Wings over the Watcher (9 page)

This was the perfect opportunity for Marilyn Saunders to volunteer some information.

But she didn’t. She simply sat, her face turned towards Joanna, the sunglasses masking her eyes. Joanna felt a
strong impulse to peel them away and peer into the depths of her emotion.

“But in other ways there is more to this disappearance than we first thought,” she continued.

Beatrice’s friend froze and her hand flew up to her cheek. The only other movement in the garden were leaves and petals, stirred by the soft summer breeze.

“Your friend Beatrice seems to have led a very quiet life. None of her family knows where she is. According to her husband no money has been taken from her bank account. Her mobile phone is switched off. Her car is still in the drive. Her passport is not missing. So where is she, how did she leave, what is she living on and who is she with?”

There was no response from Beatrice’s friend apart from a guarded tension around her month and a sharp twitch of her shoulders.

Joanna continued. “I’ll be frank with you, Mrs. Saunders. The facts are this. In the last few months it has been noticed that she has been making an effort to appear more attractive, to get fitter, to lose weight. She’s been happier and she’s more or less admitted that she has a lover. I believe she’s gone away with someone. I simply want to know who and to check that nothing is amiss. I believe you know who it is. You were close friends, after all.”

At last Marilyn Saunders removed her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. Something very bleak looked out of them then. They looked world-weary. Unhappy. Tired. She made a small, futile gesture with her hand but said nothing. Joanna reminded herself that the two women had had a long and close friendship.

“Why do you think that, Inspector?” Marilyn’s voice was low and worried.

“You know Jewel Pirtek?”

Marilyn smiled and wiped ten years off her face. “Oh yes,” she said with real warmth and affection. “Beattie, Eartha – sorry – Jewel – and myself were all at school together. We’re old mates. The Three Musketeers.” Her fist
flung up in the air.

We all have these throwbacks. Joanna recalled Cathy and Ruth and smiled too, recalling chalk and biro pens, copied homework, shared secrets and teen magazines and thought how long it was since she had seen them. Friends disunited.

She smiled. “United we stand?”

“Divided we fall”, responded Marilyn Saunders automatically. And although it was the inevitable next line it rang a dull thud in Joanna’s mind.

Divided we fall. This mantra held menace rather than promise.

Joanna was suddenly fed up with wasting time on this. “Your friend, Jewel, more or less said so. Beatrice herself hinted something on those lines to me when we were cycling together. And Arthur found some new underwear in her drawer.”

“What sort of underwear?” Marilyn asked, a note of panic making her voice shrill and sharp.

“Ann Summers.”

“Really?” Marilyn smothered a smirk. “Well – what a turn-up for the books.” But there was still something wary and guarded in her face. She wasn’t altogether happy – even with the tasty titbit of the sexy underwear.

Suddenly she drew in a swift gasp of air. “I think it’s my – I think I might have encouraged her to –”

She looked at Joanna.

That was when Joanna first felt frightened for the missing woman. Because Beattie’s friend did too.

“Look – it isn’t my job to drag her back, “ Joanna said, leaning forward, “All I need to know is that she is safe and well. Only that. I promise. I don’t need to know
where
she is. Once I have confirmed that she is all right I can cross her off the Missing Persons’ Register. It reverts to a domestic affair. She has every right to leave her husband.”

Marilyn Saunders said nothing for a brief while but carried on staring towards the clump of pink flowers, her lips moving silently.

Joanna waited.

Sometimes it is better to give your witness space to decide what to say and how to say it.

Finally Marilyn drew in a deep breath, looked up and fixed Joanna with calm, grey eyes. This time there was less worry. More of a sparkle. “You’re right, Inspector,” she said. “Beattie does have someone. But I don’t know who he is. I only know bits.” She sat bolt upright, dropped her feet to the floor. “Can I get you a drink, a lemonade or something?”

Joanna nodded knowing the simple action would relax her.

She was back in seconds, tall glasses clinking with ice-cubes and fizzing, cloudy lemonade, sipping for a while before talking.

“I feel responsible,” she said.

Joanna let her continue without interruption.

