Requiem Mass (7 page)

‘I’ve got to call the police then, haven’t I, Brian? The longer I leave it the worse it could be.’

‘Well, if it will make things easier for you, why don’t you? They’ve got masses of experience of this sort of thing. I expect they’ll tell you that in ninety-nine per cent of cases the woman
turns up straight away and that those that go off come back a few days later looking sheepish. Think of Agatha Christie – she did it, didn’t she? And there are all those cases of missing people on the television; they turn up more often than not, don’t they?’ Brian was trying to be reassuring but they both knew his words rang hollow. He made a final attempt to introduce his own brand of hope to his friend. ‘Look, you know what women can be like at this age. Turning thirty does something to them – they can go crazy. That could explain a lot.’

Brian’s bluff remarks were of little comfort to Derek, who was now floating isolated in a sea of apprehension. The cold knot of fear was locked in place near his heart, reminding him of the dark side every time he breathed and swallowed. Brian had been right about the police, though. A woman missing for at most three hours didn’t rank high in their priorities. Under-resourced, distracted by other problems, they found Derek Fearnside’s concerns somewhat premature.

Derek knew he had become angry, even abusive, in his conversation with the desk officer at the local station, driven on by a sense of impotence and frustration. He had eventually been chastened by the patient, weary tone of the duty sergeant, who sounded as if he had to deal with over-anxious, irate husbands, wives and parents every day.

‘If she’s not back by midnight, Mr Fearnside, give us another call. In the meantime, I suggest you relax and make yourself a nice cup of tea. This happens nearly every day, sir, believe me. In virtually all the cases I’ve known the missing person turns up alive and well.’

The words, coming as they did from someone in authority, offered a modicum of comfort to Derek as the evening dragged on. He rang Mavis and asked her to look after the children. He said good night to them briefly over the phone but bungled the answers to their innocent questions so badly that they started to cry in confusion and he had to ring off before he did the same. He paced the house, a bear out of place in his pen. He tried driving to the railway station and even contemplated getting the
address from Leslie and going up to London to the photographic studio, but thoughts of the empty house and the potential of a ringing phone drove him home. In every room there were a few odd jobs he could have started, but each time he sat down to mend this pan lid or put a new fuse in that plug, his attention drifted back to the last time he could recall it being used or touched by his wife. Eventually, he gave up and sat in front of the television, distracted but in no way diverted by its noise.

At midnight, he telephoned the police again and the duty sergeant promised someone would call him back. The phone eventually rang in the early hours of the morning. Derek picked it up, bleary-eyed, still in his crumpled suit, his jaw grey with stubble. A Detective Sergeant Blite announced himself.

‘At last. You took your bloody time! It’s nearly eight hours since I first rang your station.’

‘I appreciate your concern, Mr Fernshaw—’

‘Fearnside!’

‘Mr Fearnside, but as I think the sergeant explained, this is still, technically, very early in a missing persons case involving an adult. But I’m here now and perhaps you could give me the background to your wife’s disappearance.’

‘It’s just not like her to be late like this. She went up to London today and had to make careful arrangements for her return because of the children.’

‘Right. Could you tell me more about this trip, sir, starting right at the beginning?’

‘The beginning? Well, I suppose it all started when Deborah and a few of her friends applied for this part-time modelling job that was advertised in the local paper.’

‘What job was this, sir?’

‘You must have seen it. The advert’s been running for the past few weeks. Debbie cut it out and put it in her file.’

‘Do you have a copy to hand?’

‘No, she’s taken the whole file with her. I looked earlier in case she’d left something behind but there’s nothing.’

‘Do you have a copy of the local newspaper to hand, sir? In case the advert is still in it?’ Derek obediently left to look.

Muted sounds of his search reached the detective at the end of the line. Derek returned moments later, his search frustrated by the cleaning lady’s thoroughness. ‘No, no, I haven’t got it. All the rubbish has gone, you see.’

