Till We Meet Again (29 page)

‘Let’s go for a ride on our bikes,’ Susan said, grabbing Beth’s arm and pulling her along.

As it was normally Beth who made all the suggestions about what to do and where to go, she immediately guessed that this sudden need to rush off had to have something to do with the red-haired girl in checked Capri pants and a tight sweater.

Beth was no stranger to bullies herself, so after they’d got right away she asked Susan about the girl. ‘What’s she done to you?’ she asked point-blank.

Predictably, Susan pretended she didn’t know what Beth was talking about. It wasn’t until they’d reached their little camp in the woods where presumably she felt safe that she admitted she was frightened of the girl.

‘She calls me “Wrights”, she said with a sigh. ‘She got that from the register I suppose, it says Wright, S. Anyway, she’s always yelling out things like “Human Wrights” and “Animal Wrights”, stupid stuff really, but it’s embarrassing. She’s in the year above me, her older sister used to work in Daddy’s office and he sacked her for something.’

‘Is that why she picks on you?’ Beth asked. She too got taunted about her father, and she knew how hurtful it could be.

‘I think so.’ Susan hung her head and Beth saw a tear rolling down her face.

‘Why don’t you confront her and ask why she takes it out on you?’ Beth asked. That was how she always tackled bullies, and mostly they backed off.

‘Daddy’s always sacking people,’ Susan whispered. ‘Mummy said most clever men aren’t very patient. I don’t suppose her sister did much wrong and I feel bad about it.’

‘Well, tell her that then,’ Beth said, thinking that was quite simple.

‘I can’t say anything about Daddy!’ Susan exclaimed, looking horrified.

‘Then just go up to her and ask why she’s mean to you, and point out you’ve done nothing to her.’

‘She’d hit me if I even walked up to her,’ Susan replied.

Beth couldn’t remember what happened beyond that. Maybe it was resolved, maybe the girl got bored with taunting Susan, because she never mentioned it again. But what stayed with Beth was a kind of wonder that even girls from ideal families could be picked on too.

Of course she knew now that the Wrights were far from ‘ideal’. Mr Wright was a bumptious, self-centred man, and his son took after him. They’d had such bad luck too. Susan wouldn’t have had anyone at home to confide in, if her mother was preoccupied with the grandmother. Keeping her thoughts, anxieties and feelings to herself must have become a way of life to her.

Beth reflected on this for a little while. However bad her own home life was, she had always had Serena and Robert to confide in. Also, she had a more volatile nature, mostly able to give as good as she got when angry or hurt. Gentle Suzie just didn’t have that safety valve.

After a late supper, Beth rang Roy, suddenly desperate to hear the sound of his voice. He was horrified she’d been struck by the man at Hill House, and she had the feeling he would have driven straight over to Wales to be with her right then if she’d needed him.

‘I’m fine, I really am,’ she said and went through everything she’d discovered during the day. ‘But could you do something for me? Could you possibly run a check on Zoë Fremantle? I know it’s a long shot, but we might be able to find Reuben through her.’

‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ he agreed.

Roy arrived at the police station at six on Sunday morning, and the first thing he did was to run a check on Zoë. He discovered she had one conviction for possession of cannabis, back in 1986 when she was eighteen and at art college, and a further conviction for shop-lifting the following year. In both cases she received a fine, and she gave her parents’ address as 19 Widcombe Hill, Bath.

If it hadn’t been so early in the morning, he would have telephoned Mr and Mrs Fremantle straight away to ask where their daughter was living now. But with time on his hands, and nothing more pressing to do, he thought he would just check the missing persons’ list.

She was there. Reported missing by her parents in May 1993.

When he opened the file on the girl he found very little police action had been taken, and that appeared to be understandable. Zoë had moved away from home on innumerable occasions – by her parents’ own admission she was wild, bad at keeping in touch, and she only stayed in any job long enough to get money to go travelling. The year before she was reported missing, she’d been in Thailand. Enquiries had been made among her old friends in Bath, but no leads had been found. In the light of reports from some of these old friends that Zoë didn’t get on too well with her parents, her lack of communication with them didn’t seem in any way suspicious.

