘But no Miss Randall, ill, well or otherwise.’

‘No.’

‘Neighbours?’

‘Don’t know much. Hardly saw her. Always passed the time of day but kept herself to herself. No visitors. There’s something odd though, guv. Uniform said the house felt … peculiar.’

Cameron raised an eyebrow. ‘Not like them to go spooky on us.’

‘I’d like to go round there.’

Cameron looked at her. She had it – the extra instinct, flair, the nose for something … whatever you called it, Freya Graffham had it and it set her apart, as it always did. She would go to the top if she managed to retain that, along with the attention to detail and a capacity for hard work which would keep her pinned to the ground. The combination was rare enough
for him to know he had to hang on to it when it came his way.

‘You know as well as I do that if you don’t come up with anything straight away and there are no further developments, we have to drop it into the missing persons file.’

‘Low priority … no danger to the public at large or,
so far as we can judge, to the missing person … whose right to go missing at all we have to respect. Yeah, yeah.’

‘There’ll be a secret lover somewhere, and they’ve gone off on holiday … or she’s topped herself.’

‘OK, but neither of those suggestions cuts any ice with her employer.’

Cameron looked at his watch. ‘More like three minutes,’ he said.

‘I take it that’s a yes?’

‘One thing, Freya … ninety-nine out of a hundred missing persons are a waste of police time … bear that in mind before you go getting
carried away.’

‘Thanks, guv. I’ll keep it simple.’

Freya drove straight to Barn Close, taking young DC Nathan Coates with her, and, when they arrived, sending him first to check the garage and garden shed, and then to go round the neighbours. Freya wanted Angela Randall’s house to herself.

‘Weird,’ one of the uniform patrol who had first been there had said, and as Freya closed the door softly
behind her and stood in the small front hall she sensed at once what they meant. But there was nothing sinister here, she was sure immediately, it was just extraordinarily silent, with a quality and a depth to the silence she had rarely known in a house before, almost like a heavy, dense textile surrounding her, impenetrable and tightly packed.

What kind of woman was it who lived – or perhaps
had lived – here? She went from room to room slowly, trying to build up a picture of her. Clearly she was tidy, clean, careful and organised. This was a bleak little house, and almost anonymous, like an out-of-date show home
in which no one had ever lived. The furnishings were not ugly but they were unmemorable and might have been chosen by anyone. There was no sense of a personal taste behind
the selection or the arrangement. The style was neither antique nor very contemporary, the colour scheme was pale bland. Freya opened drawers and cupboards; crockery, cutlery, linen, a charity catalogue; the small bureau contained some papers, clipped together in an orderly manner – bank statements, payslips, a building society book in which £1,236.98 was deposited, utility bills, all paid and ticked
off. On the shelves in the front room were a few unrevealing books – an atlas, a dictionary, a Delia Smith complete cookery course, a wildflower guide and a couple of Dick Francis thrillers.

‘Come on, come on,’ Freya muttered, ‘give.’

It was what was not here that seemed significant, there was nothing personal – no photographs, letters, holiday postcards from friends. Her handbag which uniform
had found on a chair in the kitchen had yielded nothing beyond a purse with some change, a wallet with two credit cards and twenty pounds, spectacles, aspirin, tissues and a stamped letter containing a cheque to a catalogue company. The address book beside the telephone listed plumber, electrician, doctor, dentist, a hairdresser, an acupuncturist, the Four Ways Nursing Home, with Carol Ashton’s
private line listed separately and ‘C. Gabb – mowing man’. Angela Randall had apparently no relative, friend or godchild. How could anyone live such a barren life?

Freya went upstairs.

The bathroom yielded plain, basic toiletries from Boots. She picked up the utilitarian shampoo, the simple white soap. No pampering went on here. The spare bedroom
was clearly never used – the bed was stripped
bare and the wardrobe contained a few blankets and pillows, plus two empty suitcases. So Angela Randall had not taken off on holiday. The room was bitterly cold. The whole house was cold.

In the main bedroom, the clothes hanging in the wardrobe were scarcely more personal than everything else – beige coat, brown skirt, navy jumper, black suit, camel suit, floral-print cotton dress, white and
lemon, blue and grey cotton shirts. But there were two tracksuits of good quality from a sports shop, and a pair of brand new running shoes, still boxed – expensive.

So far, DS Graffham’s mental picture of Angela Randall had been blank, like a jigsaw to which she had not been given any pieces. Now, they had found a couple, the first to be fitted in. A single woman in her fifties of average height
and size, who wore neutral colours and clothes that would never draw anyone’s attention to her, had become a serious runner who spent £150 on one pair of shoes. She wondered how the DI would react if she took the fact back as her sole piece of information.

She was about to close the doors of the wardrobe and go downstairs to meet DC Coates, when something caught her eye, a faint gleam at the
very back of the cupboard. She reached in.

It was a small box wrapped in gold paper, with a gold ribbon tied on top in an elaborate bow. Attached to that was a small gold envelope. Freya opened it.