The Betrayal of Trust (10 page)

‘It has to. I’ve
got that feeling I’ve had so often before. If I stand long enough I’ll know. It will tell me. Do you understand? Somehow it’s here. I need to hear it or see it … what I have to know is here somewhere.’

‘No. It was once. If there were any secrets, they’ll have them.’

He sighed. ‘It gets me every time.’

‘It’s also a long time ago. You were lucky they could identify her at all.’

‘I know.’

‘What
about the other body?’

‘There’s a request out. Girls gone missing around the same time as Harriet, and still unaccounted for. Every force will check. Something could come out of it. Not that discovering who she is will necessarily move us forward to who killed her and why.’

The wind blew fine rain into their faces.

‘Time for a quick pub lunch?’

She was going to say no, that she ought to do
the supermarket
run
before her meeting, but then she looked again at her brother’s face. He was troubled by this case, beginning to be obsessed by it, as he sometimes was, fiercely determined to focus on nothing else until he reached the solution and could close it for good. It would eat into his sleep and dreams as well as occupy most of his waking hours.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Where’s nearest?’

‘Churchill Arms. Race you to the cars.’

He was well ahead of her, long legs taking the slope easily. Cat had no intention of slipping on her backside by trying to outrun him and he was putting on his warm kit by the time she reached level ground.

The pub was quiet. They had bowls of thick lentil and tomato soup, with grated cheese, doorsteps of home-made bread. Simon leaned his back against the
bench and eased his shoulders forward a few times.

‘Why don’t you take a holiday? Your back always plays up when you need a break.’

‘Ha. But there’s a treat coming up – feel like helping me enjoy it?’

‘I don’t think I trust you.’

‘Wise woman. Next Tuesday night. Big banquet given by the Lord Lieutenant. The Chief has appointed me to go in her place.’

‘Since when did you need your sister to
hold your hand at deadly social functions? I can’t – you know Tuesday night is choir night.’

‘Oh come on, you go every Tuesday.’

‘Precisely. I need to. We’re doing some Berlioz and it’s hard. Ask a proper date.’

‘Do you think Judith would come?’

‘And your stepmother is a proper date? Are you losing your touch?’

But seeing the closed expression drop down like a portcullis over his features,
she bent her head to her soup and said nothing more.

They drank their coffee and Cat got up. ‘Chores beckon.’

‘So do cold case files.’

‘Don’t let it get to you, Si.’

‘What, that I’m getting too old to pull?’

‘I didn’t say that and you know it.’

He kissed her on the cheek and turned away. Damn, Cat thought. In spite of their closeness, one chance remark and he shut her out. Dear God, why
don’t I learn?

All the same, she was not going to try to win him round by agreeing to give up St Michael’s Singers to be his partner at a banquet of dignitaries.

As she got her supermarket trolley a text message came through.

What’s Molly’s Mob no
?

She cursed as she pressed reply.
Don’t even think it
.

There was no answer.

He smiled to himself most of the way home, knowing he had wound Cat
up and that she would fret all the way round the supermarket in case he had been serious.

Had he? The thought of taking Molly to the banquet was a pleasing one, but he drew the line at a twenty-four-year-old with a boyfriend, even as his partner for a single evening.

It was his sister’s dig at his single status that annoyed him. It was a while since Kirsty on the Scottish island, Kirsty now
married to Douglas – he had had a cheery email and a wedding photograph. Simon wished them well and was entirely without envy.

He ran up the stairs to his flat, changed, showered, made coffee and then rang into the station. The message about the second skeleton had gone out and replies were coming in from other forces, detailing young women who had gone missing around the same time as Harriet
Lowther and who had never been found. There were enough of them and each case would have to be followed up. Tomorrow, he would go in and try once again to get a team together, now that he had the nod from the Chief.

Today, he was still on his own, so he worked through the rest of the files on Harriet, then listed people he wanted to interview himself.

He wrote:

John Lowther

Cadsdens

White
van man

Bus driver

Hedge clipper

Who else?

