Green and Pleasant Land Page 10

  In that case heaven included electronic media: Fran texted Webster to tell him that for reasons beyond their control – and privately, the prospect of one of Edwina’s breakfasts was one of them – they must postpone their meeting till nine.

  The ten o’clock TV news programme tarnished their euphoria: it wasn’t just the Midlands that were suffering from the vile weather. The Somerset Levels were under more water than ever; Devon coastal towns had been engulfed, with the main railway line literally washed away; and the Thames was rising ominously. Almost tucked away was footage from Kent: Maidstone, always vulnerable, was awash. And Maidstone was their nearest town.

  Was their beloved rectory still intact?

  Mark texted frantically. Caffy, builder extraordinaire, the woman who’d saved Mark’s sanity and now their dear friend and house-sitter, responded immediately: Matthew 7: 24–5 xxx.

  With a huge smile he showed Fran the message.

  Fran blinked. ‘And that means?’

  ‘That the house is built on a rock and won’t be washed away.’

  ‘We should have told Edwina we wouldn’t want breakfast,’ Mark said guiltily at seven thirty the next morning, as the smell of bacon wafted upstairs. ‘That meeting with Webster.’

  ‘You may not; I certainly do,’ Fran retorted. ‘Even if we get in late and have to use the floods as an excuse,’ she added blithely.

  The breakfast was very good. Edwina was full of apologies that she couldn’t offer them supper that evening, but offered to book them into a pub that wasn’t cut off.

  ‘We’ve already got plans, thanks,’ Fran assured her.

  But Mark was more interested in something else she’d said. ‘Cut off?’ he repeated.

  ‘It’s very bad. They’ve had to close one of the bridges across the Severn in Worcester itself. Gridlock, they say on the radio. It’s a good job you’re working this side of the city.’

  ‘This afternoon I’m actually supposed to be working the other side of Bewdley,’ Fran said, thinking of her meeting with Natalie’s mother.

  ‘If you go the long way round you should be all right,’ Edwina said cautiously. ‘But in these parts, when it’s as bad as this, we tend to phone first before we make a journey. It’s one thing the main roads being safe, but quite another with the lanes and side roads. More coffee, now, to warm you before you set out?’

  In fact it was Webster who texted to postpone their meeting from nine till whenever he could get in. Both felt they could deal with the disappointment. ‘What I want to know,’ Fran said, tucking away her phone, ‘is why he asked us in the first place.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Mark reminded her. ‘Gerry Barnes did. Prompted by some official policy, of course. He couldn’t just have plucked the notion from the ether – Let’s give Fran and Mark a bit of a gig up here – could he?’

  ‘And Gerry gets made redundant just before we arrive. Coincidence?’

  ‘Great swathes of officers have been made redundant everywhere – though of course, we shouldn’t call it redundancy. I keep forgetting, it’s reminding people they can, and therefore should, retire once they’ve completed their thirty years’ service. Silly me. As for coincidence, who knows? All I know is that Webster wants to be rid of us the moment he can. Which makes me – and no doubt you – want to stick like a limpet.’

  Fran didn’t argue.

  As they parked, Robyn texted to say she hoped to be in later: the roads were so chaotic in Worcester it looked as if the court couldn’t sit.

  Always one to play things by the book, Mark let HR know their new contact details, even giving Edwina’s land line for good measure, before they headed to the incident room. There was the sound of raised voices. Stuart and Paula were arguing about which type of coffee was better. They seemed keen to involve Mark in the discussion, but Fran caught his eye.

  Raising both hands, he declared, ‘De gustibus non est disputandum. The word order, even whether to have the verb est in at all, has always been a bit controversial. How about reducing it to De gustibus, as they say …? Which means pretty well each to their own. Choose your pod, put it in the machine, press the button and await your own miracle caffeine fix. And then – because I sense we’re living on borrowed time – let’s get to work. Stu, did you get information last night or just a hangover?’

  ‘Was that Latin, gaffer? Because they’re talking about teaching it at my youngest’s school. Do you reckon it’s any use?’

