There Goes The Bride (16 page)

They were interviewed separately. Detective Superintendent Walker, flanked by Boase, was in a high temper. He said he was sure they knew all about the smuggling and instead of informing the police had decided to play at being detectives. His temper was further inflamed by the news that Jerry had escaped.

‘May I remind you, I am a detective,’ complained Agatha, ‘and without us you’d have got sweet damn-all. I suppose you’ve arrested Bross-Tilkington.’

‘No, why? As far as we can gather, he had nothing to do with this.’

‘You must have lost your wits. George’s best friend is unloading Chinese at the bottom of his garden and he doesn’t know anything about it? What about his security-dog man?’

‘Jerry Carton has disappeared. We are looking for him. We are also interrogating Mr Bross-Tilkington, but he seems genuinely bewildered. It was Mr Dubois who suggested hiring Jerry and then Sean.’

‘Well, I’m sure when you bring Sylvan Dubois in, he will inform you that they were all in cahoots.’

Walker’s eyes flickered uneasily and he glared down at notes on the desk in front of him.

‘You’ve lost him!’ exclaimed Agatha. ‘You’ve let him get away.’

‘He got out into the Channel but the coastguard will soon pick him up,’ said Walker heavily. ‘Now, if we can get back to the questioning . . .’

Later the following morning, when Agatha and Charles, who had slept on their boat, woke up, Agatha phoned Patrick to ask him if his contact in Hewes could come up with any news. Patrick had heard about the hunt for Sylvan on the radio news that morning. ‘They’ve a fat chance of catching him,’ he said.

‘Why?’ asked Agatha. ‘They’ve got the coastguard out looking for him.’

‘Don’t the cops down there read the newspapers? Coastguard staff around Britain are on a twenty-four-hour walkout over pay. It started at seven o’clock last night.’

Agatha groaned. The thought of a surely vengeful Sylvan escaping frightened her.

When she rang off, she told Charles. Then she asked him, ‘What made you so sure he would be smuggling something?’

‘It was because of an article I read earlier this year,’ said Charles, nursing a mug of coffee. ‘In February, the police broke up a massive people-smuggling gang. Chinese people pay up to twenty-one thousand pounds to be smuggled into Britain. People like Sylvan are probably responsible for the France-to-Britain leg of the journey. That costs each five thousand pounds. In one flat in Peckham High Street in London, twenty-three Chinese were discovered living in cramped conditions. The police say it’s a myth to think they’re poor peasants. A lot of them are highly skilled.’

‘So what happens to them?’

‘They think a lot get swallowed up by the restaurants in London’s Chinatown.’

‘There’s the Chinese restaurant here of course,’ said Agatha. ‘That’s where Sylvan took me and Roy for dinner. But I wonder how he got them in?’

‘He was friendly with all the authorities down at Hadsea,’ said Charles. ‘I told you that. He probably had a room hidden somewhere in that large boat of his.’

Agatha’s phone rang. It was Patrick. ‘They’re taking the Bross-Tilkington house apart this morning,’ he said, ‘but George is swearing innocence and they can’t so far find a thing against him. They believe he was conned by Sylvan. They think maybe Felicity knew about it and was going to talk and that’s why Sylvan shot her. George and his wife were flattered because Sylvan treated them royally when they were in Paris and introduced them to all sorts of famous people.’

‘Idiots,’ commented Agatha sourly.

‘Oh, really?’ said Charles. ‘If it hadn’t been for me, sweetie, you’d have got laid and into a blind obsession.’

Agatha was saved from replying as a voice hailed them. Charles went up on deck. He came back down and said, ‘There’s a police car on the pier. We’re wanted back at the station.’

Agatha was interviewed again by Boase and Walker. The detective chief superintendent’s eyes were red-rimmed with lack of sleep. The police were still suspicious as to why Charles had leaped to the conclusion that Sylvan was smuggling something. ‘There is a detective sergeant at Mircester who claims that you have withheld vital information in the past,’ said Walker severely.

