Missing pieces, p.12
Missing Pieces, page 12
If they ever managed to get close to someone who might have known the young woman as a child, that would be invaluable information. At the same time, it made her more real to them, more of an individual. A kid breaks her arm and it seems like a domestic disaster, a family crisis. But she gets it treated well and everyone is relieved. It becomes a joke and people sign the cast. It gets worn at the edges, a bit tatty. The day it comes off, her arm has gone pale and thin but there’s a celebration… And then, years later, she will disappear. No one will report her missing and she will die in a wood in Norfolk.
Greene reported that samples from the bones and the teeth had been collected and sent to the appropriate laboratories. Freeman wasn’t actually in the room when he told them the professor had taken on board his point that they needed quick results and so she had employed couriers to move the samples rather than the postal service. She realised, she said, that would add to the cost but you cannot have it both ways, can you? Greene suggested to them that it wasn’t necessary to mention that detail to the senior investigating officer today.
Thursday the 4th of June. It seemed that everything which might lead to significant progress in the case was happening away from Lake Central and therefore out of their direct control: the bone and teeth samples from the exhumed skeleton were undergoing isotopic analysis in Oxford, as was a sample of Rose’s hair; somewhere in Cambridge University, someone else was reconstructing the girl’s face from the contours of her skull; at a forensics laboratory in Norwich, another white coat had been given the frightening job of making their one and only shot with a single minute and shrivelled hair follicle. In the room next door to that one, a lesson had been learned and the clothing was being deconstructed stitch by stitch.
In her team’s main office Freeman watched as they worked their way through the missing persons’ profiles of twenty years ago – hundreds of them. Inevitably, some were a closer match than others. Most could be quickly disregarded for all sorts of obvious reasons but a few could not, and then there would be discussions between two or three of the detectives. The temptation is always there, as with a difficult jigsaw puzzle – with a little force you could make that piece fit but you don’t do it because you know it will never look quite right. And, of course, two teams had been over this material already, with Hallam’s people having already checked for anything missed by Hardwick’s. Freeman doubted whether the answer would be found in this laborious process but it has to be done – it’s the least glamorous aspect of detective work, the one rarely written about or shown on television, but you skip over it at your peril.
She took a bunch of reports herself, and about once an hour she wandered around, doing her best to keep up morale. On one of these trips, Waters came up with a suggestion – even if the DNA on the newly-discovered hair failed to produce a usable result, couldn’t they run isotopic analysis on that hair as they were on the young woman’s? It might give them something.
Waters was promising. One of those who never entirely leave the job behind – in a restaurant, on a golf course, sailing a boat, lying on a beach or just in bed, there is always work going on, attention being given to the current case or the one before last because there is still that annoying loose end. Sometimes it’s conscious, sometimes it’s happening behind the closed door, but the best teams always include such people. She herself was guilty as charged, and Tom Greene was another. Of the rest, it was Chris Waters who stood out as a twenty-four-seven man.
There is usually an obvious price to pay. She didn’t need to look back over her own relationships or attempts thereat; no one enjoys staring at pictures of car crashes for long. She had met Mrs Greene twice and realised that Tom had found the holy grail – a partner who not only understood it but accepted it. Esther Greene was a quietly competent domestic goddess, and there was no more to be said. Waters was at a tricky point in his life – it was clear from his manner and from the things the team said that he was serious about the blind girl whom Freeman remembered from the Eden Street case. Thank goodness she hadn’t been a key witness…
Had the girl realised yet that Waters was ‘job’ in a way that most police officers are not? One was almost tempted to take them both aside and explain it before they made the fatal error – and indeed this was one reason why she’d recently spoken to Waters about his next move. It had enabled her to talk about the hours, the commitment required, the additional weight of responsibility that comes with the role of detective inspector. She had even pointed out how hard this could be on one’s relationships and potential partners. Short of posting a video on YouTube, she could not have made her point any more plainly. Had he got it? She didn’t know – he wasn’t the easiest team member to read.
Yes, she said, about the hair from the T shirt, we’ll keep that in mind. Only that morning she had emailed Harry Alexander, pointing out just how costly cold case reviews could be these days. Part of her management philosophy with her own team was “no surprises” and she was applying that to her own boss; she would not allow Commander Alexander to come back at her at some point in the future waving the bill for all this. It’s another increasingly important aspect of the job nowadays – maybe she should give Waters a maths test as well.
Freeman hadn’t been back in her own office many minutes before Greene called her on the internal line. He’d carried out the usual routine checks on any names that might be of interest as an inquiry goes forward, and he had a possible hit. A Colin Ronald Leadsom had arrests, charges and one conviction for drugs in the middle and late 1990s. The conviction was for possession of cannabis with intent to supply, for which he had received a fine and a suspended prison sentence; other charges involved LSD but these had not proceeded into a criminal trial. The record did not say why that was the case.
