The Players And The Game (5 page)

On 22 June, a Wednesday, Plender was idly going round an exhibition in the Market Square called
Crime Prevention – It’s Up To You.
The exhibition was a travelling one, staffed by some London men who managed not to smile when Plender said he was from Rawley CID and was hoping to find out something new about catching villains. He was standing in front of an exhibit full of flashing differently-coloured lights, which was meant to show the chain of communications between crime squads, when he heard his name called. He turned and saw Ray Gordon of the
Rawley Enquirer.
Plender grinned. ‘Don’t quote me, but I’m trying to learn a bit about my trade.’

‘What’s it worth to say you weren’t here?’

‘I’ll buy you a beer, if that’s what you mean. You can tell me the latest dirt.’

‘Let me buy you one. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of giving you a ring.’

‘To report a crime?’

‘Hope not.’ Plender thought of Gordon as a man with plenty of nerve, but in the saloon bar of the Red Lion he seemed nervous. ‘A girl I know has disappeared. Her parents asked me not to say anything about it, but still.’

‘When?’

‘Went out on Monday evening, didn’t come back.’

‘Your girl-friend, was she? Had a row with her, anything like that?’

‘She wasn’t my girl-friend. I’ve taken her out a couple of times, but nothing serious. And we did have a bit of a squabble last Saturday at the tennis club. She was playing with a conceited bastard called Vane, just come to live here, and we had a few words. Nothing really. I hadn’t seen her since. Her mother gave me a call yesterday, to see if I’d heard from her.’

‘So she lives at home. How old?’

‘Nearly nineteen.’

‘Doing a bit of cradle-snatching, weren’t you?’

Ray’s embarrassment deepened. ‘Sounds like that, I dare say, but she could look after herself. Well, in a way. She didn’t exactly want sex, she wanted adventure, but she was afraid too, if you know what I mean. The tennis club wasn’t her line, much too respectable and unexciting, but she’d have been frightened to go out for anything else. She was an odd girl, I suppose.’

‘Have you made her?’

‘None of your bloody business.’

Plender said pacifically, ‘I’m just trying to find out whether she slept around.’

‘I’m sure she didn’t. She told me she’d slept with a boy at some pop festival last year, but my guess would be that was about it. No, I didn’t make her.’

Plender ordered another beer. ‘Know any details? I mean, where she was going on Monday night, that kind of thing? No, all right, where do the parents live?’

‘Eighty Woodside Place. Look, if you’re going round to see them, try to forget I told you about this, will you? They won’t like it.’

‘What do you expect me to say, cock, that I’m calling at every house down their road to find out how many daughters are missing? What’s she doing, just being a home body?’

‘Left school, got a place at some university up north, couldn’t make up her mind whether she wanted to take it up.’ He brooded on his beer. ‘I suppose you could say she was filling in time waiting for something to happen.’

‘A lot of us are doing that.’

Plender went round to Woodside Place, which was a large estate of neat identical modern houses built in the form of a letter E. It took him some time to find number eighty. The door bell had a two-tone chime.

The small woman who opened the door had a dumpling face and boot-button eyes which flared with fear or anxiety when Plender gave his name. She ushered him in quickly, as though he were a rent collector. in the back room a tall man with a toothbrush moustache was watching television.

‘Dad, this is Mr Plender. From the police. This is my husband. Dad, turn it off.’

Allbright rose, took reluctant steps towards the box while still staring at it, turned the switch and the picture vanished. His wife said, ‘It’s about Louise, isn’t it?’

‘I haven’t got any news of her. I wondered if you’d heard anything. She left on Monday, is that right?’

‘Beer,’ Allbright said. ‘You’ll have a drink – Inspector, is it?’

‘Sergeant.’

Mrs Allbright went out, returned with two cans of beer and two glasses. Allbright poured, raised his glass in greeting, drank. ‘You may think we should have been in touch before, but you’ve got to consider my position. I can’t afford to be made a laughing stock.’

‘What is your position?’ Plender asked politely.

‘I’m at Timbals. Assistant works supervisor, Mouldings Division.’ He puffed out his chest as though a medal were on it.

‘And why would you be a laughing stock?’

He looked incredulous. ‘What – if it got to be known George Allbright can’t control his own daughter.’ He paused. ‘Here, if you’ve got no news of her, how d’you know she’s gone?’

