Without a Trace (5 page)

‘Come on!’ Molly called out, wondering where on earth this new courage had come from. ‘Imagine if it was your little girl alone in the woods.’

The first two men to make a move were in their fifties: John Sutherland and Alec Carpenter, both farm labourers.

‘Thank you,’ Molly said. ‘You are true gentlemen. Now, who else is coming?’

It took a while, and a great deal of whispered discussion with their pals but, gradually, the men began to come over and join John and Alec. In the end, there were eighteen of them.

Three dropped out as soon as they realized they would
have to walk up the hill. Halfway up, another four turned and went back down.

‘So a pint is more important than a child’s life, is it?’ Molly called scornfully after them.

When the remaining eleven reached the track that led down to Stone Cottage, they stopped and looked at the mud in alarm.

‘I’d like to look for her, but I’m not dressed for it,’ Ted Swift admitted, looking down at his highly polished brogues. ‘You need wellingtons to walk in that.’

‘There’s a big police search arranged for the morning, I heard,’ Jim Cready, the local window cleaner, said. ‘We should wait for that, Molly. None of us is dressed for tramping through rain and mud.’

Like sheep, they all turned and followed Jim back down the hill.

‘What’s a bit of rain and mud compared with saving a small child?’ Molly yelled out as they retreated, then burst into tears of frustration.

She stomped down to Stone Cottage and followed the well-worn small track into the woods made by Cassie and Petal. But the track petered out after about two hundred yards; this was clearly as far as mother and daughter were in the habit of going.

Molly had been calling out for Petal as she walked, but it occurred to her that no child would stay so close to home if something had frightened them there; they would run to somewhere they perceived as safe – school, the church or a favourite shop – so there was no sense in staying in a wood where the undergrowth was too thick to walk through.

Reluctantly, she turned round and made her way back to
the road. She felt foolish now that she’d tried and failed to organize a search party. She would search the church, look in the schoolyard and along the backs of the shops, but maybe she should wait for the police search tomorrow morning at first light to go further afield. After all, they were pulling in men from both Bath and Bristol.

It was gloomy in the church, and the usual smell of polish and damp had a layer of rose scent added to it from the two very large vases of roses either side of the altar.

She looked around, including in the vestries, calling out Petal’s name, but to no avail.

On an impulse she sank down on to her knees at the altar rail and prayed that Petal would be found unharmed.

As she got up she remembered that the last time she’d made a plea to God was when Emily said she was leaving home after their father had given her that beating. They were in the bedroom. Emily was sobbing; her face was swollen and red where he’d slapped it, but that was the least of her injuries: he’d hit her again and again on her back with a cane. As she was only wearing a thin blouse, her back was a mass of weals, and some were bleeding.

‘I hate him!’ Emily sobbed out. ‘I’m going and I’m never coming back and, what’s more, I’m going to steal the week’s takings to teach him a lesson.’

Molly had always looked up to her big sister, because she consistently stood up to their father and had stuck up for Molly hundreds of times. But this beating wasn’t just because Emily had carried on seeing Bevan Coombes, ‘the lout’, as her father called him, after she’d been warned she wasn’t to but because she’d dared to tell Jack Heywood he was a deranged bully who ought to be locked up in a loony bin.

Molly did everything she could that night to sooth Emily’s wounds, gently applying antiseptic cream, cuddling her sister and stealing some of their father’s brandy to help her sleep. Later, she got on her knees to pray for a miracle; that Jack would wake up a changed man and beg Emily not to go. It didn’t work, of course: her father was still as nasty the next morning. Emily waited until Saturday night when he’d gone to the pub, opened the shop safe and pocketed the week’s takings, then picked up her suitcase and went to catch the last bus into Bristol.

She didn’t tell Molly or their mother when she was going, and neither of them knew she’d found out what the combination number for the lock on the safe was. Jack found a note from her inside it. It said, ‘Treat people badly and they’ll behave badly. You deserve this and more.’

