Authors: Barry Maitland
Bren arrived in mid-afternoon, followed soon after by Brock, who was not happy. The preliminary results from the post-mortem were inconclusive, and added little to what they already knew. All would depend on the forensic evidence, which would take days. Bren too was frustrated. After hours on the phone, working through the lists he had compiled at the National Theatre, he had been able to speak to only two people who were seated within a few rows of Angela’s place. Neither could recollect whether the seat beside her had been occupied.
The prospect of days of futile phone calls and interviews, the sense of being miles away from the truth, grew as the hot afternoon wore on, and was heightened by Ted, who would stop in mid-sentence whenever a phone rang, and glance surreptitiously at his watch every few minutes. Brock sent him home at 6:00. At 9:00 Bren and Kathy were still at the desks they’d been allocated in the Orpington station.
“I’d best get going,” Bren said to her. “Want a lift back to town?”
They stopped for a hamburger on the road back, and Bren put his exasperation into words. “This is busy-work, Kathy. Filling in time.” He stretched his back and yawned.
“You think so?”
He nodded. “The theatre is irrelevant. So is the boyfriend. He and his mates didn’t do this, and neither did anyone within a mile of the National Theatre that night.”
“Who did, then?”
“A madman. Some evil, crazy bastard, out cruising the suburbs in the night, looking for a woman on her own.”
“The monster theory,” Kathy said.
Bren looked sharply at her to see if she was being sarcastic, then saw she was serious. “Yes, a monster, if you like. Some lunatic who’s sat watching a few too many sick videos at home on his
own, and decides to go out and play Freddy Kruger for real. God knows, there’s enough sick bastards out there.”
“Why did he come to her street?”
“Why not? Any one would do. He has no connection with Angela Hannaford, or Petts Wood, or anything else that we’re likely to come across. It was random. He just kept driving till he spotted someone who would do.”
“How would he have known that her house was empty?”
“He didn’t know that, not at first. That was a bonus, gave him more time. He could just as easily have done it in his car, or taken her to the woods.”
“How will we catch him, then?”
“We won’t. Not unless he’s got a record and left some prints, which seems unlikely, or got stopped for speeding on the way home and the copper noticed something odd, which is even less likely, or someone reports some bugger washing bloodstained clothes down at the local laundrette . . .” He shook his head. “We won’t catch him. Not until he does it again, if he makes a mistake, or the time after that . . .”
Bren’s pessimism worried Kathy. She remembered him as a big, cheerful bear of a man, quietly infecting the others with his confidence, and remembered Brock’s comment about him having too much on his plate.
“Why are we doing this, then?” she asked.
“Because we have to do something. Because the girl’s parents have to believe we can do something.”
“Yes. I thought I’d go and see them tomorrow. It was difficult to get much out of them yesterday. Maybe they’ll feel more like talking now.”
“I’m sure they will, Kathy. I’m sure they will. Good luck.”
Bren took another bite out of his burger, then tossed it down in disgust.
“This is shit,” he said, his jaw tight with anger.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING KATHY
decided to retrace Angela’s journey home on the night she died. She took the tube to Charing Cross as she had the previous morning, but this time walked across the Thames on the footway on the Hungerford railway bridge, alongside the heavy rumble of the commuter trains bringing their loads up from the south. Once again it was a brilliant, sunny morning, promising a continuation of the heatwave, and the skyline of the City beyond the river to the east, of St. Paul’s and the NatWest Tower and its lesser clones, was enveloped by haze. She took the steps at the far end of the bridge down to the quiet expanse of terrace in front of the Festival Hall, and walked along the river through the precinct of cultural concrete which separated it from the National Theatre beyond Waterloo Bridge.
It was difficult, on such a morning, to picture the crowd spilling out of the theatre on that warm Saturday night, to see the boardmarked concrete made magic by floodlighting and mysterious shadows, and to visualize one single woman among the milling, chattering crowd, carefully folding her programme into her bag, and then walking away to catch the last train home.
Kathy followed the route she thought Angela would have taken southward to Waterloo station, bought a single ticket for Petts
Wood, and then, as she turned to make for the barriers, found herself confronted by Angela’s smiling face.