‘That will be a bitch called Collins,’ said Agatha wearily. ‘She hates me. I have helped Mircester police many times in the past.’

Falcon put his head round the door. ‘A word, sir? It’s urgent.’

Walker told the tape the interview was being suspended and then left the room. He returned shortly, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

‘Found something?’ asked Agatha eagerly.

‘Never mind. Wait outside until your statements are typed up, sign them and then you are free to go.’

Agatha joined Charles in the small reception area. ‘Something’s happened,’ she said. ‘Walker looked so excited, I believe they’ve got him.’

‘We’ll wait to sign our statements,’ said Charles, ‘and then we’ll get back to the boat and you phone Patrick.’

‘When did you learn to handle a boat?’ asked Agatha. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you.’

‘I was in the navy as a young man.’

‘Charles! I never ever think of you as doing anything useful.’

A gust of wind rattled the windowpanes of the station. ‘Just as well I have,’ said Charles. ‘Seems to be blowing up.’

After a quarter of an hour they were both called into a side room where they signed their statements. Then they went out into Hewes High Street, leaning against the increasing force of the wind.

‘Do we have to go back to Hadsea today?’ pleaded Agatha.

‘’Fraid so. I promised to have it back. It’s only a river, Agatha. It’s not as if we have to go into the open sea.’

Agatha kept to the saloon as the powerful boat set off downstream. She could feel all her self-confidence leaking out through her fingertips. She remembered with shame bragging to Sylvan about her great detective work. Was she really any good? Or was she surrounded by clever people like Charles? The sheer folly of going out on a date and accepting another with a Frenchman who had been at the scene of every murder was silly, to say the least.

Maybe she wasn’t any good at being a detective at all. Maybe she just bumbled round like a trapped bee against a windowpane until someone opened the window and she saw daylight.

When they got to Hadsea and handed over the boat, Charles volunteered to drive them back as they had both come in Agatha’s car, and a weary and demoralized Agatha sank down into the passenger seat.

‘Before we drive off,’ she said, ‘I’d better phone Patrick and see why my interview was cut short.’

Patrick said that a fishing boat had located Sylvan’s boat adrift in the Channel and was towing it into Dover Harbour. An RAF patrol had been alerted earlier by the fishing boat’s captain and had immediately flown over the area. They had seen Sylvan diving off into the sea. He hadn’t been wearing a life jacket. They had circled over the
Jolie Blonde.
Sylvan had struck out for a little bit and then had sunk under the waves. They were now searching to see if the body surfaced.

Agatha relayed the news to Charles. ‘That’s the end of that,’ he said.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Agatha, stifling a yawn.

‘Oh, come on, Aggie. It stands to reason. He’d slept with Felicity. She must have known something.’

‘But he had a cast-iron alibi.’

‘Did Patrick say whether the Bross-Tilkingtons are still being regarded as innocent?’ asked Charles.

‘Evidently so. The police feel they were being simply used all along the way. The security and the hiring of Jerry Carter were all Sylvan’s idea. He frightened them to death with stories of burglars.’

‘So, end of chapter. Good,’ said Charles. ‘We can all get back to normal.’

‘What’s normal?’ mumbled Agatha and fell asleep.

She did not awaken until they were drawing up outside her cottage. ‘I’m starving,’ said Charles. ‘Let’s see to your cats and then walk up to the Red Lion. Has John got his outside bit?’

‘Last heard.’

John Fletcher, landlord of the Red Lion, was lucky in that he’d had an extensive car park at the back. Half was now set out with tables and umbrellas enclosed in a heavy sort of plastic tent. The day was fine, so the sides had been rolled up. They ate a hearty meal and walked slowly back.

‘My time to sleep,’ said Charles. ‘Care to join me?’

‘The usual answer.’

‘You’ll crack one of these days.’

‘Not me. I’d better go into the office. See you later.’