  ‘Your teacher cousin would be the best to answer that.’ Fran sat down in the hope the others would do likewise. ‘If you can afford another vodka and tonic, that is?’

  ‘Sorry, gaffer.’ He sat down. ‘OK. Last night. Sharon was inclined to be what you might call discreet. As you’d expect. But I said what was said in this room stayed in this room. OK? Great.’ But he spread his hands. ‘In fact, after all that, she didn’t have much to say. Ted helps with kids with behavioural or learning difficulties – one to one stuff, reading, IT, that sort of thing. Always accompanies one lad to assemblies and such because he seems constitutionally unable to sit still. Ted’s one of the few people to be able to control him. Sheer force of personality, she reckons.’

  ‘All good, then.’

  ‘Not quite. He really doesn’t like what he calls faffing around. Paperwork and stuff. He had a stand-up row with the last head, but since this guy was leaving anyway, Ted stayed put. And some of the kids are definitely afraid of him. That said, he gets amazing results.’

  ‘Still good. Sounds as if your drink was in vain.’

  ‘Apart from the fact Sharon’s spotted him popping pills – the ones she took when she was depressed after her nipper was born. And sometimes, when they ask him to do something extra, he flatly refuses. No explanation, no apology.’

  ‘Even that’s not a hanging offence,’ Paula said. ‘A man’s entitled to a private life – especially if he’s a volunteer. Does he go to after-school things? Meetings? Parents’ evenings?’

  ‘Not keen on meetings for the sake of meetings. Will talk to parents. But apparently a couple of times when he’s said he’s got a prior engagement that prevents him from going, he’s been spotted at his usual table in the Bull. On his own, as usual.’ He looked around challengingly. ‘And I’m not the one to ask Iris why.’

  ‘Quite. Originally, remember, we thought of asking him to join the little team. In view of what you’ve heard, do you think – assuming he was prepared to come – you’d welcome him as a colleague? As our folk memory, if nothing else?’

  Paula looked around. ‘We’re not exactly overwhelmed with support, are we?’ But a text claimed her attention.

  ‘Even so,’ Stu said. He might not have been the most intuitive of men, poetry apart, but when an officer with his experience had doubts, even those he seemed scarcely aware of, they weren’t going to rush into things. His mobile rang. ‘Sorry.’ He left the room to take the call. ‘I’ll get on to the PFA in a sec,’ he added, over his shoulder.

  TEN

  Any moment now, he’d snap at the mobile phone users. So with a jerk of the head, Mark silently urged Fran back to their own office. Urging her not to risk driving on her own to see Jeanette Garbutt might be best done in private. But she disconcerted him by suggesting without so much as a prompt that either he or Stu ought to accompany her. She’d have loved to help Paula to develop her interviewing skills. But the young woman had been so distressed when talking to Marion Roberts that Fran feared an even more intense reaction if confronted by a bereaved mother – even one who had coolly preferred a dental appointment to an afternoon reinvestigating her daughter’s disappearance.

  ‘So I’d like you or Stu with me. It’s crazy to risk a solo drive on strange roads. Whom do I choose? Someone I’d trust to interview the Pope about birth control without causing offence but who knows as little of the neighbourhood as I do? Or someone who knows and loves the Forest but who probably has the tact of an elephant?’

  Mark grinned. ‘Why not postpone the decision in th
e hope that Robyn returns? You know I won’t be offended either way. Now, we didn’t cover everyone on that list of the officers involved in the first enquiry – shall I have a go at that? And I might just contact Fi – see how she’s coping with her floods.’

  What Mark meant merely as an act of kindness had surprising results. Fi had been in touch not with her lover but with a journalist friend who’d covered the case. This woman, Bethan Carter, had been at the same school as Natalie. If Mark thought it would be useful, then Fi would get Bethan to phone him. Mark, of course, wanted to be more proactive: he’d like to call Bethan himself, provided Fi didn’t think it would be counterproductive.

  Fi didn’t; Bethan didn’t. In fact, she was happy to tootle over since she was in the district, provided Mark would guarantee she would have nothing to do with the dogs. He hoped she was only joking. He and Fran tossed a coin; she got to do the interview.

