COPYRIGHT

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1970 by Collins Crime

Copyright © Emma Page 1970

Emma Page asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008175849

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175856

Version [2016-02-18]

DEDICATION

FOR DUKE

with love, as always

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

About the Author

By Emma Page

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

She came blowing into the Railway Tavern in a flurry of wind and rain on a wild, squally Sunday evening at the end of February; a short, slight girl, seventeen or eighteen. The hood of her green anorak was drawn tight round her face, her black trousers were tucked into wellingtons; she had a duffel-bag slung across one shoulder. She came to a halt inside the doorway, gasping and laughing. She undid the drawstring of her hood and thrust it back, releasing a shower of raindrops. She ran a hand round the back of her neck and her long black hair swung out free of the hood. She had a sharp, resolute face, a pale skin, very dark eyes.

The tavern was a quiet, sober inn; it stood on the outskirts of Cannonbridge, in a grey, downtrodden area. Not many folk in this evening, still on the early side. She went up to the bar and swung the duffel-bag off her shoulder, resting it against the counter. She loosened the cord and took a large white envelope from the top of the bag.

A little way along the bar Detective Sergeant Lambert stood idly watching as she opened the envelope and drew out a number of photographs, snapshots mostly, one or two with the formal, stiff-backed look of studio portraits. She didn’t order a drink, she offered no preamble, she simply held out the photographs to the barman and asked him, ‘Do you know this girl? She’s about the same height and build as me.’

The barman glanced casually at the top snapshot. He shook his head slowly, in silence.

She jerked the bundle at him impatiently. ‘You haven’t looked at them.’

He took the photos from her without enthusiasm and flicked through them. He shook his head again.

‘It could have been a year or two back,’ the girl persisted. ‘Even three or four years. She might have a different hairstyle from the photographs.’

He shook his head again, with finality. ‘No use asking me. I haven’t been here twelve months.’ He handed her the photographs and she took them reluctantly. He moved away to serve a customer.

She turned her head and glanced along the counter at Lambert. She picked up her duffel-bag and moved towards him. Before she had a chance to speak he said, ‘This isn’t my usual pub, I hardly ever come in here.’ This evening he’d had half an hour to kill; he’d come in out of the wind and rain only a few minutes earlier.

She thrust the photos at him, undeterred. ‘There’s no special connection with this pub. You might have seen her somewhere else in Cannonbridge, I’m just trying to trace her. I’m going to ask everywhere: pubs, shops, cafés, offices, works. I’ve just come over from Martleigh on the train, that’s the only reason I picked this pub to start with.’

He looked through the photographs, which appeared to have been taken over a period of two or three years. The girl they showed bore a strong resemblance to the girl in front of him. She had the same long black hair, the same pale skin and very dark eyes, but she was a good deal better-looking, her features less sharp, the cheekbones more delicately moulded. ‘Your sister?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Of course she’s older than that now. She left home four years ago, she was only sixteen when the last of those was taken. She’ll be twenty-one in March.’

‘Have you heard nothing from her in four years?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a long time,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high. She could be anywhere by now.’

Conversation ebbed and flowed around them. He looked up at the clock; it showed five minutes to seven. In twenty minutes he was due to pick up the parents of a lad he took an interest in, a lad on probation, making a strong effort to go straight. He was going to run them up to the infirmary where the lad was recovering from pneumonia following a severe attack of influenza.

‘I haven’t much time,’ he told her. ‘I have to go in a few minutes. Have you some special reason for wanting to find your sister?’

‘I must find her,’ she said with force. ‘There’s some money involved. My aunt died before Christmas – she lived up north, we hadn’t seen her for years. We had a letter from a solicitor. My aunt didn’t leave a will, and it seems my sister and I are the only relatives, her money will all come to us. Not that she had a lot to leave, a few thousand pounds, but it would mean a great deal to me. I went up north to see the solicitor. I explained about Helen, that we didn’t know where she was. They won’t pay the money out till she’s found – or at least they will in the end, but it would take ages, and I don’t want to wait for the money.’

‘You need it in a hurry?’

‘Yes, I do. I want to go abroad.’

‘For a holiday?’

‘No. To study art, in France and Italy. I never thought I’d get the chance.’

‘We?’ he queried. ‘You said just now: We didn’t know where she was.’

‘I live with my stepbrother.’ She pulled a face. ‘I can’t wait to get away.’

‘He’s older than you?’

‘Oh yes, he’s turned forty. He’s as mean as sin. I’d have to wait one hell of a long time if I waited for him to give – or even lend – me the money to go abroad.’

‘What’s his attitude to all this? Did he encourage you to come over here to look for your sister?’

‘He certainly did not. He told me I was a fool, I was wasting my time.’

‘Do you definitely know that your sister came to Cannonbridge when she left home?’

‘No, I don’t know that. I have no idea where she went, she didn’t tell me anything. I only knew she was leaving because I happened to go into her bedroom the evening before she left and found her packing. I was only a kid at the time, thirteen, and we’d never been very close. She wouldn’t say where she was going or what she was planning to do. She told me I could have any things she left behind, she wouldn’t be coming back for them. She said: You want to clear out yourself when you’re old enough.’ She laughed. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’

‘Did your stepbrother ever try to find your sister?’

‘Not he. He was glad to see the back of her. He wouldn’t care if he never clapped eyes on either of us again.’

‘What made you decide on Cannonbridge to start looking for her?’

‘A girl I know, a girl from school, she told me about a year after Helen left that she’d seen her in Cannonbridge one Saturday when she was over here shopping with her mother. She saw Helen coming out of a café. She didn’t speak to her but she got a good look at her. She was quite certain it was Helen.’

‘Helen what?’ Lambert asked.

‘Mowbray. I’m Joanne Mowbray.’ Her look altered suddenly, became wary, tinged with incipient hostility. ‘Are you a copper?’

‘Yes.’ There was a brief silence. ‘I have to pick up some people,’ he said. ‘I can’t keep them waiting. Your best chance is to call in at a police station. They’ll do what they can to help you.’

She set her jaw. ‘I don’t want the police dragged into this. And I’m sure Helen wouldn’t either.’ She picked up the photographs. ‘If she’s here I’ll find her. She took a secretarial and book-keeping course at school, she worked for an agency before she left Martleigh. I’ll call in at the agencies here in the morning, she could have gone to one of them.’

‘I’m at the main police station here in Cannonbridge,’ he told her. ‘My name’s Lambert. Detective Sergeant Lambert. If you call in there tomorrow morning—’ She was already shaking her head. ‘It doesn’t have to be me,’ he added. ‘You can see someone else – or you can call in at one of the other stations if you prefer. I’m sure you’d find it useful.’

‘No, thanks,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I’ll manage on my own.’ Without looking at him she added, ‘Thanks, anyway, for taking the time to talk to me.’ She glanced up and flashed him a sudden smile. She had small, even teeth, very white; she looked all at once open and vulnerable, scarcely more than a schoolgirl. ‘At least you showed more interest than the barman.’

March came in with a whirl of sleet and snow. The weather kept up its manic mood: gale force winds, showers of hail, sudden mild sweet days vanishing abruptly twenty-four hours later in fog and rain. Sergeant Lambert was kept pretty busy, no one case of consuming interest, just the steady unrelenting pressure of the old faithfuls: breaking and entering, thefts from cars, vandalism and hooliganism, minor fraud and embezzlement, assault and violence of greater or lesser degree.

On one of his sorties he found himself driving past the Railway Tavern. He had a brief surge of memory: the black-haired girl flinging back the hood of her anorak, scattering raindrops, glancing determinedly around the bar. Joanne Mowbray. If she’d called in at the main police station she certainly hadn’t come his way. She might have found her sister by now; it was three weeks since that Sunday evening. The lad had left hospital, was convalescing at home with his parents.

At the thought he glanced at his watch. He might take five minutes to look in on them while he was over this way. He turned left at the next intersection. The memory of Joanne and her bundle of photographs dropped away into the recesses of his brain.

The Easter break threatened to be bitterly cold; night frosts, daytime temperatures kept low by brisk north-westerly winds. The evening of Good Friday was dark and overcast. At about eight o’clock a twelve-year-old lad by the name of Graham Cooney, living on the Parkfield council estate on the southern edge of Cannonbridge, a run-down area well represented in local petty-crime statistics, phoned the main police station from a call-box – to do this he had to run a quarter of a mile, all the Parkfield kiosks being, as usual, vandalized and out of action – to report the fact that his brother Jason, a child of four, had not come home since leaving the house at two in the afternoon to play with other children on the estate.