Everyone except Mrs Freedman was out. Agatha sighed and sat down at her computer to check through all the cases logged on it. ‘Nothing on that girl who went missing – Trixie Ballard?’

‘Not a sign yet. Sharon’s been working on it.’

Agatha studied the notes on the case on her computer. The disappearance of the fifteen-year-old had received extensive coverage in the press. She looked up. ‘Did the parents appear on television?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Freedman. ‘If you Google BBC News and check back, you’ll get it.’

When the video link came up on the screen, Agatha turned up the sound on her speakers and listened carefully. Mrs Ballard was a thin dyed blonde who sobbed uncontrollably. Mr Ballard did all the talking, ‘Please come home, princess,’ he said, his voice breaking with emotion. ‘We miss you and we love you.’

‘That’s odd,’ said Agatha when the brief video had finished. ‘He never appealed to anyone who might be holding her to let her go. Where is Sharon’s report? No, don’t worry. It’ll be here somewhere.’

Agatha found Sharon’s report and studied it carefully. Sharon had been very thorough. School friends and teachers had been questioned along with next-door neighbours and local shops. She had left school two weeks ago to go home and seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

Still smarting at what she felt were her inadequacies as a detective, Agatha decided to see what she could find out about the girl herself.

The Ballards lived in a five-storey block of flats off a roundabout on the Evesham Road out of Mircester. It all looked very respectable, with private parking, no graffiti, and a tiny mowed piece of grass and flowerbeds along the edge of the car park.

Agatha was about to get out of the car when a thought struck her. Surely the parents, neighbours and friends would all just say the same thing. The girl’s room would have been thoroughly searched. She remembered from the notes, Trixie’s computer had been studied in case some paedophile had been grooming her.

Leaning back in the car, Agatha lit a cigarette and brought the faces of the parents up into her mind’s eye. The father’s face had looked bloated. Grief or drink?

A memory from her own childhood surfaced in her mind. Her parents had both been alcoholics. One night she had awakened to find her father standing at the end of her bed. ‘Move over, darling,’ he’d said.

And young Agatha had opened her mouth and screamed the place down. Her mother had come tottering in and her parents had ended up having a vicious fight.

Had daddy tried anything on with young Trixie? Now, if you were a fifteen-year-old, would you commit suicide? There was a lot of that around. But the reports had her down as a sensible girl, fairly good at exams.

What would I do? wondered Agatha.

With all the influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe, lousy jobs were hard to find, the sort of jobs where they didn’t bother about employment details. She hoped Trixie hadn’t gone to London, where there were plenty waiting to prey on runaways and put them into prostitution.

She was an ordinary-looking girl, tall for her age, with mousy hair. But if she dyed her hair and wore glasses, she could change her appearance.

What would I do? thought Agatha again. She lit another cigarette.

Work? Chambermaid or dishwasher. That might be it. Maybe not too far away. The report said she had never been out of Mircester before. She was too tall and not nearly pretty enough to attract a paedophile. She could pass for seventeen or eighteen.

She returned to the office in time for the evening briefing. ‘Sharon, you’ve done very good work on this girl, Trixie Ballard,’ said Agatha. ‘But I’ve got a feeling there might be trouble with the father. I don’t think she’s been snatched, and from that report from the school counsellor, she doesn’t seem the suicidal type. It’s a wild guess, but she might be working somewhere where they aren’t too fussy about employment legalities. I want you all to take tomorrow to check hotels for chambermaids and restaurants for dishwashers. Jobs like that.’

After briefing them, Agatha went wearily home. Charles had left. She fed the cats and let them out into the garden. She would start work on the Trixie case in the morning.

Toni had enjoyed her brief time of being her own boss. She felt she’d taken a great step backwards to be working for Agatha again. She was grateful to Agatha – too grateful – for all the help she had given her.

Most of the girls she had been to school with had settled for unexciting jobs. Still, thought Toni, they might turn out to be a good source of information as to low-paid jobs where too many questions might not be asked. Toni had opted to search the hotels. Trixie would need somewhere to stay.