Cross My Heart and Hope to Die (3 page)

Quantrill stood up eagerly as his sergeant entered the living-room, tall and thin and elegant even in casual clothes, a complete contrast to his dumpy wife.

‘Morning, Hilary!'

‘Good morning, sir. How are you?'

Her coming had done wonders for him, but he remembered to put a croak in his voice. ‘Much better, thanks. Should be back at work in a day or two.'

Molly offered coffee, but Hilary refused because she was on her way to play squash. ‘I see you've lost your walnut tree,' she said. ‘What a shame, it was such a handsome shape.'

‘Wasn't it just?' mourned Quantrill. ‘The place looks all wrong without it, inside and out. I'll replant, of course, but it won't be the same …'

‘I should hope not!' said Molly. ‘That tree was much too big. What I'd like to have there, Douggie, is one of those nice double-flowering pink cherries –'

‘Anything interesting happening at work, Hilary?' interrupted Quantrill. He might have lost the argument about the new furniture, but he was damned if he was going to put up with Molly's frilly little choice of tree. And he hated being called Douggie.

As he had hoped, his wife retreated to the kitchen. He and Hilary exchanged wordless grins, and relaxed into their working relationship. She gave him a quick update on their current cases, and then hesitated.

‘Something new has come up, and I hardly know whether to take it seriously or not. An old couple, late seventies, living in squalid isolation on the other side of Byland, seem to have disappeared. The husband didn't collect their usual groceries on Thursday, and when one of our patrol men went to their house on Saturday he found it empty. They've not been taken to hospital, or moved out by the social services, and the shopkeeper is fairly certain they've never been outside the village during the past eighteen years.'

‘Any suspicious circumstances?'

‘Not really. The house had been left locked, and I found their pension books on the mantelpiece so it seems that they intend to return. But I feel uneasy about it.'

‘Any family?'

‘Eight children, apparently. All adult now, of course, and none living locally. I've made contact with two of them so far, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of family feeling or communication. Their surname's Polish, by the way. Don't ask me to pronounce it.'

Intrigued, Quantrill scratched his chin. ‘What do they say about their parents, the two you've seen?'

‘Not seen, telephoned. The eldest son, a single man, works offshore on a North Sea gas rig. He goes to see his parents occasionally, and says he's been trying for long enough to persuade them to move into the village. He doesn't seem too worried about their disappearance. They were reasonably well when he called last Monday, he says, and he thinks one or other of his family must have fetched them for a visit.'

‘Sounds a bit wishful to me,' said Quantrill.

‘That's my impression. He feels a responsibility, and he's thankful to be relieved of it. But the only sister I've been able to contact, in Peterborough, knows nothing about them. She says she isn't in touch with her parents except to send them a card at Christmas, and she's doubtful if any of the others do more than that. I really think we need to be concerned for their welfare, Douglas. A Press appeal for information, do you think?'

Quantrill agreed. ‘No cause for alarm, but we'd certainly like to know they're all right. What's your next move, Hilary?'

‘If I haven't discovered anything before tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to Byland again. The son's coming off the rig to meet me.'

Quantrill sat up. ‘D'you mind if I come with you?' he asked hopefully. ‘Not to interfere, just for the ride.'

‘You're still off sick,' Hilary reminded him. ‘And what would Molly think?'

‘You heard what she said, she'll be glad to get me out of the house. Besides, I'm interested. If the old couple really are missing, I want to know what's happened to them.'

The obstruction in Longmire Lane had been cleared, and Sergeant Lloyd was able to drive her Renault up to the gateless gap in the broken-down garden wall that fronted the old couple's home.

‘Good grief …' said Chief Inspector Quantrill, easing himself reluctantly out of the passenger seat and turning up the collar of his coat. The wind was sharp, he still didn't feel fully recovered from his bronchitis, and their destination was more uninviting than he'd imagined.