Roy studied the photograph of Zoë on file. It was taken on a beach, with her wearing a bikini top and a sarong. She was a very pretty girl, with long blonde hair and blue eyes, around five feet eight and slender. He wondered what a girl like her, from a wealthy background and with a good education, would have in common with an ageing hippy. Drugs were the one thing which sprang to mind.

Roy then ran a check on Reuben Moreland, and found nothing. But he had a hunch that wasn’t the man’s real name anyway.

He thought about it for a while. While there was no evidence that this man had committed any crimes, Susan had on her own admission handed over all her property willingly, just as the others had done. But Moreland was certainly a dubious character, and Roy’s long police service had taught him that such men usually warranted investigation. The ‘commune’ in Wales could very well be a cover for drug-dealing. Maybe Zoë, with her looks and good background, had encouraged him to expand this further. As she was now missing, Roy had a first-class excuse for poking around a little more.

Later on that morning, after ringing Mrs Fremantle and discovering Zoë was still missing, Roy had a consultation with his governor, who gave him permission to visit her parents in Bath.

*

Driving back from Bath to Bristol later that day, Roy felt saddened by the Fremantles’ lack of real concern for their missing daughter. Their attitude appeared to be that Zoë owed them for having been born into an elegant Georgian home and educated at the best private schools. They had reported her missing in May 1993 only because she hadn’t contacted them around the time of her birthday at the end of April. This, they said peevishly, was out of character.

Roy had heard a litany of Zoë’s failings, her ‘rough’ friends, her endless travelling and her failure to get a ‘proper’ job. The last time her parents had spoken to her was New Year’s Day 1993, when she’d phoned them from a pub. They didn’t know where it was, or who she was with. They said they’d never heard of Reuben Moreland, and then they didn’t know any of her friends’ names. Roy had heard similar stories from other parents with missing children, but all of them had made some effort privately to find their children, if only to reassure themselves they were alive and well, and to send a message that they were concerned.

The Fremantles could easily afford to hire a private investigator, but they hadn’t done so. Their excuse was ‘We assume she is leading a life-style we wouldn’t approve of.’ Roy could hardly blame Zoë for staying away, if all she ever got when she came home were recriminations. He fervently hoped she was having a good time somewhere like Thailand, preferably having dumped Reuben for someone younger and less manipulative.

He thought it would be divine justice if the man arrived back in England with his tail between his legs to find his house in ruins. He thought Beth would like that too. She hadn’t sounded like herself last night on the phone, but then he supposed it wasn’t reasonable for anyone to sound bouncy when they’d been punched in the face earlier in the day.

Although he had never had the opportunity to observe Beth working with any other client but Susan, he sensed she had never gone right out on a limb as she was doing with this one. It seemed to be more than just the childhood friendship thing too, almost as if she was working through her own past and problems as she raked through Susan’s.

Roy considered himself to be a simple man. Even as a young man he hadn’t yearned for fast cars, foreign travel or wealth, all he’d wanted was to be a good policeman, husband and father. The death of Peter, his son, and the subsequent break-up of his marriage a couple of years later, had come close to breaking him. For quite some time he’d constantly asked himself,
Why me?
He had met so many men who were almost oblivious to their children and unfaithful to their wives, but such things didn’t happen to them. He still had no answer to why it had to be
his
son who had died, and he still mourned him. But in time he had come to see that it was only Peter who held Meg and him together, that their relationship was one of habit, rather than like minds, passion or even real friendship.

But with Beth he felt all that and more. She was on his mind constantly, just a day without a phone call or seeing her seemed too long. He admired her keen brain, her often wry sense of humour – even her coolness excited him.

He wanted her passionately. He dreamed nightly of those long, slender legs, her narrow hips and her glorious black hair, but he knew too that he must wait for her to make the first move. But it was so hard waiting, knowing she was afraid because some man out there had hurt her badly. The need to know was tearing him apart, yet he was also scared that once she did tell him, he might not be able to make it better for her.

Beth opened the downstairs door at Roy’s ring right on seven o’clock and went out on to the landing to look down the stairwell.

He was carrying a bunch of white lilies and a bottle of wine, but it was the weariness in his step that touched her most. She had got home from Wales just after twelve that lunch-time, and had a little snooze, and apart from her sore jaw she was feeling fine. Roy on the other hand had worked a twelve-hour shift.

