Wexford 6 - No More Dying Then (3 page)

   “So John has been missing since about three thirty?”

   She nodded. “But why would he go there? Why? He’s afraid of the dark.”

   Her composure remained and yet Burden felt that the wrong word or gesture from him, perhaps even a sudden sound, would puncture it and release a scream of terror. He didn’t quite know what to make of her. She looked peculiar, the kind of woman who belonged to a world he knew of only through newspapers. He had seen pictures of her, or of women who closely resembled her, leaving London courts after being found guilty of possessing cannabis. Such as she were found dead in furnished rooms after an overdose of barbiturates and drink. Such as she? The face was the same, pinched and pale, and the wild hair and the repellent clothes. It was her control which puzzled him and the sweet soft voice which didn’t fit the image he had made of her of eccentric conduct and an unsound life.

   “Mrs. Lawrence,” he began, “we get dozens of cases of missing children in the course of our work and more than ninety percent of them are found safe and sound.” He wasn’t going to mention the girl who hadn’t been found at all. Someone else probably would, some interfering neighbour, but perhaps by then the boy would be back with his mother. “Do you know what happens to most of them? They wander away out of pique or bravado and get lost and exhausted, So they lie down in some, warm hole and - sleep.”

   Her eyes dismayed him. They were so large and staring and she hardly seemed to blink at all. Now he saw in them a faint gleam of hope. “You are very kind to me,” she said gravely. “I trust you.”

   Burden said awkwardly, “That’s good. You trust us and let us do the worrying, eh? Now what time does your husband get home?”

   “I’m divorced. I live alone.”

   “Yes, well, my chief will want to know about that, see your - er, ex-husband and so on.” She would be divorced, he thought. She couldn’t be more than twenty-eight and by the time she was thirty-eight she would probably have been married and divorced twice more. God knew what combination of circumstances had brought her to the depths of Sussex from London where she rightly belonged, to live in squalour and cause untold trouble to the police by her negligence.

   Her quiet voice, grown rather shaky, broke into his harsh and perhaps unjust reverie. “John’s all I’ve got. I’ve no one in the world but John.”

   And whose fault was that? “We’ll find him,” said Burden firmly. “I’ll find a woman to be with you, Perhaps this Mrs. Crantock?”

   “Would you? She’s very nice. Most of the people around here are nice, although they’re not . . .” She paused and considered. “They’re not quite like any people I’ve known before.”

   I’ll bet they’re not, thought Burden. He glanced at the patchwork dress. For what respectable social occasion would any woman choose to wear a thing like that?

   She didn’t come to the door with him. He left her staring into space, playing with the long chain of beads that hung round her neck. But when he was outside he looked back and saw her white face at the window, a smeared dirty window that those thin hands had never polished. Their eyes met for a moment and convention forced him to grin uneasily. She gave no answering smile but only stared, her face as pale and wan as the moon between clouds of heavy hair.

Mrs. Crantock was a neat and cheerful woman who wore her greying black hair in crisp curls and a string of cultured pearls against her pink twinset. At Burden’s request she left immediately to keep Mrs. Lawrence company. Her husband had already gone off with the search parties and only Julian and his fourteen-year-old sister remained in the house,

   “Julian, when you saw John walk off towards Mill Lane, did you see anything else? Did anyone speak to him?”

   The boy shook his head, “He just went off.”

   “And then what did he do? Did he stand under the trees or go down the lane?”

   “Don’t know.” Julian fidgeted and looked down. “I was on the swings.”

   “Did you look over towards the lane? Didn’t you look to see where he was?”

   “He’d gone,” said Julian. “Gary said he’d gone and a jolly good thing because we didn’t want babies.”

   “I see.”

   “Honestly, he doesn’t know,” said the sister. “We’ve been on and on at him but he really doesn’t know.”

   Burden gave up and went to the Deans at 63.

   "I'm not having Gary hounded,” said Mrs. Dean, a hard-looking young woman with an aggressive manner. “Children quarrel all the time. Gary’s not to be blamed because John Lawrence is so sensitive that a bit of teasing makes him run off. The child’s disturbed. That’s what’s at the root of the trouble. He comes from a broken home, so what can you expect?”