‘Never mind, sir, we can easily get a copy from the local paper. Perhaps for now you can tell me roughly what it said and how it came to lead to your wife’s disappearance.’

Derek explained about the opportunity that had eventually attracted Deborah and her friends, and the selection process in which she and Leslie had been successful. As he spoke he realised how vague and ill-informed he must sound.

‘Do you have the address of the photographic studio?’

‘No.’

‘Any correspondence of any sort?’

Derek shook his head wearily. ‘No.’

‘There must have been some sort of correspondence, sir. You must have discussed the whole thing.’

‘No. We didn’t. It was a source of some disagreement between us. I didn’t really approve of it, you see.’ And so it went on, the policeman’s questions becoming more and more cursory.

‘So, Mrs Fearnside applied with a number of her friends to an advert from a firm whose name you can’t remember, for some family models.’

‘Yes.’

‘Your wife and a few others – you can’t remember who apart from Leslie Smith – then went to an unknown hotel in London for an interview. Then she and an unknown number of her friends went to a local photographic shop and had pictures of themselves and their children taken. That would have been expensive; would your wife have had the money to pay for that herself or did she ask you for it?’

‘No and no. She obviously had money of her own but not enough, without going to her building society, to pay for anything significant and she didn’t ask me for any.’

‘I see. Then she went off to a photo session, again in London, but you don’t know the address or the name of the firm. Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Excuse me for asking, but were you close to your wife, sir? It’s just that, if mine had become involved in something like this, I think I would have looked into it a bit more.’

‘I don’t see that that’s any of your damned business, Sergeant!’

‘You called us in, Mr Fearnside, and your wife is missing. That makes this our business. I repeat, were you close to your wife?’

‘About the same as any couple that have been married for some time and have two demanding young children, I suppose. With the best will in the world, it is pretty hard to stay really close – life had a way of coming between us. Surely you must have found that yourself.’ Derek waited hopefully, but the policeman was quiet for some time.

Eventually he broke the silence: ‘So, you weren’t very close. You realise that I have to ask you the next question, sir. Was your wife having an affair?’

‘No! That is, I don’t think so.’ He paused, then finally: ‘No! Of course not. The whole suggestion’s ridiculous.’

‘I see.’ The detective’s tone indicated that he did not see it the same way as Derek at all. ‘When she left today did she take anything with her that might indicate that she was not intending to come straight back?’

Derek paused uncertainly before answering.

‘Not really, no.’ But even he could hear the falsehood in his voice.

‘What
did
she take?’

‘A small case, her make-up, some toiletries – the usual things.’

‘Nothing else? Like money, passport, chequebook, credit cards, those sort of things?’

‘She didn’t take her passport. I came across that when I was looking for the papers earlier. But she did take her chequebook …’

‘And?’

‘That was it; that’s all.’

‘So, if she were staying away for the night for any reason, she would have sufficient money in her account?’

‘Yes.’

‘Exactly how much does she have?’

‘I’m not exactly sure. About a thousand pounds, I think. She’d just had a small legacy left her and was deciding what to do with it.’

‘That’s rather a lot of money. It does rather change things, doesn’t it, sir?’

‘I don’t see why at all, Sergeant. She’s still missing, I still have no idea at all where she went or where she might be. Her friend, the one she was meant to be with today, was prevented from going in the most peculiar circumstances and Deborah hasn’t even called to make sure the children are all right. I know my wife, and I can assure you that none of this makes sense!’ Derek’s anger and concern exploded in a tirade at the policeman. As he paused for breath, the detective intervened.

‘I understand all that, sir, but this is all very vague. Now if you’ll just calm down and tell me the names and addresses of your wife’s friends I’ll be able to get someone on to this in the morning.’ Derek could hear him turn to a clean page in his notebook.

The policeman advised Derek to go to bed and try and get some sleep. He would make sure there was a full briefing for the day shift and if there was still no news from Deborah by the following afternoon – twenty-four hours after her disappearance – they would start investigations.