  Afraid she might be late greeting her visitor, Fran ran down the stairs more quickly than usual. The entrance hall was still empty, but from her vantage point some six or eight stairs up, Fran could see two women outside, one petite, the other probably five foot six; the light was too bad to see any details. The taller one was doing all the talking, as the shorter struggled to yank off wellingtons. Fran went unobtrusively into reverse. Now the smaller woman was arguing, palms spread. She bent again – to put on shoes? The taller woman disappeared. In came short woman, to be greeted apparently spontaneously by Fran.

  ‘Ms Carter? I’m Fran Harman. It’s more than kind of you to give us your time.’

  ‘Bethan. Actually I don’t know what I can contribute after all this time, to be honest.’ She stowed her brolly in a bucket doubling as an umbrella stand and put her wellies beside it before walking straight over to Iris to sign in. She must have been about fifty if Fran’s sums were right; she certainly looked very good for her age. ‘It doesn’t seem to know how to stop, does it? At least it’s rain, not snow. Not like it was twenty years back,’ she observed. Her faint local accent became more pronounced as she called out, ‘Hello, Iris! How’s things? How’s that knee of yours? She had it replaced last year,’ she added parenthetically. ‘The left one, wasn’t it?’

  Fran was suitably shocked and impressed at Iris’s total lack of a limp. She had an idea that the three of them could have nattered happily and meaninglessly all day, and was wondering how to wind up the conversation without appearing brusque.

  It was Bethan who announced, ‘Well, as my grandad used to say, There’s work to be done, ere the setting sun. Though I’ve no idea where he got that from. Where have they put you, Fran? Oh, it must feel so grand to be popping up and down this staircase all day.’

  ‘I was actually a reporter in Wolverhampton when Nat went missing,’ she told Fran. She sipped the tea she’d asked for instead of coffee. ‘So I got to know a number of people like Iris.’

  ‘You must have been an invaluable source of information.’ Which was a polite way of asking her to share it. Now.

  ‘My editor might have seen it that way, but I don’t think the police necessarily did,’ Bethan said cautiously. ‘Of course, I was trying to pick their brains, not the other way round, hoping to keep the story going. In those days the press office wasn’t as obliging as it is now – there was this residual belief that if you gave the public too much information it would somehow undermine police authority. It’s all changed now, thank goodness. Anyway, back then … the snow – all that snow … and she and Hadrian were under it.’ She shrugged resignedly.

  ‘You were happy with the theory? About a friend of yours?’

  The younger woman raised a finger. ‘We weren’t bosom pals, Fran. I’d be in the upper sixth, as we called it then, when she was in the third or fourth form. Stourport High School. She probably knew more about me than I did about her, as you do about prefects. But she was in a number of sports teams: netball, tennis, that sort of thing. Represented the school, too, which is how I knew the name. I suppose that’s why she got into sports administration. Not my scene at all.’

  Fran could have smiled and agreed it wasn’t hers either, but she didn’t like lying, and her county championship level badminton was coming into its own on the tennis court.

  ‘What about other school-friends? Are you still in touch with any of them? Was she?’

  ‘I’m not. I didn’t really enjoy school, and you know how it is …’ She spread her hands. ‘All these people trying to discover people they didn’t even like when they were penned in a classroom together. Do you see any point in it?’

  Fran wasn’t to be drawn. ‘Anyway,’ she recapped, ‘Natalie caught the fitness bug young. You wouldn’t know if she kept it up after school? At uni for instance?’

  ‘Other things to do there, surely.’

  Nonetheless, Fran made a note to find out. And about gym and sports club membership in Birmingham. ‘You said it was hard to extract information from the enquiry team back then. OK, that was the ethos then – but did you have any sense they were making a particular effort to be obstructive? As a team? Or any individual?’

  Bethan blinked, as if the enforced return to the original topic disconcerted her. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. But I was only a cub, back then, of course.’

  ‘And probably more observant than blasé old hands?’ Fran pointed upwards. ‘At this stage, it’d be strictly sub rosa. We’re not investigating the police; we’re trying to find out what happened to Natalie. Quite different.’ Though there might have to be conversations with Police Standards later.