   These were Burden’s own sentiments. “I’m not blaming Gary,” be said. “I just want to ask him some questions.”

   “I’m not having him bullied.”

   These days the least bit of opposition was liable to set him off.

   “You’re at liberty,” he said sharply, “to report me to the Chief Constable, madam, if I bully him.”

   The boy was in bed but not asleep. He came down in his dressing-gown, his eyes sulky and his lip stuck out.

   “Now, Gary, I’m not angry with you. No one’s angry. We just want to find John. You understand that, don’t you?”

   The boy didn’t answer.

   “He’s tired,” said his mother. “He’s told you he didn’t see anyone and that ought to be enough.”

   Burden ignored her. He leant towards the boy. “Look at me, Gary.” The eyes which met his were full of tears. “Don’t cry. You could help us, Gary. Wouldn’t you like everyone to think of you as the boy who helped the police to find John? All I want you to tell me is if you saw anyone at all, any grown-up, by the lane when John went away.”

   “I didn’t see them today,” said Gary. He screamed and threw himself on his mother. “I didn’t see them, I didn’t!”

   “I hope you’re satisfied,” said Mrs. Dean. “I’m warning you, I shall take this further.”

   “I didn’t see that person,” Gary sobbed.

“Well, Mike?” said Wexford.

   “It looks as if a man’s been hanging about that playing field. I thought I might have a go at the people in the end houses overlooking the swings field.”

   “All right, and I’ll try the two end ones in Wincanton.” 

   Did Wexford remember that be and Jean had once lived there? Burden wondered if he was attributing an excess of sensitivity to the chief inspector. Probably. A policeman has no private life when on a case. He made his way to the bottom of Fontaine Road. The fields were dark now but occasionally in the far distance, he could make out the gleam from a torch.

   The last two houses faced each other. One was a detached bungalow, vintage 1935, the other a tall narrow Victorian place. Both had side windows facing the field. Burden knocked at the bungalow and a girl came to the door.

   “I’m out at work all day,” she said. “I’ve only just got in and my husband isn’t home yet. What’s happened? Has something awful happened?”

   Burden told her.

   “You can see the field from my window,” she said, “but I’m never here.”

   “I won’t waste your time, then.”

   “I hope you find him,” the girl said.

   The door of the Victorian house was opened before he reached it. As soon as he saw the face of the woman who was waiting for him he knew she had something to tell him. She was elderly, sharp-eyed and spry.

   “It wasn’t that man, was it? I’ll never forgive myself if it was him and I . . .”

   “Perhaps I could come in a minute? And may I have your name?’

   “Mrs. Mitchell.” She took him into a neat, newly decorated room. “I ought to have gone to the police before but you know how it is. He never did anything, he never even spoke to any of the children. I did mention it to young Mrs. Rushworth because her Andrew plays there, but she’s always so busy, out at work all day, and I expect she forgot to tell the other mothers. And then when he didn’t come back and the children went back to school . . .”

   “Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we, Mrs. Mitchell? You saw a man hanging about the swings field. When did you first see him?”

   Mrs. Mitchell sat down and took a deep breath. “It was in August, during the school holidays. I always clean my upstairs windows on a Wednesday afternoon and one Wednesday I was doing the landing window and I saw this man.”

   “Where did you see him?”

   “Over by the Forby road, Mill Lane, under the trees. He was standing there, looking at the children. Let me see, there was Julian Crantock and Gary Dean and poor little John Lawrence and Andrew Rushworth and the McDowell twins, and they were all playing on the swings and this man was looking at them. Oh, I should have gone to the police!”

   “You spoke to one of the mothers, Mrs. Mitchell. You mustn’t reproach yourself. I take it you saw this man again?”

   “Oh, yes, the next Wednesday, and I made a point of looking the next day, the Thursday, and he was there again, and it was then I spoke to Mrs. Rushworth.”

   “So, in fact, you saw him often throughout the August holiday?”

   “We had a spell of bad weather after that and the children couldn’t go into the field, and then it was time to go back to school. I forgot all about the man after that. Until yesterday.”

   “You saw him yesterday?”

