A Velvet Scream (23 page)

She found Beth and Philip Carraway quietly dignified with tightly reined in emotions. They sat together, motionless, on the sofa while she tried to convince them that the investigating team had had a productive day. It didn't fool either of them; least of all her. And yet. And yet. She couldn't tell them but those last interviews had unearthed something. They simply listened as she said her piece, their eyes numb.

Philip Carraway set his mouth tightly against any display of grief. ‘Is there anything
we
can do, Inspector?'

‘Not really. Sit tight. Let me know if you remember anything that might have some significance.'

She didn't even bother adding,
And let me know if you hear from your daughter.

‘What sort of thing?' He was still being polite.

‘Any hint of a relationship you recall, any ideas you might have. Have you checked all her friends and family?'

‘Yes, yes,' Carraway said impatiently. ‘Of course we have. But even if we hadn't they would have rung.'

‘Her mobile?'

‘Off. Straight to answerphone.' He was sounding angrier now. Joanna looked at him in surprise. She had assumed the emotion they had been reining in so tightly was grief, anxiety, desperation, even. But now she looked at them closer she understood that there was another component. They were still angry with their daughter for her deception.

Molly's parents looked at each other. This time it was Beth Carraway who spoke. She cleared her throat first. ‘Inspector,' she said, in her soft voice, ‘we don't know that we can help you.'

She dabbed her eyes with a tissue while Joanna waited for her to explain. ‘You see –' She shot a look at her husband. ‘We've been wondering,' she almost whispered, ‘whether we really knew Molly at all.' She made an attempt to explain and Joanna wondered what on earth was coming next. But even she was unprepared for the bombshell. ‘We thought she was serious,' Beth continued, ‘about going to university, concentrating on her studies and work. Now we find that she was lying to us all the time. Clara tells me that they were going out a couple of times a week, to that horrible club. We thought she was spending time with Clara, studying. Her grades at school were nothing like as good as she told us. And she didn't give us the letter about the latest parent-teacher meeting in the middle of November. We're finding out, Inspector, that Molly, our daughter, was deceitful. We're finding that almost as hard to come to terms with as her disappearance.' Beth's eyes were pale blue and met Joanna's with a look of complete confusion and hurt. ‘We gave her everything,' she said, echoing the cries of so many middle-class parents. ‘Every advantage. She had a stable and comfortable home life, a private education. Everything.'

Joanna could hardly believe her ears. Was this another, new manifestation of grief? So she found herself in the bizarre situation of defending the missing girl. ‘Molly's just a normal, average teenager,' she said. ‘I wouldn't think too badly of her. She's not the first to lead her parents up the garden path.'

Besides,
she thought, feeling the unreality of the situation,
she's probably dead. No university. No swotting, no parent/teachers' meeting; just a bloody funeral.

That was when Philip Carraway lost it and Joanna saw inside the life Molly Carraway must have led. ‘Up the garden path?' he exclaimed furiously. ‘Up the garden path? What you mean, Inspector, is that our daughter was a liar. A liar,' he almost screamed. Out of the corner of her eye Joanna marvelled that Beth Carraway's hand was stealing
into
her husband's. She obviously condoned his outburst of righteous indignation. Carraway's eyes were bulging. ‘Had my daughter been honest,' he said, ‘she would be here, with us. And you, Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy, would not.' There was real venom in his voice.

Aghast, Joanna sat very still, now pondering a new angle. Was this an extreme manifestation of Philip Carraway's grief and worry? Or was it something else? Had Molly Carraway so disappointed her parents that  . . .?

It seemed incredible. And yet.

Joanna left with a heavy heart and a sick misgiving after giving them her mobile phone number. Her mind was frantically disturbed, tracking outwards furiously, in a new and terrible direction. Had she been barking up the wrong tree? Should she have looked a little closer to home for the missing girl? Were the three cases all part of the same picture – or not?

She looked at her watch. It was seven o'clock. Korpanski would be back home. She was tempted to drop by his house and talk this over with him but Fran Korpanski would not welcome her. She had resented Joanna from the first and now had a new reason for hating her. Joanna had put her husband's life in danger.

