Authors: Elena Forbes
‘Is it your ego you’re worried about, or your job?’
He shook his head in disgust. ‘I should never have let you in the door.’
She sighed. ‘Stop being so paranoid, will you? I came over to see you because I wanted to. It seemed like a good idea at the time. End of story. It had nothing to do with your job or mine.’ She held up her hand before he could get a word in. ‘And no, I didn’t snoop around your flat and no, I certainly didn’t look in your notebook. Whatever we did and said is between the two of us.’
Instinctively, he knew she was lying. ‘That’s not good enough and you know it. What we both did was wrong. The only difference is that my job’s on the line if anyone finds out.’
‘Trust me, they won’t. Now, I’ve really got to get a move on. I’ll catch up with you later.’
The address given for Danielle Henderson in the missing person report was half way down York Road, in the Montpelier area of Bristol. Like many of the older parts of the city, the street was narrow and on a hill, with a mixture of modest, multi-coloured Georgian terraced houses, Victorian buildings and modern council housing. The house was on three floors, the front painted a faded, damp-stained peach, with a weatherbeaten eighteenth century porch and sash windows. Cars were tightly parked along both sides of the street and there were no gaps anywhere. Leaving Chang to find a space in one of the neighbouring streets, Donovan got out and rang the bell. It was answered moments later by a small, bird-like woman with greasy, dyed blonde hair scraped loosely back in a short ponytail.
‘Yes?’ She eyed Donovan suspiciously, a lit cigarette clamped between bony fingers. At first glance, she looked far too old to be Danielle’s mother, with a deeply lined face and the papery grey skin of a heavy smoker.
Donovan held up her ID. ‘I’m from the Metropolitan Police. I’m trying to locate Susan Henderson.’
‘What do you want with her?’
‘It’s to do with her daughter, Danielle.’
Her watery eyes widened. ‘It’s Danni. We called her Danni. So you’ve found her, then?’
‘Are you Susan?’
‘No. I’m Reenie. I’m Susan’s mother. Susan passed away two years ago.’ She spoke with a throaty, West Country accent. ‘Danni’s dead, isn’t she?’ Her expression was resigned, as if bad news was something she was accustomed to.
‘I’m afraid so. May I come in?’
‘I knew all along Danni hadn’t run off, like they said,’ she muttered, moving aside to let Donovan pass. She closed the front door and shuffled away along the narrow corridor. The house was airless and smelled strongly of stale cigarette smoke, as though nobody had opened a window in years. Reenie was wearing fluffy pink slippers in the shape of Garfield and looked painfully thin under her loose-fitting tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt. Donovan followed her into a small kitchen at the back, which looked out onto a sloping strip of overgrown garden. The room was painted a pastel shade of blue, with a border of flying seagulls pasted around the top. In a corner by the sink was a cage. Inside, a sparrow sat puffed up on a perch asleep.
Reenie stubbed out the butt of her cigarette in a saucer on the counter and turned to Donovan. ‘Have a seat.’ She gestured vaguely towards a couple of chairs and a small, yellow Formica table that was pushed up against the wall. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
Donovan pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘Thanks. If you’re having one.’
‘Yes. I need one, after what you just told me.’ Reenie switched on the kettle and took down a couple of mugs from a shelf, which she wiped methodically with a tea towel.
‘Sugar?’ she asked, as the kettle pinged.
‘One, please.’
‘And milk?’
‘Just a drop.’
As Reenie prepared the tea, the sparrow started to make harsh chirruping sounds from the cage. Donovan turned round to look at him. It was almost as though he was shouting for attention and he was standing up on his perch, looking straight at her, his head cocked to one side, black eyes glittering in the light from the window.
‘Don’t mind Steve,’ Reenie said, coming over to the table with the tea. ‘He’s just a nosy parker. Won’t mind his own business and he wants to know who you are. It’s not often we get company.’ She sat down opposite Donovan and passed her a mug. It looked well-used, the side decorated with one of the signs of the Zodiac printed in dull gold. Reenie’s had a picture of Sagittarius, Donovan noticed, while hers was Pisces. She wondered if it had belonged to Susan or Danielle. The tea looked good and strong, but it was too hot to drink and she put it down on the table to cool.
‘You’re sure it’s Danni?’ Reenie asked, taking a sip of hers.
‘As far as we can be, at this stage. We’ll need to take a DNA swab from you to see if there’s a match. If you had the name of her dentist that would also help. In the meantime, I wonder if you recognise these?’
She took the colour photocopies of the earrings out of her bag and handed them to Reenie, who stared at the images for a moment, then closed her eyes. ‘Those are my earrings. At least, they belonged to my mother. She gave them to me just before she died. I thought I’d lost them. Trust Danni to have taken them.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Reenie shook her head. ‘Where did you say you found her?’