Derek replaced the receiver and stood forehead pressed against the wretched cream-striped paper. Tears smarted his eyes and he blinked them back. He understood, with some surprise, that he still loved his wife deeply, had never stopped loving her. Things would be different when she came home. He would suggest that they go away, just the two of them. He would indulge her and treat her to make up for lost time. Derek locked up mechanically, made a pot of tea and poured a whisky to take to bed. He was exhausted, not thinking
straight, and when, halfway up the stairs, he saw that he had automatically made tea for two he sank to his knees and wept like a child.

CHAPTER SIX

By eight o’clock in the morning he had all the information he needed. Towards the end she had become incoherent; thirst, sustained terror and measured but constant pain had finally robbed her of her reason and hence her usefulness. It was irrelevant. He doubted she knew anything more.

The mention of a diary had intrigued him. Not hers, a friend’s; that could be helpful and it tied in with the letter he had received, the instructions he now followed. The woman’s confession had been revealing. The final twist, Octavia’s love affair, angered him. Part of his mind – the emotionally underdeveloped adolescent that he kept locked away and out of sight – refused to believe her speculations, but the remorseless adult in him knew it could be the truth, however odd and unsuspected.

Of course, she had denied the death was anything but an accident, even when the pain had been at its worst. Even under the pressure of the scalpel and the whisper of the filleting knife she had held to that part of her story but it did not matter. He had confirmed the truth amongst her twisted ramblings and he knew more than enough now to move on to the next stage.

He had only one immediate problem: what to do with her? She had pleaded with him to spare her life; had offered to do anything for him for the privilege. Some of her more exotic suggestions had stimulated his curiosity but not his desire. He was amazed that a middle-class, county-town housewife should have such a fund of ideas. At one point he had almost found
himself tempted despite his best intentions; he was curious to see what she would do given the opportunity. But the risks were too great and her stinking, bruised and bloodied body did not arouse him.

The question now was, should he kill her? He knew he had little option and how would not be an issue – he had an embarrassment of choices. The problem, to his surprise, was that he did not really want to. Despite himself he had warmed to her and she had not, after all, been directly involved in the killing. She had spirit. Beneath the obvious vanities he had seen the caring mother and fond wife. Even at the worst point of her humiliation and torture she had carried on pleading with him to contact her husband to make sure that her children were all right. Part of him insisted she wasn’t a bad woman. She hadn’t committed the murder, although she’d admitted she had done nothing to prevent it. Could she have, though? It was a moot point.

Perhaps he could let her go, eventually. She would be unable to identify him and, with his contacts, he planned to leave the country once the final killing had been done. He remembered the vixen, and his determination to kill the woman wavered even more.

His musings were interrupted abruptly by a knocking at the front door. His immediate thoughts were – Police! Where was his gun? Had he regagged her securely? He smoothly picked up his weapon and tucked it into the back of his waistband. He removed the Balaclava and checked his face in the kitchen mirror; most of the simple disguise was still intact. Lastly he removed his gloves and looked at his hands for signs of blood – they were clean. Then he calmly went and opened the front door.

The rain had subsided to a thin drizzle but the yard was a swamp of muddy puddles. In the middle of one stood a short, profoundly ugly woman in her late fifties with a muddy dog attached to a length of rope.

‘Ah good, you’re in.’ She had a plummy English voice with no trace of Welsh lilt. ‘I’m Miss Purbright from Lee Farm. I
promised to keep an eye on the cottage for the rental agency, check on any problems and such like, y’know.’

He clearly did not know and his silence disconcerted her.

‘Yes, well, after last night’s storm and what have you, I thought I’d better check you were all right, had power, phone, that sort of thing.’ She paused to tap the fat, smelly retriever on his haunch. ‘Better check the new tenant’s all right before we do anything else, hadn’t we?’

‘I see. I’m fine, thank you.’ He moved to close the door as she tried to peer over his shoulder into the hall.

‘On your own here, are you? A bit remote for a holiday, isn’t it?’