Life Sentence (20 page)

‘There’s something terribly erotic,’ Mark reflected, ‘or maybe perverted, in watching your lover sitting stark naked in bed, while she phones another man who fancies her. And don’t forget to conceal your number!’

‘Already have.’ She pouted a kiss but applied herself to phone. ‘Alan: I’ve got some wonderful news about Elise!’ she cooed, enthusiastic as if she actually fancied him. ‘Please, please call me straight away!’

He watched her: she always tilted her head when she spoke on the phone. Long ago, he’d told her she looked like a bird after a worm. OK, the image was clichéd, but she did. Wagging her head to show there was no response, she replaced the handset.

‘Not surprising,’ he commiserated, ‘given that most sensible people would be in bed or the shower at this time.’ He looked at the radio alarm, its services not required this morning: six thirty-seven.

She replaced the handset and looked the still sweating Mark in the eye. ‘Which means you’d better have first shower, while I scratch together some
breakfast. Unless you’d really prefer the canteen?’

‘They might object if we make love on the canteen floor,’ he said.

While he tidied her kitchen, she tried Alan Pitt once more. Still no response.

She sat down at the table, scratching her head. ‘Do you think he might cut out the middleman, as it were, and head straight for the hospital?’

‘You know the man better than most: what do you think?’

‘One more phone call, then. Whatever did we do without them?’

Her face was a picture when he got not into his own car but into hers. ‘Are you off your head? ACCs don’t get their hands dirty on real cases. They sit behind big desks and make decisions.’

‘Of course they do,’ he agreed. ‘As do Chief Superintendents. But if you want a bit of real policing, how do you think I feel?’

Mrs Wallace said much the same thing when Fran collected the bungalow key. Returning to the doorstep, she began, ‘I know that some of my erstwhile colleagues rhapsodise about the Golden Age of Crime Fiction, Chief Superintendent, but this is so much more exciting. All these people looking serious and pulling on gloves. It looks as though you’re about to perform surgery.’

‘That’s not a bad analogy,’ Mark smiled. ‘We shall be delving into every nook and cranny as delicately but as ruthlessly as a surgeon.’

‘You’re not expecting’ – Mrs Wallace indicated the silent troupe of white-clad officers at the bottom of the driveway – ‘a body, are you?’

‘I sincerely hope not,’ Fran replied. ‘But we always take care not to contaminate anything. The worst case scenario is that we need it as unequivocal evidence; the best is that Dr Pitt will come home from his conference and want to sleep in a decent tidy house tonight.’

‘Conference! Well, I must confess to doing my own bit for Law and Order – please note the capitals! – Ms Harman. I got on the phone and then searched the Internet too. I have to report, ma’am,’ she continued, pulling herself into a parody of a junior officer reporting to a senior, ‘that I could find no academic course relevant to the interests of Dr Pitt. I think he was telling a whopper!’ she said, grinning like a child at her vocabulary. ‘Bathos,’ she concluded in her own voice.

‘I’m very grateful,’ Fran said. ‘I truly haven’t had time, nor the staff, to be honest. The hunt for Rebecca’s taken all our resources.’

‘Are you telling me that this is not part of the search for Rebecca? You certainly have plenty of resources now.’ Her eyes twinkled.

‘What you’ve just told me entirely justifies them. Thank you, Mrs Wallace. I can’t tell you not to peer
round your curtains, but I can ask you not to put yourself at risk should there be any – action.’

By no stretch of the imagination could she see any promise in Mrs Wallace’s expression.

They entered the house quietly, then, with none of the affront of breaking down the door. And when Fran stepped inside, calling out, routinely, ‘Police! This is the police!’ she did so without conviction. She raised a warning hand, and stopped on the mat, using her senses as she’d told generations of young officers. Sight: there was a pile of mail, pushed aside by the door. But there were also a couple of opened envelopes on the side table. There was no sound, except her breathing and Mark’s, standing at her shoulder. She would touch nothing she didn’t have to, even though she was gloved. Smell: no, to her huge relief there was no sickly sweet stench of death. But – she turned to Mark and made exaggerated grimaces to suggest he sniff too – there was a smell of occupation. She compared it with her hall, and more particularly Mark’s, after a period when it had been left.

She stepped back outside, half-closing the door, and looked enquiringly at Mark. ‘The place has been occupied until very recently,’ she murmured, so quietly he had to bend his head to hear.

‘You mean – he’s still in there?’ he mouthed back.

Shrugging, she gestured for reinforcements round the back and by the garage door.