‘A friend of hers told me. You can’t keep this kind of thing quiet.’

Allbright spoke bitterly. ‘That dirty little journalist. It’s all they ever think of, publicity.’

‘But Dad, he only did it for the best.’ His wife was timid but determined. ‘What George thinks is, she’s done the same as before.’

‘And what was that?’

‘Last year, when she wanted to go to the Isle of Wight pop festival.’

‘And what happened?’

‘Told her she couldn’t go,’ Allbright said. ‘Might as well have been talking to the air, she just went. Forty-eight hours away, no message. We were worried sick. Then she turned up again, cool as you please.’

‘She did leave a message, Dad, it was just that poster got put on top of it.’ He waved a hand irritably, went out of the room. ‘We did go to the police that time, we felt such fools when she just turned up and asked what all the fuss had been about. But you mustn’t get the wrong idea, she’s not one of those rebels you’re always hearing about She just doesn’t get on with Dad, that’s all. Of course I can see he’s got his position to keep up, but all that trouble about wearing minis. Everybody wears them now, I told him. I don’t care what
everybody
does, he says, Louise’s my daughter.’

‘What about boy-friends?’

‘Never seemed to have them, or she never brought them home. There was this Ray Gordon, he took her out two or three times and once brought her back here. Then on Saturday night she said one of the bosses at Timbals wanted to make love to her, but she wouldn’t let him.’

‘What was his name, do you remember?’

‘A Mr Vane. Mind you, she may have said it just to spite her dad. But she was always talking about what she’d do, the kind of life she’d live when she got away from here. Don’t be in such a hurry, I said, you’ll soon be at college.’

‘Where did she go on Monday?’

‘To a Keep Fit class at the Institute.’ Tears came from the boot-button eyes. ‘Oh, Mr Plender, I’m so worried.’

A lavatory flushed. Allbright returned with more beer.

‘No more for me, thanks. Two things. Have you got a photograph of her? And could I see her room before I go?’

Mrs Allbright said nervously, ‘Dad?’

‘I suppose so, I bloody well suppose so. She’s my daughter, you know, I’ve got my feelings too. But I’m not going to be made a fool of, and I’m not going to have my name spread over the papers with stories about Hunt For Missing Girl when it’s all a load of bloody rubbish. My principle is the young don’t know as much as their fathers and mothers, and they ought to do what they’re told. Right, eh, Sergeant?’

Plender, who thought nothing of the kind, said, ‘Right.’

Mrs Allbright went through a box of photographs, and he chose a head and shoulders. The picture showed a girl with straight long hair, wide-set eyes and an undecided expression. She was far from beautiful, but there was something attractive about the face.

He could not have said what he expected to find in the girl’s bedroom, but his five-minute look-round revealed nothing helpful. Tennis rackets, pin-ups of Mick Jagger and other pop stars, romantic novels and a couple of books about Buddhism, school textbooks, there was nothing out of the way. He found no correspondence. Mrs Allbright followed every step he took, rather as though Louise might be produced from a drawer or the wardrobe. She couldn’t be sure whether any clothes had gone, but she did not think so. No suitcase had been taken, but Louise had taken with her the blue holdall she always took to the Keep Fit classes, and she could have put something in that. By the time he left she was slightly distraught. Plender told her not to worry.

‘What will you do now?’

‘Tell my inspector.’

When he left the TV was on again.

Hurley was not greatly impressed. Disappearances of this kind, he repeated, were two a penny. ‘What have you got after all, Harry? We’d never have thought anything about the French piece if it hadn’t been for what’s her name, Brown. Then Brown turns up. Now you’ve got another, that’s only two. There are a lot of girls in Rawley.’

‘Do you mean we should just leave it?’

‘Of course not, I didn’t say that. Ask some questions. Quietly, though, tactfully.’

After Plender had gone, Hurley pondered. He ought to cover himself in case the two disappearances were actually connected. He sent a memo through to Detective Chief Inspector Hazleton at Divisional HQ. Rawley contained two Sub-Divisions, Rawley and Burnt Over, and Hurley was in charge of Rawley Sub-Division. The arrangement was rather artificial, because Divisional HQ was in the same building, and although Rawley was a town it had no separate police force. Hurley could easily have gone in to see Hazleton, but he was a great believer in getting things down on paper.