  ‘No, no one sticks out. And actually I don’t think they were obstructive. Just professional,’ Bethan declared. Not necessarily truthfully.

  ‘OK. Do you think the ethos of non-disclosure was stronger here than in other areas where you covered cases – presumably all over West Mercia?’

  Bethan chuckled. ‘I always used to say that the nearer to the Black Country you got the fewer questions you had to ask. Talk to someone in Dudley or wherever for five minutes and you were their new best friend. Lovely people, Fran, Black Country folk. The people you’re dealing with are country folk. Like The Archers! Are you a fan?’

  Fran ignored the question: this wasn’t supposed to be just a conversation. ‘And country people prefer you to mind your own business. I get it,’ she said, thinking about Ted. ‘Living in the country, as we do. Do you think they’d take sides if, say, one of their own was threatened by something? Someone? Yes, I’m talking about Phil Foreman. Did you ever meet him, by any chance?’

  Bethan looked blank. Carefully blank? ‘Why do you ask that?’

  Fran spread her hands: ‘You’re a journalist: you might have got the chance to interview him when he came down here to see how the search was going – I presume he did?’ she added, despite what Stu had said.

  ‘If he did I never saw him,’ she declared, with something of a snap.

  ‘Are you suggesting he didn’t? To see where his wife and child had disappeared? I know today we’re all touchy-feely and leave flowers and teddies everywhere, but not to appear at the scene – and not to have an entourage of national media representatives swarming round – seems strange.’

  ‘All I know is that I never saw him.’

  Fran nodded her thanks, as if she believed her. ‘You must have interviewed Natalie’s parents – particularly as you were at least acquainted with their daughter. Tell me about that. Did they react as you’d have expected them to react?’ she prompted.

  ‘How would that be?’ Bethan countered.

  What was going on? Since Bethan had volunteered to come in, Fran had expected her to be cooperative and forthcoming. She said quietly, ‘You’ve probably interviewed a lot of parents who’ve lost children, before and since. Bereaved men and women. OK, the vast majority would know their child, their grandchild, was dead. They’d have closure. If you knew how many families I’ve delivered that closure to … You must have acted as unofficial counsellor. I know I did, many a time. I was a sort of midwife to all sorts
of emotions the bereaved didn’t know how to deal with. And to be honest I didn’t either.’ She waited for Bethan to pick up the conversational ball and run with it. Waited in vain. ‘Do I gather that the Garbutts weren’t ready to talk?’ Even now they wanted to wait forty-eight hours before talking to Fran – their readiness must take a long time to come to the boil.

  ‘They were very distressed. But stoical. They wanted to concentrate their efforts on getting Julius a Christian burial.’

  Something new at last. Wouldn’t that be the father’s responsibility? Or was he too grief-stricken to think of anything like that? ‘Didn’t Phil want to do that?’ Again she felt she had to fill the silence she had hoped would elicit a response from the other woman.

  ‘He’d be working,’ she said with an air of finality.

  Really? Did he carry on playing all that time? Another job for Stu. Fran smiled, hoping to find another way to skin a cat. ‘Do you still work, Bethan?’

  ‘Redundant about a year back. These days I freelance. I thought it might be nice to do a piece on you and – what’s his name? – Mark. I bet that would sell.’

  ‘As soon as we get this case sorted, we’ll be all yours. Until then, we hardly have time to breathe, as you can imagine.’ Especially when confronted with someone as unhelpful as you, she added mentally. What was going on? Did Bethan somehow feel she’d got fobbed off with the monkey when she was expecting to see the organ grinder? Perhaps she should try a new tack. ‘We haven’t got a very big team, you see. Mark – he’s the one who phoned you – tends to do most of the admin work, which is a bit of a comedown from being an assistant chief constable. I do more of the hands-on stuff, because I retired more recently than he did. We’ve only got a couple of West Mercia officers helping us, which makes things more difficult because their systems are slightly different from how ours were in Kent.’

  ‘Kent?’

  Why was the question full of sharp interest? ‘Like you, we’re freelancing. It’s not just West Mercia Police we’re new to – it’s the whole area.’