Cause of Death (15 page)

‘What do you
want
to do with your life?' she asked abruptly.

Stan laughed. ‘Direct as ever.'

‘I suppose. But it seems to me that you've drifted a bit. That you've not actually made any conscious decisions for a long time.'

Stan thought about it and wondered if he was offended by the suggestion; found that he wasn't. ‘Not since I left the army,' he agreed. ‘I suppose even before that. I mean, once you join up your future is directed for you in some respects. You've got a path to follow.'

‘And now?'

‘Now I feel like I've stepped off this cliff top and not even tried to stop myself from falling,' Stan said. ‘So I can't answer your question, Rina, because the truth is I haven't got a clue.'

She nodded as though that's what she had expected. He wondered if he'd disappointed her and then decided not. Rina wasn't a woman who indulged in making judgements; she just did things, sorted stuff. He wondered if she ever got tired of being the facilitator and decided that he was not yet enough of a confidante for her to tell him even if she did. That was the sort of thing she'd confess to Tim or maybe to Mac.

‘So,' he said, ‘what car are you after then?'

She smiled. ‘I rather think it will be a case of what De Barrs have got,' she said. ‘So get your negotiating head on, we're going to get ourselves a deal.'

A
ndy had spent Wednesday morning driving around the countryside close to Frantham and offending people. Or at least that's the way it felt. Those he hadn't offended he knew he had upset, and so far it had gained him nothing.

There had been Mr and Mrs Franks, whose daughter had gone missing ten years ago at the age of twenty-two. They had been cautiously welcoming when he'd knocked on their door.

Andy had sat in their kitchen and drunk tea and asked if they had heard from their daughter since her disappearance.

Mrs Franks had pursed her lips and shaken her head. Mr Franks had taken to staring out through the window at the very tidy garden.

‘You've heard about the bones we found at the dig?' Andy asked cautiously. ‘So we're reviewing old cases?' He'd made a question of this last, hoping they would take the hint and respond with one of their own.

They didn't. Andy was left to plough on without help. ‘So we're, as I say, revisiting relevant missing persons' reports and looking to eliminate any that . . . well, that might have been in contact since.' He paused, looked from one to the other. Where was Frank Baker when you needed him?

‘Those are not her bones,' Mrs Franks said eventually.

‘You've heard from her then?' Andy realized he sounded too eager, but surely it was a good thing if they knew where she was and it was one he could cross off his list.

Instead there was just a silence, one that grew increasingly uncomfortable as the seconds ticked on.

‘Do you know where she is?' Andy asked at last.

Mrs Franks shook her head. The lips were tightly pursed again.

‘No more would we want to,' Mr Franks said. ‘She made her choice and she must live with it.'

‘I don't understand,' Andy said.

‘Went off with some foreigner,' Mr Franks said. ‘We told her if she stuck with him she needn't bother coming home again.'

‘You reported her missing,' Andy said.

‘And so she is and so far as I'm concerned she can stay that way.' Mr Franks got up abruptly and pointed at the door. ‘So if that's what you've come for I think you should go now.'

‘So you know she's alright?' Andy persisted. ‘You reported her missing.'

‘That was before we knew,' Mrs Franks said. ‘Then she sent us a letter. Told us where she'd gone and that she was with him. Said she hoped we could forgive her.'

‘It would have been helpful,' Andy said, ‘if you'd let the police know. Your May is still listed as a missing person.'

‘And have the whole world know what she'd done?' Mr Franks demanded.

Andy left shortly after, leaving the Franks bristling with indignation.

Then Mrs Emmory and her seven cats. Her sister had left home without a word eighteen years before, never a word since, and what did Andy think he was doing dragging all that up again?

Having half suffocated on the smell of cats and litter trays during his brief stay, Andy could not help but sympathize at the sister's departure.