The Rawley Adult Educational Institute ran classes in everything from aeronautics and bee-keeping to weight-lifting and zoology. Plender asked for the Keep Fit class, and was directed to Miss Weston in Room 24. There he found twenty women in shorts and vests swinging their bodies about. Several of them were middle-aged. Breasts flopped and stomachs trembled. Miss Weston, lithe and slim, set an example. Music played, Miss Weston and her acolytes chanted, devotees of an ancient ritual. ‘Hup-two-three, down-two-three, left-two-three, right-two-three,’ they breathed in unison. Some of them saw Plender and stopped, evidently glad of the break. Miss Weston became aware of an alien presence. She turned to him, hands on hips. Plender proffered his card. She barely glanced at it.

‘Didn’t they tell you in the office that men aren’t allowed in the classroom? You’re interrupting rhythm maintenance.’

‘Sorry. I didn’t know police counted as men. I wanted to speak to you about Louise Allbright.’

‘I’ll be free in ten minutes.’

He stood outside reading the notices on the board advertising Institute dances, film club, debating society, dramatic society and hikers’ group. The women came out, transformed into Rawley housewives. Then Miss Weston, thin and wiry, hair pulled back. They went to the canteen and she ordered cups of tea.

‘Louise Allbright was in your class. Did she come on Monday?’ She nodded. ‘Anything special about her that evening?’

‘Why?’

Miss Weston, breastless and heavy-browed, looked like an aggressive and, if you cared for such looks, attractive boy. Plender, who preferred round soft girls, found her slightly antipathetic, but he smiled. ‘Keep this to yourself, there may be nothing in it. The class was six-thirty to seven-thirty, she should have gone home after it. She didn’t, and she hasn’t been back since. Now, was there anything special?’

‘She was excited. I don’t know what about.’

‘How well did you know her?’

‘Better than anyone else in the class, but that doesn’t mean much. She’d been coming for two terms, so I’d seen a bit of her. She was unhappy at home, you know that? Her father was an awful bastard. She wanted to get away.’ She chewed her lips. ‘I told her she could move in with me if she wanted.’

Were Lesbian inclinations being suggested? ‘But she didn’t.’

‘No, she was keen to get to London to live. So she said. She had some sort of vision of herself doing what she thought were romantic things in the big city. You know, most of them come to class because they’re overweight and think they can cut down by exercise while they go on stuffing themselves with pastries. Bloody fools. But Louise did it because she wanted to have a perfect body. She was a bit thick in the hips. She once said to me that she’d like to be a striptease dancer. The point is she wouldn’t – wouldn’t have liked it, I mean. Basically she wanted romance, not sex. She liked to think of herself as bohemian, but she was respectable as hell.’ This time there could be no doubt about the meaning of her tight-lipped smile.

‘Any boys around? Did she ever talk about one in particular?’

‘Talked about them. I don’t know if it went any further. This term it was one called Ray something. Journalist, I think.’

‘Those gym slip things they were wearing. Do they bring them along?’

‘Yes. They have holdalls, small cases, that kind of thing.’

‘No lockers? No? All right. Anything more you can think of that might be useful? No idea what she was excited about on Monday?’

‘The odds are it was a man.’ Miss Weston’s smile was tight. ‘That doesn’t mean a man was poking her. She was a timid girl who wished she was different, is that any help?’

‘Not a bit,’ Plender said cheerfully. ‘But thanks all the same.’

Hazleton’s office was bigger than Hurley’s, and cooler, partly because an electric fan hummed in it. Hurley’s shirt was sticking to his body, and he envied Hazleton the electric fan. The DCI’s voice on the telephone had been sharp, but Hurley faced him with the imperturbability of the lazy man who feels sure that he has covered any tracks indicating possible negligence.

‘These two disappearances. What have you been doing about them?’

‘We only heard about the second one yesterday. Plender’s been looking into it. So far he hasn’t come up with much. The girl had been talking about becoming a striptease dancer.’

‘And the first case, the French au pair? Why wasn’t I told about that at the time?’

The DCI was a big man with a face that appeared to be all knobs, two for his cheekbones, another for his nose, and an outsize knob for his formidable chin. When he was moved emotionally the knobs all shone, and they were shining now. Hurley saw that he had better choose his words with care.