Burying the Past (10 page)

‘I might just do that. Go to Loose, that is. But don't bank on my seeing you again this evening.' There was a distinct emphasis on the pronoun. ‘It seems everything my sister says about you is right.' He turned on his heel and left, stowing the card in his jeans' back pocket.

She wanted to run after him, desperate to tell him she was doing her best in the most trying of circumstances, when two of Pargetter's lads emerged with the frame of their bed, the sight of which appeared to confirm all that David had said – that she was a scarlet woman, seducing their father from the paths of righteousness.

If ever divine intervention was needed, it was now – but all she got was a phone call from Kim, which she took, since she could see what she presumed was a hire car driving away.

‘I'm sorry to trouble you, guv'nor, when I guess you've got more than enough on your hands, but I thought I should update you.'

Suddenly weak at the knees, Fran retired to a garden bench she'd promised to leave for the new owners. ‘Fire away.'

‘That strange looking compost heap: we thought we should take a look in it.' Fran knew it was at Pact's suggestion, but let that pass. ‘And we found a wheelbarrow in it. You know you said that even a small woman might move heavy things if she was desperate? Well, what if she had the assistance of a set of wheels?'

‘What indeed! I know we're cash-strapped, but get it checked for blood, DNA, anything you can think of. Well done – and thanks for letting me know. Did the metal detectorist find anything else? Like the Staffordshire Hoard?' she added hopefully.

‘What would they be doing down here?'

Fran didn't feel up to a long explanation. She just wished Caffy or Paula was beside her. ‘So the detectorist found nothing at all?' she prompted. ‘No broken tools?'

‘A couple of Victorian pennies, a table fork that might be quite old, he said – just two prongs. A few odds and ends. We've bagged everything up as possible evidence.'

Blast: she'd have loved to pick over items, however trivial, that connected her to previous owners. ‘Have we got a decent guess at a year of death?'

‘About fifteen or twenty years ago, they say. Shall I email the complete report?'

Surely, Fran detected – at last – a tongue in cheek joke? ‘All couched in impenetrable jargon, no doubt? At your peril, Kim. Just fillet out the best bits. And remember I'd like the most detailed biog you can get on Lovage as soon as possible. Go back to her weight at birth, if you can – no, only joking. But, as I said, her family, relationships – anything relevant and irrelevant. No chance of an ID on the skeleton yet?'

‘With the extra cash you freed up, we're looking at Monday. And we'll get the DNA analysis, so we can go for matches. Better than three weeks' time. Thanks, guv.'

She smiled. ‘My pleasure.' And it was. How could she do relationships with strangers but not with her putative family? Stepfamily. It looked as if already she was doomed to be the Wicked Stepmother, despite all her determination to do better.

She'd still not told Mark what was happening: if the voicemail had been full last night, it probably still was, so she phoned Sally, the old chief's PA. ‘I really, really need to speak to Mark – it's personal, but vital.'

‘He's with Mr Wren and some bods from Police Standards, so I daren't interrupt him now, Fran. Daren't. As I told a previous caller,' she added, meaningfully.

‘Would you not tell him about the previous caller till you've got him to phone me? I wouldn't ask, Sally, but it's family politics, as you may have gathered.'

As she cut one call, another came through, this one from Janie. ‘How much longer will the removal men take?' she asked without preamble.

‘No idea. No idea what the time is, even. Hang on, I'll go and ask Mr Pargetter . . . He says they'll be clear by noon – so say twelve thirty.'

‘So where would you like your picnic? There, or at your new place, or somewhere neutral?'

If she knew Mark he'd make a big thing of their arrival together at the rectory. Or perhaps she just wanted him to. ‘I really, truly don't have time.'

‘The removal men will be stopping for lunch. You can too. Thirty minutes max, if you insist. Twenty. Somewhere on your way.'

She supposed it made sense. ‘Somewhere neutral. The new place is a crime scene, remember. Not very user-friendly . . .'

‘Grafty Green. Where the Greensand Way heads south. One o'clock.'

‘No problem – hang on, why don't I treat you to a pub lunch?' But she spoke to a dead line.