Everyone moved quietly, as she’d insisted in her
briefing. The officers she waved into the house moved as if they were playing a children’s game.

‘Cooee! Hello, there! Superintendent Harper, is it?’

Fran wheeled. It was Natalie Harwood, waving vigorously from her drive. Hoping her anger wasn’t too apparent, Fran strode across, pinning a smile across her face.

‘If it’s Dr Pitt you’re after, you won’t find him today,’ Mrs Harwood said. ‘No, he was off ever so early.’

‘Off – today?’ Fran swallowed bile. ‘I wish you’d let me know he was back, Mrs Harwood.’

‘Well, I couldn’t since I didn’t know he was here till he left,’ Mrs Harwood replied, with some tenuous logic. ‘And I was going to call later, but I had to get the girls off early – they’ve gone to London to—’

‘What time did you see him?’

‘Oh, let me see… It must have been about half-past six. Yes, because I was just telling the girls if they didn’t hurry they’d miss—’

‘Which way did he go, Mrs Harwood?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Towards Whitstable or towards Canterbury?’

The woman stared as if Fran had just started speaking Chinese.

‘Did he turn left or right?’ Fran was ready to scream.

‘Oh, left. Whitstable. I think. I don’t know.’

‘He could be picking up Thanet Way and the M2,’ Fran shouted to the nearest PCs. ‘The reg is on file. Get a call out now. Stop but approach with caution!’ She
turned back to Mrs Harwood. ‘Was he carrying anything?’

‘How should I know? He got the car out, locked the garage from the inside, came out of the front door and drove off.’

Fran got back to the house to find Mark rigid with anger, addressing an inspector she didn’t know who presumably didn’t know her or Mark either. ‘I don’t want a full-scale forensic examination,’ Mark was saying, ‘not if it’s going to take five hours. I want the swiftest gathering of evidence you can manage. And I want to know where he could have kept Rebecca.’

‘But current Home Office procedure dictates—’

‘Let me make it clear, Inspector, I don’t give a flying fuck about Home Office procedure. I want that child found, and I want to know where he was keeping her. Fran – was his car big enough to carry a child?’

‘Yes: an M registered Passat. Overshoes, please.’ She snapped her fingers at the hapless inspector, and scanned the rooms quickly from the hall. ‘The loft? Look, there’s an access panel. Get up there, now! Oh, for God’s sake, there’s a pole there.’ Aside to Mark, she said, ‘It’s identical to one at my parents’ place. And there’s a knack. The steps should be concealed inside – yes, there we are.’

She stopped halfway up, her head and shoulders only in the roof space. ‘Good God, there’s a tent up here! And an Elsan. That’s where we need meticulous forensics,’ she declared, coming down. ‘He was too
bright to keep her down here. OK, get moving. And,’ she added to the young man carrying away Pitt’s computer, ‘I want every single word, every full-stop off that hard disk. Faster than you know how,’ she added with a grin.

He grinned back as he left.

‘No deadline?’ Mark queried.

‘No need. I’ve worked with him before.’

It was with a feeling almost approaching anti-climax that Mark and Fran returned to Maidstone. They had done all they could, and more than they should. Now it was the responsibility of their colleagues to piece together the picture and locate Alan Pitt.

As Fran locked her car, Mark asked, for perhaps the fifth time, ‘So where the hell could he be taking her?’

‘If I know him, somewhere so ordinary, so prosaic, we could kick ourselves…’ She stopped abruptly. ‘Mark, I’m going to Ashford. I’ve just got this feeling. He does care about Elise, you know.’

He checked his watch. ‘I’ve got a damned meeting,’ he said, disappointed as a child deprived of Christmas. ‘But I really don’t want you to go alone. And everyone else is busy… No, Fran, it won’t do, will it? I’ve got a whole constabulary to run. You grab young Tom or whoever and tell me all about it later.’ He reached for her hand, drawing her towards him and kissing her. ‘You will take care, sweetheart, won’t you?’

They were halfway to Ashford, Tom driving, when her radio crackled into life. A voice far unlike the usual almost bored tones of the control room rang out, ‘They’ve found her! She’s alive!’

There was no need to ask who. Fran was almost crying with relief when she replied, ‘Details?’

‘Outside her school, ma’am. Just like that. Ready to go in with the rest of them, it seems. Only of course, she didn’t have her uniform or anything.’

‘I suppose no one saw her arrive?’

‘School run, time, ma’am? A thousand witnesses and none. Chief Superintendent Henson’s on is way now, ma’am.’

