The Sting of Death (18 page)

When Carlos Pereira had shown up, shouting for his daughter, maddened by the bland
unconcern of Philip Renton, it had thrown everything into even greater confusion. The uniforms had dragged him off Renton and taken him to the station. The forensic team had almost simultaneously finished bagging up their gleanings from the Metro and followed closely behind. Den and Bennie had been left unsure what to do, until Hemsley had ordered them back to base for yet another debriefing.

He wished it would all just stop. He didn’t want to search for a missing child; he didn’t want to find her dead and have to watch the wretched Rentons disintegrate. He would much rather never have heard of Justine Pereira or Georgia Renton. Except then of course he would never have met the delightful Maggs. And meeting Maggs was the only bright moment in a long spell of gloom.

Carlos Pereira was clearly not a fully functional person, although once in police custody he did calm down considerably. He could not coherently explain exactly why he’d driven down to Devon from his home in Derbyshire and launched an attack on the unsuspecting Renton. He would only say that he’d known something like this was coming. Justine had not been in touch as regularly as usual; she’d sounded depressed the last time she’d phoned him and laughed bitterly when he’d asked if she had boyfriend trouble.

‘That’s not quite the same thing as accusing her landlord of harassment,’ Den observed mildly.

‘Something was upsetting her,’ said the man stubbornly. ‘I begged her to tell me what it was, so that I could come and lend a hand. She always used to come to her Dadda when she had problems.’ Pereira’s Spanish accent was unmistakable, but he seemed to have complete mastery of the English language. His daughter was very like him in looks and Den wondered whether she’d inherited some of his instability as well.

‘Well, sir, you’ve shown up at a highly critical moment,’ Den told him, with a touch of exasperation. ‘As you probably realise, we’re in the process of investigating the disappearance of Mr and Mrs Renton’s three-year-old girl. There’s a strong possibility that your daughter is somehow implicated in the matter.’

Pereira stared wildly at him. ‘Little girl? No, I know nothing about that.’ His face contracted at a sudden painful thought. ‘Justine wouldn’t hurt a little girl. Not after losing her own baby.’

Den was slow to react. ‘Pardon?’ he said. ‘When did this happen?’

‘Five years ago,’ the man supplied, his eyes sunken into dark shadow. ‘It was terrible. A tragedy. Little Sarah, the light of our lives, the
best darling child in the world. She died.’ He clutched his heart dramatically. ‘It was like the ending of the world. Poor Justine. She went wild – we both did – and then she started her pottery and calmed down, and took those rotten pills the doctor gave her and seemed to be getting better. I telephoned her every week and wrote to her and went to see her a few times. But now …’ He sighed heavily, and rubbed his broken knuckles where he’d punched Philip Renton.

Even operating on autopilot, Den couldn’t miss the obvious. ‘How old was Sarah when she died?’ he asked.

‘Three. She was just over three. The same age as this child you say is missing.’ He stared desperately at Den, the same thought quite legible on both faces. But then Pereira banged the door shut on it. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s a coincidence. Justine would never do anything to harm a little girl.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Den, unconvinced.

Drew asked for Detective Sergeant Cooper when he telephoned. He’d rehearsed various ways in which to give Roma’s message, but they all sounded weak at best and positively obstructive at worst. Roma’s behaviour – driving home, leaving an hour’s interval between finding the body and reporting it – seemed almost culpably
careless. This family – Justine, Penn and Roma – were rapidly seeming more and more strange. Disturbed, dysfunctional, devious: epithets rolled round Drew’s head as he imagined the police reaction to his information.

He was, after all, an undertaker. He knew that there was a profound human need to gather up and protect the mortal remains of a deceased person. When it was a child, this need was all the greater. The image of a week-old body lying in a ditch, exposed to weather and animals and birds, was deeply distressing. The time between replacing the receiver on Roma’s call and lifting it again to do her bidding and tell the police was little over two minutes. And even that felt much too long.

By some telepathic magic, Maggs came into the office just as Drew pronounced the name of Cooper and flew to his side, her eyes firing questions at him. In the wait for the policeman to be located, he refused to tell her anything, waving a finger across his face to indicate the need for patience. Finally they were connected. ‘Cooper,’ came a tired-sounding voice.