Mrs Cooney had not become seriously alarmed until the early evening. She had then sent her daughter, a girl of eight, chasing and calling round the estate, knocking on doors, asking if anyone had seen Jason. All without success. At about seven o’clock Graham had returned home and joined in the search. When he could discover no trace of the missing child it was he who had taken the decision to ring the police.

This was a routine matter for the uniformed branch. The usual drill went into operation, with some added drive because of the sharp frost forecast: patrol cars asked to keep a look-out, detailed tours of the area, broadcasts from the local radio station, asking householders to search cellars and outhouses. None of it produced any result.

At first light a more thorough and urgent search began. A troop of Scouts undertook a yard-by-yard sweep of neighbouring woodland, police cadets examined the area around the railway line and along the banks of the river. Another sharp frost was forecast for Saturday night. It was thought unlikely that a child of that age, in the clothes he was wearing when he left home, would survive a second night of hunger in the open.

By nightfall, again with no result, the Parkfield estate was alive with rumours: strange cars had been observed cruising about the streets earlier in the week; a lorry that had broken down on the main road near the entrance to the estate, on the afternoon of Good Friday, had remained stranded there until five or six in the evening. There was by now a general belief on the part of the estate dwellers – if not yet of the police – that the child had been abducted. Shortly after nine p.m. the CID were called in.

The light-bulb centred above the table in Mrs Cooney’s kitchen shone down white and harsh, without the benefit of any softening shade. An ancient alarm clock on the mantelshelf showed ten-fifteen. The house was very cold and smelled of damp and mould, with an overlay of soot. Through the party-wall came the sound of a radio, a brass band playing a rousing regimental march.

Mrs Cooney stood by the stove, making yet another pot of tea. She upturned the tea-caddy, shaking the last few leaves into the pot. She was a widow, a big, fleshy woman a year or two past forty, with a weary, resigned face, muddy skin, lifeless hair taken back anyhow, looks gone long ago from work, worry and hard times, the summit of her endeavours now, as far as personal appearances went, being merely to keep herself and her four children reasonably clean, not to drop so far down the scale of clothing as to be taken for gipsies.

‘Run next door,’ she instructed Graham, who was sitting hunched over the table, doing his best to keep awake, digging his knuckles into his eyes. ‘Ask them if they can spare me a packet of tea. I’ll let them have it back for sure on Wednesday.’ Her two other children, girls of eight and two, were upstairs in bed – the same bed, for warmth. Her husband had died six months before the youngest child was born; a strongly built, jovial man, struck suddenly down by virus pneumonia. He had been a plasterer, unemployed during the recession, finally taking the plunge and setting up on his own. He was just beginning to find his feet when he fell ill. With his death there had been an abrupt descent into poverty.

Graham pushed back his chair and went yawning out through the back door. A sturdy boy, tall for his age, with a sensible, serious air.

‘He’s a good lad,’ Mrs Cooney observed to Sergeant Lambert who stood leaning against the dresser. ‘He’d do anything for anyone. You couldn’t wish for a better son.’ She showed no sign of hysteria. She hadn’t collapsed into tears or exhaustion, she went soldiering on through this crisis as she’d soldiered on through all the others. It seemed to Lambert that already she more than half accepted the possibility that Jason might not be found alive. She seemed to have armoured herself with a stoical, fatalistic view of life. as if she had long ago concluded that beyond a certain point struggle was useless.

She took Lambert’s mug and poured in a little milk made from powdered skim; it had grown progressively more diluted as the day advanced. She poured out the tea. Just as well he didn’t take sugar, her supply of that had run out some time ago.

Lambert drank his tea. ‘Not a lot more we can do tonight,’ he told her. ‘We’ll be back first thing in the morning.’

‘Thank God I don’t have to go to work tomorrow,’ she said with fervour. Missing child or not, the loss of a few hours’ wages would have been disastrous. She worked five mornings a week, five o’clock till seven, cleaning in a factory on the industrial estate. She left the two older children in charge of the little ones. She was always back by half past seven, had taught herself not to worry about them while she was away. She couldn’t take a regular daytime job, not with Jason and the baby.

Graham came back with the packet of tea and set it down by the stove; he could scarcely keep his eyes open. ‘You’re sure you didn’t see anything of Jason yesterday afternoon?’ Lambert suddenly asked him. He’d already questioned the boy. He seemed a decent enough lad, cooperative and observant, but Lambert hadn’t been one hundred per cent satisfied with his answers. Nothing he could put a finger on but some doubt registered with him all the same.

Graham shook his head in silence. A gigantic yawn rose in his throat. He closed his eyes and let the yawn swell to its full gaping conclusion. ‘Where were you until seven o’clock yesterday evening?’ Lambert asked him.

Mrs Cooney put a hand on Graham’s arm. ‘You’d better get off to bed. You’re asleep on your feet.’ She steered him towards the door leading into the hall. She flicked a remonstrative glance at Lambert. ‘He was out playing with his mates. He’s told you that twice already, I don’t know why you keep on asking. They were over in the woods, the other side of the railway line.’

‘On a cold dark evening like that?’

‘Lads don’t mind a bit of weather.’ She stood in the doorway, watching Graham stumble up the stairs. She came back into the kitchen, walking slowly and heavily. Her bare feet were thrust into battered old shoes; the skin of her legs, shiny, bluish white, was knotted and corded with varicose veins.

Lambert finished his tea and set down his mug. ‘If there’s any of them out there wanting tea,’ she told him, ‘send them in. I won’t be going to bed just yet.’

‘Try not to worry,’ Lambert advised her. ‘Try to get some sleep. We’ll be bringing the troops in in the morning. They’ll be able to cover a much wider area.’ As he turned to the door a picture on the wall caught his eye: a country garden, romantically pretty, beds of hyacinths and tulips, a cat curled up asleep on the cottage window-sill. A snapshot was stuck in the side of the frame: Mrs Cooney and her husband, taken years ago on a summer holiday, Mrs Cooney tall and slim, her husband’s arm around her shoulders, her head thrown back in laughter, the sea breeze blowing the skirts of her cotton dress against her beautiful, long, shapely legs.

Easter Sunday dawned bitterly cold but by seven the mists had vanished from along the river and a brilliant sun had broken through. Already the first holiday traffic was on the move. In a field beside the motorway, six miles to the south-west of Cannonbridge, a small party of troops was searching a derelict house, Stoneleigh, the property of an old man who had died years ago, leaving everything to his only living relative, a cousin in South America, who had himself died shortly afterwards.

There had been endless legal wrangles about the ownership of the property. A local farmer had made fruitless attempts to buy the land but eventually, with the coming of the motorway, he had lost interest. Once in a way someone asked a question on the local council but nothing was ever done, nothing ever resolved. Stoneleigh was gradually forgotten, sliding from the consciousness of councillors, solicitors, estate agents; no one concerned himself about it any more.

And all the while the wind and weather had been about their work. What had once been a pleasant enough foursquare, dwelling was now a crumbling rain, roofless and eyeless, invaded by weeds and saplings.

‘Nothing up here,’ one of the soldiers called to the corporal as he came gingerly down what remained of the rotting staircase.

The party moved out into the sparkling sunshine. The corporal glanced round the field. In one corner, under overhanging bushes, he could see the end of what looked like a shed or hen-house. He jerked his head at it. ‘Better take a look over there.’ Two men crossed the field and parted the bushes. The corporal stood surveying the terrain, deciding on his next move.

The structure appeared to be some kind of ancient privy. A couple of boards – considerably newer than the rest of the timber – had been placed in position at the top and bottom of the door, had been firmly secured by brass screws. The two men exchanged a glance. One of them stooped and pushed his way under the bushes, round to the back of the shed. Here there was a tiny window set high up, with a single deeply-grimed pane. He glanced about for something to break the glass and came upon a mossy half-brick. His mate joined him as he smashed in the pane. Together they peered in.

The first man wrinkled his nose at the smell that greeted him: age and decay, with some more disagreeable overlay. Inside the privy were three long bags of heavy translucent plastic, bundled close together in the confined space. Two bags were propped against the end walls, the third was squashed down on the floor; all three were tied at the mouth with stout cord. The bag on the floor was crammed with a miscellany of articles; he could see cushions, paperback books, the stiff sleeves of gramophone records.

‘God Almighty!’ he said suddenly. Through the plastic of the bag on the right he could make out the shape of a body, sideways on, in a green jacket and black trousers. Spilling out of the jacket hood was a tress of long dark hair.

His mate uttered an exclamation; he shifted his gaze to the bag on the left. Inside it, pressed up against the plastic, he could see locks of black hair, and, half visible through the strands, something that might once have been a face.