‘In that case they won’t need me. I’ll carry on where I was heading – the William Harvey, in Ashford.’

Tom looked reproachfully at her. ‘Wouldn’t you rather be where the action is, ma’am?’

‘Too right I would. But it’s not my party, Tom. I’ve got to visit the sick. And you can come too.’ He brightened like a puppy promised walkies. ‘Actually, you may not want to see Elise. She’s not a pretty sight.’ She explained the effect on the Draytons.

‘Why are you going then, guv?’

‘Copper’s hunch. If you ever get one, act on it. Now, I’m going to phone the ACC to get the details. No interrupting, but I promise to pass them on to you afterwards. OK?’

‘The ACC who’s—?’ He broke off.

‘Who’s my bloke. That’s right. Well,’ she added,
skittishly, ‘there’s no point in phoning the other one.’

Tom might make of their conversation what he would, but in effect all Mark did was confirm the original news, adding that Rebecca had been reunited with her parents and despatched also to the William Harvey. ‘She’s confused, that’s all – no complaints of injury.’

‘No abuse?’

‘None that she reports. Of course, there’ll be a thorough medical examination when she’s deemed up to it. But she’s alive. I’ll stand us champagne tonight, my love.’

‘You’re on!’

‘I’m sorry it’s been so long, Elise. Well, not so very long, not really. Though it seems like a lifetime. I’ve done something really stupid, Elise. Really stupid. Some people will think it was bad, wicked even. But really it was stupid. And I think I’ve just done something even more stupid. Yes, coming here to see you. Frances said you were getting better, but you’re not, are you? You’re just the same. She tricked me. So she must know…

‘I just wanted to do what I can’t do to you. Watch someone sleep, really deeply, so deeply they’re almost unconscious, and then wake them up. That’s all. I never meant any harm, any more than I meant to harm you. And actually, I did a lot less. They’ve got these clever drugs, you see, that knock you out and you come round not remembering anything. They actually use them for pain relief for minor operations, I gather. So I got hold of some through the Internet and tried them out. And they worked. But it all got out of hand. God help me, I don’t know why I did it. Everyone must have been wild with worry. And all those police officers. Frances herself. Now perhaps she’ll take me seriously. But I won’t be able to take her to the
Brodsky concert, I can see that. She’ll be much too angry. Tell you what, I’ll give her the tickets: perhaps she’ll find someone else to go with.

‘I got hold of a little tent for her, so she’d keep warm. No, not Frances. Rebecca. The little girl I drugged and took home. And a little portable loo. I didn’t want her seeing the house in case she could identify it later, despite what they said about the drugs taking away your memory. We played games: I taught her draughts and chess – don’t they teach these children anything these days? Scrabble, Monopoly – while she was awake, I kept her thoroughly amused. Well fed, too, even if it was frozen meals I reheated in the microwave. I swear, I swear – and the doctors will be able to confirm this – that I never harmed her. She’s still virgo intacta. I like younger girls, Elise, but not prepubescent children, God help me! I’m not – what will they call me in prison? A nonce! No, I’m not a nonce. Not that that will save me! Though I sensed a trap, I came anyway. I wanted to say goodbye, because I can see they won’t let me come again, not for a while. I just hope they’ll let me see you once more if they ever stop treating you. Or, of course, if you ever come round. But you won’t, will you? Not like little Rebecca.

‘That Michael Penn – he’s looking very hard in this direction. I think he means to come over if I stay with you much longer. Now, I shan’t be back, maybe never, and so I want you to remember this, my dear: I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world. Not for all the world.’

Fran watched his quiet, touching little farewell, and hardened her heart.

Tom stepped over to make the arrest as soon as he left the ward – she’d decided it should be his collar, not hers. Not quite shrugging with resignation, Pitt held out his hands as if expecting to be cuffed.

‘Why did you do it, Alan?’ she asked him, trying to keep her voice calm, despite all her instincts to yell and scream at him. ‘We heard what you told Elise, but that doesn’t explain everything, surely?’

‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’ He started to weep. ‘I really have been so stupid, haven’t I? Making Rebecca better didn’t help Elise, did it?’

‘I doubt if anything will,’ Fran said gently.

‘You heard what I said about Rebecca? I didn’t touch her, Frances. I swear I couldn’t have treated my own child better.’

‘Not that that’s saying a lot, these days,’ Tom muttered furiously.

Hushing him swiftly, she set them in motion down the corridor. ‘Her name isn’t Elise, really, you know. It’s
Marjorie. Marjorie Gray.’ She paused for a response, but he gave none. ‘I shall drive you back to Maidstone, Alan, but after that you’ll be talking to a different set of police officers. And I’m afraid they’ll be more determined to find answers than I am. Do you have a solicitor?’