‘Drew Slocombe. Listen, I’ve got some very serious news for you. Roma Millan – Justine’s mother – went to Gladcombe Farm earlier today and found the body of a little girl. She’s in a ditch, about a quarter of a mile from the farmhouse and seems to have been dead for some days. Roma’s
too upset to speak to you herself, so she asked me to do it.’

‘All right,’ came the steady response. ‘Is she there now? Will she show us the place?’

‘No, she went home again. I think she just acted instinctively. It came as a horrible shock to her.’

‘Must have done. Tell her we’ll collect her right away, take her back there and she can show us what she’s found.’

‘Can I come?’ Drew surprised himself by the question. ‘Me and Maggs. You’ll need someone to remove the body anyway.’

‘Steady on. That won’t be until after the team’s done its bit. Doctor, SOCOs, photographer – all that stuff.’

‘I know. And I have urgent work here for another half-hour or so. But we can’t help feeling involved, especially since Roma asked me to call you. I think she might need someone like me to be there. Somebody who understands her.’ He wondered at his own temerity, his acute sense of wanting to protect the woman who everyone saw as so in control and domineering.

‘I can’t stop you if you decide to be there. Now, I’ll have to go. This is going to need all available hands, in the house as well as outside. Sounds as if it’ll be messy.’

Sheena Renton was home by five-thirty, a sudden surge of emotion sending her foot down on the accelerator, for no conscious reason. She arrived to find the farmyard so full of vehicles that she had to leave her car on the approach drive. Philip was standing by the house, the lowering sun shining full on him like a spotlight. As she ran to him, she saw that his face was bruised and swollen, giving him an appearance both sinister and pathetic.

‘Have they found her?’ she gasped breathlessly.

He met her eyes. ‘We tried about fifty times to call you. Where have you been?’

‘Driving. Just driving. What’s happening here?’ Her voice felt rough, emerging from a constricted throat. She stared around at the knots of people filling the yard, none of them quite looking at her. She recognised the tall detective and a short middle-aged woman with him who had the square shoulders of a police officer. There were at least four uniformed officers standing about.

‘Philip, tell me. What the hell is going on?’ She made as if to run to the single person she recognised, but her husband caught her arm.

‘We have to stay here. They’ll come and talk to us when they’re ready. They only say there have been developments, up to now.’

‘Developments? Why? What’s happened?’ She
felt light-headed, inarticulate, the only important questions endlessly repeating themselves.

‘They told me to stay in the house. They wanted to keep me a prisoner in my own house. So I came outside.’ His voice was much too loud. Many nervous glances came his way from different corners of the yard.

‘For God’s sake, we should do as they say. They have our best interests at heart. And what happened to your face?’ She put up a hand to examine his injuries.

‘What?’ He brushed her hand away. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘It’s our daughter who’s lost,’ she whispered, tears filling her eyes. ‘Come on. We should go in.’

Philip sagged defeatedly and followed her back to the kitchen. They sat down at the table in silence. Sheena pushed the fingers of both hands through her hair and dropped her head, staring blankly at the scrubbed pine surface inches from her face. Her husband once again began to explore his own damaged face, slowly crisscrossing his cheeks, wincing as the bruises reacted, but making no effort to lighten the pressure of his fingers. Ten minutes passed, with occasional subdued sounds filtering through from the yard. Sheena resisted any temptation to look out of the window at what might be
happening. Somehow over the past moments, she had understood, and no longer felt any impatience to know the unbearable truth.

But Philip was different. ‘I can’t stand this!’ he burst out, and got up from his chair. ‘I’m going to see what they’re doing.’ Sheena ignored him as he went out of the room.

He was back within seconds. ‘There’s another man here now. Looks like a doctor.’

‘Oh, God,’ she wept. ‘They must have found her, then.’ She stared blankly at him. ‘But how …?’

‘We’ll know soon enough,’ he grated. ‘All we have to do is sit here until they condescend to talk to us.’

Only then did Sheena grasp the reason for the surreal sense of déjà vu she had been experiencing since entering the yard. Men in uniform; silent stony faces; heart pounding; Philip almost crazy with the horror of it. ‘It’s like the foot and mouth all over again,’ she whispered.

Philip’s throat worked convulsively and she wondered for a moment if he was going to be sick. He said nothing.