That last defiant act of Emily’s still impressed Molly. Time and again when her father hit her, she wished she could find her older sister’s guts. Now, as she walked from the church to her home, she thought about the prayers she’d just offered up. They were simply that she wanted God to keep Petal safe, and that if someone was holding her to let her go without harm. She hadn’t prayed that her father would be pleasant when she got home, because she knew he wouldn’t be.

News travelled fast in the village so, by now, even people who hadn’t been at the hall or in the pub would know exactly what had happened. Her parents may have even watched from the window as Molly passed the shop with the men as a search party.

Molly let herself in the side door, passed along the corridor by the stock rooms and went up the stairs to the flat. She was tempted to go straight to her bedroom instead of going into
the sitting room where her parents would be, but if she did that her father would only come in and ask her what she was playing at. So there was nothing for it but to join them and get it over with.

Opening the door to the sitting room, she found her parents sitting just as they always did. Her father was in the wing-back armchair to the right of the fireplace and closest to the new, small, cube-like television placed on a table in the alcove. Her mother was on the left side, her back to the window overlooking the high street. Her chair was smaller, and rather hard, but she claimed it supported her back well. Neither of them ever sat on the couch, and the cushions on it were arranged with precision.

Jack turned his head as Molly came in, his mouth already twisted into a sneer rather than a welcoming smile.

‘I always knew that little tart would come to a sticky end,’ he said, his accent broad Somerset. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish, that’s what I say.’

Molly’s eyes prickled with tears at his nastiness. She hadn’t expected him to show any concern for Cassie but, even so, delighting in her death was appalling.

‘That’s very cruel, Dad,’ she replied, wishing she had the courage to say something stronger. But she could see the glint of malice in his eyes, and knew by the way his mouth was twisted that he had plenty more to say on the subject and that one wrong word from her could make him flare up. She always promised herself that the very next time he was horrible she would tell him what she thought of him, but the truth was she was far too scared of him, so much so that she usually fled when she thought he might be about to hit her.

Mary, her mother, put her finger to her lips to warn Molly.
With her back to the light from the window, she looked younger than her fifty-five years, but that was only because she’d had her brown hair permed recently and was wearing a flattering duck-egg-blue twinset and a little powder and lipstick for what was a special day. Close up, her face was very lined, and there was a deep sadness in her eyes that was very aging.

Jack Heywood was sixty and, although her mother always said he’d been a fine-looking man and old photographs bore this out, bitterness, thinning hair, bad teeth, a paunch and a greyish tinge to his complexion had taken those good looks.

Molly felt bad that she didn’t like him, much less love him, but then he’d never been a real father. He’d never played with her and Emily, never taken an interest in their schoolwork or hobbies. All they’d ever got from him was criticism and scorn. Maybe if he’d had a son he might have been different, but he saw all females as his inferiors, and there to be used and abused.

Even the decor of their flat above the shop was evidence of his laziness and lack of interest in the home.

Paint and wallpaper had been in very short supply after the war, and most ordinary working people didn’t have the money to spend on non-essential things. The more affluent people soon began making an effort to spruce up their homes and businesses, but not Jack Heywood, even though he could easily afford it.

The parade of shops in which his business stood had been built back in about 1850, and in 1910 the previous owner had extended his shop, Greville’s, into the one next door and the flat above. The older residents in the village often said what a high-class establishment it was. The installation of a bathroom
and a large kitchen and other renovations to the living quarters had made it an attractive and spacious home. But it hadn’t been redecorated since then, and the Edwardian wallpaper, although probably once lovely, was now stained and shabby. All the furniture – a mixture of handed-down and wartime utility pieces –looked as if it had seen better days.

‘Cruel! I’ll give you cruel,’ Jack snarled at Molly, rising in his chair a little as if about to strike her. ‘Everyone but you knew that girl was a wrong’un. You’re just too stupid to see it.’

‘Yes, I suppose I am stupid,’ she said meekly, thinking she must be stupid to work so hard for him for nothing. She moved out of his reach as a precaution. ‘But even if you didn’t approve of Cassie, I’m sure you feel some concern for Petal. She’s missing, you know, and for all we know she could be dead, too.’