Needle. And not even much of a haystack.

PAM STARTED TO
cry, and after a few moments Jocelyn had to hold the receiver away so as not to hear her stumbled words buried in sobs and odd little choking noises.

She had written it all very carefully in a letter, reading it over twice and then rewriting it in what they had called ‘best’ when they were at school together. She and Pam went as far back as that.

The phone call had come
in the early evening. Pam had had the day to think about Jocelyn’s request but in fact she had not, she said, been able to think about it at all, she had torn the letter into pieces and thrown it in the rubbish, then retrieved and burned it instead.

‘I have never been so upset. I honestly don’t believe I have. I’ve been shaking all day.’

‘My dear, you should have rung earlier, or just come here.
I didn’t intend it to upset you like this.’

‘So what did you intend?’ But the crying had begun before Jocelyn could answer.

‘I’m sorry. Let’s just forget it, forget the whole thing, Pam.’

‘You ask me to … as if you wanted us to go out for a day in the country or something. You’ve changed our entire relationship … you’ve destroyed a friendship of over fifty years. Doesn’t it occur to you?’

It had not, but clearly for Pam things between them would never be the same.

Somehow, she blurted out a few more apologies and came off the phone. She made a pot of tea and took it out to the conservatory, though it was a grey and dismal outlook.

She would ask no one else. If her daughter and her oldest friend had reacted so badly, leaving her feeling both guilty and disturbed, there could be
no more attempts.

But she was not going to change her own plans. She had burrowed deeper into the Internet and braced herself to read some personal accounts of those who had had relatives die of MND – what its progress had been, how they had worsened, how they had died – and they had only served to strengthen her determination. Waiting until she could no longer speak or swallow, and then breathe,
was out of the question. She was not brave enough. Yes, she thought now, that’s what it was. A question of bravery. What she planned required far less courage.

It was not until later that she found the newspaper, on the floor with a pile others to be put out for recycling. As she bent to move them she saw the photograph and the headline, which she must surely have read at the time without much
interest. The paper was several weeks old, from what she had come to think of as ‘the time before’ – the time before the symptoms had appeared. In her old life.

Dr Thomas Thorne, a retired GP who accompanied a number of patients to a Swiss clinic and helped them commit suicide, was killed yesterday in a multiple accident on the M4. Dr Thorne had freely admitted
to going to the Bene Mori clinic and said in an interview, ‘I would do it again, if I was asked. So long as I am satisfied that the patient is of sound mind and suffering from an incurable terminal illness, if they wish me to go with them and help them, I will gladly do so. My conscience is quite clear.’ Dr Thorne, who was 72 …

She went upstairs. She took great care now when having her bath,
aware that her balance or the movement of her legs could let her down, not filling it too full or allowing the water to be too hot.
But
tonight, she had no trouble, and she managed to turn the taps on and off without too much of a struggle. For how much longer?

Dr Thomas Thorne was in her mind the whole time. She could not ask him for assistance now, but she could surely find someone else, somewhere,
a doctor or someone similar who was willing to help people in her situation. It relieved her mind. Presumably it would be a business arrangement – certainly all fares paid and probably a ‘fee’ – and she felt much happier about that, she realised, than she had about asking someone she knew.

What could be simpler or more efficient? It did not much matter to her that she would travel with a stranger
and that she would draw her last breath among strangers, see strange faces last of all. They would not show distress or have any reason to try and deter her at the last minute, she would not feel guilt or face their tears. Problem solved. She slept.

And woke at four thirty. Problem solved? So what must she do? Advertise?

‘Congenial companion wanted to travel with terminally ill lady to …’

‘Friend wanted to assist …’

‘Wanted. Discreet person to …’

She got up and went downstairs. The house was silent. She looked through the curtain at the outside. It was never very busy but now, deserted under the street lights, it looked like a street in a black-and-white photograph.