Freeman asked whether this was definitely James Leadsom’s brother, and Greene’s answer was, ‘I can’t be definite about that yet, ma’am. But Colin Leadsom gave an address in Reigate when he was arrested the first time, and checking James Leadsom’s National Insurance details also produces a Reigate address when he first paid tax. Leadsom might be a common surname in that part of the world, but I’d say it’s more likely this is the Ronnie Leadsom we’ve already come across. At some point he started using his middle name.’
She agreed with that assessment, of course – festivals and drugs went hand in hand in those days, and surely still do. There had been nothing in the forensics work ever to link the girl’s death to drug use but it might be worth asking for that to be double-checked. She thanked Greene for the update and asked him to pass on the message to the lab in Norwich. He asked whether she wanted to look for Ronnie Leadsom straight away, just as another potential witness, and Freeman said no – ‘We’ll hold off until we have more on the girl, more on Rose. Why have they called her that, by the way?’
Greene said, ‘I’m not sure, ma’am. I can find out if you’d like?’
No, it wasn’t important. Tell them they’ve done well this week, she said. She put down the receiver and looked at her watch. In a few minutes Priti would be here to work up the notes for the investigation, something they hadn’t done for a couple of days. It was a chore but Freeman had accepted it now; there were benefits to the senior investigating officer maintaining a more distanced and global view of things, and keeping out of the evidence chain.
She glanced at her mobile, a routine check to make sure there was nothing from Daria. All clear – they were in the middle of a good run as far as her mother was concerned. Then she went to her saved messages and read again what Yelena had sent to her last Sunday evening, late in the day. She could imagine the doctor spending a long time wondering exactly what she should write, in the circumstances. The result had been My apologies. I am usually more professional than that. It was a misjudgement. Please try to forget about it. And if I got you wrong, I am sorry.
That night Freeman had read the message through a number of times, the way she would study a statement issued by a suspect through their solicitor. The words “professional” and “misjudgement” were given close attention, and analysed from various perspectives; “try to forget” suggested the author of the text message understood well enough that doing so wouldn’t be easy.
She had climbed into her bed but could not sleep. She pictured Yelena Kaminski in the same situation – having found the courage to send the message, she would at that very moment be simultaneously regretting it and wondering how it had been received. Freeman checked her settings then – yes, she still had read receipts switched on, so the woman on the other end of this thread of messages would know it had been seen. It was a simple binary choice, therefore; say nothing or say something.
She had closed her eyes, thinking she would sleep on it but sleep would not come. The other person’s anxiety became a palpable thing in the darkness, a stealthy cat-like presence, watching her. Freeman sat up, opened her phone and saw it was almost midnight. Tomorrow was another early start to another busy day…
Then she went to the message, typed No problem. You did better than most people. You got me half-right. She considered those words for another ten seconds and then pressed send.
Chapter Thirteen
As sighted people, there are many things we take for granted, if we take them into consideration at all. A long car journey, for example. Whether we are in the driving seat or not, we can see where we are and where we are going. We can read the road signs and judge how much longer it will be before we reach our destination, and we do these things almost unconsciously. When they were travelling around Kings Lake and the nearest villages, Miriam would know from a particular bend or sequence of junctions and roundabouts exactly where they were, but straighter, longer and unfamiliar roads eventually led to her being lost in a way that the sighted never will be.
Waters saw Miriam touching the Dot braille watch again – she seemed to be doing so about once every twenty minutes. She knew the journey from Lake to her parents’ home should take them about three hours, and she was measuring their progress using the watch instead of asking him directly. For Waters, this was also a measure of how apprehensive she was about this visit –he hadn’t known her to be this anxious about anything before. He had asked her about this in roundabout ways and been given answers ranging from dismissive to heavily ironic, but he was able to piece together how she must be viewing this and feeling about it. She had often enough referred to herself as the black sheep of the family – Waters had pointed out that the phrase is one that has probably fallen out of favour but Miriam didn’t seem overly concerned. ‘So,’ she had commented a week ago, ‘the black sheep is coming for a weekend visit. It’s the first one in years. She will be accompanied by her latest boyfriend, whom they have never met, and she will announce that they are engaged to be married. There will be phoney congratulations and fake laughter, followed by cocktails and dinner. What could possibly go wrong?’
Perhaps she was still wondering about that – she hadn’t said much since they left Kings Lake well over an hour ago. He said, ‘We can always turn the car around and make some excuse. You could say Patsy phoned and told you Ben is unwell.’
It was strange not having him in the car but apparently Miriam’s mother had strong allergic reactions to anything wearing a fur coat. Miriam said, ‘Thanks! Put it on me! Or we could say your goldfish died.’
He said, ‘I don’t have a goldfish.’
‘They don’t know that. And why don’t you? I’ve often wondered whether I should trust a man who doesn’t have any pets…’
Waters said, ‘I’ve been saving myself for someone special.’
She put a hand on his thigh and squeezed, and then he said, ‘I meant Ben.’
She pinched him and said, ‘No. Let’s keep going and get this over with. Where are we?’
‘On the M40, near Bicester.’
She touched the watch again.
‘We’re going to be early. I told them we’d arrive just in time for lunch.’