‘Her remains were in a lake in between Bristol and Bath. From what we know, she went to a party given by some students who were living near the lake and died there. This would have been in June, or possibly early July, 1991. I’m afraid we’re treating her death as murder.’
Reenie met her gaze with burning eyes. ‘Murder?’ She sank back against her chair. ‘Dear Lord. I suppose it had to be, didn’t it? I mean, if she’d had an accident or something, she’d have turned up sooner. What happened?’
‘It looks as though she was strangled.’
She swallowed hard. ‘Sweet Jesus! Do you know who did it?’
‘We have a suspect, but that’s all I can say for the moment. I need to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.’
Reenie nodded and hunched over her tea, her hand clamped tightly around the mug. Donovan saw tears in her eyes. After a moment, she got up, grabbed a tissue from a box by the sink and blew her nose loudly. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then, fumbling, helped herself to a Silk Cut from a packet on the counter. Her fingers were trembling as she lit up. She took a long, deep pull as though struggling for air, then leaned back against the cupboards. ‘I’ve been hanging on waiting for this day for so long. I can’t tell you what it’s been like. I couldn’t say nothing to Susan, but I knew Danni was dead. I just wish my Susan was still here. She’d have given anything just to know what happened.’
‘You said Susan died.’
She nodded. ‘She was only fifty. It was cancer, they said, but I know it was Danni’s going missing. It cracked her up and she went to pieces after that. She wouldn’t get out of bed, wouldn’t go to work, wouldn’t see her friends or anyone, really. The pills the doctor gave her only made it worse. Right through it all, she was always so sure Danni was still alive. She tried everything she could to find her and she spent all her savings on some psychic who said he’d help her find Danni. But he was just a charlatan. Even I could see that, but she was so desperate I said nothing. You can’t imagine what it’s like, losing your child, not knowing all this time what’d happened to her. No parent should have to outlive a child, let alone a grandchild. I hope you find whoever did this.’
‘We will,’ Donovan said with as much conviction as she could muster.
‘I’ve never thought the death penalty was the answer, but whoever did this deserves to be strung up. They’ve ruined three lives.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ Donovan said.
Reenie gave a wheezy sigh. ‘Thank you. I can see you mean it, which is more than I can say for the police what come here when Danni disappeared. They was worse than useless.’
‘We’ll need to contact Danni’s father,’ Donovan said. ‘Do you have an address for him?’
‘Colin? I haven’t a clue where the sod is. There’s no love lost between him and me, I can tell you.’
‘We’ll still need to contact him.’
‘How I hate that man. They were childhood sweethearts, him and Susan. When he ran off with that little teenage whore while he was out in Northern Ireland, it broke Susan’s heart, it did.’
‘He was in the army?’
‘That’s right. Upped and left Susan and Danni high and dry, without a penny or a roof over their heads. That’s why they had to come live with me. When he tried to wheedle his way back in, I saw him off. I told him exactly where he could go. They were both so soft, they’d have had him back at the drop of a hat, but I was having none of it. I gave him what I had in my savings account and told him to bugger off. He was one of those . . . what do they call ’em . . . ?’ She waved her frail hand vaguely in the air. ‘Serial adulterer. Isn’t that it? Never could resist a short skirt and a pretty face, he couldn’t, and the younger the better. He’d only’ve broken Susan’s heart all over again.’
‘What about Danni? Was he close to her?’
She nodded. ‘He doted on Danni, I’ll say that for him. She could do no wrong in his eyes. He used to call her his little princess and he’d heap presents on her whenever he came home. It was difficult for Susan to see how close they was. But it didn’t stop him messing around, though, did it? When Danni went missing, my first thought was she’d run off to him. It’s what the police thought too. But then they told me he’d gone straight back to Northern Ireland after the Gulf War ended, so I knew for sure something must’ve happened to her. However silly she was, she’d never run off on her own and leave us with no word. At heart, she was a good, sweet girl, however they tried to paint her. When he come home and found out about her being missing, he was round here straight away, threatening to kill us both like we’d had something to do with it. It was truly frightening.’
‘Do you know where he is now?’
Reenie stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Abroad. Last I heard, he was out in the Middle East somewhere, working for some security company. Your best bet’s to try the army. They should know how to find him.’
‘Which regiment was he in?’
‘The Light Infantry, although he left a while ago. Maybe they’ll have an address or something on file.’
‘Do you have a photograph of him, by any chance?’