Another twenty minutes passed, during which neither spoke a word. For Sheena time meant nothing. Her thoughts alighted on a string of unrelated topics, one after another. Images of Georgia meshed with memories from earlier
times. She thought of Philip’s father, pulling on his boots and cursing the weather. She heard again the muted explosions of the stun guns, killing scores of healthy cows. She smelt again the rotting carcasses that were not removed for an unbearable ten days. She thought of her husband, doing his best to carry on, dealing in safe undemanding bales of hay and straw, investing no emotion in them, a hollow man.

At last the waiting came to an end. She lifted her head as she heard footsteps in the hallway outside. The tall detective ducked his way into the room with them, his face grim. There were grooves around his mouth and nose, as if he’d been trying to escape an awful smell.

‘I’m very sorry,’ the detective began. ‘But I have to tell you that we have found the remains of a child in a ditch a short distance from here.’

‘No!’ Sheena howled, wrapping her arms around her head as if to ward off a blow.

‘We’ll have someone here in a few minutes to sit with you,’ he went on. ‘She’s just outside …’

‘What does that matter?’ Renton ground out. ‘We don’t need anybody like that.’ He scowled at the floor near Den’s feet. ‘What happens now?’

Den cleared his throat. ‘There’ll have to be a positive identification and then a post-mortem. Until then, we can do very little.’

Renton dragged himself to his feet. ‘I’ll identify her,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

‘Oh … no, not yet.’ Den showed some alarm. ‘She isn’t – I mean, it would be better at the mortuary. Better, actually, if there was somebody less closely related.’ He swallowed.

‘There isn’t anybody,’ the man insisted. ‘What’s the matter? Won’t it make your job easier this way?’

Den looked in vain for assistance. Nobody had followed him into the kitchen. There was no way he could permit the man to lay eyes on the horrible mess that had been his little girl. But he wasn’t sure how to prevent him.

‘I really don’t think—’ he tried again.

The sound of more people just outside the front door gave him hope of reprieve. ‘Just a moment,’ he muttered, and went to investigate.

Drew and Maggs were standing warily, looking around at the gathering in the yard. They smiled awkwardly at Den.

‘Am I glad to see you,’ he hissed at them, coming up close. ‘You can probably help me on this.’

‘All done then?’ Maggs asked, eyes glittering.

‘More or less. She’s been dead several days and not nice. The thing is …’ he spoke urgently, addressing himself to Drew, ‘… the father says he wants to identify her. Here. Now. I can’t really
stop him if he insists, but he probably has no idea what it’ll be like. You must get this all the time. What do I do?’

‘Nasty,’ Drew agreed. ‘How bad is she? Smelly, I suppose.’

‘Very. We’ve got her into a bag, just down there. Her eyes are gone, for a start. Well, you know.’ Cooper put a hand to his mouth, wishing he could dispel the image from his mind.

‘Give us a couple of minutes with her,’ said Maggs. ‘We can probably get her a bit better. Has the photographer been?’

‘All that’s been done hours ago. That’s why we’ve made you wait for so long.’ Cooper nodded at the crowded yard. ‘It’s a murder enquiry now.’

‘Couldn’t she have just wandered off and got lost?’ Maggs asked.

‘It’s a tempting thought – but unlikely,’ Den grimaced. Their eyes met, with layers of meaning.

‘So we can remove the body, can we?’ Drew had become briskly professional. ‘I assume we’re to take her to the Royal Victoria?’

‘Once we’ve sorted the parents out,’ Cooper assented.

‘Go and see if you can talk him out of it. If he still insists, then give us the nod and we’ll do what we can.’

‘You know you can’t do anything that might interfere with evidence?’

‘Obviously. But we can wrap her up nicely and close her eyelids. Every little helps.’

Cooper went back into the kitchen, taking Bennie Timms with him. She’d been deep in conversation with Roma Millan, who had hovered for the entire afternoon, unable to tear herself away. The two women had formed a bond based on the tragic anguish of a dead child.

‘Mr Renton,’ Den began carefully. ‘The undertakers are ready to transfer the body to the mortuary. Can I just repeat that we think it would be very much better if someone else could be found to identify her, or if you really do want to take it on, then wait until tomorrow morning.’