Once, she had had a cat, never especially affectionate or companionable, but a presence in the house, something
else that moved and breathed, and she longed for it now, sleeping curled on the kitchen chair, or at the foot of her bed.

The kettle whistled.

A moment later, boiling water was all over the floor. She was not badly scalded but only because she had jumped back as she had dropped the kettle, out of a hand that had suddenly ceased to work.

She sat at the table, frightened. Something else. She
was not safe to make tea in her own kitchen.

She knew that the progress of her disease was unpredictable but that at any time she might find that a particular symptom
had
become very much worse very quickly. Today, her grip was weakening, tomorrow, she might find her walking much more unsteady, or that she had difficulty speaking or swallowing. No one could tell her what exactly would or would
not happen next or how long it would all take, but, sitting here at the kitchen table, with hot water dripping onto the floor, Jocelyn knew that if she was to make arrangements to travel, it had to be done soon.

She went into the sitting room, noticing that she was shuffling slightly. Was that because she was afraid to trip over the carpet and so shuffled deliberately, or because she could not
now walk any other way?

It took twenty minutes of working her way through the wrong websites to find what she needed. She had to register, re-register and then be sent from one site, which was clearly just a front, to another, where she registered again and had to enter and confirm two passwords. But in the end, she was a member of the forum, joined by those who wanted to share information, as
well as feelings and thoughts, about assisted suicide. There were people who had already been to Switzerland and who had said goodbye to friends on the forum, others who had taken relatives and were returning to share the experience. She read one or two posts but then went on searching. It was some time before she found a protected area, for which she had to register again.

But then, she was
there. She had found it.

Q. I have terminal cancer and I am planning to end my life with dignity and at a time of my choice. I cannot ask anyone in my family to accompany me. Does anyone know of a doctor or nurse who might travel and assist me
?

Sandra

A. Hello, Sandra. There are several members of the medical and caring professions who are members here and would be able to help with your enquiry.
Please send a private message (PM) to the forum administrator quoting the reference number beside this reply
.

Mike (Moderator)

She was suddenly overcome with tiredness and a great wave of relief. She bookmarked the page, closed down, and went back to bed. There was no light in the sky yet.

She slept until after nine o’clock and woke with a feeling of having settled her future.

DOUGAL CRAWFORD AND
John Fryer, two of the oldest DCs at Lafferton, were both accepting the early retirement package and leaving within a month. Fryer would not be greatly missed. He kept his head down, was rarely to be found away from his desk and never took the initiative. If anyone had routine paperwork they wanted to escape from, Fryer would always take it on. He had transferred from
uniform as a keen young officer and the keenness had evaporated the moment he walked into the CID room. Dougal was an old hand, experienced, methodical, but with a nose for a crime and a suspect, and Serrailler had hoped to persuade him onto what might eventually be a team investigating the cold cases. Now there was little point. Dougal would be gone just as he dug into the inquiry.

This morning,
after exchanging files, Simon found the CID room empty except for DS Ben Vanek and Fryer, face, as ever, at his computer screen.

‘John … any chance you could do a bit of digging for me? I’m trying to trace a man who drove a van sixteen years ago.’

Fryer shook his head without glancing round. ‘Sorry, guv, got this known dealers file to sort.’ Which meant checking old addresses and prison records
and updating them, and Fryer would rather plod along doing that than be given a new, more complicated task.

‘I’m free,’ Ben Vanek said, pushing his chair back. ‘I slipped chasing a villain down the underpass in the rain and I’m on desk
duty
, only there doesn’t seem to be much going on. Everyone’s out crawling over the Dulcie estate, except Steph, and she’s waiting at BG for someone either to
come round or to die.’

‘Thanks, Ben. Honestly, these blasted drug ops drain our resources and for what? How much difference do we make? How many kids do we stop from getting hold of them? OK, subject for another day. If you can trace this guy, find out if he’s still on our patch, at the same address and so on … If he is, you can come with me to talk to him. Could take you five minutes, could
take all day.’