Half an hour later, in a hamlet no more than two miles from the Parkfield council estate, an elderly cottager living alone made his way stiffly to the far end of his garden, reluctantly driven by the bright spring sunshine to open his shed after the winter, look out his tools, make a start on the vegetable plot.

He creaked open the shed door and stood arrested, staring down, a hand up to his mouth.

Inside the shed, bedded cosily in a nest of old sacks and newspapers, fast asleep and none the worse for his adventure, lay Jason Cooney, one hand tightly clutching a bag of sweets.

CHAPTER 2

Detective Chief Inspector Kelsey stood inside the screened-off area of the field at Stoneleigh, talking to Sergeant Lambert. The Chief was a big, solidly built man with craggy features and a large, squashy nose; he had shrewd green eyes and a crop of freckles, a head of thickly springing carroty-red hair. He glanced at his watch and then at the privy, both ends of which had now been removed. Nothing more they could do at the moment, not until the entomologist, an enthusiastic little man plucked at intervals from retirement to assist the police, had finished his examination.

Little doubt about the identity of the bodies. ‘Joanne Mowbray,’ Sergeant Lambert had told the Chief a few minutes after he arrived on the scene. ‘It’s more than likely that the other one will be her sister Helen.’

The entomologist was finished at last. He came out of the privy and crossed over to where the two men stood. The Chief listened to what he had to say with his head bent, looking down at the bright spring grass, displaying no sign of unease. Sergeant Lambert felt nausea rise inside him; there were still these pockets of squeamishness which in spite of experience lingered on to inconvenience and embarrass him. He managed well enough while the entomologist spoke of soil structure and condition, moisture and desiccation, heat and cold, the effects of stability or fluctuation in all these factors, the less than airtight securing of the bags, but his brain attempted to switch itself off as soon as the little man began a lively account of the relentless, unwavering progression of insect life, blow flies, cheese flies, flesh flies, coffin flies, refusing to steady itself again until the expert’s tone took on a conclusive note.

‘As far as the older girl is concerned,’ he said judicially, ‘I would say her body has been in the shed between two and two and a half years. And the younger girl, four to five weeks.’

An hour or so later the sound of holiday traffic had increased, there was a constant whir and thunder from the motorway. Kelsey stood drinking a mug of scalding coffee. He had refused a sandwich, he could never fancy eating anything in circumstances such as these, however empty his stomach grew, however loud its rumblings.

The photographers had finished their work and left; the two bodies had gone off to the mortuary. The contents of each plastic bag, still kept separate, had been set out on the ground and given a preliminary examination before being taken off to the Forensic Science laboratory.

The identity of both girls had been amply confirmed from this brief scrutiny of their belongings. Joanne’s National Savings bank-book was among the orderly contents of her duffel-bag, which had been stuffed in alongside her body. The book gave her home address in Martleigh: 34 Thirlstane Street. The account showed a balance of almost a hundred and ninety pounds, the last entry being a withdrawal of thirty pounds from a Cannonbridge sub post office on Tuesday, March 1st. There was over ten pounds in notes and coins in a zipped pocket of the anorak she was wearing. There was no diary, no personal letter, among the possessions of either girl.

Helen Mowbray’s belongings were far more numerous than Joanne’s. Inside the privy, behind the two propped-up plastic bags, they had found two suitcases of quite good quality, together with a soft, zipped handgrip. These contained clothing and various business papers; all three cases clearly belonged to Helen. Their contents had been neatly packed and were apparently undisturbed. In marked contrast to this orderliness, the rest of Helen’s possessions had been tumbled pell-mell into the plastic bag that had lain on the privy floor. They undoubtedly belonged to her; her name appeared on the flyleaf of several paperbacks and on the sleeves of some of the gramophone records. Among these belongings was a shoulder-bag containing over a hundred pounds. Several articles had suffered minor damage, breakage, chipping, or tearing.

‘It looks as if Helen packed the two suitcases and the handgrip herself,’ Chief Inspector Kelsey said to Sergeant Lambert as they drank their coffee. ‘Ready to leave for some destination. Able to take her time about it, do the job properly. Then she also had all the other stuff to take with her, all her awkwardly-shaped possessions, difficult to pack neatly into cases. It looks as if she could have been expecting someone to call for her in a vehicle and she intended stacking these loose oddments in the boot or the back of the vehicle. Then whoever it was brought along a plastic bag and just shoved the things into it anyhow, in a tearing hurry.’ He chewed the inside of his cheek. ‘Her cases were so neatly packed, I can’t see her flinging the stuff into the bag in that careless fashion herself – or standing idly by and allowing someone else to treat her belongings in that way.’

He finished his coffee. ‘No doubt about it, both murders were committed by the same man. Clearly the second girl was killed because she came along asking questions about the first. She had either stumbled on or was about to stumble on the man who had killed her sister.’

‘The man?’ Lambert echoed.

Kelsey thrust out his lips. ‘Man or woman.’ He agreed with the doctor’s opinion that it could have been either. Both girls were short and slight. Both had been strangled from behind with a length of strong cord identical with that used to fasten the mouths of the plastic bags; both ligatures were still in place round the girls’ necks. ‘Nothing beyond the strength of any ordinarily healthy and active woman,’ Kelsey added. ‘All that was needed was a vehicle. And the ability to use a screwdriver.’

The town of Martleigh was a good deal smaller than Cannonbridge and lay twenty-two miles to the north-east. 34 Thirlstane Street proved to be a small butcher’s shop standing at the end of an Edwardian terrace in a respectable working-class district a mile or so from the town centre. There were no front gardens; the houses opened directly on to the street. When Sergeant Lambert halted the car and stepped out on to the pavement there were only the peaceful sounds of Sunday morning to be heard under the pale blue sky: radio music, children playing in a nearby street, a dog barking, the hum of traffic, a woman calling a child.

Gilded letters above the shop read: A. F. LOCKYEAR. FAMILY BUTCHER. The marble display slabs in the window had been washed down with scrupulous care; behind them a precise row of sheaves of white greaseproof paper, neatly impaled on metal hooks, obscured any view of the interior. Kelsey got out of the car and glanced up at the living quarters. The curtains were drawn back but there was no sign of life.

Sergeant Lambert pressed the doorbell. After a minute or two when there was no answer he pressed the bell again, keeping his finger on it for several seconds. Still no reply. He was about to press it for the third time when he became aware of someone watching from the house next door. A whisk of movement behind the net curtains of the downstairs window, a hand lifting the curtain discreetly to one side, a woman’s face appearing briefly at the other side of the glass. He stood waiting for her front door to open, as it did a few moments later.

A little birdlike woman of fifty or so came out on to the doorstep. She wore a trim nylon overall, her brown hair was neatly and becomingly dressed. She gave both men rapid up-and-down glances from her bright black boot-button eyes. She darted a swift look at the car before she spoke, knowing them at once for policemen.

‘Something wrong?’ She stepped out on to the pavement. When Kelsey didn’t answer she added, ‘Mr Lockyear’s not here. There’s no one at home. He’s on his own just now, with Joanne being away. I could take a message.’

‘Perhaps you could tell us where we could find Mr Lockyear?’ Kelsey said.

‘He’s down at his allotment. He’s always there this time of a Sunday, Easter or no Easter, makes no difference. He won’t get back here till just before one, all he’ll do is cook himself a chop.’ A mouth-watering odour of roasting turkey, sage and onion stuffing, drifted out behind her. Lambert felt all at once acutely hungry. ‘Is there something wrong?’ she asked again with the same lively, inquisitive air.

Kelsey still didn’t answer that. ‘Where can we find these allotments?’ he asked.

She gave him directions. ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ he told her. ‘Very good of you, Mrs …’

‘Mrs Snape,’ she said at once. ‘If there’s anything I can do—’

‘Thank you,’ he said, with finality. They went back to the car. She remained standing on the pavement, watching them with unabashed curiosity. ‘You can get back here tomorrow,’ Kelsey told Lambert as the car moved off. ‘She’ll talk her head off, given half a chance.’

The allotments were some three-quarters of a mile away, on the northern tip of Martleigh, in an open, windswept situation. The air was full of the cries of domestic fowl mingled with the chirruping of songbirds. Somewhere a radio played a Strauss waltz. Judging from the lingering, acrid smell as they crossed the bleak terrain, someone had recently cleaned out the fowl pens, had scattered the manure over the earth.

There was no great air of urgency about the place. Twelve or fourteen men, middle-aged or older, dug and planted in a leisurely fashion. Kelsey asked the first man they encountered if he could point out Mr Lockyear to them. ‘Arnold Lockyear?’ the man said. He gestured with an earth-stained hand. ‘He’s over there, at the far end.’