He shook his head. ‘Only the sort that makes your Will. I need something a bit more serious now, don’t I?’

‘There’ll be one on call at Maidstone,’ she said. Would it be unprofessional to recommend a top-class one, who might well not be on the roster? She’d ask Mark what he thought. And then caught herself up short: why should she need to discuss a matter like that with her lover? She never had in the past.

Leaving Tom to walk him to the car, she phoned Mark, surprised that she’d not told anyone the news. And surprised that it didn’t feel like good news. The truth was almost self-evident, surely: Alan was mad, not bad.

‘You’ve what?’ Mark’s voice leapt out at her.

‘Arrested Alan Pitt for the abduction of Rebecca Court. I put my phone under Elise’s pillow and picked up everything he said on Tom’s phone. It won’t do as evidence, but it was enough to permit an arrest.’

‘He’s confessed to you?’

‘To Elise, in fact. And then he admitted to us that being able to wake Rebecca at will wouldn’t bring Elise round. Which reminds me, remind them to get blood and urine tests done on the poor kid now. These rape
drugs are almost untraceable after a few hours, aren’t they?’

‘I’ll get on to it straight away. Fran – are you all right?’

‘I ought to be ecstatic, oughtn’t I? But I just feel sad, Mark – very sad.’

‘I’ll have to see what I can do about that, won’t I? Fran, this is truly the most wonderful news! Very, very well done. I’m so proud of you.’

By the time she caught up with them, she did indeed feel better. But, as she updated Alan on all her discoveries about Elise, she realised her main emotion was a profound sense of anti-climax, and a realisation that her own case, finding Elise’s murderer, was still far from over.

As the tears rolled down Pitt’s face, she did one more thing: she called the best criminal lawyer she knew and arranged for his presence at HQ.

‘How does it feel to have saved a child’s life?’ Mark asked as they walked into the canteen for lunch.

Before she could reply, she was almost flattened by a barrage of noise as the entire canteen burst into applause: she might have tried to take a back seat in the case, but the police rumour machine knew exactly who had done what. Forgetting the queue, she walked straight over to Carl Henson, and opening her arms, forced him to give her a footballer’s hug.

‘This was a team effort and don’t you forget it!’ she muttered, as she smiled broadly.

‘But—’

‘I don’t want any credit. Too old.’

‘I noticed you got Tom Arkwright to do the honours,’ he said, slightly mollified.

‘And the paperwork,’ she grinned. ‘That should keep him off the streets a bit.’

By now Mark had caught up with them, and there were further handshakes all round.

‘But we could have done without Brian Shelley as his solicitor,’ Henson shot at her.

‘I don’t think Pitt could. He’s a total mess, isn’t he? What does the Medical Examining Officer say?’

‘The words “nutty as a fruit cake” entered his diagnosis somewhere,’ Henson conceded. ‘The bloody scrote keeps asking for you to interview him.’

She shook her head firmly. ‘Carl, he’s not a scrote. He’s a sick man.’ She raised her voice. ‘Tell him I’m too busy hunting Elise’s killer: that should shut him up.’ She added ruminatively, ‘What he never said was how he came to put his plan into operation – I wouldn’t mind eavesdropping on that part of his interview.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said shortly. Then, perhaps remembering who was standing right by Fran, he added, ‘Won’t he smell a rat if we move to a different interview room? The one with the two-way mirror?’

‘He can sniff all he wants, and so can Shelley,’ Mark said. ‘But he’s accused of a most serious crime and can’t yet expect to be treated as a patient, not a criminal.
Anyway, lunch: I’ve got a most exciting meeting to go to. I don’t think.’

‘And I’ve got a criminal to run to earth,’ Fran capped him.

Once the adrenaline had subsided, Fran’s legs would hardly carry her. She sat at her desk, surveying the list of things Tom had already done for the Elise enquiry and wondering, as helplessly as a rookie detective, where on earth to start next.

The phone broke her reverie.

‘Fran? You haven’t forgotten about tomorrow, have you?’

Did she know anyone with a Scottish accent? It dawned on her so slowly she could almost hear the electrical pulses in her brain that this was Hazel.

‘Tomorrow?’ She scribbled on her jotter,
Have they cancelled reconstruction???

‘Exeter Airport. You’re picking us up at 7.30 – right?’

‘I thought – a taxi…’ Hadn’t she already organised the money for that?