Then two dead ends, people having moved on and the new residents ignorant of any tragedy relating to their homes until the moment Andy knocked on their front doors. And the three heartbreaking encounters with parents who believed he may have finally brought news when he really had none. He had drunk tea, left his card, spoken words of sympathy and wished fervently that he had been able to get hold of a family liaison officer to make these calls with him. Frantham, being such an outpost, had no such personnel attached, and it would have meant trying to co-opt someone from Exeter. Andy hadn't thought there'd be a cat in hell's chance of that happening on short notice.

By two o clock he felt wrung out, had a bladder bursting with too much tea, and thoughts tumbling and moiling in an overfull brain.

The bladder sending too insistent a message, Andy pulled over at a farm gate and discreetly relieved himself behind his car. Afterwards, he paused for a moment, leaning on the gate and enjoying the view across the rolling field and out to sea. He loved this place, had been born and cherished here, and he could think of nowhere better. He thought of the Franks and their daughter and her foreigner, their refusal to reconcile, and compared them to the Reeds, who he'd just left, still grieving for their teenage daughter and who would have given anything to know that she'd just run away with someone. He thought of his younger sister, Lizzy, and what their mam would think if Liz chose someone she might not approve of. Lizzy was sixteen and currently their mother didn't really like any of the assorted boys vying for her attention. But that, Andy knew, was just parental anxiety. Once Lizzy chose someone their mam's only concern would be that her child was happy and that her man was good to her.

Andy knew that he or his siblings would have to do something really drastic to earn such radical disapproval, and even then he suspected their mam would go all out to protect them, even if that meant doing something drastic like breaking the law. Not, Andy admitted, that his mum had a lot of time for what might be called conventional morality as represented by the local police. He was well aware of how much his own career choice bewildered and amused her. He also knew that she was proud of him, and that mattered a great deal.

Reluctantly, Andy got into his car and drove to the last person on his list. He knew Ted Eebry quite well, having been in the same school class as his youngest daughter and part of the same loose group of friends. He'd fancied Gail something rotten when they'd both been fifteen or so, but she'd always gone for the better looking – and older – boys. Then she'd gone off to uni and he'd gone to do his police training, though they were still friends on Facebook.

He pulled up in front of Ted's house, wondering if he'd be in at this point in the afternoon. Ted had always kept rather odd hours. He rang the bell and waited, noting the For Sale sign nailed to the front gate post. So Ted was moving on? Andy found it hard to imagine him living anywhere else. This had always been the Eebrys' house, one of a small group built in the seventies by some developer or other who, so his mum said, had planned to create a full estate on the outskirts of Frantham, only to fall foul of the local planners or not have enough money or something like that. In the end there'd been a half-dozen homes built around a green crescent, about half a mile from the Jubilee Estate where Andy had grown up; a hundred miles away in terms of class and affluence.

‘He's not home,' someone shouted from across the road. ‘Went out about an hour ago.'

Andy turned and wandered over to where another familiar from his teenage years smiled across at him. ‘How's it going, Andy?'

‘Fine, thanks, Mr Jones. How's Bee?'

‘Oh, still engaged, still as empty headed.' He laughed. ‘You looking for Ted?'

‘It'll keep,' Andy said. ‘Any idea when he'll be back?'

‘Sorry, no. He can't have gone far. He didn't take the car.'

‘Right.' So, should he wait? Andy wondered. In the end he decided he'd come back another time. He'd had enough for one day and wanted to talk to someone who wasn't going to be offended by his questions or overwhelmed by the grief they caused, and he wasn't sure which camp Ted would fall into.

Getting back into his car, Andy cast his mind back to when Kath Eebry up and left. He and the Eebry girls had still been in primary school . . . No, that was wrong, Stacey had already gone up, hadn't she? He recalled Kath Eebry as being a happy, friendly woman who always kept chocolate bars in the kitchen drawer, but he could bring little else to mind apart from the distress her daughters had suffered when she had gone away. They'd stopped coming to school for a while and he sort of remembered that they'd gone off somewhere and come back after the summer holidays.