Lockyear had his back to them as they came over. He was stooping over a bed of rhubarb, examining the crowns, replacing ancient bottomless buckets and wooden orange boxes over the slender stalks. The other men continued to work on their plots, displaying no open curiosity.

Lockyear turned his head at the sound of their approach. He paused in his task and then straightened up. He remained where he was, in silence, his face expressionless, his eyes darting over them in swift assessment.

‘Arnold Lockyear?’ the Chief said. Lockyear gave a single nod. His face wore the look of a man who knows with certainty that he is about to hear bad news. A short, stocky man within hailing distance of middle age; a thick red neck and fleshy, jowled face, deepset brown eyes, thickly curling hair the colour of a cobnut. He looked not unlike a yearling bull.

The Chief identified himself and Lambert. The look on Lockyear’s face intensified, he closed his eyes for an instant.

‘I’m afraid we have bad news,’ Kelsey said. ‘Very bad news.’ The manure-scented breeze blew in their faces. From the neighbouring allotments the thock and click of tools sounded clear and distinct on the shimmering air.

‘It’s Joanne,’ Lockyear said with grim certainty. He stood with bowed head as the Chief said what had to be said. As he listened his face took on a look of stunned disbelief. When the Chief came to the end of his harrowing recital Lockyear raised his eyes and stared into Kelsey’s face. An expression of horror overlaid with frowning questioning appeared on his blunt features.

There was a brief silence, then Lockyear said with an air of frozen shock, ‘Both of them? Both the girls? Helen as well?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ the Chief said gently.

Lockyear drew a long quavering breath. He shook his head as if trying to clear it. ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said in a dogged way as if it might all somehow turn out to be no more than a piece of lunatic misunderstanding. ‘There’s no possible doubt about it? Both the girls are dead?’

‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt at all,’ Kelsey said. ‘They’re both dead.’ Lockyear stood looking at him with his arms hanging limply at his sides.

‘I’m afraid I must ask you to carry out an unpleasant duty,’ Kelsey said. Lockyear gave him an uncomprehending look. ‘I must ask you to come with us to the Cannonbridge mortuary, to identify the bodies.’

Lockyear’s mouth opened a little. He turned his head and stared down at the rhubarb crowns with their delicate rosy stems tipped with pale yellow leaves, frilled and crimped. He gave a single nod.

‘And we’ll need to ask you some questions,’ Kelsey said. ‘I’m sure you understand that. When you last saw the girls, what contacts you may have had with them since that time, who their friends and associates were, and so on. Any light you can throw on what’s happened. It will all take time, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.’

Lockyear nodded slowly, he went on nodding for some seconds.

‘The post mortem will take place tomorrow morning,’ Kelsey said. Lockyear gave another slow, bemused series of nods. ‘You’ll probably want to call in at your house before we go to Cannonbridge,’ Kelsey added as Lockyear continued to stand there. ‘You may want to change your clothes, there may be something you need to see to. We can wait while you attend to it.’

Lockyear glanced down at his clothes. ‘Yes, I suppose I’d better change.’ He looked vaguely about. ‘I’d better clear up here.’ He covered the rest of the rhubarb, gathered up his fork and spade, trowel and hoe, without haste. He put them tidily away in the shed and locked the door, testing it afterwards to see that it was properly secured. All his actions were marked with care and deliberation, though his face still wore its drained, numbed look.

He didn’t speak to any of the other men working on the allotments as he walked away beside the two policemen; the men continued with their digging and forking as if unaware of the little party making its way past them. But when they reached the car and Lambert glanced back he saw that they had all now stopped working and were openly staring after them.

The drive to Thirlstane Street took place in silence. When they reached Lockyear’s shop it was lunchtime and the street was deserted. Lockyear was able to dart into his house unnoticed. The two men followed him inside. The air smelt stale and musty as if no one bothered to open the windows any more.

‘I’d like to take a look in Joanne’s room,’ Kelsey told Lockyear. ‘You can carry on with whatever you have to do.’

Lockyear led the way upstairs and opened a door on the right of the landing. ‘This is Joanne’s room,’ he said. ‘Helen had the room next door – it hasn’t been used since she left.’ He went off along the corridor to the bathroom.

Kelsey went into Joanne’s room and looked swiftly through her belongings. The room was adequately furnished, reasonably comfortable. All the soft furnishings looked in need of repair or renewal, as if nothing much in that line had been done for several years.

Joanne’s clothes were neatly arranged in a single wardrobe and a chest of drawers. Not a great deal of clothing and nothing very fancy; plain, functional, inexpensive garments. Beside the window stood a small bureau; none of the drawers was locked. The top drawer held an assortment of papers, methodically disposed. The letter from the aunt’s solicitor. A bundle of school reports: Joanne had been an industrious pupil, usually first in form at Art. Well behaved, presenting no problems; otherwise unremarkable. Photographs and snapshots, going back over a number of years, all with carefully written identifications. A wedding photograph of her parents, the bridegroom a resolute-looking young man, tall and slightly built, with a good forehead; the bride short and slight with a delicate, pretty face and shy smile, a great deal of dark hair dressed in curls and loops under her filmy veil.

A second wedding photograph, taken nine years after the first: the marriage of the girls’ mother to Arnold Lockyear’s father, the bridegroom grey-haired and bull-necked, with no discernible waistline but with a cheerful, good-tempered face alight with pride and love. His hand clasped the hand of his bride, even more slender and delicate-looking now in a dress and jacket of pale silk, a pretty little veiled cloche hat perched on her dark hair, still abundant, still glossy and wavy. She had an air of having passed through some harsh weathering process since she had last taken the arm of a bridegroom; the look was temporarily overlaid with an expression of tenuous optimism.

In front of the bridal pair stood two little girls in long dresses of Victorian print, their dark hair taken back under ribboned head-dresses, their hands clutching formal posies. Helen half a head taller than Joanne, both of them with ritual smiles fixed over an air of uncertainty.

Arnold Lockyear stood beside his father, with a space of a good couple of feet between them as if he had been determined to mark out the distance separating him from the rest of the family group. He wore a dark suit, a carnation prinked with greenery in his buttonhole; he looked straight ahead, his expression blank and unsmiling.

In the second drawer of the bureau were some paper-backed books: lives of various artists and a history of European art; a number of postcard-size reproductions of famous paintings; some copies of magazines devoted to the arts. And a portfolio of drawings and watercolours, all dated and signed: Joanne E. Mowbray, in a hand that grew progressively less rounded and childish as Kelsey turned the pages. Careful pencil studies of faces, animals, buildings; landscapes and townscapes in line and wash; heads of children in crayon and pastel. They looked competent enough to Kelsey; he wouldn’t have minded half a dozen on the walls of his flat.

In the lowest drawer he found a handful of trinkets, a few pressed flowers, some carefully preserved lengths of satin ribbon decorated with bows, such as might have been used to tie up presents. More photographs: Lockyear senior and his second wife with the two girls on a seaside holiday, all apparently enjoying themselves; Lockyear lying back in a deckchair with a straw hat shading his eyes, Joanne kneeling beside her mother’s chair, talking of her, both of them looking relaxed and carefree, Helen sitting beside them on the sand, absorbed in a book.

Kelsey closed the drawer and went next door into Helen’s room. Dusty sunlight streamed through the panes. A butterfly lay shrivelled on the window-ledge. The bed had been stripped, the mattress covered with an old cotton bedspread. The walls were bare, the wardrobe and chest of drawers empty except for a yellowed lining of newspapers bearing a date some five years ago. In the top drawer of the dressing table, under the lining, were a few blue beads and a torn piece of pink face tissue. In one of the small drawers was a child’s ring with a stone of red glass, and a motto from a Christmas cracker. Kelsey came out of the room and closed the door. He went slowly downstairs.

Sergeant Lambert was standing waiting in the hall; Lockyear was in the kitchen. He had washed, had changed into a dark suit and white shirt. He poured himself a cup of milk from the fridge. He held up the bottle and glanced at the Chief but Kelsey shook his head. ‘Ready when you are,’ he said.

Lockyear drained the milk in a single gulp. He washed his cup, locked up, and followed the two men out to the car.

He took his seat beside Kelsey in the rear. He made no attempt at conversation but kept his head averted, his elbow resting against the window, the outspread fingers supporting his forehead. After some little time Kelsey became aware that he was crying. The holiday traffic streamed towards them, family parties with excited children laughing and waving, dogs staring out through rear windows, blasts of music from radios as the cars swept past.

