The Various Haunts of Men (9 page)

Pauline put the paper down on the table between them.

‘Have another cup.’

She did so, and
sipped it slowly, talked about the shops, Christmas, the cost of everything, the funny new hymns, spinning the time out. Because when she left Pauline’s house for her own, she would have to take the piece of paper, and when she had closed her own front door, she would be alone with it and the name and address and number.

To make it easier, she glanced down quickly now at Pauline’s round writing.
Sheila Innis. 20 Priam Crescent. 389113
.

The plainness of the woman’s name and the address, on a road she knew, were reassuring somehow, so that she took the paper and folded it away into her handbag quite cheerfully, scoffing at herself for having been worried.

DS Freya Graffham stood in the entrance hall of the Four Ways Nursing Home, waiting to be directed to Carol Ashton’s office and wanting to flee. It was the smell – polish and chrysanthemums to the fore, but with heavy notes of antiseptic and stewing meat. It took her back to the corridors of her convent school, and, more recently and distressingly, to the care home in south London where her
grandmother had spent her last two miserable years. And there had not even been the disguising smells of the polish or the flowers to mask the stench. Coming into a nursing home again, however different this one might be, struck chill to her heart.

Carol Ashton’s office was bright and pleasant with pictures, plants and a comfortable chair.

‘Have you found Angela? Do please sit down …’

‘I’m
sorry, I’m afraid we haven’t.’

‘It seems so long. I’m absolutely certain something must have happened to her …’

‘Mrs Ashton, I’m trying to build up a picture of Angela
Randall. I wonder if you’d mind going back over a couple of things again?’

‘I’ll do anything, of course I will.’

‘You told me that just going away without saying anything to you, or as far as you know to anyone else, just wasn’t
in character.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I’m sure. I know people sometimes behave unexpectedly but I truly do not believe Angela would ever have gone away like that. She wouldn’t have left her job and her home without warning, she simply wouldn’t.’

‘Do you know if she had any close relationships?’

‘You mean a man? A love relationship?’ The suggestion seemed to take Carol Ashton
aback. ‘I think I told you she isn’t the sort of person who talks about her private life. Do you know, I couldn’t even tell you if she owned a cat? But she’s never mentioned anyone.’

‘No one she might have bought expensive presents for?’

‘I doubt it. What kind of presents do you mean?’

‘We found a pair of gold cufflinks in the house, gift-wrapped and with a note indicating some sort of affectionate
relationship.’

‘Goodness.’

‘You can’t think of anyone?’

‘I can’t and I have to say, I’m very surprised. There just isn’t anything like that about Angela.’ She was thoughtful for a moment. Freya waited.

‘If I had to choose a single word to describe her, I’m afraid it would be “chilly”. I don’t mean to imply that I don’t like her because I do, and I respect her too. I respect anyone who works
as conscientiously and loyally.’

‘I understand what you mean, don’t worry.’ Freya got
up. ‘There really is every possibility that she will simply return home … the more private she is, perhaps the less likely she would be to confide in anyone if there was some problem in her life.’

‘Maybe.’

Carol Ashton looked sceptical. Freya didn’t blame her, even she didn’t believe in the bland reassurances
she heard herself babbling.

‘Will you go on trying to remember anything she may have mentioned, probably in passing, about someone she knew, someone she was close to?’

‘Yes, I’ll try. But I won’t come up with anything.’

As they went out into the corridor a wail came from somewhere above. It was all Freya could do not to run for the front door.

‘Sergeant, there was something I wanted to ask
you. The other day I turned on Radio BEV and there was an appeal for any information about a missing dog … someone’s prize pedigree … I wondered if there would be any point in asking them to put out something about Angela?’

‘We do use local radio from time to time to appeal for information and we’re always flooded with calls, not all of them relevant. But there’s often something helpful. Let
me check.’

‘Surely it’s worth a try? Someone might have seen her … seen something.’

They walked across the polished hall. Above, everything had gone quiet. Freya wondered fleetingly how the wailing voice had been silenced.