‘There’s one up in Danni’s room. He sent it to her just before she went missing. I remember the fuss I had trying to get a frame she liked. Nothing was good enough. I’d have chucked it long ago but Susan wouldn’t let me. She wanted it all kept just the way Danni left it. Before she died, she made me promise again not to touch it, in case Danni’d come home. I told her Danni’d be a woman by now and she wouldn’t want it like that no more, but she wouldn’t hear a word of it. Danni was still her little girl. I go up there sometimes to dust and hoover. Maybe now Danni’s dead, I’ll have a clearout. Perhaps Susan wouldn’t mind now.’
‘Would it be ok if I took a look?’
‘Help yourself,’ she said, lighting another Silk Cut. ‘It’s the room on the top floor. Why don’t you go ahead while I tidy up here, then I’ll follow you.’
33
Danielle’s room was right at the top of the house. Listening to make sure that Reenie was still safely downstairs, Donovan called Tartaglia to tell him about Colin Henderson. His mobile rang, then went through to voicemail. Not bothering to leave a message, she called Steele, who was at her desk, and explained what she had learned. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take long for them to trace Henderson and find out if he was still abroad.
As soon as they were finished, she tucked her phone away in her pocket and gazed around the small room. An old Japanese paper lantern hung from the centre of the ceiling like an enormous white moon. The furnishings were makeshift, but the room was clean and tidy. Light flooded in through the window and it must have been a pleasant place to be, with a nice view of the little Georgian houses opposite, one periwinkle blue, one yellow and one a soft pink. Like many teenage girls’ rooms, the walls were plastered with posters and torn-out pages from magazines of actors and pop stars. She recognised a young Jason Donovan, Michael Keaton as Batman and Kevin Costner in
No Way Out
. A small collection of CDs were stacked by the player. The Bangles, Cure, R.E.M., Guns N’ Roses, Sinead O’Connor, B52s. It took her straight back and it struck her for the first time that she and Danielle were the same vintage. She wondered why it hadn’t occurred to her before. In her mind, and no doubt in that of everyone who had known her apart from her grandmother, Danielle would be forever frozen at the age she had been when she disappeared.
The bed under the window looked freshly made, the duvet cover a girlish riot of pink and purple peonies, with a moth-eaten, one-eyed teddy bear lying against the pillow. Fourteen: that awkward transitional period between girl and womanhood. She noticed a hairbrush lying on top of the small chest of drawers. Like everything else in the room, it too had been thoroughly cleaned, but there were still a few strands of pale blonde hair caught amongst the bristles, maybe left for sentimental reasons. It might still hold some DNA that could be matched with the body, if needed, although with the earrings there no longer seemed any room for doubt. A shelf unit above the desk held a small collection of books and a framed photograph of a man who Donovan assumed was Colin Henderson. He was wearing uniform and was attractive in a rugged sort of way, with short black hair and blue eyes. He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties at the time. She took it down from the shelf and, turning it over, found a small colour photo of two young girls sellotaped to the back. It had been roughly cut from a strip taken in a photo booth. They were squeezed into the small cubicle, heavily made up, grinning at the camera, their arms locked around each other. It took her a moment to realise that the blonde one was Danielle. She looked nothing like the girl in the photograph in the missing person report. Wondering what had happened to the other photos and if they had been hidden to escape Susan’s censorship, she heard Reenie’s hacking cough on the stairs behind her.
‘Is this Colin?’ Donovan asked, turning around with the photo as she entered the room.
Reenie nodded, steadying herself against the doorframe for a moment. ‘Handsome devil, isn’t he? Give me a plain man any day. They’re much less worry.’
‘What about this? Is this Danni?’ She held up the small photograph.
Reenie shuffled over to where she was standing and took it, holding it up to the light and peering at it short-sightedly. Then she nodded. ‘Where’d you find it?’
‘It was taped to the back of this frame.’
‘Danni must have put it there. Fancy nobody noticing. Susan hated her dressing up like that and wearing make-up.’
‘Who’s the girl with her?’
‘That’s Amber. Amber Wiseman.’ Donovan picked up a sharpness in her tone.
‘I gather you didn’t like her.’
‘Amber was trouble.’
‘I went to see her mother this morning . . .’
‘Frances? I wouldn’t pay no heed to her. I doubt she’s changed much, although age is a humbling thing for a woman like that. I often wonder what would’ve happened if Danni hadn’t met Amber. Maybe she’d still be here now.’
‘You really think that?’ Donovan asked, trying to marry this up with what she had learned from Frances that morning.
‘I do. And if you want the honest truth, I’d say the rot started with the mother. She had no morals.’