She drove home through a space invaders' display of swirling snowflakes which gave her the illusion she was travelling through time itself. Two teenage girls, both now labelled ‘liars' by their parents. No, in the case of Kayleigh, only one parent. So what did her stepfather and natural father think of her? She hadn't pursued this angle of enquiry perhaps as much as she should. She rang the station from her car phone and asked them to fix up an interview with Neil Bretby on the following day and made a note to ask Hesketh-Brown if he was any nearer tracking down Peter Harrison. While they had no leads on Molly she may as well put the heat on Kayleigh. And what about Danielle? she wondered. What would she have been able to contribute to the investigation had she lived?

It was late when she finally drew up outside Waterfall Cottage, parked and walked up the path. Eloise's car was, hooray, gone. Matthew had left the curtains open though she had warned him about this on numerous occasions. ‘You're a sitting target,' she'd said but he'd merely laughed. ‘Who on earth would want to target me, Jo? We're in the Staffordshire moorlands, not the middle of Johannesburg. It's safe enough out here.'

The trouble was that in spite of his work as a forensic pathologist she and Matthew inhabited different worlds. Hers was populated by thieves and liars, cheats and people who believed the law did not apply to them so they could do what they liked: rape, torture, steal and kill. Most of Matthew's post mortems were on people who had died in their beds of natural causes. Even he rarely met the victims of crime and
never
talked to their damaged families. Like most pathologists much of Matthew's day was spent peering down a microscope at tissue samples.

She peeped in through the window and smiled. While he might pretend to be watching BBC
News 24
, in reality he was lying stretched out across the sofa fast asleep, his breathing peaceful and regular. She let herself in quietly and woke him with a kiss. For just a moment he looked sleepy and confused, his blond hair tousled like a child's. She felt overwhelming affection for him and relief that they were again alone. His face broke into a smile as he fed her the usual line. ‘I wasn't asleep,' he said, just as she'd guessed he would. ‘I was just dozing until you came home.'

‘I bet,' she challenged, then gave him another kiss – on the mouth this time, feeling warm with affection when, without warning, a thunderbolt hit her and she spoke her truth without thinking. ‘I wish we didn't have to go through all that stuff,' she said, settling down beside him.

Matthew sat up. ‘What do you mean,
all that stuff
?' There was a razor edge to his voice which should have warned her.

‘Oh, you know,' she said. ‘The wedding. I wish we could just go on as we are. Why can't we?'

He was silent and still and she knew, too late, that she'd upset him – again. ‘I'm sorry,' she said and clumsily tried to rectify the situation. ‘What I mean is – the
actual
wedding. Just that, Matthew.' She reached out for his hand. ‘I don't mean I don't want to be married. It just seems such a lot of palaver for basically nothing different. Know what I mean?'

‘Not sure I do, Jo,' he answered slowly. ‘Not – quite – sure.'

She could think of nothing that would heal the situation, so kept quiet.

Matthew sought neutral ground. ‘Any news about the missing girl?'

She shook her head. ‘Though I had a rather unpleasant insight into Molly Carraway's home life today.' She related the conversation the Carraways had had with her.

Matthew's eyebrows rose a fraction.

‘Now I'm wondering whether she's taken off, perhaps with a boyfriend.'

‘Surely her friend, whats-her-name, Clara, would know if Molly had had a boyfriend?'

‘Mmm. Not necessarily. I'm beginning to realize that Molly could be quite cleverly secretive. A devious little thing, really. Maybe I should go into the school and speak to some of her classmates. What do you think, Matt?'

‘The school won't like that. It's not the best of publicity for an independent, having the police in.'

‘Maybe. But if it helps us find out what's happened to her it's worth ruffling a few feathers.'

Matthew smiled. Then his face changed. ‘So what's bothering you?'

‘The father,' she said simply. ‘He was so – unforgiving. So – censorious, so prepared to reject his own daughter because she told a lie about where she was going. She'd have told her parents the truth if she could have, I'm sure.'

‘And?'

Now she could voice her concern. ‘What if he found out about the lies, followed her to Patches, laid in wait outside and then  . . . took her?'