The landscape was not picturesque, but even so the dilapidated building made a blot on it. The site of the two adjoining houses – a double-dweller, in Suffolk parlance – was at an elbow of the lane, where the surface of churned mud was differentiated from the cultivated land by a remnant of hedge and one or two scrubby trees.

Immediately surrounding the houses was a piece of garden ground, long overgrown, with a few old fruit trees, one of which had been pushed at an angle by the gales. Surrounding the whole was an expanse of arable land, striped green by row upon row of emerging sugar beet. The only relief for the eye was a couple of hundred yards up the lane, where an old farmhouse stood on a rise, sheltered by stag-headed oaks.

‘Is the farm occupied?' Quantrill asked.

‘No, it looks as though it's been empty for some years. A great shame, because it's a fine old timber-framed house. It needs a lot of work doing now, but I should think it's had money spent on it in the past. Which is more than you can say of this pair.'

The mean little double-dweller had been thrown together at a period when the cheapest materials, instead of being fittingly local, were Midland bricks and thin Welsh slate. The front elevation had a door at either end, and four windows, one up and one down for each house. In the centre of the roof was a shared chimney.

After a hundred years of neglect, the building seemed to be on the point of disintegration. Slates were slipping off the roof, guttering hung loose, cracked brickwork was green with damp, windows and doors were rotting. There was, though, a difference between the two houses. The one on the right was unoccupied, its windows blackly empty behind broken panes. The one on the left was shabbily curtained, and a plaster Alsatian dog ornamented the window sill.

‘It's unfit for human habitation,' pronounced Quantrill.

‘Wait until you see inside,' said Hilary.

They could hear the sound of an approaching car and presently a Jaguar XJ6, several years old but obviously cherished, nosed cautiously up the lane towards them. The driver, a man in his early forties, was smoking a cigarette but he civilly dropped it in the mud as soon as he stepped out of the car. He was long-legged, athletic-looking, husky in a thickly padded bright blue windcheater.

Hilary introduced herself and the Chief Inspector, and apologized for not having known how to pronounce the man's name when she contacted him.

Krzecszczuk laughed. ‘We're known hereabouts as the Crackjaws,' he advised, ‘but I gener'ly answer to Andrew.'

His appearance was eye-catching. He had a shock of prematurely greying hair, thick black brows that met in a straight line over the top of his nose, and very wide cheekbones; a Slav with a Suffolk accent, very much aware of himself, and of Hilary, but pleasantly wry when she failed to respond.

‘Any news of the old folks?' he asked.

‘I'm afraid not,' said Hilary. ‘The only other member of your family I've been able to contact is Sonya, and she couldn't tell me anything about them.'

‘Our Sonya?' He shrugged: ‘I'm not surprised. She's never bothered with them, hasn't been here for years. Still – no news is good news, eh?'

The detectives made non-committal noises.

Andrew gestured defensively at his parents'home. ‘Look, I know what you're thinking,' he said. ‘I shouldn't have left them to spend their old age in a place like this, should I? But I've done my best to persuade'em to move to one of the council bungalows in the village, and they won't budge.'

‘Old people get stuck in their ways, you can't force them to do things for their own good,' Quantrill reassured him. ‘D'you think it's possible they went off under their own steam, though?'

‘Not a chance. Mum's poorly on her feet, she'd never have got beyond the gate. Besides, if they wanted to go anywhere they'd have told me when I came over at the beginning of last week.'

‘Have they lived here long?' asked Hilary.

‘All their married lives. It suits them, they like to keep to themselves. I don't manage to get here as often as I should, but at least I know they're contented. I'm certain they'd never have gone away, even for a few days, if somebody in the family hadn't insisted. Did you find the door key, by the way?'

‘No, they must have taken it with them, so we forced an entry. We needed to be sure they weren't lying ill.'

Andrew pulled a face. ‘Oh God, you've been upstairs then … I haven't done that for years. I s'pose it was in a terrible state?'

‘I've seen worse,' Hilary said diplomatically, as she unpadlocked the temporary fastening on the front door.