Some minutes later Lockyear drew a shuddering sigh. He sat up and took a handkerchief from his pocket. He dried his eyes, dabbed at his cheeks. He put the handkerchief away, drew several more trembling breaths and then fell silent. After a brief interval he said in a detached, explanatory tone. ‘They were both wilful, stubborn girls. There was no doing anything with them.’ Neither Kelsey nor Lambert made any reply.

Another minute or two slipped by, then Lockyear said, ‘I don’t suppose I understood either of them.’ He sounded as if he no longer expected any response but was simply expressing his thoughts aloud. ‘Hardly likely, I suppose, me being a bachelor.’ He said nothing more but sat in silence until the car halted outside the Cannonbridge mortuary.

Lambert got out and opened the car doors. Kelsey stepped out on to the forecourt but Lockyear didn’t budge. Lambert stooped and glanced in at him; he seemed to be making an effort to compose himself. Lambert said nothing but continued to look in at him. Lockyear suddenly jerked himself up and out of the car. He stood bracing his shoulders, drawing deep breaths, looking straight ahead.

‘Right then!’ he said with an attempt at briskness. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

When they came out into the mortuary corridor a few minutes later Lockyear was very pale. Tears ran down his face but he appeared unaware of them. He stood stranded in the middle of the corridor; he seemed at a total loss. Lambert put a hand under his elbow and steered him out of the building, down the steps, towards the car.

The Chief took his seat again in the back beside Lockyear. As the car pulled out Lockyear suddenly said, ‘This will finish me. It’ll ruin the business. I know it.’ He dropped his head into his hands.

‘I should have a word with your doctor when you get back to Martleigh,’ Kelsey said.

Lockyear made no reply. They reached an intersection and Lambert turned the car in the direction of the main police station.

CHAPTER 3

Very little time elapsed between the local radio station’s broadcast of the news that Jason Cooney had been found safe and well and its first news flash of the discovery at Stoneleigh of the bodies of two young women. After the police had broken the news to Arnold Lockyear the radio station made further broadcasts, giving details of the two girls. Shortly afterwards the phone calls began to come in.

Among the hoaxers and the nutters were several genuine calls; the more important of these the Chief intended to deal with himself. His first call, a little after eight on Monday morning, was on a Mrs Huband, the landlady with whom Joanne Mowbray had lodged during her brief stay in Cannonbridge; Mrs Huband lived in a terrace close to the railway station.

She was outside, perched on a stepladder, busily cleaning her windows, when they arrived. A plump, motherly-looking woman in late middle age, greying hair twisted into a bun; her print overall was carefully laundered. She abandoned her bucket and wash-leather and took the two men into her spotlessly clean little house.

‘I was that upset when I heard it over the radio,’ she told the Chief, her eyes filled with distress. ‘I’d often wondered how Joanne had got on, if she’d managed to find her sister.’

She had had no other lodger during the few days Joanne had stayed with her. ‘She found it quite comfortable here, and quite convenient, but she couldn’t afford to stay more than a few days.’ She looked earnestly up at him. ‘It’s not that I charge a lot, I wouldn’t want you to think that, but it’s all I have to live on, that and the widow’s pension.’ She pressed her hands together. ‘Anyway, she said she had to be careful with her money, so I told her about the girls’ hostel. I advised her to go along there and see the Warden.’ The hostel was an old-established concern in a residential quarter of Cannonbridge, run by a charitable trust.

Kelsey asked if she knew what success Joanne had had in her enquiries about her sister.

‘At first she was very pleased with what she’d been able to find out,’ Mrs Huband said. ‘She thought she was making good progress.’ She’d been along to two secretarial agencies Helen had worked for and she’d made contact with other people who had known Helen or employed her services. ‘But on the Wednesday morning I could see she was looking a bit down in the mouth. It seemed that everyone she’d come across who’d known Helen had known her some time ago, she hadn’t been able to find anyone who’d known her recently. She was beginning to think Helen must have left this area. She was in two minds about staying on in Cannonbridge at all, she thought she could be wasting her time – and her money. Perhaps she should give up and go back to Martleigh. It depended what she found out that day.’

Joanne had been along to the hostel on the Tuesday afternoon to explain her position. The Warden had told her she could have a bed there any night as long as she let them know before seven-thirty in the evening; if it was later than that, then she would have to take her chance. ‘So she squared up with me on the Wednesday morning,’ Mrs Huband said. ‘She told me she’d call back for her things about four o’clock. I said not to be later than four because I had to go out – I help at the Darby and Joan club on Wednesdays.’ She drew a sighing breath. ‘She was a nice girl, not pushy or inconsiderate, though she was very determined.’

‘Was she back by four?’

‘Yes, she came in about ten to.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

‘I didn’t have much time, I had to rush off. I told her to make herself a cup of tea, and to be sure to drop the latch when she left. She was the sort you could go off and leave in the house without worrying about what she might get up to. She was as honest as the day. You can always tell.’

‘Did she tell you how she’d got on that day? If she’d decided what she was going to do?’

‘I asked her if she’d had any luck. She just said: Nothing special. She still hadn’t made up her mind about going back to Martleigh that evening. She said she had another two or three leads to follow up, she’d be going after them in the next hour or two, then she’d make up her mind.’

‘How had she done her hair that day?’

She looked startled at the sudden switch. ‘The same as every other day, just long and straight.’

‘Did she ever wear anything in her hair? A ribbon or a comb, perhaps?’ Caught up in the tresses of Joanne’s long dark hair was a large decorative hairslide with the catch open. The slide was of heavy quality polystyrene, white veined with green; it had a fancy curved top

Mrs Huband shook her head. ‘I never saw her wear anything in her hair.’

‘What time did you get back home that Wednesday evening?’

‘About ten o’clock. She’d taken all her things – she only had the one bag with her, a duffel-bag. She’d left everything nice and tidy, the house properly locked up.’

When they left Mrs Huband’s they went straight along to the hostel but the Warden could tell them nothing further. Helen Mowbray had never had any contact with the hostel and Joanne had neither shown up again or phoned, after her visit on the Tuesday afternoon. Nor had she mentioned, during that visit, the names of any contacts she hoped to see the following day.

They called next on a Miss Gallimore who had phoned the station to say that Helen Mowbray had at one time lodged with her. Miss Gallimore was an old woman, white-haired and fresh-complexioned, with an air of having seen better days; she lived in a run-of-the-mill red-brick semi in a side street not far from the centre of town. She took them into a sitting room with a great many faded family photographs in ornate old frames ranged on top of the piano and along the mantelshelf.

Helen had come to lodge with her almost exactly four years ago, when she had first come to Cannonbridge. She had been the sole lodger; Miss Gallimore never took more than one girl at a time. Helen had stayed about a year; thirteen months, to be precise. She had been a very satisfactory lodger, always paying promptly, clean and tidy, pleasant and polite, quiet and hard-working.

Miss Gallimore’s recollection was that Helen had worked for agencies when she first came to lodge with her, then she had had one or two spells of working for a particular employer, with some freelancing in between. She was able to give them the names of two employers: the Cannonbridge branch of Wyatt Fashions, and Fletcher’s Plastics, on the industrial estate.

Kelsey asked her if Helen had had any men friends. Yes, she had, that is, she had gone out sometimes in the evenings or at weekends and Miss Gallimore had assumed it was with some man or other. She had never brought anyone to the house, had never mentioned anyone. ‘I didn’t ask her personal questions,’ Miss Gallimore said. ‘It’s never been my way, and I’m sure she wouldn’t have welcomed it. She wasn’t a chatty girl.’

Why had Helen decided to leave after thirteen months?

‘We didn’t have any disagreement or anything like that. She was beginning to do quite well in her little business and she felt she could afford a place of her own. She told me she’d seen a furnished flat she liked.’ Miss Gallimore hadn’t seen Helen again after she left. ‘I can give you the address of the flat,’ she added, ‘but it’s not much use your going round there. The house has been pulled down, they’ve put up some flats there. You probably know the place – Holmwood, the house was called, on the Tappenhall Road. It had a big garden.’

Yes, Kelsey did know the place, on the southern tip of Cannonbridge. An Edwardian house had stood there until a couple of years ago. The site was occupied now by sheltered-accommodation units for the elderly.

He asked if Joanne had contacted Miss Gallimore. Yes, she had called at the house on a Monday afternoon at the end of February; she had been given the address by the Cannonbridge Secretarial Agency. Miss Gallimore had told her what she had just told the Chief. Joanne had said nothing to her about any discoveries she had made or any leads she intended following.