“Beattie was desperate to find herself, to have a bit of fun before it was too late.” Marilyn frowned. “To have some adventure and enjoyment.” She frowned abstractedly. “You’re young yet, Inspector, but believe me. Life is not long.”

Joanna made some polite comment, followed it up with, “Do you know how she met him?”

Marilyn shook her head. “I don’t even know whether it’s someone from work or someone she met elsewhere but she will be with him, I promise.” She allowed herself a small smile. “Quite safe. From what she said he is just as passionate about her. She was quite desperately in love and her feelings were reciprocated. They will be together,” she repeated. “It doesn’t surprise me that she hasn’t taken anything with her. Beattie’s honest and fair. She wouldn’t rob Arthur. She simply wanted a new start. A new beginning. A second chance of life.” She lay back again and drank some more of the lemonade. “You’ve spoken to her son and daughter?” A gentle lift of the eyebrows invited comment.

“Yes.”

“Then you know that they couldn’t care less about her. They’re a selfish pair of buggers if you ask me. And they’ve never been close. And as for poor old Arthur.” She smiled sadly, shaking her head. “He was one of those who was born old. He’s never had anything about him. He just plods on, going to work, doing the garden, sleeping, eating. He’s never been any different. There’s no sparkle about him. And that’s what Beattie desperately needs. Sparkle.”

A young man wandered in. In his thirties. Crop-haired, muscular, in a black vest and well-fitting jeans, tattoos on both arms. He bent over and gave Marilyn a kiss on the cheek. “Hiya.”

Marilyn’s face warmed and softened. “This is my partner, Guy,” she said, with the self-conscious pride of a trophy-dangler.

Joanna tried not to gape and failed completely. Guy was around her own age, Marilyn an obvious twenty years older. They looked like mother and son.

Guy sat down in the third chair, patently at ease. He grinned at Joanna. “I don’t think I know you, do I?”

“This is Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy, Guy. You’ll never guess what’s happened.”

“Speeding again?”

Marilyn shook her head, stroked his arm with her hand. “Silly boy,” she said indulgently. “No. Beattie’s run off with someone. Or at least – she’s vanished.”

Guy looked neither shocked nor surprised, but folded his arms behind his head, displaying hairy armpits, blatantly masculine. “Wow,” he said theatrically. “What scandal.”

“And she’s been buying naughty underwear too.”

The
Ann Summers
underwear was exposed as though it was strung along a plastic washing line in a dull, urban garden. Just as tawdry and unsexy and inappropriate.

The scenes began to remind Joanna of Beryl Cook pictures because it stripped away so much illusion and left her with a graphic vision of reality yet still marked by this great sense of fun and mischief.

Guy’s touching up his partner’s leg was simply one of the tableaux; the memory of Beatrice’s metamorphosis another.

Guy’s hand wandered up towards Marilyn’s thigh. “Who’s she gone off with, tiger?”

“We – don’t – know, Guy. We
really
– don’t.” A warning was tucked inside the transparent words.

Joanna’s suspicions were alerted. This pair of lovebirds knew something. She looked from one to the other and addressed her next question to Guy. “You knew Beatrice Pennington well?”

“Not really,” he said casually and without interest. “Not that well. I mean – she came here sometimes. A couple of times.”

“What did you think of her?”

Guy shrugged. “Not a lot,” he said.

Exactly, was what Joanna was thinking. So what was the secret? Another youthful paramour?

“I don’t suppose
you
have any idea where she might have gone?”

“I’m sorry, Inspector. Not a clue.” There was a tinge of matey Cockney in his voice, which made Joanna instinctively mistrust him.

Guy grabbed his partner’s lemonade and took a long swig before handing it back to her. “She’s not with her mum and dad, is she?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna said. “Not according to her husband. Is it likely she would have gone there instead of going to work?”

“I’m only thinking if her mum had been ill or something. I’m sorry. It’s the only thing I can think of.” He subsided with a look of mock humility.

Joanna returned to questioning Marilyn. “You never saw the man?”

Beatrice’s friend seemed confused by the question. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so. At least – not for certain. We met for lunch one day. I was early so I called around to the library. She was talking to some bloke. Tall,
thin, round-shouldered, bald patch with comb-over. I think he works there. His name’s Grove. Adrian Grove. But I don’t know if he was the one. They just seemed sort of pally.”