There was no time to get sentimental over leaving her cottage, although she had loved living there, mostly alone and latterly with Mark. Good times, by and large. She gave one final sweep of the kitchen floor, chasing a couple of spiders that had taken up residence behind the fridge freezer, probably on the day it had been installed, and, which, from their size, had never deemed it necessary to find a new territory. Only when, still clutching the broom, she locked the door did she find a sob rising, very painfully. But she put her shoulders back and reminded herself that the money popping into her bank account within a very few minutes would enable them to pay Paula for the huge amount of work that Pact had already completed.

Even as the Pargetter team drove away, the new owners' van drove up. It was time to scoot. She scooted.

T
here were a dozen places Fran should be, none of them here, on her own, wasting time.

Just as she was about to give up and fume off, however, Janie's surprisingly chic Ka appeared – a gift from an occasional member of the congregation who had decided to emigrate. It was only when Fran saw the second figure in Janie's car that it dawned on her that the reason for a picnic was Janie preferred not to have their meal recorded on any sort of CCTV, though of course their journeys would be. Smile for the camera! Half of her was angry that Janie had gone against her wishes and brought Cynd to see her, undermining Jill's authority. The other half was interested to hear what Janie or Cynd had to say.

Janie and Cynd emerged with a couple of carrier bags, Cynd looking around her as if a green space was an entirely alien concept, even though if ever a city nestled in countryside, Canterbury did.

Fran fell into step with them, saying nothing till she felt she was cued in. By this time poor Cynd, carrying the most enormous bag on one crooked arm, as if she was some Hollywood celeb, had trodden on endless prickly plants that had somehow eluded the older women's more thickly shod feet. At last, fishing three empty carrier bags from her pocket, Janie announced that this was a perfect picnic site and they were to sit on the grass and eat. The sandwiches – cheese and pickle – were home-made, but that was about all that could be said for them. Perhaps if you were a
Big Issue
-seller you could feed them to your poor dog. The water might have come in bottles, but it was from a tap – about which Fran had no complaints at all, though she did wonder whose lips had drunk from the bottle Janie passed her before hers did.

‘Cynd's had all her tests, and we're awaiting the results,' Janie announced, as if she too had pressures on her time. ‘We know she's not pregnant. But she has had some problems with her memory, Fran – shock, probably, I'd say. Wouldn't you?' she prompted.

‘Like Hillary Clinton, she misremembered something?'

Cynd blinked, as if the word and the name were equally strange. ‘He wasn't quite like I said, miss,' she told Fran, as if she resembled a half-forgotten teacher.

Probably, she did. But she tried to wipe every shred of threatening authority from her voice as she replied: ‘It's hard to be clear in such awful circumstances, isn't it? But I'm glad your memory's coming back, because the CCTV didn't show anyone like you described near your flat. So why don't you just tell me quietly what you remember now. Take your time.' Should she mention the knifing? Or the DNA tests? On the whole she thought not. Not yet.

There was a light scratch on the door, and Sally put her head round. Mark suppressed a grin – she'd never have interrupted the old chief's meetings like that. Her arrival was greeted with a mixture of exasperation and relief, depending on whether you were Wren or a normal human being. How many hours had they been talking? He wouldn't have minded if they'd been using English, but it was all management-speak – worse, it was Whitehall-speak, polysyllabic pap, although the Police Standards people were all serving officers like himself. None of them seemed upset by Simon's death, for all they'd once been colleagues. Did that say more about them or about him?

He was hungry and thirsty – Wren's first economy had been to axe mid-meeting refreshments, though surely their old instant coffee and bottom of the range custard creams hadn't been an extravagance. He was also so stiff about the jaw and shoulders that he'd have a migraine, if he wasn't careful. Or a heart attack. That was what Fran was afraid of. For him, not for her, though he'd read somewhere that women of her age with stressful lives like hers were candidates too.

By now Sally was tiptoeing across to him. ‘Could you spare a moment outside, Mr Turner?'

He caught Wren's eye, as if asking for permission, but since he was already on his feet it was clear he was leaving anyway. Shutting the door quietly behind him, in the freedom of the corridor, he couldn't help releasing a theatrical sigh.

