The Pure in Heart (20 page)

Somehow.

His phone rang as Marilyn’s car turned out on to Sorrel Drive.
Hugo Pears was walking slowly towards the gate.

He spoke into the phone. ‘Serrailler.’

For a second or two he could not take in what his brother-in-law was saying. His eyes were on the small white-faced boy with a school bag and cap, now standing by the gatepost of the house opposite. A man rode past on a bicycle, head down against the rain. Had he been there? Had he ridden by in that way at
precisely that moment? Simon turned round to look at him as he pedalled away.

Chris’s voice sounded odd coming out of his mobile.

‘Si?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you hear me?’

‘I’m in Sorrel Drive – we’re in the middle of the David Angus last-known movements mock-up.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Is it Cat?’

‘No,’ Chris said gently. ‘Not Cat …’

Simon Serrailler listened and when his brother-in-law had finished, said,
‘Right. Thanks,’ and then disconnected.

He stared at the mobile in his hand. Hugo Pears was still waiting. Just waiting. Soaked to the skin.

Nathan Coates waved from the police car a few yards away.

The DCI looked at his phone again. Then pressed his sergeant’s number.

‘OK, let’s call it,’ he said calmly to Nathan. ‘Tell the parents to come down to the boy. And get Mrs Angus back home.’ The
rain was running off his hair into his eyes and his jacket was sodden.

Nathan Coates came running down the road towards him, slipped and almost fell on some wet leaves. He was calling out something, talking about how it had gone, what they had noticed, but as he got closer to Serrailler his words petered off.

‘Guv?’

Simon stared at him.

‘You OK?’

‘Yes.’ He stared down at his mobile again,
as if it would ring and he would listen to Chris Deerbon telling him there had been a mistake. ‘My sister’s dead.’

Dr Derek Wix, GP to Ivy House, sat in the staff-room drinking tea and eating the bacon sandwich they had brought to him. He had revised the dosage of Mr Parmiter’s tablets, given an antibiotic for Miss Lemmen’s ear infection, and signed the death certificate for Martha Serrailler.

‘You checking up on me?’ he mumbled through a mouthful of bread as Chris Deerbon walked in.

‘Don’t
be ridiculous.’

Derek Wix was a good doctor and a morose and curt man. His patients seemed to like him. Chris and Cat had often wondered why.

‘Your sister-in-law … it wasn’t the chest infection as such.’

‘Heart?’

Wix nodded, slurping tea. ‘You want to see her?’

‘I’ll go in of course. But you’re the GP – whatever you say, Derek.’

Derek Wix stood. ‘Staff seem cut up.’

‘They loved her. They
looked after her so well.’

‘Best thing though.’

‘Of course … just don’t say that in front of anyone else.’

‘Richard will agree. Always told me she shouldn’t be here.’

Chris had no doubt that his father-in-law would have said just that many times. ‘Still … point is, if someone loves them, they’re –’

‘Point is, to get them before they start barking. Give them nothing, no affection, no attention
… what are you left with? Sarah’s working in an orphanage in Thailand, did I tell you? No one loves those poor little sods. Never have. They turn into animals.’

He stalked out.

Chris had to remind himself that Derek Wix had a charming wife and three daughters, including Sarah, who had qualified as a doctor the previous summer and gone straight out to work in the Far East.

Shirley Sapcote came
down the corridor as Chris went towards Martha’s room. Her eyes were red.

‘God rest her beautiful soul, she’s an angel with the angels. She never did a wrong thing or said a bad word in her life, Dr Deerbon, and how many can you say that about? Newborn babies, that’s all, and that’s what she was. Innocent as that.’

‘You’re right. I know how fond you were of her and how well you’ve looked after
her. We all do.’

Shirley followed him into the room. ‘As soon as I looked at her I knew. I didn’t have to touch her. You know how it is, Doctor.’

‘I do.’

‘She seemed OK yesterday, happy, you know … I knew when she was happy. Everybody saw her, except Dr Cat of course … How is she, Dr Deerbon?’

‘Tired of waiting … and now upset about this of course.’

‘Yes … but I tell you what, it’ll be the
Inspector who takes it hardest. It was ever so touching, seeing him with her, hearing him talk to her. He’ll be the one.’