What they didn’t know was that Adrian Grove was on his holiday, walking in Tuscany – alone. While Beatrice’s passport was lying in a drawer at home.

Joanna stood up. She would gain nothing more from here – for now. Besides – Guy’s hand was moving with intent towards his partner’s upper thigh. Joanna was no prude but it embarrassed her, as she knew it was supposed to. They meant to shock her. She could see it in the demeanour of both of them as they regarded her slyly.

But her thoughts were not as they imagined. What she was thinking was this: Marilyn had her toy boy. So why wasn’t she looking as though she was enjoying it more? Why did she have this downtrodden look? And if things were so hunky-dory why did this pair have to rub her nose in their relationship? They had each other. What did she matter?

“Thanks,” she said quickly, turning towards the exit. “Her parents. They live in Brown Edge, don’t they?”

Neither of them looked at her. “They’ve got a smallholding there,” Guy muttered.

It would be her next port of call.

It was still a beautiful afternoon, full of birdsong and colour. Pollution seemed a million miles away and not for the first time Joanna was glad she lived in this part of the country, this hidden part of England, a small haven cleverly concealed from tourists and crowds alike, quiet and green, pleasant and rural. She would not leave it. Washington DC seemed on another planet, one that Matthew inhabited but that she could not reach. She allowed her mind to flicker across the distance and picture his face without anger and without another woman behind him before schooling it back to Staffordshire, England.

One step at a time, Sweet Jesus.

With the sun full in her eyes she drove up the hill which led out of Leek, towards the Potteries. Known as Ladderedge it consisted of three steps, leaving the town below, in the valley. She drove through Longsdon, passing its pretty, spired church and turned off the A53 just before Endon, forking right up Clay Lake before taking another right turn into Broad Lane, rising to the ridge which marked the southern boundary of the Staffordshire Moorlands. At the summit, marked by a chapel converted into a house, she turned right again to travel along the ridge of Biddulph Moor, towards Lask Edge and Lion’s Paw.

Involuntarily she smiled. Years ago she had asked an ancient moorland-dweller where the name Lion’s Paw came from and been amused at her answer.

“‘Tis where they shot the last lion in Staffordshire.”

It was a more poetic explanation than the fact that the lumpy outcrop resembled a lion’s paw.

Beatrice’s parents lived in a tiny cottage, pebble-dashed-grey with bright green paintwork. There was a chicken run to the side and a couple of inquisitive sheep in a fenced field to the side. As she pulled up a dog started barking. She approached the gate warily. Some of these farm dogs have sharp, aggressive characters.

But the dog was chained up. Otherwise it would certainly have launched itself at her. It growled and lunged at her a few more times before being stilled by its master.

Beatrice’s father had arthritis. His back was bent almost double. He looked in his eighties and frail, his face sharpened and wrinkled by a hard life. He stood in the doorway of the cottage, squinting across the yard at her. “Hello. Can I help?”

“Mr Thomas Furnival?”

“Aye. That’s my name. What have yer come about, young lady?”

Joanna flashed her ID card. “Your daughter.”

“What – our Beattie?” He looked incredulous and again Joanna realised that Beatrice Pennington had never been a
source of worry to any member of her family before. Not ever.

“Have you seen her lately? Is she here?”

“No – she ain’t. Arthur’s already been here. What’s it to do with the police anyhow?”

A voice called from inside the cottage. “What are yer doing out there? Shut the door, will yer, Thomas.”

The old man turned towards the voice. “You’d best come in,” he said grumpily.

She followed the old man through a low doorway into a small room.

The evening was warm. Marilyn might have been sunning herself in her garden. But warmth rarely touched this bleak part of the county. It was too high. Too exposed. They had still lit a fire, probably out of habit. This ridge was well known for its harsh conditions and cold winds that found the tiniest crevice in a house and whistled right through. Added to that the exposed position of the cottage, on the ridge’s highest, easterly point, meant that draughts always would find a way in. But such properties have their advantages too. Every few years a heat wave cooks the county. On those days this high point is the most perfect spot on earth. Still cool and green, with the freshest air.