Past Praying For (31 page)

The
fog was growing denser, the yellowish polluted fog of the Thames Valley, thickening in eddies and swirls until it seemed almost viscous. It enfolded buildings, trees, figures, as if the air itself were becoming as solid as the objects it shrouded. PC Tom Compton was not as a rule a fanciful man, but as he trod his lonely beat he almost turned to see if a bow wave was forming as he breached the opacity ahead.

Compton
was not happy. He was accustomed to the comfort and security of a police car, dry and warm, with the familiar crackle of radio voices from headquarters and other nearby cars, and his partner for company in the slack times and support if things hotted up. Even when he had been on a foot patrol, there had always been two of them; tonight he was on his own, with not a soul about. Well, probably not. He glanced over his shoulder nervously.

He
was in radio contact, of course, but tonight the strategy was to cover the village with as many officers in as many places as possible, particularly now that visibility was reduced to only a few paces.

And
that idea was a loser for a start. There wasn’t an icecube’s chance in hell that he would see anything, unless he tripped over the fire-raiser – a woman, they seemed to think – squatting over the next blaze warming her hands. Someone could be within three feet of him, ahead or behind, and he wouldn’t even know.

He
shivered. As a mere PC he wasn’t, of course, privy to the discussions of the great men who flaunted a ‘D’ before the ‘C’ in their police title – PCs to them were a lower form of life – but the rumour was all round the station that the woman they were looking for was a nutter. It wasn’t a comfortable thought.

Compton
turned on to a back lane which ran behind some of the smarter houses, with the trees of the common dripping eerily on the other side. With sight being so little use to him his hearing seemed much more acute and he found himself becoming aware of all sorts of little sounds in that heavy greyness, muffled and distorted by the blanket of the fog. There were rustles too, and the snapping of twigs in among the light undergrowth and the bushes. Was that one of the foxes, scavengers of dustbins, which were so common here, or was it someone moving lightly and furtively among the trees? Perhaps it was an ordinary citizen perfectly legitimately taking his dog on its late-night walk. Perhaps it wasn’t.

There
was a thick fur of moisture on the pile of his clothes now, and it was condensing on his brows and eyelashes too. He knuckled his eyes as if that might restore clear vision and peered into the damp darkness, shining his torch which dazzled but shed no light. It was probably no more than imagination which made him think he sensed the stir of someone’s passing on the thickened air.

***

Rod Vezey, when he reached Burdley, was high; high with a sort of nervous jubilation. He strode through the little police station, Moon and Smethurst trotting in his wake, with such purposeful haste that he created a stir.

‘
Well, well! Do you reckon Wonderboy has had a break-through, then?’ the constable manning the front desk asked the sergeant.

He,
dislodged from his office and grudgingly back on the desk too, sniffed.

‘
About bloody time too, if you ask me,’ he said bitterly.

In
sublime indifference, the usurper shut behind him the door of his annexed territory and said, in an unconscious echo of the man outside, ‘Well, it’s about time we got a break, isn’t it? All I ask is that it hasn’t come too late. It’s an evil night out there.’

He
stood in the centre of the little room, frowning his concentration, then gave his orders.

‘
Dave. Get across to headquarters with these bags now. Take it as quickly as you can – siren if you must – but for God’s sake don’t kill anyone, even yourself. I’ll phone ahead and get a print man waiting for you. That probably won’t tell us much, since I’d be astonished if our friend here has form, but we can’t get down to analysing the thing until fingerprints have finished with it. And once they’ve finished, I want full photocopies faxed here asap. We must be in a position to act first thing in the morning.’

‘
OK, guy.’ Smethurst took the plastic bags and left.

‘
Robert, I want you to sit down now and dredge up all you can remember of what the diary said. Write it down. I’m just going through to see if anything’s come in from the patrols. And switch on the kettle, would you?’

Leaving
Moon sitting down at the desk and reaching for paper, he went through to the other small office which had been transformed into a primitive ops room. Two PCs and a woman sergeant were running it, manning hastily-installed radio equipment and telephone lines. One man was talking quietly into the speaker of his headset, but they all looked up when Vezey entered.

‘
Anything to report, sergeant?’

She
pulled a face. ‘Nothing interesting that I can see, sir.’ She hesitated; his own state of high tension was obvious.

‘
Er – has something else come up?’ she could not resist asking, though she was not sure it was wise.

He
gave his brief, mirthless grin and stretched out his hand with a seesaw motion.

‘
It’s just possible. Keep me in touch, if anything comes in,’ he said, and vanished again.

When
he returned, Moon was methodically covering a sheet of paper with his neat, precise handwriting.

‘
Nearly there,’ he said without looking up. ‘It’s not very accurate, but I think I’ve got the gist. There are probably things you can add that you’ve remembered and I haven’t.’

‘
I’ll have it photocopied whenever you finish, and then we can both have a look at it.’

Vezey
got out the mugs and coffee. ‘Milk and sugar?’

Moon
had finished by the time the coffee was ready, and they sat with their copies on either side of the desk. Vezey was able to add one or two points; it was certainly not wholly accurate, but there was enough information to be useful.

‘
What does this do to your profile – that’s the first point, isn’t it? Anything that helps to fill it out?’

Moon
scanned it again. ‘Curiously enough, I’m not sure that in psychological terms it’s added a great deal to what we had already surmised. It’s mainly confirmatory, in fact. But it’s interesting to see the connection with Christmas; that’s probably always been a tricky time for Missy. Most women seem to get themselves to the verge of collapse by the time the turkey reaches the table, and in her mind it would be inextricably linked with stress already. If a crisis of some sort arose at this time, she would be particularly vulnerable.