Such a major event, Andy thought. In their lives and so, by proxy, in his. The more he pressed the memories, the more he could recall of the local gossip and speculation and one odd thought he'd had a couple of years later when he'd lost his own father in very different circumstances. He'd thought, at least I know where my dad's gone. It would have been terrible if, one day, he'd just not been there and he'd always had to wonder if and when he might be coming back.

‘H
ow's it going?' Mac asked later that afternoon, popping his head into Andy's cubby hole.

‘It's not,' Andy told him forlornly.

‘You want to tell me about it?'

‘It's just all so overwhelming. I'm asking all these questions and some people don't want me to rake everything up again and others, well, you can see they're just waiting for news, like their entire life has been put on hold, just waiting for me or someone to come and give them answers.'

Mac sat down in the other chair. ‘It's tough,' he said. ‘You're doing a good job, Andy. None of this is easy and you should really have more backup on this, not be handling it on your own.'

Andy sighed. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘It all got a bit much today. And I'm not getting anywhere, that's the frustrating thing.'

Mac listened while Andy filled him in on the day, about the Franks and the rest and his remembrance of Kath Eebry.

‘You going back to talk to him?' Mac asked. ‘Feel like some company?'

Andy nodded. ‘That would be welcome,' he admitted.

‘Tomorrow morning, then. I'll pop along with you and then I think we ought to pay a visit to the dig site, I've not had a chance to see the crime scene yet.'

Andy nodded. ‘Anything on that David Jenkins?'

‘Not yet. Stan Holden has seen the police artist and taken a look through our pictures of Haines's known associates. He's given us some additional details, but . . . Kendall's keeping me informed.'

‘Does that feel frustrating?' Andy wondered. ‘I mean, kind of being on the outside.'

‘A little,' Mac told him. ‘But not as much as you might think.'

Ted Eebry had been out to fetch the evening papers when Andy had called. He'd taken a walk to the newsagent for the local papers and one of the nationals and then nipped into the little convenience store and added others, popping them guiltily into his shopping bag. He'd never found time to read more than one paper a day, often not that, and here he was scouring half a dozen some days, searching for any little scrap of news.

Of course, the few bones found at an archaeological dig had been soundly beaten into second place by the news of some man's death out at Teston. The man's picture appeared in the papers this time. His name was David Jenkins. Ted glanced at his picture and at the artist's impressions of the men who had been with him, and then moved on, searching assiduously for any glimmer of news about
his
bones.

There was nothing new. Nothing.

He'd driven past the site every day. Seen the police cordon and, before this David Jenkins got himself killed, the little encampment of journalists and even a television news crew down at the road end. Even they had gone now, chased off after richer pickings, and Ted supposed he should be relieved. This might all blow over.

Then he looked again at the friendly little note that Andy Nevins had left, asking Ted to give him a ring when he had a minute, and he knew it wasn't over yet, however much he might wish it to be.

Haines was also reading the newspapers. They lay scattered across the impressive desk in his hotel suite, together with the report from the pathologist and the latest faxes and emails pertaining to the police investigation. Haines liked to be well informed; he paid good money to be kept up to date. So far, though, he knew nothing that he hadn't known yesterday.

‘Stan Holden talked at length to DI MacGregor,' Tomas said. ‘We can guess what he'll have told him.'

‘Perhaps. Our Mr Holden always had an agenda of his own. He may well be selective in what he decides to impart. I don't believe he has a great love of authority in any form, least of all the law.'

Tomas gestured impatiently. ‘I still say we bring him in and find out.'

‘And I agree. Where we disagree, Tomas, is in the timing. I need to think about this. It may be that we can make some use of our Mr Holden.'

‘Use? How?'

‘With regard to Parker's daughter,' Haines said.

‘And I've already told you. We can take care of that.'

‘Oh, maybe you could, Tomas, but it would amuse me to watch Stan Holden have a go at solving that particular problem. It would amuse me and it would save you the trouble, shall we say.'