When they left the house Kelsey looked at his watch: time to be getting along for the results of the post mortem. The Cannonbridge Secretarial Agency would have to wait till tomorrow when the agency would be open again after the Bank Holiday, but they could call in at the Tradesmen’s Agency this afternoon. This was a small concern run from a private house by a Mrs Ingram; it dealt with the services of plumbers, carpenters, electricians and the like. Mrs Ingram had phoned them on Sunday evening to say that Helen Mowbray had worked for several of the men on the agency books; she would be at home all day if they wished to talk to her. ‘After we’ve seen her,’ Kelsey told Sergeant Lambert, ‘you can get on over to Martleigh again, see if you can manage a word with that neighbour of Lockyear’s, Mrs Snape.’

The post mortem provided no surprises; afterwards there was a conference, briefings, the Press to be dealt with. It was turned three by the time they reached the small detached dwelling that housed the office of the Tradesmen’s Agency.

Mrs Ingram was on the phone when they arrived. She was a youngish woman with a briskly capable manner. She had spent the morning attempting to contact the men on her books in order to ask them about their dealings with Helen Mowbray, but she had been able to speak to very few of them, because of the holiday. From those she had spoken to she had learned nothing of significance.

Helen had got in touch with her shortly after she arrived in Cannonbridge. Mrs Ingram had given her a list of agency members; one or two had immediately employed Helen to prepare their accounts. Her work had been excellent. She had subsequently been employed by several others on the books; there had never been any complaints.

Mrs Ingram handed the Chief a list of members with a mark against the names of those she knew had employed Helen. ‘I can’t imagine there was ever any question of any personal involvement with any of our members,’ she said with the air of a tigress protecting her young. You’d hardly be likely to know if there was, Kelsey thought, running his eye down the list. Most of the addresses were in Cannonbridge, a few in neighbouring villages.

Yes, Joanne had contacted Mrs Ingram on the morning of Monday, February 28th. ‘She phoned to ask if she could come round to see me,’ Mrs Ingram said. ‘I saw her at twelve o’clock.’ She showed the Chief the entry in her desk diary.

She had given Joanne much the same information as she had just given the Chief. She had later heard that Joanne had phoned every man on the agency list and had called to see two or three. ‘She was certainly thorough,’ she said with a note of respect. ‘But as far as I know, none of them was able to tell her anything very much. None of them had had any dealings with Helen for two years or more.’ It had been her private opinion that Helen had probably gone off to London or some provincial city, that Joanne didn’t stand much chance of coming across any recent traces of her in Cannonbridge.

The afternoon sun was still warm as Sergeant Lambert drove over to Martleigh; there was a welcome temporary lull in the holiday traffic.

Earlier in the afternoon Arnold Lockyear had duly telephoned to learn the findings of the post mortem. He had made no comment on the results, had merely confirmed that he would be attending the inquest later in the week.

According to the lengthy statement he had made on Sunday, after his visit to the mortuary, Lockyear had had no contact of any kind with Helen after she left Thirlstane Street four years ago. Nor had he had any kind of communication from Joanne since she had gone off to look for Helen at the end of February. In neither case had he expected any contact. ‘I dare say you’ll hear this from others,’ he told the Chief, looking at him with weary resignation, ‘so you might as well hear it first from me. I was never on what you would call very friendly terms with either of the girls.’

Arnold’s mother had died when he was twenty, and his father had married Mrs Mowbray, a widow, seven years later; her daughters, Helen and Joanne, were at that time aged eight and four. ‘I did my best to get on with them all,’ Arnold told the Chief. Things had gone along well enough until the death of the second Mrs Lockyear a few years later. She was a woman of some refinement, fond of reading and music, very different from the robust, down-to-earth countrywoman his father had married first time round. The second Mrs Lockyear had fussed over her daughters, dressed them in artistic clothes she made and embroidered herself, encouraged them to think of themselves as talented, likely to make a place for themselves in the world beyond the domestic hearth. Her new husband humoured her, charmed by his luck in snaring this unlikely bird of paradise. Arnold was living at home, working in the shop – he had worked there ever since leaving school. He had felt himself an outsider in the new family circle. It was then that he had taken on the allotment, had begun to spend his spare time digging and hoeing, planting and weeding, in fair weather and foul.

Perhaps if the marriage had lasted longer Lockyear senior might have ceased to humour his new wife to the same extent, but three years after she walked out of the register office on his arm she was abruptly taken off by a rapid disorder of the blood. Her husband couldn’t believe she would die. Right up until the last moment he had fought against the idea, had refused to countenance it. He was knocked sideways by her death. Certainly there was never any question of his going out to look for any successor to her.

He was determined to look after his stepdaughters with every possible care. He went next door and asked Mrs Snape if she would come in daily to cook and clean, keep an eye on the domestic side of things in general, watch over the two motherless girls. She had readily agreed.

Things continued in this fashion for another four years and then Lockyear himself died, dropping dead from a heart attack one afternoon as he was unloading the van after a trip to the slaughter-house – right there in Thirlstane Street, in front of the shop, standing by the rear doors of the van, with Arnold helping him to unload.

After that it was just Arnold and the two girls, Helen now almost sixteen and Joanne twelve. In Lockyear’s will everything had been left to Arnold; house, business, furniture, savings. There was a clause instructing Arnold to pay over by way of dowry the sum of three thousand pounds to each girl on the occasion of her marriage or at the age of thirty if she should still be unmarried at that time. In addition Arnold was charged with continuing to provide a home in Thirlstane Street for both girls for as long as they should require it.

‘What happens to the dowry money now?’ Kelsey had asked. It seemed it would pass to Arnold. Certainly not a fortune, Lambert mused, though many men had killed for a great deal less. He had no idea if Arnold was in any way strapped for cash, how well the shop was doing.

‘I certainly didn’t drive either of the girls out of the house,’ Arnold had said with some heat. ‘Whatever you may hear from others.’ It was true that shortly after his father’s death he had made some alterations to the way the household was run; that was surely only to be expected. He had informed Mrs Snape that her services would no longer be required. ‘After all,’ he told the Chief, his brown eyes steady and unflagging, ‘Helen was rising sixteen. Some girls are married at that age, running a house and looking after a husband, entirely on their own. I didn’t see why she shouldn’t buckle down to a bit of housework. I felt it would do her good, she’d have to learn how to manage a home one day. And Joanne was old enough to help. They were both strong, healthy girls. I couldn’t see that it was any great hardship.’

Helen was at that time in her final year at school, taking a course in book-keeping and secretarial skills. Kelsey asked how she had received the news that Mrs Snape would no longer be coming in to run the house. Arnold had shrugged. ‘She didn’t say anything, she just got on and did what was needed. She was good at it too. I wasn’t surprised. I knew they learned domestic science, cookery and needlework, all that kind of thing, at school. It was just that she’d never been asked to do it before.’ No, she had never appeared to resent the change, she had never made any comment. Some fifteen months later, a few days after her seventeenth birthday, she had left home.

Kelsey asked Lockyear to outline the circumstances. ‘She left school in the summer,’ Arnold told him. ‘She’d done well there. She’d won a couple of prizes, one of them was for being the best student on the secretarial course. She could easily have got a good steady job in Martleigh right away. I know for a fact she was offered one in a solicitor’s office and another with an estate agent – on account of winning the secretarial prize. But she wouldn’t take either of the jobs, and she wouldn’t look for another.’ She hadn’t discussed the matter with him. ‘That wasn’t her way,’ he said with a note of old resentments. She had gone along to a secretarial agency in Martleigh and put herself on their books; they had sent her out to local temporary and relief jobs.

‘And I also know for a fact,’ Arnold had added, ‘that she was offered jobs by different employers she worked for while she was with the agency.’ But again she had accepted none of them. One spring morning, seven or eight months after she joined the agency, she had left home. She hadn’t told him she intended going, she had left no note, had apparently said nothing to Joanne. He had only become aware that she had left when he came into the house after closing the shop for the day and had found no sign of supper and no sign of Helen. When she hadn’t come in by nightfall he had gone into her bedroom and found most of her belongings gone.

‘Were you surprised?’ Kelsey asked. Arnold shook his head. ‘No, I can’t say I was. She was always secretive.’ He had phoned the agency to see if they knew anything. They told him Helen had given the usual month’s notice and had left with an excellent reference from them and no doubt equally good references from various employers. She had given them to understand she was taking a short holiday and then going off to some larger centre, London or one of the provincial cities, in search of wider opportunities.

Arnold hadn’t worried overmuch about her, he had felt she was quite capable of looking after herself.

Joanne was then fourteen, reasonably competent in the house. She worked well at school, was no trouble there or at home. A quiet girl who never bothered with boyfriends, never wanted to go out to discos or parties. She had stayed in her room a lot, reading, studying, drawing; she hadn’t appeared to miss Helen.

