Requiem Mass (13 page)

‘Comfortable! I haven’t had one moment of comfort for the past four and a half weeks, Chief Inspector, so don’t start
patronising me now.’ Fearnside paced the room. ‘And I thought that you were here to investigate my complaint,
not
to cross-examine me on facts I have already submitted to your station at least twice.’

‘I appreciate your feelings, Mr Fearnside, really, but in order to investigate your complaint I have to review the earlier interviews. It will help me to have a separate discussion with you first.’

Cooper, who had been told on more than one occasion that his face could be read as easily as a book, looked down and busied himself in his notes.

‘I see. Well, in that case,’ Fearnside sat down, ‘let us proceed.’

Fearnside recapped everything he knew about the modelling opportunity and his wife’s activities in the weeks leading up to her disappearance.

‘Were you in favour of her application?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It was a nonsense. A middle-aged woman preening herself in front of the cameras and then, assuming she avoids the indignity of rejection, facing the worse humiliation of having herself ogled by the general public with, one supposes, some prurient interest.’

‘I see. So you thought it was beneath her?’

‘Yes. Obviously it was, but that was Deborah all over. A strongly warped sense of judgement. Remarkably sensible where the children were concerned but betraying her lower-middle-class origins in all other matters.’ Fearnside looked Fenwick in the eye. ‘You see you must understand, Chief Inspector, Deborah was, I mean is, a paradoxical woman. A butterfly on the surface, practical about home and family matters, but deep down she was intensely insecure. I think she was desperately unhappy as a teenager.’

Fenwick was surprised by the depths of the man’s sensitivity. He hadn’t expected it from the reserved, tense individual sitting opposite him. He wondered briefly if Deborah Fearnside had known it was there.

‘And so the modelling advertisement presented an opportunity for her to be the butterfly?’

‘Yes exactly, Chief Inspector.’ Derek Fearnside smiled, a taut grimace. ‘Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?’

‘Yes, coffee, please. Black, one sugar for me.’

‘And a white, two sugars for me, thank you, sir,’ added Cooper who, after Fearnside had left, turned to Fenwick and whispered: ‘This is a bit slow, isn’t it, sir? We’re not getting anywhere.’

‘Of course we are, Sergeant. We now know several things. Fearnside loves his wife, despite his affair, and he feels helpless and guilty that she’s gone off into the unknown whilst he raised disinterest to a fine art. It’s obvious he’s had nothing to do with his wife’s disappearance.’

A rattle of cups and a smothered oath over the sound of a stubbed toe announced Fearnside’s return.

He set down a tray on which there were three bone china mugs – white with a fine gold rim, silver teaspoons, a cafetière, brown crystal sugar and warm milk. There were biscuits. The policemen looked surprised.

‘Debbie’s influence,’ he explained.

‘This is splendid, Mr Fearnside, thank you. I always enjoy proper coffee.’

‘I suggest you wait until you’ve tried it before you volunteer compliments, Mr Fenwick.’ For the second time, Fearnside smiled.

‘Right. I’d like to spend a little more time on your wife’s background, if I may. It helps to build up a picture of her. When did you meet her?’

Fearnside no longer seemed to find the questioning strange. ‘When we were at university – Exeter – I was a year ahead of her and I helped her through her first year. For all her prettiness and glitter, she was a frightened young thing.’

‘Frightened? Why?’

‘Oh, I suppose because it was all new to her. She had never been away from home; and she was surprised to have made it to university, particularly Exeter. She told me she did nothing but
study in her sixth form years and I believed her. She certainly couldn’t maintain the pace during her degree. When I graduated, she left – with relief, I think.’

‘Why was she so keen on studying and on getting away from home do you think?’

‘I don’t know, Chief Inspector. In fact, I can remember her mother telling me they’d expected Debbie to marry early, straight from school, but she changed, suddenly.’

‘When was this change?’

‘I’m not sure but according to her parents, its effect was to turn Debbie from being a happy-go-lucky, uninspired girl into a swot; she passed three A levels much to everyone’s surprise. Her parents put it down to her realisation that she had to
work
to get on in life but I’m not so sure. Debbie has always been popular and her mother’s stories of her staying away from her circle of friends and studying at home, even during the summer holidays, don’t ring true to me.’