The picture had been enlarged from a snap her father had taken of her that spring, in the garden at number 32. Her fair hair was held back from her forehead by a simple band, and her smile was playfully scolding, as if she’d just looked up and realized her picture was being taken. She was wearing no make-up or jewellery. The wording on the poster read, “This woman caught the 11:08 p.m. train from Waterloo to Petts Wood on the evening of Saturday, 8 September. Did you catch that train? Did you see her? Contact the Metropolitan Police on these numbers.”
On this second journey along the corridor of Angela’s London, Kathy began to recognize features and landmarks from the previous day. The difference was that, although her own train was again almost deserted, the rest of the system was in convulsive action, the city-bound trains packed with rush-hour crowds crammed behind the windows of the carriages, and the station platforms dense with rushing figures. The suppressed violence of commuting struck her, of squeezing into a metal tube in one part of the city, of being crushed against sweaty strangers for a while and then abruptly ejected into a charging mob in another part.
She recognized the names of the stations—Hither Green, Grove Park, Elmstead Woods, and then through dark woodland and out on to the long straight to Petts Wood and Orpington.
There were more posters of Angela on the metal bridge across the station at Petts Wood. Kathy took the steps down the east side and walked around the Tudorbethan loop of Station Square, with the half-timbered bulk of the Daylight Inn at its centre, named in honour of the district’s most famous citizen, William Willett, the inventor of daylight saving time, appropriately enough for a community regulated by the clockwork discipline of the railway timetable.
The lights of the taxi rank and the shop windows would have
finished here
, she thought,
and then it would have been the street lights, partly screened by the thick summer foliage of the trees. Would you notice someone following on rubber soles? Or a car gliding slowly past, stopping around the next corner, its lights extinguished? At what point would he make his approach, ask to use her phone to get help for a girlfriend in the car, perhaps, suffering an asthma attack? Was there anyone else at home, he might ask, who could help him lift her out of the car? No, no one. I’m all alone. Come inside. Use the phone.
As she walked the deserted suburban streets, heavy with the aroma of roses and cyclamen, murmuring with the sound of bees and foliage stirring, the sense of unreality and suspended time returned to Kathy.
The crimes that happen here happen indoors, hidden from the public eye by lush, lovingly tended gardens. Private crimes. Family crimes. And the occasional thunderbolt from outside.
Mrs. Hannaford looked as if she’d aged ten years in the previous forty-eight hours. Weeping and lack of sleep had drained the colour and the muscle tone from her face, which sagged around the despairing points of her eyes. Her husband’s face, by contrast, had hardened in the interval. His big head was fixed in an expression of grim outrage. The contrast between them was heightened by the distance at which they sat apart, as if they were suffering in isolation, without reference to one another. Glenys sat in the same armchair as before, beside the fireplace, while Basil Hannaford took the settee against the wall farthest from it, leaving Kathy to take the other armchair, at the third point of a remote triangle.
“I’m so sorry to intrude again. You must have seen more than enough of us over the last couple of days,” Kathy began, lamely trying to break the heavy silence. “I have a list here of men that Angela may have known socially or through her work. I wonder if you could help us by suggesting any more names for that list.”
Kathy gave a copy each to the silent couple. Mrs. Hannaford lowered her head to the piece of paper in her lap, but Kathy wasn’t sure that she was really focusing on it.
Basil Hannaford glared at his copy. “I’ve never heard of some of these people. Clive Ferry is the manager where she works, isn’t he? What is the point of this?”
“We want to eliminate everyone who was known to Angela from our inquiries, if we can,” Kathy answered gently.
“Why would you imagine that the man was known to her?” He was speaking through clenched teeth, with the air of someone who has been taken advantage of once and is determined not to let it happen again.
“We don’t know that, of course. But he was able to get in without forcing an entry, apparently . . .”
“It’s perfectly obvious what happened, surely!” His anger came bursting through his self-control. “He came up behind her as she was opening the front door to let herself in. He pushed his way in and she dropped her bag!”