‘Petal!’ he exclaimed. ‘What sort of a name is that to give a child?’

Molly knew it was an odd sort of name but she’d never known one that had fitted a child better, and anger rose up inside her that just this once he couldn’t show a little concern for a child in danger.

‘The name suits her beautifully,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘I can’t believe that you can’t say you hope she’ll be found soon, and how terrible it is that a young woman should be murdered in our village.’

She turned on her heel and left the room swiftly, ignoring his protest that he knew the truth about people and that Cassie had probably brought her death on herself.

Going into the kitchen, Molly paused for a moment to take a deep breath.

The kitchen was a large, pleasant room, the walls lined with
glass-fronted cupboards which her mother kept immaculately, with her best glass and china on display. On the central, scrubbed-top table was the special cake Mary had made for today. She’d put a model of the Coronation coach on to the white icing but it had sunk to halfway up its wheels because the icing was too soft. Molly had noticed some plates of vol-au-vents, cheese straws and other food on the sideboard in the living room; the cake must have been intended to be the centrepiece. But as no one had cut into it she guessed that her father had been so scathing about it that her mother had brought it into the kitchen to hide it from any visitors.

Aware that she’d eaten virtually nothing all day, Molly cut a slice of it. Like all her mother’s cakes, it was perfection, a soft and moist fruit cake, and very delicious. Molly stood for a moment or two eating it, thinking about how many people in the village really liked Mary Heywood. Before her nerves got the better of her, she had been involved in everything from singing in the choir to being a leading light in the Mothers’ Union. Jack had no real friends, only people who toadied around him because he owned a shop and was on the parish council and therefore a useful person to keep in with. Some of them must have been around this afternoon, and it was likely that’s how he’d heard about Cassie.

Molly was just putting the kettle on for some tea when her mother came out of the living room, shutting the door carefully behind her.

‘I’m so sorry about your friend,’ she said once she was in the kitchen. She held out her arms to her daughter. ‘I’m sorry, too, that your father had to be so nasty about it.’

Molly allowed herself to be drawn into a tight embrace, remembering that, just before Emily left for London, she’d
remarked that it was shocking that their mother couldn’t even hug or cuddle them in their father’s presence. As she pointed out, a man who resented his own daughters being shown affection was worryingly strange.

‘Oh, Dad’s just a grumpus,’ Molly said lightly, because she knew her mother’s nerves got worse when she thought her youngest had been hurt by him. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t really mean to be that way. I’m really tired now, so I’m going to bed. I hope you don’t mind?’

‘You’re such a good girl,’ Mary said, holding her daughter tighter still. Her voice sounded as if she was about to cry. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you went off like Emily did. I know it’s no life for you here.’

‘How could I leave you?’ Molly replied, forcing herself to laugh, as if she’d never even considered leaving home.

‘Go and get into bed,’ her mother said. ‘I see you’ve had some cake, but I’ll bring you some tea in and you can tell me all about what happened earlier. John and Sonia Burridge called round and told us you’d found Cassie dead and were in the police station giving a statement. They heard it from Brenda Percy. Then Mrs Pratt rang and said you’d gone into the pub to try to get a search party together. Your father scoffed, of course, but I thought it was very commendable of you. Poor little Petal, I do hope she will be found.’

Molly went into her bedroom then, got undressed and into her nightdress, and she was just getting into bed when her mother came in.

She sat on the end of the bed, and Molly related the whole story, excluding only what she’d told the police about the men in Cassie’s life. She knew that would offend her mother.

‘Cassie was murdered,’ she said once she’d finished. ‘My
first thought was that it was an accident, but I soon realized she wouldn’t have fallen backwards onto the hearth, she’d have gone face down. Besides, if Petal had seen her fall, she would have run and got help, wouldn’t she?’

‘Yes, I suppose she would,’ Mary said thoughtfully.

‘So it stands to reason that whoever killed Cassie took Petal so she couldn’t identify him.’