They walked straight into a jumbled living-room that stank of wet rot, mice, mouldering wallpaper, old clothes and a lifetime of greasy dinners. The cheap furniture had long ago been battered into submission, and over everything was a fingermarked fuzz of ripening dust. The room was saved from complete squalor only by the fact that the table had been cleared and the worn vinyl floor-covering had recently been given a sketchy wash.

Andrew went on the defensive again. ‘It hasn't been easy for Mum out here, with no water laid on or anything. She's always done her best, she's just too old to cope.'

‘She's kept trying,' said Quantrill generously, ‘we can see that.'

‘Have they anything to live on, apart from their State pensions?' said Hilary.

‘A few pounds put by, I daresay, but nothing in the way of income. I don't s'pose they left their pension books behind, did they?'

‘As a matter of fact they did.' Hilary went to the mantelpiece and took the two books from where they were lodged behind a tarnished looking-glass. She flicked one of them open, and showed Andrew the post office date-stamp on the most recent counterfoil.

‘The 23rd – when was that?' he asked.

‘Last Thursday. I've talked to the postmistress, and she says your father drew both their pensions in the morning just as usual. He didn't say anything to her about going away.'

‘No reason why he should, I s'pose … P'raps he didn't know himself, at the time.'

‘But if he didn't know he was going away, why didn't he collect his groceries as usual? That's what's puzzling us.'

Andrew Krzecszczuk's eyebrows knotted over his nose. ‘That's a rum'un, that is,' he agreed slowly. ‘I dunno … unless whoever came to fetch them drove him to the post office first, to collect the pensions before they went.'

‘That's possible,' said Hilary.

‘More'n likely, I'd say.' He brightened. ‘The main thing is that they didn't take their pension books with them. The next docket's dated the 30th, this coming Thursday, right? That must mean they're intending to come back this week to collect their money. So what are we worrying about?'

‘It's our job to be concerned when anyone goes missing,' said Quantrill. ‘'Specially when they're as old as your parents. Look, if they've been fetched by one or other of your family, that's fine by us. We don't want to interfere, we just want to be sure they're all right.'

‘'Course they're all right!' said Andrew confidently. ‘Sure to be. Somebody in the family'll be looking after'em.'

‘Not according to your sister Sonya,' said Hilary.

‘Oh, you don't want to take any notice of
her
. She never visits, so she wouldn't know who does. M'sister Cathy's the likeliest, she was always Mum's favourite.'

Hilary reached behind the looking-glass again and produced a discoloured Christmas card, on the back of which a shaky hand had written a number of names and addresses.

‘This is how I found you and Sonya,' she said, ‘but I can't make contact with any of the others.'

Frowning, Andrew studied the card. ‘Oh well, this is an old list … Cathy's been divorced and remarried since then, I know that. Mum did tell me her new name, but I've forgotten. No idea where she's living now, or any of the others come to that. Mum's prob'ly got a more up-to-date list somewhere.'

‘This is the only one I've been able to find. There don't seem to be any family letters about, either. Are you absolutely sure you can't remember Cathy's new name?'

‘Sorry,' he apologized handsomely. ‘In one ear and straight out the other. I like to be independent, I've never bothered with keeping in touch except to see Mum once or twice a year. But don't you worry, somebody'll be looking after the old folks.'

He paused and gave a wry grin. ‘Well, it stands to reason. They couldn't have gone off on their own, and let's face it – who else but family would want to have'em?'

Andrew Krzecszczuk drove off in the direction of Yarmouth and the helicopter that would return him to his North Sea gas rig. Quantrill, whose breathing hadn't been improved by the atmosphere in the Crackjaws'house, decided that he'd just as soon take the remains of his bronchitis home. But on their way back through Byland he agreed to wait in the car while Hilary had another word with the sub-postmistress.

The village shop and post office, a substantial late-eighteenthcentury building in local grey brick with a roof of dark blue pantiles, stood in a prominent position beside the green. Byland was a growing village, favoured by commuters who worked in either Breckham Market or Yarchester, and the shop looked well maintained and relatively prosperous.