‘What was she like at university?’

‘Initially quiet, withdrawn even. She was timid in company and seemed nervous of being hurt but that only lasted a few months. As she made the acquaintance of new people and joined a couple of clubs, she blossomed. I have to admit I was one of several people who became enchanted by the change in her.’

‘Which clubs did she join?’

‘Um, drama and a music one – a choir I believe.’

‘And her A level subjects?’

‘Oh heavens. Let me see if I can remember – English, History and the other was Music, I think.’

‘I’d like to come back to the present if I may, Mr Fearnside, and ask you again to try and recall the events in the weeks leading to your wife’s disappearance.’

‘I’ll try. More coffee?’ There were no takers. ‘As I mentioned, it all started with that wretched advertisement. A gang of them – Debbie and her friends – decided to apply. I think at one point Brian Smith said he would go with them but then they decided there was safety in numbers.’

‘How did your wife find out she had been successful?’

‘I don’t know – a letter, I suppose. I never gave the matter any thought.’

‘Did you see the letter?’

‘No. I’ve already told you, I never saw any correspondence. My wife had a file, a blue cardboard folder that she used, and I think everything associated with the affair went in there. I think she took it with her, Chief Inspector. At least I’ve searched and cannot find it. But, returning to your earlier question, I must say that my overall impression was that most of the arrangements were conducted over the phone.’

Derek Fearnside completed his story of the events leading to his wife’s disappearance but nothing was added to the detail already in the files. The names of friends who had joined her at various stages were confirmed and Fenwick prepared to leave.

‘You’ve been most helpful Mr Fearnside. So far as your complaint is concerned, I can assure you that we are and will continue pursuing the limited lines of inquiry open to us. Unfortunately, these are very few and, as you know, an adult missing person case is not normally investigated unless there are suspicious circumstances; even then, they may remain unresolved.’

‘I appreciate that, Chief Inspector. But all I want to know is that you will do whatever you can. You see, I know something has happened to my wife. She just wouldn’t stay away this long without some contact – nearly five weeks, and it’s Katie’s birthday soon. She’d never leave the children this long voluntarily.
Please
do what you can. I need to know that everything is being done that could be done.’

‘I understand, Mr Fearnside. We’ll look into this until we’ve followed up everything – even if we end up with dead ends.’

‘Thank you, Chief Inspector, thank you. For some reason I trust you – you seem to understand what I’m going through.’ He paused and thought for a long moment on the doorstep. ‘I won’t be pursuing the complaint now that I know you’re on the case – but keep me informed, won’t you?’

As Fenwick and Cooper made their way down a now darkened path, they both instinctively looked back beyond the
dim glow of the light sensor. In the brighter light through the half-glazed door, they could make out the silhouette of Derek Fearnside as he watched them walk away.

CHAPTER TEN

The rented house was simple yet comfortable, sandwiched into a mews block in a fashionable but private part of the city. The white-painted front door at the top of a set of rising steps opened into a narrow marble-tiled hall, giving access to the downstairs rooms and stairs to the upper level. Two reception rooms, tastefully if clinically furnished, were ranged on opposite sides of the hall. At the end of this narrow passage, decorated with mirrors to create an illusion of breadth, was the kitchen, fitted out in black, white and stainless steel, and every appliance possible. A small cloakroom had been tucked under the stairs.

Upstairs, the whole of the front of the house was taken up with the master bedroom and, running back from this, a dressing room and en suite bathroom. A boxroom with ladder access to a small loft overlooked a paved square at the back of the house. All the furnishings were distinctly male, tasteful but impersonal. There were no photographs, records or CDs, no ornaments. The only art on the walls had obviously been placed there by the interior designer. The whole house was scrupulously clean, as if someone obsessively polished and removed all signs of occupation every day, which they did.