‘Hullo, Mr Detective Inspector,’ she called out.

‘Hullo, Miss Defence,’ he called back, and managed to bound up the last few steps. ‘Oh shit, what a nasty bruise!’ he exclaimed, reaching out and touching it tenderly. ‘I hope the Welsh police put him in leg irons and beat him with their truncheons.’

Beth laughed. ‘It looks worse than it is, as my mother always said when Father clobbered her. But every cloud has a silver lining. If I hadn’t had to call the police there, I wouldn’t have got them interested in checking out Reuben’s house.’

‘I’ve got a bit of news on that score,’ Roy said, giving her a hug. ‘But let me have a drink first.’

Beth made him sit down on the couch and poured him a glass of wine. ‘We’ve got fillet steak, salad and baked potatoes,’ she said. ‘Everything’s ready but the steak, that only takes a couple of minutes. So just say when you want it, you look very tired.’

‘It’s been a bit of a gruelling day,’ he said, then went on to tell her about his interview with Mary Fremantle. Then he showed her the picture of Zoë.

‘Wow!’ Beth exclaimed. ‘I think any woman would feel dejected being replaced by her.’

‘I personally can’t see what a girl like that would see in Reuben and a commune for weirdos,’ Roy said. ‘The only thing that springs to mind is that she thought he had money. Anyway, later on I spoke to the minister of the church where Susan met Reuben, his name is Peter Langdon. A good man, I’d say, caring and committed. He remembered Susan well, but he hadn’t connected her with the shooting and was very shocked. He said he found it totally out of character as she was such a gentle, shy woman. But his views on Reuben were much harsher, he said he’d had his suspicions that the man was some kind of confidence trickster, but he’d never managed to get any proof. He also wasn’t aware Susan had gone off with him.’

‘Would he be prepared to act as a character witness for Susan, do you think?’ Beth asked.

‘Without a doubt,’ Roy nodded. ‘He even offered to go and visit her. He’s a very sincere and genuine man. But the good news is that he had a photo of Reuben. It was taken at one of the church’s little parties.’

Roy pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to Beth.

She laughed, for he looked even worse than she’d imagined, with his long, gaunt face, his greying hair tied back in a pony-tail, and a rather ostentatious embroidered sleeveless jacket over a Nehru-style shirt.

‘He looks like a creep,’ she said. ‘I’ve always had an aversion to middle-aged men who try to look trendy. But I suppose he fits the bill as a “psychic healer”.’

Roy smiled. ‘Peter Langdon was appalled that he called himself that. He didn’t recognize Zoë from her photograph, so it looks as if Reuben met her elsewhere. Maybe Susan will know where, and when.’

‘She didn’t even tell me or Steven about Zoë,’ Beth said with a frown. ‘She said there was a new woman, but nothing more. Why do you think that was?’

‘The same reason she didn’t tell you Liam dumped her,’ Roy said. ‘Pride maybe, not wanting to admit, even to herself, that she’d been had.’

‘Poor Susan.’ Beth sighed. ‘So much bad luck and unhappiness. Let’s hope it breaks for her soon, and we can at least find Reuben to stand as witness.’

‘We’ll be applying for permission to access to his bank account tomorrow,’ Roy said. ‘That should give us a lead as to where he is.’

Beth looked sharply at him. ‘Do I hear the “We” as in police investigation?’

Roy looked a bit sheepish. ‘Yes. We need to pull him in and ask him a few questions.’

On Wednesday evening Roy called round at Beth’s place on his way home from work. ‘Sorry to barge in uninvited,’ he said as she let him in. ‘But I thought you’d like to know we checked Reuben’s bank account today.’

‘And?’ she said.

‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t touched it since April ‘93.’

Beth made him a cup of coffee as she listened.

‘He had a credit balance of some two thousand pounds then. We looked back over the previous year and found he’d paid sums of two or three hundred into it about every four or five weeks. I assume that was money from the craft workshop. He had monthly direct debits set up for the council tax, electricity and a credit card. Those have been met every month. But there have been no other withdrawals at all, and no credits. At present there is a credit balance of around two hundred and fifty pounds.’