You Don't Have to be Good (15 page)

‘No. My sister has no distinguishing characteristics,’ she said coldly and the two men exchanged the briefest of looks. But how could she be sure about Bea’s body? she thought. She hadn’t seen her naked since she was fourteen.

‘And what name did she go by?’

‘What?’ They had Bea’s name. What were they talking about?

‘There can be some confusion over identity where married women are concerned,’ said Jim. ‘Sometimes they use more than one name. We have Beatrice Pamplin down here. Is that her married or her maiden name?’

Maiden? Katharine suppressed an image of Bea in a wimple and gown, traipsing the meadows and glens of Hastings. ‘Kemp,’ she said, ‘Bea Kemp. I have a feeling she used her married name, Pamplin, for some things but not for work. She’s been there so long, perhaps it felt odd to change it.’

She put her hand to her mouth and looked at the whiteboard. How were they going to find her if they didn’t even know her name?

‘I know this is difficult for you,’ said Jim. ‘But can you think of any reason why your sister may have decided to leave? Did she seem depressed, unduly worried about things? Were there problems at home perhaps?’

Katharine was shaking her head, impatient with this man, this room, the slow, tedious business of forms and protocol. She felt desperate to speak to Bea, saw now not Bea but a gap where she had been, the negative space of her sister. She couldn’t remember the last time they had had a proper, serious conversation together that wasn’t about time or objects or children.

‘She seemed tired but fine. I mean, I think things with her husband hadn’t been easy for a while.’ She stopped and wondered whether they had met Frank.

‘Things hadn’t been easy for a while?’ The short one was talking now. ‘In what way?’

She looked at them. They were asking whether Frank was violent.

‘He has a temper, I do know that, but it is mainly these dark moods. He’s capable of not talking for days . . .’ She shook her head. ‘But Frank’s not violent, I don’t think, no. His main problem is he doesn’t really have a proper job. I mean, a writer, for heaven’s sake.’ She suddenly wondered how on earth Frank and Bea managed for money.

While Jim wrote this down, she could feel the other one looking at her. His scrutiny made her blush. She had made up her mind about Frank a long time ago, dismissed him and closed her mind to him. He was a man who was disappointed with life and as a result adopted that ridiculous mantle of false pride. It would be so easy to drop Frank in it right now. Here she was, talking about violence when all they had asked was how she got on with her husband. She shrugged and tried to smile.

‘All I mean is that if I woke up one day and found I was married to Frank, I would probably run screaming into the sea.’ She gave a laugh. They looked at her. The phone on Jim’s desk rang. He ignored it and it stopped after three rings.

Now she felt like a suspect. Shame prickled at the roots of her hair. ‘Look, we’re not particularly close to them as a couple, if you know what I mean, but our children are. They’re very fond of Bea. They’re fond of both of them. Adrian adores Frank.’

In her mind she saw Frank as the opposite of violent, as spineless and impotent. But how could she be sure? She swallowed and wondered whether she had been reckless with her children’s safety, leaving them in the care of a man she did not like, much less knew in any real sense of the word.

Jim entered some information on the computer. He was bringing the interview to an end and Katharine rubbed at the tingling beginning in her hands, saw the lights in the room flare up then retreat as a migraine threatened. She didn’t want to leave. How was she going to find Bea? She must be somewhere. What if she had had an accident, fallen in the river, been attacked or murdered? Why was there no word from her, why was there no trace?

‘This, all this . . .’ She brought her hand up to her head and looked wildly about her. ‘Oh God . . .’ All this was the stuff of newsprint and television, not Bea and Katharine.

Jim straightened his tie and stood up, gesturing gently at the door. He began to speak, something about ‘The investigation is already underway. We will be visiting her husband later today, making enquiries and contacting the main agencies . . .’ Katharine stayed where she was; she wasn’t going anywhere. She needed some inside information. She was a hospital doctor, for God’s sake, she knew how the system worked. She needed to be fast-tracked, given the names of the best people to see; she wanted the truth about survival. This was twenty-first-century Britain; there could only be a limited number of possibilities. There was the bank, the doctor, passport control. We’re all on CCTV, we have mobile phones— She stopped herself, remembering that Bea’s phone had been stolen.