Chris stood beside Martha’s bed. Death, as ever, flattered to deceive. Apart from the deep stillness she might have been sleeping. But death had no work to do here in smoothing out the lines of age and trouble, for Martha had had none. Her skin was a baby’s, her hair fine-spun,
her expression bland and smooth and, as Shirley had said, entirely innocent – innocent of experience, of knowledge, of wrongdoing, of emotion – of life.

Cat Deerbon had seen Sam and Hannah into Philippa Granger’s car – the Grangers were their nearest neighbours and Philippa had cheerfully taken on the school run for the last few weeks. She had cleared the breakfast things from the table, wiped
it, loaded the dishwasher and got out a tin of food for Mephisto. As she bent down to put his dish on the floor, water flooded down her legs and made a pool on the tiles. Cat gave a sigh of relief and pulled the telephone towards her across the work surface.

‘Hi, babe.’

‘Chris, you need to ring Carol Standish.’

Carol was the locum who had replaced Cat for her maternity leave. She was new to
Lafferton, seemed efficient, pleasant but slightly cold. They were lucky to get her, locums were becoming hard to find.

‘She’s not in this morning.’

‘She will be now. I’m in labour.’

Where are we going?

I don’t want to go in that car again. I just want to go home now please.

Is this a game? Or a dare?

That’s OK but can it finish now and say you won it?

Don’t pull my arm, it hurts where you pulled it before, it really, really hurts … don’t pull it.

I don’t want to go in that car but I will, I will go in it, please don’t pull my arm.

It’s dark.

It’s always dark.

I haven’t seen the daylight for a long time. Not since …

Why do we go everywhere in the dark?

I’m very tired of going to different places.

Why are we always going somewhere else?

I think it’s a long way from home now.

I don’t like that.

I wish you would stop.

Please stop.

The DCI looked round the room. He could see it in their faces. Exhaustion. Disappointment. Flickers of stubborn determination. But no hope. They expected the worst now. It was only a question of when.

‘OK, the reconstruction this morning wasn’t worth much … the rain altered the scenario of course but it wasn’t only that … no one came forward saying they’d seen anything because no
one did see anything … simple. We put the boy and Mrs Angus through it for nothing.’

‘Guv, a minute ago there was a call in from a cyclist … said he went past this morning without knowing about the recon, but he just heard about it at work.’

Serrailler remembered him, flashing past on a mountain bike, head down against the rain. ‘Is he coming in?’

‘In about an hour … he can’t get off work sooner.
He remembers seeing the boy at the gate that morning.’

A couple of people in the room punched the air.

‘Anything else?’

‘Not so far.’

‘Thanks, everyone. I know how frustrating this is but we can’t let up.’

‘Guv? What do we really think here?’

‘I’m not concerned with the thinking, it’s doing. We redouble our efforts to find him, Jenny. We have no other option.’

Serrailler walked out of the
room, leaving the usual subdued buzz as the relief broke up.

‘He knows he’s dead,’ Jenny Humble said, ‘why the hell doesn’t he just come out with it?’

Nathan Coates turned on her. ‘If he is, ain’t we still got to find him? Think of them parents. The worst is not knowing and never finding, you ask anyone out there who’s had someone go missing, they’ll tell you.’

‘My dad spent a week doing nothing
but look for our dog. He’s never given up really, still thinks it’ll come back.’

‘Right. The worst is not knowing.’

The room emptied and the door banged shut.

Simon Serrailler stood at his office window looking down on to the car park. It was gone noon and still only half light. He felt as if he had lived through a century since getting up that morning.

His telephone rang.

‘Chief Constable
for you, sir.’

Here we go, he thought wearily … Why no progress? … What exactly are you …

‘Simon?’

‘Good morning, ma’am.’

Paula Devenish was one of few women chief constables, in her late forties and a police officer since she was twenty, with a QPM and a medal for bravery. She had arrived eighteen months ago and turned the county police around, the crime stats around, morale around. She was
efficient, energetic, frighteningly knowledgeable about all aspects of policing, and hands-on. She was also approachable and sympathetic. Simon respected her a great deal.

‘How is everybody bearing up? I know what these cases are like when days go by and there’s nothing … everyone feels frustrated.’

‘That’s just what they are … determined and frustrated. We’re as much in the dark as we were.’