In due course she had left school. She had wanted to take an art course, had wanted to go off to some college near London. But it would have cost a lot of money – and Arnold couldn’t see what it could lead to. The local education authority had cut back on discretionary grants and in any case didn’t look with favour on art courses, taking the view that the country was already oversupplied with unemployed designers – a view Arnold heartily endorsed.

He had done his best to discourage these notions on Joanne’s part. He reckoned she’d inherited her fancy ideas from her mother. ‘She wanted me to advance her the money for the course,’ he said. ‘Out of the three thousand that would be coming to her one day under my father’s will. Of course I refused. The whole of the three thousand would have been swallowed up well before the course ended – and that wasn’t what my father had in mind for the money, he intended it as a nest-egg for the future.’ He had told Joanne she could either find herself a job right away in the town or she could take some sensible, straightforward course at the Martleigh College of Further Education. If she didn’t fancy the secretarial side there was domestic science, accountancy, hotel catering; a wide variety of practical, down-to-earth subjects.

‘But she wouldn’t have any of them,’ he said. ‘She went out and got herself a temporary job.’ At an art shop in Martleigh, serving behind the counter while one of the regular girls was in hospital. The job had lasted a few weeks, then she had worked for three months in a needlework shop where one of the assistants was on maternity leave. After that she was taken on in a department store for the Christmas rush and the January sales. Shortly before her stint there came to an end the letter had arrived from the solicitor up north, informing the girls of the death of their mother’s sister. Joanne had appeared very anxious to get her hands on her share of the aunt’s money, but she hadn’t told him she intended going to Cannonbridge to look for Helen; he had known nothing about that until the Sunday she left. She had simply informed him as she cleared away the breakfast things that she was going.

He had had no idea that she knew of anything to link Helen with Cannonbridge. She hadn’t mentioned any such link to him then, she had merely told him that that was where she was going. He asked how long she intended staying. She had shrugged and told him to expect her when he saw her. She might go on somewhere else from Cannonbridge, it depended on what she found out. He had told her she was on a fool’s errand, the money from the aunt’s intestacy would be paid over in the end, he couldn’t see why there need be so much rush.

No, he hadn’t worried about her. She was as determined a character as Helen; she was intelligent and serious-minded, had always behaved sensibly in Martleigh, he had no reason to suppose she would behave otherwise in Cannonbridge.

‘If you had never heard of her again,’ Kelsey put to him, ‘if she had simply stayed away, like Helen, would you have done anything about it?’

Arnold was silent for a minute or two. His eyes never left the Chief’s face. At length he said, ‘No, I don’t believe I would. I’d probably have thought she’d found Helen and decided to stay with her.’

‘You wouldn’t have expected her to inform you of that decision?’

He shook his head. ‘Probably not. I don’t think you quite appreciate what self-willed, independent girls they were.’

What would happen to the aunt’s money, now that both girls were dead? ‘I imagine it will all go to the State.’ Arnold had looked unwaveringly at the Chief. ‘It certainly won’t come to me. The old lady was no kin of mine.’ Hard to see how Arnold stood to benefit by the girls’ deaths, Lambert pondered – apart from no longer having to pay out the two dowries.

Kelsey had asked how often Arnold had visited Cannonbridge over the last few years. ‘I came here on a coach trip about fifteen years ago,’ Arnold had answered. ‘I haven’t been here since, never had any occasion to.’ He had paused briefly. ‘Until today.’

CHAPTER 4

There was no sign of life in the butcher’s shop or the living accommodation when Lambert reached Thirlstane Street. He got out of his car and stood surveying the property; he could discern no movement behind the windows, no sound from within.

He went next door and pressed the bell; it was a minute or two before his ring was answered. When the door was at last flung open Mrs Snape stood facing him with an expression of lively irritation that was at once replaced by a smile of welcome.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ she exclaimed. Her dark skirt and ruffled blouse were protected by a smart frilled apron; she wore sparkling ear-rings and a matching necklace. Her hair was elaborately arranged, her face carefully made up. She came out on to the step and glanced sharply up and down the street. ‘I thought it was another reporter.’

‘Have they been pestering you?’ Lambert asked.

She shrugged. ‘It was him they wanted, of course.’ She jerked her head towards No. 34. ‘But he wouldn’t speak to them, he wouldn’t even answer the door. I told them they were wasting their time. He’s an obstinate man, I said, you can ring his bell till you’re blue in the face but if he’s made up his mind not to come out, then come out he will not. They took some pictures of the shop.’ She smiled fleetingly and touched her hair. ‘They took a picture of me as well, standing here in the doorway, looking over at the shop. It’ll be in all the papers. They asked me a lot of questions about Arnold and the girls, about the family in general. Of course I’m very well placed to answer. No one round here knows more about the Mowbrays and the Lockyears than I do.’

She frowned suddenly. ‘What was it you were wanting? I’m up to the eyes just now. I’ve got my sister-in-law and her husband, and their son and his wife and family, coming over to tea in half an hour. They’ve been on the phone already this morning, wanting to know all about this dreadful business. I’ve had half the neighbourhood phoning or calling round, asking me what I know.’ She spoke with a mixture of pride and irritation. ‘All of a sudden I’m the most popular woman in the street.’ She gave a little jerk of her head. ‘Oh well – you’d better come inside. I can get on while I’m talking to you, better than standing out here doing nothing.’

He followed her into the house. She stood watching with a hawklike gaze to see that he wiped his feet properly before she allowed him to set foot on her hall carpet, brilliantly patterned in crimson and beige, a design of huge cabbage roses that made the tiny hall look even smaller.

‘My husband’s over at my sister-in-law’s now,’ she threw at him over her shoulder as she led the way into the kitchen, recently modernized, furnished with expensive-looking units, the latest model electric cooker. ‘He’s taking a look at their car, it’s been playing them up. Never happy unless he’s getting his hands dirty, my husband, even on a Bank Holiday.’ She waved a hand. ‘He’s done all this himself.’

A large table in the centre of the kitchen was covered with plates, dishes and basins holding food in various stages of preparation: the remains of a cold turkey, a highly decorated trifle, a packet of sliced bread, a lettuce in a plastic bag, tomatoes, cucumber, hard-boiled eggs, beetroot, tins of peaches, fruit salad, cream. Whatever else awaited her in-laws, it wouldn’t appear to be death from starvation.

‘I gather you used to help out next door,’ Lambert said. ‘Until old Mr Lockyear died.’

‘That’s right.’ She began to cut delicate slices of turkey breast. ‘Mr Lockyear came round here to ask me, he made a special favour of it. I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else. And it was handy, being next door. I never had any trouble from either of the girls. They were always well behaved, quiet girls, nicely brought up. I got on well with the old man too, he was very straight, very considerate. He was well liked round here, well respected.’

She glanced up at Lambert. ‘His second wife was a very nice-looking woman. The chap she was married to before, he was a decent enough fellow, a commercial artist, worked for himself. They never had two pennies to rub together, they just struggled along. He had poor health, something wrong with his kidneys. He was in and out of hospital the last few years before he died. She had to give piano lessons to keep going. They lived near here, a few streets away, she always got her meat at Lockyear’s.’

She turned her attention to buttering slices of bread. ‘She had a hard time of it after her husband died. Joanne was only two or three years old. But she always kept the two girls very neat and clean.’

‘Were you surprised when she married Lockyear?’ Lambert asked.

‘I was and I wasn’t,’ she said with a judicial purse of her lips. Lambert, who had subsisted all day on small and infrequent snacks, couldn’t prevent his gaze from resting on the pale, succulent slices of turkey. She turned her head suddenly and caught his yearning eye. ‘Hungry, are you?’ Without waiting for an answer she picked up a couple of slices on the point of the carving knife and deposited them between slices of bread. She thrust the sandwich at him. ‘Help yourself to mustard and pickle.’ Lambert began to eat with gratitude and energy.

‘Make yourself a cup of coffee,’ she said. ‘Don’t bother with any for me, I haven’t got the time.’ She resumed her swift buttering. ‘She certainly wasn’t the type I’d have bet money on if I’d ever thought of old Lockyear marrying again, but afterwards, when I came to think about it, I could see it was really a very suitable match for both of them. She never had any more financial worries. He gave her a comfortable home – she’d been living in rented rooms. And he was very good to the two girls, he treated them as if they were his own.’

She paused and stared at the opposite wall. ‘He worshipped the ground that woman walked on, anyone could see that from the way he looked at her.’