‘Total waste of money. And a good excuse for you not to be on time.’

‘With the A303, Hazel, one doesn’t need excuses.’

‘Well, start out earlier then. Come on, Fran, with Pa in hospital, you can’t look for excuses to mess around.’

‘I don’t think a possible murder enquiry is a mere excuse. But what’s this about Pa?’

‘A fall. I emailed you. Nothing serious, and the
doctor was actually at the bungalow when it happened.’

‘A fall when you’re his age is always serious.’

‘Have you booked us a hotel as we asked?’ Hazel continued as if she hadn’t heard.

‘I understood you were to sleep at the bungalow.’ Why was she always on the back foot with Hazel? ‘In any case, I’ve had no time to—’

‘Do you spend your entire life finding reasons not to fulfil perfectly reasonable requests? I asked you to book us into an hotel, on account of Grant’s allergy to household dust.’

Even to her own ears, she sounded stupid. Or mulish. ‘I don’t know any hotels.’

‘You must do. You’ve been down there often enough.’ She made it sound as if it were by choice, somehow to escape the real world.

At last Fran responded hotly. ‘Indeed. But, I assure you, not to check out hotels.’ But her voice was suddenly less forceful than she meant: if she went down, would Mark come too? After all those months, years, now, of doing just that, she couldn’t bear to go alone. She needed his quiet presence, the warmth of his body in the middle of the night. She changed the subject. ‘Why was the doctor there?’

‘Oh, another of Ma’s little aches and pains.’

Fran had her mouth open to demand how Hazel knew they were little, but shut it again.

‘See you at the airport!’

The phone went dead.

‘Of course I shall come with you. Where else would I want to be?’ Mark interrupted her hesitant enquiry over supper, which they’d picked up at a take-away and were eating at his house. ‘In fact, we’ll take the afternoon off to be sure of being there in time. You’ve more than earned it, Fran. And in a case this old half a day isn’t going to matter.’

‘Two and a half,’ she said pettishly.

‘Come on, even a few days won’t really matter.’

‘And I don’t see why I should go at all since Hazel’s going to be there. I’d be much better employed—’

‘If Hazel’s going to be there, you’ll have time to show me round Teignmouth and environs,’ he overrode her.

‘Wouldn’t you prefer to see the Marstons?’

‘Sorry?’

‘The Marstons – that was the name of your boating friends, wasn’t it?’

He grimaced, and then appeared to make some sort of decision. ‘I do have some friends called Marston, but not in Devon. The only reason I said they’d invited me down was so that I could spend some time with you. I’d have told you once I’d got you in my clutches,’ he said, with an agreeable leer. ‘As for your sister, you need a chance to discuss your parents’ future care with her.’ He lifted a hand to stop her interrupting. ‘If your pa’s had a fall, your mother may not be able to manage on her own.’

She stared at him in horror. ‘But I can’t take time off
now! Not when I’m this far from Elise’s murderer!’

‘Of course you can’t. And as your senior officer I should make that point officially. Unless,’ he added, tenderly, taking her hand, ‘you really want to leave Kent at this particular juncture. In which case, I’d have to move heaven and earth to make it happen. But you don’t, Fran, do you?’

She bit her lip, shaking her head. ‘And not just because of the case, Mark. It’s us – I want to… I want to see what happens next.’ It was strange to use the phrase out loud.

‘Between us? That may take a long time to unfold. A very long time. Come on, let’s go and turn the next page now. And then we’d better go to your place.’

‘Mine?’

‘So you can pack for tomorrow. And I fancy your bed’s more comfortable than mine.’

If Fran had hoped to get back to the Elise case the following morning, she was disappointed. The officers questioning Alan Pitt wanted her to talk through all her meetings with him, to make sure all he alleged was verified. She also had notes of her own to write up, and she wanted to discuss with Tom their line of enquiry for the following week. He seemed as pleased as she that they’d be working full-time together again, with no pressure from Henson.

‘What I really want you to teach me, guv, is how to get these intuitions of yours.’

She smiled sadly. ‘If only I could teach that, I’d be the richest women in the world. Sorry, Tom, it’s something that you have to grow for yourself. I’ll tell you this, though: when you get it, it’ll never let you down. Not unless you stop acting on it. Come on: if I’m taking a few hours off, I don’t see why you shouldn’t, either.’

His face lit up: Fran could see the projects unfolding behind his eyes. ‘Thanks, guv. Have a good weekend, like.’

She’d do her best. But somehow she doubted it would be the unalloyed pleasure she hoped Tom’s would be.