   Mrs. Mitchell nodded. “It was Wednesday and I was doing the landing window. I saw the children come into the field and then this man appeared. It gave me a shock, seeing him again after two months. I thought to myself, I’m going to stand at this window and watch you and see what you do. But be didn’t do anything. He walked around the field and he picked some leaves, branches of autumn leaves, you know, and then he stood still for a bit, looking at the boys. He was there for about half an hour and when I was just thinking, I’ll have to get a chair because my legs won’t hold me up, be went down over the bank.”

   “Had he a car?” Burden asked quickly. “In the lane?

   “I couldn’t see. I think I heard a car start up, but it mightn’t have been his, might it?”

   “Did you see him today, Mrs. Mitchell?”

   “I should have looked, I know that. But I had told Mrs. Rushworth and it was her responsibility. Besides, I’d never seen this man do anything.” She sighed. “I went out at two today,” she said. “I went to see my married daughter in Kingsmarkham.”

   “Describe this man to me, Mrs. Mitchell.”

   “I can do that,” she said, pleased. “He was young, hardly more than a boy himself. Very slim, you know, and sort of slight. Not as tall as you, not nearly. About five feet six. He always wore the same clothes, one of those - what d’you call them? - duffel coats, black or very dark grey, and those jeans they all wear. Dark hair, not long for these days, but a lot longer than yours. I couldn’t see his face, not from this distance, but he had very little hands. And he limps.”

   “Limps?”

   “When he was walking round the field,” said Mrs. Mitchell earnestly, “I noticed that he dragged one of his feet. Just slightly. Just a slight little limp.”

The next parallel street was called Chiltern Avenue and access to it was by a footpath which ran along the side of Mrs. Mitchell’s house between her garden and the field. Burden went down Chiltern Avenue, calling at every house. The McDowell family lived at number 38 and the twins, Stewart and Ian, were still up.

   Stewart had never seen the man, for during most of August he had been confined indoors with tonsillitis and today he had been with his mother to the dentist. But Ian had seen him and had even discussed him with Gary Dean, his special friend.

   “He kept right under the trees all the time,” said Ian. “Gary said he was a spy. Gary went to talk to him one day but he ran into Mill Lane.”

   Burden asked the boy to describe him, but Ian lacked Mrs. Mitchell’s powers of observation.

   “Just a man,” he said, “About as big as my brother.” The brother in question was fifteen. Burden asked about the limp.

   “What’s limp?”

   Burden explained. “Dunno,” said Ian.

   Further down, in a house of the same vintage as Mrs. Lawrence’s, he encountered the Rushworth family. Rushworth, it appeared, was an estate agent in Kingsmarkham, and he had gone off with the search parties, but his wife was at home with her four unruly children, all of whom were still up. Why hadn’t she come to the police when Mrs. Mitchell had first warned her back in August?

   A little blonde woman whose stilt heels and long fingernails combined with a bouncing crest of hair gave her the look of a delicate game bird, Mrs. Rushworth burst into tears.

   “I meant to.” She choked. “I had every intention. I work so hard. I work in my husband’s office, you know. There’s never a moment to do anything!”

   It was almost eight and John Lawrence had been missing for four and a half hours. Burden shivered a little less from the frosty chill of the night than from the sense of impending tragedy, of coming events casting a long cold shadow before them. He went over to the car and got in beside Wexford.

The chief inspector’s driver had left him alone and he sat in the back of the black official car, not making notes, no longer studying his map, but pondering deeply. There was very little light - he hadn’t switched on the interior light - and in the shadows he might have been a figure of stone. From head to foot he was grey - grey sparse hair, old grey raincoat, shoes that were always a little dusty. His face was deeply lined and in the half-dark it too looked grey. He turned slightly as Burden came in and fixed on him a pair of grey eyes which were the only brilliant sharp thing about him. Burden said nothing and for a few moments the two men were silent. Then Wexford said:

   “A penny for them, Mike.”

   “I was thinking of Stella Rivers.”

   “Of course you were. Aren’t we all?”

   “It was her half-term holiday too,” Burden said. “She was an only child of divorced parents. She also disappeared in Mill Lane. There are a good many similarities.”

   “And a good many dissimilarities too For one thing, she was a girl and older You don’t know much about the Stella Rivers case You were off sick when it happened”