A single light was on in the study-dining room to the left of the front door. Inside, a man stood looking down at a large-scale Ordnance Survey map into which small coloured pins had been stuck, spearing the paper and penetrating the green baize board underneath. The man stared intently at a single orange pinhead and then opened a street map, the cover of
which read ‘Harlden and Surrounding District’.

From the dense grid of streets and grey hatching for houses it appeared that Harlden was a sprawling dormitory town with little remaining of the sensible market village it had been until it was discovered between the World Wars. The momentum of urbanisation had been so great that it had sprawled to absorb surrounding villages in successive waves. Even now, pseudopods of development were sketched in on the map, proof of the failure of local residents to preserve Green Belt and local identity. Belated attempts at character had involved intense planting of trees and shrubs in geometric lines along the new roads. At least the new-home dwellers appreciated them.

It was along several of these recently tree-lined roads that the man started to trace a route in green highlighter pen. It ran virtually straight west, from a grey shaded block marked ‘Downland Comprehensive School’ to a perimeter bypass. Just before the green line crossed this road it dog-legged north, ending in a small red circle on the map. The route resembled a long, inverted tick, which was somehow appropriate as it traced the daily path of school teacher Miss Katherine Johnstone.

His extremely unwilling but reliable source had provided enough details for him to find Miss Johnstone easily. The far more complicated task of tracking her and planning her death was taking more time. Preparations had so far consumed most of the spring and he was concerned now to complete the job quickly before school closed for the long summer holidays when her whereabouts would become less predictable.

So far, the facts he had gathered from his meticulous surveillance had revealed a remarkably straightforward and self-contained life. Kate Johnstone, as she was known, was responsible for the fourth year at Downland Comprehensive School. In addition to taking various mathematics classes, she helped to run the school orchestra and the surprisingly good sixth form choir. She was friends with the Head of Music, Mrs Judith Chase, but otherwise appeared to have few close acquaintances.

The extra-curricular activities required her to work late at
the school on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. On Thursdays she also took responsibility for locking the music rooms. These were housed in a brick-built block, separate from the main school at the back of the original school hall, now only used for aerobics, self-defence classes and other fiercely twentieth-century activities that would have bemused the founding board of governors.

He had found the music rooms laughably insecure and a possible fire hazard. There was a steep flight of steps immediately inside the single door to the block, leading to three rooms on the first floor, large enough for choir or chamber orchestra practice and also used for music lessons for individual pupils.

On the ground floor there were two rooms. To the right of the entrance, the piano room housed a surprisingly good baby grand, a bequest from one of the founding governors. On the left, incongruously, was a changing room used by the various aerobics and other sports classes, which had about it the unwholesome odour of school changing rooms everywhere – a potent combination reminiscent of damp flannels, old socks and stale tinned tomato soup. On damp or airless days the unpleasant but compelling smell pervaded the music room – forcing a choice between fresh but cold air or a warm fug.

At times, particularly after the judo class, the smell was so bad that Miss Johnstone (who was blessed, or as it turned out cursed, with an excellent sense of smell) had taken to leaving deodorant sticks and aerosols on the benches. The gentle hint went completely unnoticed by youths who were still several years away from developing any sensitivity to their own body odour.

On leaving the music rooms, Kate Johnstone took a fifteen-minute walk home to number 1 Hedgefield, a house on the perimeter of an early eighties in-fill development between the town bypass and the original London road.

All of the routines of her life were known to the man patiently stalking her. The problem now facing him was where and when to kill her. As his pen traced her regular route on the map, his mind ran sequential pictures. He had already decided he should
act at the end of the school day, as this would both delay realisation that she was missing and provide him with an opportunity to search her house. For what, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps she might have further information which would confirm the guilt of his final victims, or provide more detail of the original tragedy.

Thursday looked the most sensible day. She was likely to be the last person at the school apart from the caretaker, who rarely left his snug next to the boiler room. On Thursdays, she had responsibility for locking and checking the music-room windows and door. Unless she stayed to play the baby grand piano, which she had done twice since he had started watching her, she locked up at about quarter to six, a full hour and a half after the main school had finished. Netball practice was already over and there was no cricket on Thursdays.