Sally's smile suggested that what she had to say wouldn't be good news. Panic-stricken thoughts about no-show removal vans and motorway crashes replaced the tedium of the previous three hours.

‘Everything's fine. Fran's fine. But Fran wanted you to phone her before you did anything else. Anything at all. I've waited all this time, but you'd better do it now. Now, Mark, before I say the next thing.' She returned to her office, ostentatiously closing the door.

She'd have made a good oracle, with her strange gnomic utterances, wouldn't she?

Blast and bugger it! He couldn't reach Fran. Bloody Kentish mobile coverage. And by now the cottage landline would have been cut off.

He shrugged his way into Sally's office. ‘What was the next thing? I can't get hold of Fran,' he added, like a kid whose dog had eaten his homework.

‘I think there may have been a connection between what she wanted to say and what I have to tell you. No, there's nothing the matter with Fran. Nothing, I promise you,' she repeated, as if she saw the fear he knew must still lurk in his eyes. ‘But there's a young man waiting in reception claiming to be your son. He says he won't leave until he's spoken to you. But I think,' she said, getting to her feet and pushing him gently backwards until he had no option but to sit on one of the visitors' chairs, ‘that I'll get you a cup of tea before you go and see him. And there are some of those custard creams somewhere.'

Dave. What the hell was Dave doing here? No reason why he shouldn't be in the UK, of course, and no reason why he shouldn't want to see his father. But why today, dear God – why today? Because of Sammie, of course. Hell, when had his thought processes got so slow?

There was a light touch on his shoulder. His tea, with a couple of biscuits in the saucer, hovered a few inches away.

‘Thanks, Sally. Just what the doctor ordered. Tell me,' he asked, realizing belatedly that all these proposed changes would affect precisely the sort of people like her whom the Home Secretary dismissed as non-front line, and thus expendable, ‘have you heard anything about your own future? Now the chief's gone?'

‘The chief is dead, long live the chief,' Sally responded with a rueful grin. ‘I work for the organization, remember, not a particular person. I go where I'm put. These days a woman of my age has to be grateful she's got a job – all this anti-age discrimination's a lot of theoretical tosh, if you ask me. I'll just have to get Mr Wren trained, assuming he's appointed long-term.' She nodded home her point, before adding, ‘Are you feeling better now?'

‘Much, thanks. Maybe I'd better try Fran again before I go and beard this stranger, though.' Stranger. How about that for a Freudian slip? Caffy would love it.

But stranger he was, his lovely firstborn, the kid he'd never quite had enough time for – the kid whose birthday parties he'd turned up late for or had to leave early. The kid he'd left to Tina to discipline and cuddle better: she might have been a single parent. Perhaps that was why Sammie had turned out as she had; he didn't even know how Dave had turned out, did he?

Observing him via the CCTV screen, Mark was shocked. He'd have passed him in the street, with that American business suit and aggressive hair cut. He was tapping away at the latest phone, occasionally flicking a fierce glance at his wristwatch, though surely the phone would have told him the time in every continent, every time zone, even.

Mark found himself checking for biscuit crumbs, squaring his tie, pulling in his stomach, though thanks to Fran and her insistence on exercise for them both, he was trimmer than most men his age. And at the thought of Fran, he was suffused by a simple but profound desire – to have her beside him literally holding his hand when he confronted Dave. Turning from the reception area, he dialled her, just in case.

Although she'd have said the place Janie had chosen was quiet to the point of peaceful, Fran had to bend her head close to Cynd's to catch the words.

‘It was a punter, miss. That I knifed. I do it for me fix, see.'

Fran could almost feel Janie willing her not to mention at this juncture the possibility of coming off drugs. But she didn't think she would have done anyway.

‘Did you know the punter? I mean, was it the first time he'd been a client?' Hell, this was all too heavy. These days interviews like this – any interviews, for God's sake – were conducted by officers with special and regularly updated training. In something as delicate as this there should have been a team watching, waiting to advise – interrupting if necessary. Meanwhile, Cynd's trust was ebbing away quite visibly.