Lambert stood by the window drinking his coffee, looking out at the back yard, transformed with coloured paving slabs and a roofed-in area for sitting out, bright with tubs of forsythia and flowering currant. A white plaster figure of a cupid held aloft an urn planted with trailing variegated ivy. ‘I never go into the shop now,’ Mrs Snape said. ‘Not after the way Arnold behaved towards me after his Dad died.’

She took the lettuce over to the sink and began to wash it. ‘He could hardly wait till his Dad was cold before he told me I wouldn’t be wanted any more.’ She gave a resentful jerk of her head. ‘He didn’t mince his words either. He more or less implied I’d been leading the life of Riley for the last few years, a nice cushy job, getting paid for doing damn-all.’

She shook the lettuce vigorously in a wire basket; drops of water flew about the kitchen. ‘I didn’t demean myself by arguing with him. I just gathered up my bits and pieces and walked out. I’ve never set foot inside the place from that day to this.’ She glanced at Lambert. ‘I had no quarrel with the girls. I always spoke to them if I saw them in the street, but that was as far as it went.’

She arranged the lettuce in a glass bowl and began to slice tomatoes and cucumber. ‘It’s certainly no hardship not to buy my meat there any more. I can buy it cheaper and better trimmed at any of the supermarkets in town. The business has gone right down since old Lockyear died. He had some first-class contracts with local hotels and restaurants, one or two school kitchens. He had a man with a van delivering full-time, used to go out round the local villages three times a week. All that’s finished now, it’s just Arnold and an apprentice lad.’

She cracked the shells of the hard-boiled eggs and stripped them swiftly and cleanly, sliced them neatly on a little aluminium gadget. ‘No, Arnold isn’t the butcher his father was, nor the businessman. He hasn’t the manner either, he never has two words to say, not in the way of friendly chat while he’s serving you. He’s downright surly sometimes.’ She disposed the egg slices in an artistic pattern over the salad. ‘I don’t know if he’ll have the face to open the shop tomorrow, but if he does there won’t be many from round here that’ll go in. By next weekend he’ll be standing behind his counter twiddling his thumbs.’

She set about opening the various tins. ‘He never got on with those two poor girls. He never liked them, he was always jealous of them. He couldn’t see why he should have to be responsible for them after his father died. He always wanted them to clear off out of the way, and the sooner the better. He kept his mouth shut while his father was alive, of course, but I could see well enough what was going on inside his head. It didn’t take a mind-reader to do that.’

She took a tin of little homemade cakes from a shelf and set them out on a platter, handing Lambert a couple as an afterthought. ‘Arnold drove those two girls out of the house – or as good as, whatever he likes to tell you now.’

‘Would you have expected Joanne to phone him while she was away?’ Lambert asked. ‘To let him know how she was getting on?’

She shook her head at once, with decision. ‘No, not her. The less he knew about anything they were doing, the better those girls were pleased, that was always the way it was.’ She gave him a shrewd glance. ‘I’ll tell you something, though: the last thing in the world Arnold would have wanted would be for Joanne to find Helen and talk her into coming back home.’

‘Have you spoken to Arnold since all this came out?’

‘No, I have not, nor intend to.’

‘Have any of the neighbours been to see him?’

‘Not they. What could they say to him?’

‘Has he any relatives round here?’

‘Not that I ever heard of.’

‘Is he in the house now?’

‘I expect so, I haven’t seen him go out. And in any case, where would he go? He’s never been one for the pub.’ She paused. ‘I suppose he could be down at his allotment, but I doubt it. He wouldn’t want the other men watching him, talking behind his back.’ She glanced up at the clock and uttered a sharp exclamation.

‘I’ll get along out of your way,’ Lambert said. ‘You don’t happen to know of any special friends either of the girls may have had locally?’

‘They certainly neither of them ever had any boyfriends,’ she said at once. ‘Arnold would never have allowed them to bring a boy home. Not that either of them was ever interested in boys, from anything I could see.’ She flashed him an upward glance. ‘More interested in getting away from here altogether, putting some distance between themselves and their precious stepbrother.’ She pondered. ‘I can’t remember any special friend of Helen’s, but there was a girl Joanne used to pal about with. Michelle Kershaw, number eleven Chadcote Road. It isn’t five minutes’ walk from here.’

She came to the door and gave him directions. Lambert could see the curtains move at the windows of more than one house in the terrace opposite. He turned his head and glanced at the butcher’s shop next door. He had a vision of Lockyear inside, alone, sitting in silence in the kitchen or lying upstairs on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

Mrs Snape followed his glance. ‘He’s got what he wanted now all right,’ she said with an edge of malice. ‘He’s got the whole place to himself at last. I only hope he’s satisfied.’

The houses that faced each other across Chadcote Road were smaller and older than those in Thirlstane Street, the brickwork crumbling, the paintwork faded, a general air of seediness.

Lambert’s ring at the door of No. 11 was answered after a minute or two by a flustered-looking, middle-aged woman. ‘What is it?’ she demanded, already half turned away again, back to whatever she had been snatched from.

Lambert disclosed his identity and the nature of his inquiry. Conflicting expressions flitted across her face. She was clearly torn between a strong desire to pump him for every drop of information and the equally powerful necessity to return to what she had been doing.

‘You’d better come in,’ she flung at him half angrily after a few moments. He stepped inside and she banged the door shut. The house smelled of perfumed bath salts – expensive French bath salts, if Lambert’s nose was any judge.

‘I warn you,’ Mrs Kershaw added, ‘Michelle can’t stop long gabbing, she’s on her way out. She’s got this young man calling for her at half past, he’s taking her home to supper. It’s the first time he’s asked her, she’s only known him a few weeks.’ She looked earnestly up at him in the narrow hall. ‘He lives out on Jubilee Drive’ – as if the name must strike awed respect into all who heard it. She saw that it meant nothing to him. ‘Those lovely new houses,’ she added. She made a gesture indicating expansiveness, conditions very different from Chadcote Road. ‘She can’t keep his parents waiting, they must see she knows what’s what.’

A door opened along the hall and a girl’s head appeared, covered in blue plastic rollers swathed in a film of white chiffon. She looked very like what her mother must have been twenty-five years ago; her frowning expression showed what she would look like herself in another quarter of a century. ‘It’s nearly twenty to,’ she said to her mother loudly, with accusation. She barely glanced at Lambert.

‘It’s this gentleman,’ her mother told her, in a tone now markedly placatory. ‘He’s from the police. Come to ask some questions about Joanne Mowbray.’

‘I didn’t know her all that well,’ Michelle said at once. She came out into the hall. She wore a nylon petticoat richly flounced with lace; her bare legs were thrust into fluffy mules. She had a tiny waist, a beautiful bosom, neat and rounded. Lambert strove to raise his eyes to the level of her glowering countenance.

‘I won’t keep you long,’ he promised.

‘You’d better come on in.’ Mrs Kershaw led the way along the hall. ‘I can finish your dress while we talk,’ she added to Michelle. Lambert followed them into a small, crowded living-room. A table in the centre of the room held a sewing-machine. Mrs Kershaw picked up a sleeveless dress of beautiful flowered silk and slipped it over Michelle’s head. She knelt down and began to pin up the hem. ‘Don’t make it too long,’ Michelle warned.

‘I understand you were a friend of Joanne’s,’ Lambert said.

Michelle pulled down the corners of her mouth. Before she could speak her mother put in, ‘They were never really friends, and she hardly knew Helen at all. She never went to the house, not in recent years.’

‘Joanne sat next to me at school,’ Michelle told him. ‘We used to walk home together. That was all.’

‘They never went out together,’ Mrs Kershaw added. ‘No one could say they were at all close.’

Michelle turned to let her mother deal with the back of the dress. ‘Joanne never went anywhere. Not after her stepfather died. Her stepbrother never gave her any pocket money. When she was turned thirteen she got herself a Saturday job, at a greengrocer’s. After that she always had a little job somewhere or other, but she never spent any of the money, she used to pay it straight into the post office. She never went on holiday, or on any of the school trips, not after Mr Lookyear died.’

‘Did she have any boyfriends?’

She shook her head. ‘She didn’t have any time for boyfriends.’

‘Did she tell you she was going to Cannonbridge?’

‘No, I didn’t know anything about that. I’d hardly seen her since we left school.’ She revolved again.

‘Michelle’s at the College of Further Education,’ her mother told Lambert with pride and satisfaction. ‘She’s taking a commercial course, she’s doing very well.’

‘Was it you that saw Helen Mowbray coming out of a cafe in Cannonbridge about three years ago?’ Lambert asked Michelle. ‘And told Joanne about it?’

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