‘That's a terrible accusation, Jo.'

‘I'm not making an accusation at all,' she said. ‘I'm just going over things. Exploring possibilities.'

‘But what could Philip Carraway have had to do with the other girls?'

‘Mm,' she said. ‘See what you mean. Nothing.'

She sneaked a glance at him, realized she had all his attention, and risked it. ‘Matthew,' she wheedled, ‘you did the post mortem on Danielle Brixton?'

‘Yes.'

‘Can I ask you something about it?'

‘Anything you like,' he said indulgently, stretching his legs out in front of him and giving her a smile that warmed her right through.

‘Did she need to die?'

‘Sorry?'

‘If she had had medical treatment is it possible she would have lived?'

‘Oh, yes,' he said. ‘Undoubtedly. Hospital, antibiotics, oxygen; all a few hours earlier. She could have made it. She was young and healthy.'

‘So, in a way, it was murder.'

‘Well, manslaughter – though you probably wouldn't get it past the CPS.'

‘Mmm. Was she a virgin?'

‘It's hard to tell these days; probably not.'

Their conversation was interrupted by the telephone's intrusive and insistent ring. Joanna was tempted to leave it but Matthew always worried it might be Eloise. Besides, he ‘remembered' when he was almost picking up the receiver that her mother had instructed him that Joanna call back ‘the very minute' she got home. He handed her the phone with a rueful grin.

It was her mother. A one-sided conversation followed: about Lara who was still vacillating about whether she wanted to be a bridesmaid at all, about long lost relatives, a ticking off for concentrating so hard on work when there was still so much to do before the wedding, being so late back when she had a fiancé waiting for her. Give her mother her due, Joanna thought, she could really talk. By the time she had rung off Joanna felt exhausted – and guilt ridden.

Matthew held out his arms. ‘I can think of something that'll cheer you up,' he whispered into her ear. ‘Close your eyes. Now think blue sky, white sand, hot, sunny, fabulous beaches, surf rolling, white as snow, sea so clear you can see your feet beneath you. Lovely, lovely food, sweet fruit and drinks, all fresh. Keep your eyes shut,' he ordered. ‘Keep thinking. Swimming in a sparkling blue sea, underneath a perfect sky with no clouds, diving coral reefs and snorkelling, fish streaming through your fingers if you splay them out, birds of paradise screaming through the trees. Think paperbacks by the pool; think honeymoon. And now you can open your eyes.' His eyes were bright and warm and his smile very broad. He was laughing. And now she was too.

‘Oh, Matt,' she said. ‘Surely our honeymoon can't hold all that?'

‘It had better,' he said, ‘or I shall want my money back.' He paused, before adding in a different tone, ‘and it's less than four weeks away.'

Tuesday, 7 December. 8.30 a.m.

The day began awkwardly. As soon as she arrived at the station she was summoned by Chief Superintendent Arthur Colclough to ‘update' him on the current case.

‘How are your investigations going?'

‘Slowly, sir.'

‘I take it you have some leads?'

She shook her head. ‘Not a lot, sir, I'm afraid. I've got ideas and there's a lot that doesn't fit together.'

‘You have a girl alive, though, Piercy.'

‘Yes, sir, but she's not a very reliable witness.'

‘Why not?'

‘She's brought apparently spurious allegations against her stepfather and was very drunk at the time of the assault.'

‘Any other lines of enquiry?'

‘I'm a little uncomfortable about Molly Carraway's parents' attitude towards her frequenting nightclubs.'

‘A little uncomfortable doesn't sound a lot to go on, Piercy.'

‘No, sir.'

‘Anything else?'

‘The gang of men who were celebrating the thirtieth birthday would benefit from further scrutiny.'

‘Mmm. So what's on the agenda today, then?' he demanded.

She explained that she had arranged to meet up with Kayleigh Harrison's stepfather and they were hoping to track down Kayleigh's natural father to try and ascertain how much her stories were to be believed. But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, Colclough frowned. ‘Why aren't you concentrating on young Molly Carraway? She's the one who's missing – and getting all the headlines.'