‘I’m planning to come into the station on Friday, but will you put the word about that I’m on side? I don’t want them feeling got at when they’re already under so much pressure.’

‘Thank you, ma’am, I will. They’ll appreciate it. The team needs a boost.’

‘Finding the boy will do that, but I’ll try my best. Now, what about you? Are you taking the day off?’

‘Ma’am?’

‘I’ve just heard about your
sister.’

It was one of the things that gave the CC such a formidable edge – knowing everything almost before it happened, including personal matters like this.

‘Take a couple of days’ leave … you’ll be at the end of the phone if you’re needed.’

The rain had cleared for the moment but the sky was heavy with iron grey, scudding clouds. Car lights were on. A woman towing a child took a chance
and darted across the road in front of him. Simon cursed and banged the flat of his hand on the hooter, startling her and making the child cry.

He eased his foot off the accelerator.

Martha was in his head. He knew that what had happened, the quiet death in her sleep, was the right end to her hopeless life … for it had been hopeless, he would not lie to himself. He was not sorry for her, he
was sorry for himself. The closeness he had felt to her had been severed abruptly, his feelings left in limbo. There was no one now towards whom they could be directed. Her death left an uneasy, unhappy hollow within him.

His mother was in the kitchen, standing in front of the range waiting for the kettle to boil and to his surprise she was in her maroon dressing gown, her hair down as she never
let anyone see it.

She turned as Simon went in, and he put his arms round her. Without make-up and smart clothes she looked older – gentler too. The polished surface she always presented to the world often seemed to him as hard as varnish, but this was the real woman, holding tightly to him for a moment and then stepping back as the kettle began to sing.

‘I went to see her. Then I’m afraid I
came home and went back to bed. I needed to blot things out for a while.’

He had never known her do such a thing in her life before. He wondered how his father was dealing with Martha’s death, which he had so long and loudly anticipated.

‘I’m not crying,’ Meriel Serrailler said, ‘I cried all the tears I had for her years ago. Do you understand that?’

‘Yes. It’s a shock though. She was fine
yesterday – or seemed fine.’

‘Well, but that was always the way. She couldn’t tell you how she was.’

His mother filled a cafetière and set it in front of him.

‘I’ll go into Ivy Lodge,’ Simon reached for the milk jug. ‘I’m taking the rest of the day off.’

‘I’m surprised they can spare you.’

‘The Angus case? We’ve nothing.’

‘Oh darling, what a host of black clouds gathered overhead. I can’t
see my way through them to the light.’

‘Not like you.’

‘I don’t feel like me. I feel as if I’ve lost what I thought was a burden, only to find that it wasn’t one after all … well, whenever you carry your own child, in whatever sense, it isn’t a burden, is it? But I didn’t understand that until this morning … about her. About the rest of you, yes, but it was always … so complicated with Martha.’

She stared down into her cup. Her skin was meshed with the finest wrinkles. But she was still beautiful, Simon thought, her high, prominent cheekbones, and elegant straight nose – beautiful, austere, slightly forbidding. And now, having to come to terms not only with the death of her youngest child, but with an uprush of strange and unanticipated emotion, for the first time vulnerable.

‘Where’s
Father?’

‘Undertaker … all of that.’

‘Inquest?’

‘No … why would there be?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Richard doesn’t want any fuss … just the crematorium service. The ashes will be buried in the cloister garden later and there’ll just be a small stone.’

‘And what do you want?’

‘Oh darling, I’ll leave it to him, he needs to deal with it – it’s what he’s best at.’

‘Why can’t she have a proper service?
Isn’t that what you’d do for the rest of us? Why is Martha any different? We could have a small family funeral in the cathedral – one of the side chapels.’

‘Simon, I can’t cope with a battle. Leave it.’

‘I’ll organise it. Let me argue with Father.’

‘Please. Don’t. Besides, what difference would it make?’

Simon emptied the cafetière into his mug. ‘It would make a lot of difference to me.’

His mother sat very straight and upright in her chair, not looking at him. It had always been like this with her, he thought, always leaving things, letting things go, not stirring anything up, placating his father, humouring his father, keeping things quiet. It was the way she had survived a long and unhappy marriage to a bully – that and by separating herself from him in her work and, after retirement,
in all her committees and trusts.