Mrs. Hannaford gave an agonized sob.
“That’s quite possible . . .”
“This is utterly useless!” He crumpled the paper in a sudden violent gesture. “You must have names, on your computers, of perverts, don’t you? The sort of filth who could have done this?”
“Yes . . .”
“Well, are you rounding them up? Are you?”
“That is another of our lines of inquiry, Mr. Hannaford. However, we’ll be better placed to do that when we have the results of the forensic tests in a few days. They should help to narrow . . .”
“A few days! And in the meantime he’ll have gone to ground, covered his tracks! I find this utterly astounding.”
“I can assure you . . .” Kathy tried again, but it was clear that Hannaford’s anger was not going to be mollified.
“I would be obliged if you would ask your superior officer—what was his name?”
“Detective Chief Inspector Brock.”
Hannaford grimly made a note on a small telephone pad at his
elbow. “. . . If you would ask Detective Chief Inspector Brock to come here in person next time. We would like
him
to report to us on his progress, within twenty-four hours.”
Kathy took a deep breath. “I’ll tell him, sir. Mrs. Hannaford, there is one thing perhaps you can tell me. Did Angela ever speak of being annoyed or pestered by anyone, at work perhaps, or on the train?”
There was a moment’s silence, then Glenys rocked her head from side to side. Her husband gave a grunt of exasperation and got to his feet.
When she reached the front door, Kathy turned to face him. “Mr. Hannaford, I do understand . . .”
“You have no idea whatsoever, young woman.” There was a panel of yellow tinted glass in the oak front door, and the light from it glowed unpleasantly on Hannaford’s angry face. “She belonged to me, and he took her.”
Kathy was startled by his choice of words, and she stared at him, her throat tight. But the choice was deliberate, and he repeated it.
“She belonged to me!”
He reached past her shoulder abruptly and opened the front door.
KATHY HAD BEGUN TO
walk back to the railway station when she stopped and retraced her steps. She passed the Hannafords’ house and rang the bell of number 30, next door. Pamela Ratcliffe, the woman who had spoken to her when she had first arrived at the scene on Sunday, answered.
“Yes, I do remember you,” she said. “Some of your other people came to take statements from us.” She led Kathy briskly through to the rear of the house. It had originally been identical to the Hannafords’, but the dark timber had been painted a pale grey, the floors polished, and with modern chrome and leather furniture
it was unrecognizably light and airy where the other was dark and claustrophobic.
“Have you had a chance to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Hannaford at all, Mrs. Ratcliffe?”
The other woman made an uneasy grimace. “I tried. I called round yesterday, but . . . Glenys is under sedation, and Basil . . . I don’t know. He’s very bitter. It’s completely understandable, of course. I’m doing their shopping for them, although, in a way, I wondered if it might be better if they got out and spoke to people. I suppose they will when they’re ready.”
“Have they had visitors, do you know?”
“I’ve seen the doctor’s car there. And yesterday, when I was weeding in the garden, I saw their vicar call in. He didn’t stay long.”
There was a sudden burst of pop music from somewhere close by.
“Warwick’s having his breakfast in the kitchen,” Mrs. Ratcliffe said. “I let him sleep in later during the school holidays. Quite often he stays up late at night with his radio. It’s his hobby.”
“Listening to the radio?”
“No.” Mrs. Ratcliffe smiled and pointed out into the garden through the new aluminium sliding doors. For the first time, Kathy noticed the spidery structure of aerials and masts that were threaded through the silver birch trees. “He gets messages from all around the world, and he transmits them as well. He built it all, with his dad’s help.”
Kathy had already noticed a portrait photograph of father and son grinning at the camera, both with the same shock of red hair and wearing similar large round glasses.
“They had a bit of trouble with the neighbours for a while.” Mrs. Ratcliffe rolled her eyes, as if to say that boys will be boys. “They were causing interference with everybody’s TVs. The Hannafords got particularly agitated at one point, so we introduced
the eleven o’clock rule. He’s not allowed to transmit before 11:00 p.m., when everyone’s switched off for the night.”