‘
But I must say, it’s fascinating to have chapter and verse. I’d like to write this one up; I can’t think of a case where there is such a clear description of the factors contributing to dual personality.’

‘
Let’s cut the theoretical crap, shall we, and get down to the investigation?’

Moon
blinked but said nothing, only surveying him owlishly over his spectacles, and Vezey had the grace to look abashed.

‘
Oh – sorry, Robert. But it’s just – oh, I don’t know. It seems as if while we’re groping along in a mental fog, anything could be happening in the fog out there, anything.’

They
both glanced automatically at the impenetrable blankness outside the uncurtained window.

Vezey
persisted. ‘Well, what do you reckon?’

‘
In practical terms? There, of course, you know as well as I do what questions to ask tomorrow. It’s all down here.’

Moon
tapped the copy on his knee with his pen. ‘It’s as straightforward as the most exigent detective could wish, surely. Who had a mother who died when she was a small child, whose brother died shortly afterwards? And who was aged, say, between six and nine in 1967?’

Vezey
nodded. ‘Yes, simple enough, you would think, wouldn’t you? I’ll buzz them just now and get ages from the statements. And even if she won’t come straight out and tell us herself, all we have to do is go to the public records to find out about her family – no nasty fiddly conversations with relatives and friends. Always supposing there isn’t a curved ball, like her having assumed another name, or something like that.’

‘
Surely not!’

Vezey
sighed fatalistically. ‘It’s always when you think you’ve got it in the bag that things decide to go wrong. Still, assuming that for once the gods are merciful, as soon as we’ve nailed her, surely we’ll be able to get proof?’

‘
Psychological proof? Probably; I should think her state must be pretty volatile by now.’

‘
I was thinking in terms of nice ordinary physical proof. The courts like that an awful lot better. We may get prints off the book, or off the wrapper anyway, and given a search warrant it’s awesome what forensic can come up with.’

‘
What are you going to do now?’

Vezey
hesitated. ‘I have –’ he said, and then stopped, as if reluctant to say something which approached the intimacy of a personal confession. He got up, went across to the blank window and stared pointlessly out.

‘
I can’t explain it. I just have an irrational feeling that something’s going wrong out there. I don’t know why and I don’t know where, and I can’t justify it. But I feel I should be doing something. Perhaps only something high profile, with lights and sirens, that might make somebody think again...

‘
But on the other hand...What time is it now? Well after eleven? How the hell can we go out ringing doorbells, without solid evidence as support? Look,’ he picked up the list that had been brought in, ‘these are the women who would have been between six and nine in 1967 – eighteen of them! OK, we’ve homed in on four, but given your sister’s intransigence all we can claim is that it’s a hunch. And we’ve interviewed them all recently, each of them more than once and one of them three times. Despite what my gut is telling me, my head says we have to wait either until we have something concrete or it isn’t the hour of the night that has people screaming about Stasi tactics. You never know, it’s possible Prints might turn up something.’

Moon
sighed in his turn. ‘I’m sure you’re absolutely right, but I confess to sharing your sense of unease. When do you think you might get information through from your HQ?’

Vezey
looked at his watch again impatiently, though he knew perfectly well what it would say.

‘
By the time he’s got there – and the fog would make it slow – got it set up, fingerprints taken and compared with known prints – another half hour at least. And even then, we’re unlikely to be any further forward.’

It
was three-quarters of an hour, in fact, but when the phone-call did come, the result took him completely by surprise.

‘
Minnie Groak?’ Vezey repeated blankly, taking a note of the address then replacing the receiver.

‘
Is there anything you can tell me about Minnie Groak, whose prints we seem to hold for some reason?’ he demanded.

‘
Minnie?’ Moon echoed. ‘Minnie’s my sister’s cleaner, if you could dignify her with that title. You’d have her prints for elimination after the fire.’

‘
Good God. And what age is the woman?’

‘
Hard to say. She’s one of those grey women who look middle-aged from puberty on, but she’s probably around forty-five, I would guess. And her mother is very much, but very much alive, according to Margaret. How does she come into this?’

‘
That’s what I’m going to find out. Her prints are all over everything – the book, the wrapping, everything. Where does that leave our profile now?’

It
did not take Robert long to make the connection.

‘
I think that what has happened is that Minnie has just demonstrated yet again her contempt for Marcus Aurelius’s dictum that one should not waste what remains of one’s life in speculating about one’s neighbours. I think that speculation, in this case, has become investigation. She has taken matters, quite literally, into her own hands.’ ‘Opened your sister’s mail, do you mean?’

‘
Without a doubt, I should say.’

‘
Right.’ It was the excuse for action Vezey had been looking for, and he leaped to his feet. ‘If you’re right, she’s going to get the sort of fright that will make sure she wouldn’t read a love letter from the Prime Minister to Princess Di if she found it lying face-up on the pavement.’

In
minutes they were in the police car, with blue light flashing and siren wailing, making surprising speed through the fog to Minnie’s door. The turn that it gave her this time made all her previous palpitations insignificant by comparison.

When,
after half an hour, they drove off to the district headquarters, leaving behind a hysterically-sobbing Minnie snivelling her statement to a policewoman, they took with them in the statutory plastic bag the crumpled wrapping with its pathetic message, stained now with tea leaves and potato peelings from the Groak dustbin.