‘Please,’ she said.

‘I know it’s hard.’ Jim sat down again. ‘When a loved one goes missing, those left behind can often become lost themselves in a kind of—’

An animal noise rose up from inside her. She covered her face with her hand. This was appalling. She was out of control. She heard the other one switch on the kettle, the rustle of tea bags in a jar. Jim waited. His hands rested together on his laptop. His fingers were long and tanned. He wore a gold wedding ring.

‘But why?’ she whimpered. She hated that question. It was the question grieving parents asked of her, the question she always deflected with statistics and a cool professionalism. ‘But why do people go missing?’ she said, her voice small and hopeless. It was a stupid, unanswerable question. He nodded and cleared his throat, and she held her breath and tried to look him in the eye because it seemed as though he was going to say something important, something that might save her from the storm, that would bring Bea back, but fluid was running from her nose and from her mouth and eyes all over again.

‘The missing tend to fall into four categories: young people in care, men in their twenties, middle-aged men, and elderly people suffering from dementia. Sexual abuse, financial worries or mental illness are often the reason. It’s rare for women your sister’s age to take themselves off. Women tend to be firmly bedded into their lives, to family, friends and so forth, and that is why we are treating her case as high risk.’

‘You think that something’s happened to her?’

‘Most Mispers are found or return home of their own accord. It is only a very small number, a tiny number, to whom something untoward has happened.’

‘What we find,’ said the other man, ‘is that it’s never really a mystery. Somebody in the family always knows why they’ve gone. It may take a while till they realise they know. But it’s just a matter of time until they tell us.’

Katharine disliked what he was implying. Horrible little man, with his cheap shirt and brand-new trainers. She shook her head and snapped two migraine tablets from their foil. ‘Not Bea. This is completely out of character.’ No. Not Bea’s face fading on posters. Bea was solid and real. She was flesh and bone and blood, laughter and words and breath. Bea could not just vanish and melt away into nothing. Katharine fumbled about her for a tissue then reached again for one of theirs. She pressed it hard against her nose and mouth as if to block out the stench of death.

The phone rang again. Jim excused himself and answered it.

Mispers
. Katharine tried out the word silently inside her mouth. It had the papery whisper of something that could not be told; it had the shifty sibilance of secrets and of shame.

Jim hung up and told Pete that Erkan had just been found. ‘Got a train to Manchester and was picked up sleeping rough round the back of the station.’ He looked at Katharine. ‘This lad’s been missing three weeks. He stole money from his uncle to pay off a gambling debt. Then he was too afraid to go home.’

‘What shall I do?’ said Katharine. ‘I can’t just sit around waiting for her to turn up.’

‘We will be working with CID and conducting house-to-house interviews. They may carry out a thorough search of the area with dogs, helicopters and divers. But it’s early days yet. The chances are your sister will turn up.’

‘I see.’ But she wasn’t sure that she did. So now they were going to be looking for a body, not a live woman.

‘Often, when people take themselves off, they go back to places they knew well.’

‘Hastings,’ Katharine said. ‘It’s where we grew up.’ She got up to go and checked her watch. She was impatient now to get out of the room, away from the whiteboard with its names of the lost. There was no time to lose. She would find Bea herself. She would go to Hastings as soon as she possibly could. Not today, there was so much to do. Tomorrow perhaps. Or Sunday. Monday at the latest.

F
RANK SAT
in the kitchen and poured milk into his cup of tea. He had showered, put on clean clothes, shaved and trimmed his ears. The knock at the door made him jump, even though he had been waiting for it since breakfast.

Without uniform but wearing pale blue shirts and dark trousers, the two men on the doorstep looked more like salesmen than police officers. The tall, handsome one with the tie flipped his warrant card open. The silver badge flashed and Frank saw his eight-year-old self, fringed Stetson, sheriff’s star,
I’m the Milky Bar Kid and the Milky Bars are on me.

‘I’m Jim Woods from the Missing Persons Unit. Mr Frank Pamplin?’

An instant later the warrant card was flipped shut and back again in Jim Woods’s pocket. He introduced the smaller man without a tie, who looked like he could throw a punch or two.