She returned to the car through drizzle. Lights were on in almost every house though it was barely three o’clock.
Christmas was in a few days – a poignant time of year to
go missing.

For the rest of the afternoon she was at Bevham attending a seminar on Internet crime, with special reference to paedophiles. Regional HQ were setting up a special unit and keen to attract recruits. Freya Graffham was not in the least tempted to put her name forward for what she saw as a grubby, upsetting and unpleasant area of police work which involved spending too much time at
a computer. But it would be useful to get the broad picture of something relatively new and it always paid to show keenness by signing up for a seminar. She had thought when she had left the Met and come to live and work in Lafferton, that ambition was something she would be glad to leave behind, together with the stress of a London that was becoming increasingly dangerous and depressing and a short,
seriously unhappy marriage. Now she could feel the change beginning to heal and refresh her already. She had fallen in love with Lafferton when she had come for the interview, enjoyed the beauty of the cathedral town and its surrounding countryside. It had far more to offer than she had anticipated and she was still happy sorting out her new house.

Above all, she felt relaxed and was enjoying
her job again. Enthusiasm and idealism filled her, as well as a confidence which she thought she had lost for good during her last miserable year in London.

Twenty minutes later, she was sitting in a room of about thirty other police officers listening to a profile of the typically sick, warped and secretive abuser-by-proxy of children, and discovering the latest techniques being deployed in
operations to flush him out. Once or twice the details of paedophile websites repelled her so much
that she closed her mind to them and went back to thinking about Angela Randall, making a mental note to call up Radio BEV the following morning.

The seminar was followed by questions. Freya had nothing to ask and most of those who did went into Internet technicalities. But the final question caught
her attention, not because of what was asked, but because of the questioner, DCI Simon Serrailler, who had interviewed her, but since her arrival at Lafferton had been on leave. She was reminded at once of how young he seemed for his rank and also how unusual he was in having almost Nordic blond hair but with dark eyes.

At the end of the seminar he made his way across.

‘I’m glad you could make
it. Not very pretty, is it?’

‘Grim. There were a couple of times when I had to switch off, I’m afraid.’

‘So we won’t be losing you to the new unit?’

‘Er … no.’

‘Good. Perhaps you’ll come and see me tomorrow, let me know how you’re settling in?’

‘I will, sir, thank you. I’m enjoying it very much.’

DCI Serrailler smiled but then turned away, as someone tapped his arm.

The streets of Bevham
were bright and crowded with late-night shoppers, the Salvation Army band was playing carols, and people stood with song sheets under the huge tree in City Square. ‘While Shepherds Watched’ came faintly through Freya’s car window.

Christmas. Families reunited; home and hearth … the previous Christmas had been the last she and Don had spent together, almost in silence, hostility and misery like
a stormy sea between them. In the afternoon, she
had walked the streets of Putney and been glad to find an Indian corner shop that was open and to take refuge among its crammed, spice-smelling shelves for a while. This year, having gently rejected pleas for joining the family Christmas at her sister’s Cumbrian farm, she was looking forward to shutting her new front door and being by herself with
some simple food, a good bottle of wine, some new CDs and novels and the television. Her brief marriage seemed, in retrospect, to have been spent either in shouting or in acrimonious temporary truce.

At the three slow sets of traffic lights down the high street, looking at the Aladdin’s cave of coloured lights and gilding and silvering, she thought again of Angela Randall. Where was she now,
at this minute, at this bright, busy, happy season? Freya thought of the immaculate, impersonal, chilly little house, and its queer silence, its mundane furnishings, its sterile air; 4 Barn Close had the smell of a house into which love and friendship and laughter had never come. And the costly present in its gilded wrapping? The gift tag,
To You, with all possible love from your devoted, Me
.

Whatever the DI might say, Freya Graffham knew she could not leave this one. She wanted to get her teeth into something of her own and make her mark, that much she recognised. But that was the least of it.

She drove out of the city through the dark lanes, towards Lafferton and home, her mind full of the missing woman and a deep unease.