It was as if she didn’t want to spend a minute more than necessary with her parents, and he felt a little sorry for her. They had been to his own home three times now, each one more welcoming and easier than the last. His father had been bewitched after the first fifteen minutes; his mother – more cautious and more practical, as she had always been – had said, as he kissed her goodbye after the last visit, ‘She’ll do.’
Waters said, ‘I can slow down if you like.’
She thought and then said, ‘Would you like to see where I used to live? Where I grew up?’
Yes, he said, of course – he hadn’t realised that was not where they were going. She frowned, remembering, and said, ‘So stay on the motorway and take the second exit to Oxford. I think that’s the A40.’
He asked her for the address and then spoke it into the voice control. Miriam had left her hand in his lap but she became quiet again as he drove. He wondered what this might mean to her, and whether it was more than a way to delay their arrival. Where she grew up meant where she had been living before the meningitis took her sight away. He was going to see for himself some of the last things she had seen as a child.
‘That is a big house.’
She was smiling but it was somehow a rueful sort of smile. She said, ‘Number twenty-one, Northmoor Road. Northmoor Road is where all the big knobs hang out.’
Waters turned to look at her, and though she couldn’t see him, she knew he’d want an explanation for that. Miriam said, ‘A girl at school told me that. I’d told her where I lived, she told her mother and that’s what her mother said. We thought it was hilariously rude. But funnily enough, it turned out to be true in some ways.’
‘In what ways?’
‘Well, you’ll be meeting my father soon…’
More than once he’d thought she was preparing him, even warning him about that forthcoming meeting. Waters had guessed that it was with her father she had the most difficult relationship. He didn’t respond to her but looked out at the huge house again. It was a red-brick, three-storey house, with a slate roof and tall chimneys – late Victorian or Edwardian, he thought. On the gravelled space before it there was enough room to park a dozen cars, and beyond and behind it he could see mature trees which he guessed were a part of the garden. Waters knew nothing about property prices away from North Norfolk but that mattered little – this house and the others in the road were all well into seven figures.
He said, ‘How many bedrooms?’ and she answered, ‘Five or six. Mine used to be on the first floor. When they realised my sight wasn’t coming back, they tried to move me onto the ground floor, to make it easier and safer for me. I insisted on moving up to the top floor. Just one of many battles.’
‘Did you win it?’
‘Yes, eventually. I had the room on the second floor, end right as you face the house. You can probably see it.’
He could, and he could see too the eight-year-old girl alone in the room and a newly-darkened world; he saw a hand trailing along the bedroom wall as she found her way out of it for the first time, watched her clinging to the bannister rail as her feet found each step down and her mind counted them – seven, eight, nine to the first landing – as she had counted her way through every room ever since. It’s unconscious, she had told him, you don’t even realise you’re doing it.
He made a couple of other comments about the house and the road but she didn’t ask him questions; it seemed to be enough that he had seen it for himself. Afterwards, he wondered whether she didn’t want to know what had changed – perhaps it was a memory she wanted to be unaltered. After all, she didn’t have many of them.
After five or so minutes she said brightly, ‘So, there you have it – the place wot I growed up in! You’ll be delighted to hear that after this we moved to somewhere bigger…’
The satnav offered a choice between returning to the ring road or carrying on into the centre of Oxford, a place that Waters had never visited. They still had plenty of time, and so he took the second option. Before long they were passing signs for colleges and then the buildings and campuses themselves; it reminded him of Cambridge, which he knew well. In both cities the academic elites of centuries had created rather nice working environments for themselves – that sense of space and airiness which is obviously required by those who think the largest and loftiest of thoughts. And some pretty good houses too, for the ones who have been given tenure for thinking those thoughts.
It struck him that somewhere here, too, was a lab containing tiny fragments of the body he had helped to exhume. He could not imagine anyone at work here on a Saturday morning – he imagined instead the slivers of bone and teeth in test tubes, or whatever they used, at rest in a fridge, awaiting further investigation. Perhaps he had already driven past them. Odd that the course of his private life had brought him here this week of all weeks; it was one of those synchronicities Smith would have enjoyed.
They re-joined the A40 west of the town, and straight away he could see signs for Burford. He left the satnav on, and the female voice told them how many more minutes of the journey remained. Miriam had fallen silent once more. When they reached the town and he took the left turn off the A road, he thought she would begin to recognise the route but she said nothing – it was the satnav which told them they had reached their destination.
It was a quiet road and these were exclusive, executive homes. He found the house, or rather the turn off towards it – there was a single-track leading up to wrought-iron gates set in a wall of pale Cotswold stone. As he slowed, the gates began to slide back automatically. Beyond them Waters could see a large house built of the same stone as the wall. In the centre on both floors were huge picture windows, each with three panels – the middle panel of the lower window acted as the front door.
When the gates were fully open, he said, ‘I assume we just drive in?’
When she didn’t answer he glanced to his left. She was upright and rigid, and he could hear her breathing. Eventually she said, ‘Unless you have an interesting alternative, yes, we just drive in. The gates will shut behind us.’