In the kitchen they stood round the table and the tall one looked kindly at Frank while the short one cast his eyes around the room. Frank gestured vaguely at the sinkful of dirty tea cups and the curdled milk on the table and said, ‘I was just going to get some more milk.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Jim. ‘Is it all right if we sit down?’ He pulled his pocket book out. Frank nodded and sat across the kitchen table from him. Pete, the short one, stood with his back to the light. Frank wanted to see what he was doing, but it would have meant turning away from the tall one, who was looking him in the eye and straightening his tie.

‘I had a visit from the uniformed branch yesterday,’ Frank said.

‘There is some concern as to the whereabouts of your wife, Mr Pamplin.’

‘Can’t say I’m terribly confident about their powers of deduction.’ Frank chuckled, then wished he hadn’t. The informality of these men confused him. Was it sympathy or a trap?

‘Are you worried about your wife, Mr Pamplin?’

Well, that was a complicated question. They had to realise they were dealing with an intellectual here. Worried about Bea? Bea had always been able to look after herself. Worrying was Bea’s department. Writing was his. He pressed hard at the ache in his back and said, ‘Yes, of course I’m worried.’

Jim crossed his legs and began the questions, making brief notes as Frank answered. First, a description of Bea. Frank swept a glance round at Pete but couldn’t see his expression. He told them she had green eyes and was about the same height as himself. He wasn’t sure about her hair colour because it kept changing. He thought it was probably blondish. He had no idea how much she weighed, although she had put on a bit of weight recently. ‘I couldn’t lift her off the ground,’ he said. Jim’s pen paused.

‘We can usually get an idea from her clothes.’

‘Well, she buys enough of them,’ said Frank, risking a smile.

‘You wouldn’t believe how often we hear that,’ said Pete.

Frank relaxed a bit. He turned and smiled at Pete, at his boyish face and military haircut, but Pete was frowning at the floorboards.

Jim asked if they owned a car.

‘We do. It’s up the road. But she usually walked to work. You know, along the river.’

‘Quite a long walk. Wouldn’t it be quicker to take the bus?’

Frank shrugged. ‘Oh, she liked to walk. She needed the exercise, so she said. To keep her weight down. I told her running was what she needed for that.’

‘Can you tell us what she was wearing when she left for work yesterday morning?’

Frank swallowed. ‘She generally wore something fairly smart.’

Pete waited.

‘You know, dark. A skirt. Blouse. That kind of thing.’

‘Coat?’

‘Probably, although she did complain a lot about being too hot.’

‘Colour?’

‘Well that would depend which one she took.’

There was a pause. Pete flicked back through his notes. ‘What time exactly did she leave the house on Wednesday morning?’

Frank blushed and said, ‘Er . . .’

‘It’s quite important as you can appreciate,’ said Pete.

‘I didn’t actually hear her get up.’

Jim and Pete exchanged a look. ‘You mean you didn’t see her at all before she left for work?’

‘Not as such.’ Shame crouched in Frank’s chest. ‘I worked late the night before and slept on the couch downstairs.’

‘So the last positive sighting we have of your wife is Tuesday evening.’

Nobody spoke. It didn’t sound very good, Frank had to admit. Somebody cleared their throat.

‘Do you own a computer, Mr Pamplin?’

‘Yes.’ Frank’s voice was faint. He tried again. ‘Yes, I do.’

Jim looked at him and waited, but Frank had nothing more to say. His desultory late-night surfing would be there for all to see, he knew that, and some of it, especially after the second bottle of red, was not especially edifying.

‘Is it a shared computer or does your wife have her own?’

‘She has a laptop she brings home from work. My wife . . .’

Frank stopped. The word ‘wife’ hung in the air and he thought how Bea disliked the word. She said it sounded cold and sharp and that it was never a word the world used warmly. Jim was asking how long they had been married, while Pete was looking out at the garden. Frank said they had only been married a few years but had been together for ten. Pete looked in the vase on the low shelf by the door and found the door key. Frank heard himself saying that Bea’s sister, Katharine, persuaded them to get married because of inheritance tax and pensions. Bea made him promise not to call her his wife. I’m still Bea, married or not, she said, and Adrian had said, To be or not to be, is that the question?