When the blue-and-cream bus drew up at the stop in the market square Debbie Parker had a moment of absolute panic, which turned her stomach to water and made the sweat break out in a band round her neck.

There were three buses a day from Lafferton to Starly and Starly Tor. This, at nine forty-five, was the first and she would have over an hour to kill before her appointment. She had planned
it all carefully. She would find out exactly where Dava’s Spiritual Sanctuary was, and then get coffee somewhere. If there was time after that, there were small shops to browse in. Starly was not much more than a village which had grown around the Tor itself, but a lot of therapists and healers had set up there, as she had discovered from the
Tor Community Newsletter
she had picked up in the health
shop. For days she had been reading it, and following leads it had given her to other pamphlets and books, and Sandy had left her computer switched on, so she could access more on the Internet. Some of it sounded cranky but a few things fascinated her so that she sat up late into the night reading
deeply into them, and afterwards lay awake questioning, trying to apply their principles to herself.
She had so much to discover from Dava, so much guidance to receive, so many questions to ask, and whenever she glanced at the blue card, she felt reassurance and a profound certainty that this was the lead she must follow, this was what was meant to speak to her. Nevertheless, faced with the doors of the bus swinging open and the metal steps to climb, Debbie felt terrified enough to want to duck
and run, back through the streets to the safety of home and her dark room, her own bed.

‘Come on, love, you’re holding up the queue.’

The driver-conductor was waiting, tapping a coin on the ticket box. She glanced round. Half a dozen people were pressing in behind her.

‘Starly and Starly Tor via Dimper, Harnham, Bransby, Lockerton Wood, Little Lockerton, Fretfield, Shrimfield and Up Starly.
Plenty of choice, only make up your mind.’

Someone pushed against her back and to save herself, Debbie had to put her foot on the bus step.

‘Thank goodness for that. Where to?’

She swallowed and her throat had a hard dry lump of coke stuck in it, she could neither speak nor breathe.

‘Starly.’

‘Single or are you planning on coming home?’

‘Return. Please.’ The lump dissolved but her fingers
shook, holding the white roll of ticket.

She had forgotten how beautiful the countryside round here was, even in January, how the hills sloped and unfolded one after another, with small clumps of woodland between, and streams running along the bottom of the hills, ribbons of silky grey drystone walls, sheep
scattered as if they had been thrown down on the fields at random, like confetti. There
was a lemony winter sun, low above the fields, and the light was wonderful, soft and clear, picking out a barn roof, a crown of oaks, a wooden gate, or slanting suddenly across an open meadow. Once, she saw a hunt streaming across, each horse jumping a long scribble of hedge, red coats and black hats and manes and tails pouring over and on.

Just looking at everything lifted her mood and calmed
her. She ought to come out like this more, travel about anywhere, looking, looking, peaceful and cocooned in the warm bus. Her dark loathing of herself and her own unattractive face and overweight body seemed to have been left behind in Lafferton. Now, she was someone else, or no one else, content, unworried, happy even, in a pleasant trance of enjoyment.

She did not mind the slowness of the
bus or the roundabout route, the stopping and starting, all of it pleased her and kept her safely away from herself. In her pocket, the blue card was safe, a talisman, a promise and not, for the moment, anything to fear. What lay ahead, did, what was going to happen, would, and it was all meant to be.

The sun was warm on Debbie’s face through the bus window. A heron, long legs dangling, flew
down into a field beside a stream, and stood, erect, elegant, uncannily still. A hare raced suddenly up a slope and out of sight. She fell into a half-doze.

‘Starly … Starly … all change please.’ She started and for a second couldn’t remember why she was sitting with cramped legs and stiff neck on an emptying bus.

‘Late night, was it?’

She stood on the pavement watching the bus turn round and
pull up at the stop on the other side of the street. The engine died and the driver climbed out.

Everything went quiet. The rest of the passengers had vanished and a Tuesday afternoon in January was not a day when a place like Starly bustled with people.