Donovan looked at her surprised. She hadn’t particularly warmed to Frances, but she seemed quite harmless, although it was difficult to imagine how she had been twenty years before. ‘Isn’t that a bit strong?’ she said, curious, hoping to provoke Reenie into saying more.
‘I’m telling you, that woman was no better than she should be. The permissive society, isn’t that what they used to call it? She’d leave Amber on her own far more than is good for a young girl and it gave Amber ideas. She’d come and go as she pleased, any time of the day or night, just like a bloomin’ adult. From what I know, Frances’d be off out somewhere else most nights. According to Amber, she’d been getting her own supper and putting herself to bed since she was six. Can you believe it? It’s no wonder Amber turned out the way she did. Susan once went round their place to get Danni after she’d stayed over. It was past midday, but Frances was still in bed with some man she’d picked up. Of course Amber had no idea who he was. Susan said the place looked like a bomb’d hit it, with bottles and stuff everywhere. I had half a mind to call social services when Susan told me. Danni wasn’t allowed to see Amber after that, apart from at school.’
‘But Danni liked Amber, didn’t she?’
‘Danni knew no better. Like her mum, Amber could turn on the charm when she wanted. She certainly knew more than most girls twice her age, I can tell you, and she had a mouth on her that’d make your hair curl. When I heard through one of the mums at Danni’s school that Amber’d run off to live in London with Frances’s boyfriend, I didn’t half laugh. It’d all been going on in secret for a while, so they said. Getting her own back in spades, she was, and Frances was hopping mad. She and Amber didn’t speak for years after that.’
‘I hear Danni and Amber quarrelled just before Danni disappeared.’
Reenie shook her head knowingly. ‘Don’t you believe it. That was just their little story so’s Susan would think they weren’t friends any more. It fooled Susan but it never fooled me. They were thick as thieves, those two. Just after Danni disappeared, Amber come looking for her. When I told her Danni’d gone missing, she smiled, like she thought she’d an idea where Danni was. I was so angry, I slapped her hard, I did, and I cut her cheek with my ring. I grabbed hold of her and I tried to make her tell me where Danni had gone but she wasn’t saying nothing.
I just remember the look in her eye, real angry like, as though nobody’d ever dared do that to her before. She didn’t cry or nothing, she just turned and walked out the door cool as a cucumber. I’m sure whatever she told the police, it was a pack of lies.’
‘I see. Do you mind if I borrow these photos?’
‘You can have them. I’ll only put them both straight in the bin otherwise. I don’t want to be reminded of him and I certainly don’t want to think of Danni that way either, particularly not with Amber.’
Alex got off the bus at Fulham Broadway and walked along the Fulham Road until he came to the address Anna had given him, which was at the end of a parade of bric-a-brac shops. The window was dirty, with the blinds drawn down against the heat of the sun and a notice on the door said ‘closed’. From the little he could see, peering in through a gap into the dark interior, it looked like another junk shop and he wondered if he had come to the right address. But he was sure he had remembered the number correctly. Maybe she lived above the shop, although it looked equally derelict from what he could see from the street. He pressed the buzzer and a moment later, the blind on the door was pulled back. A man peered out at him.
‘I’m looking for Anna Paget,’ Alex mouthed.
The man nodded, undid the lock and opened the door. ‘You must be Alex.’
‘Is she here?’
‘Yes. She’s expecting you.’ A bell tinkled as he closed the door behind Alex. ‘She’s just finishing off a piece. She won’t be long. She said for you to wait here.’ His manner was abrupt, as though he had better things to do. His face was tanned like leather and he was lean and wiry, maybe five-eight or nine, with very short, thinning grey hair and deep-set blue eyes. He was wearing black tracksuit bottoms, trainers and a black T-shirt with some sort of logo on the front. Alex wondered if he was Anna’s partner, although he looked quite a bit older.
The shop was furnished as a living area, with the front and back rooms knocked into one. An old piece of carpet covered part of the bare boards and an ancient-looking sofa and chairs were grouped around a makeshift coffee table, with a TV next to the fireplace. Someone had recently been having a fire, in spite of the hot weather, and the room smelled of smoke. At the far end was a small, open-plan kitchen, with a bar dividing it from the sitting area. The man turned on a lamp and looked over at Alex.
‘Can I get you a drink or something while you wait?’
‘Do you have anything cold?’ he asked.
‘There may be some coke in the fridge, or there’s white wine. I’ve just opened a bottle for Anna.’ He gestured towards the coffee table where the bottle was sitting temptingly in a cooler. ‘She likes a glass when she’s working and she said you and she might have a drink together.’
Alex nodded. ‘A glass of wine would be great, thanks.’ Even though he had to go to work later on, a glass or so wouldn’t hurt and it might help to oil the wheels. There was something about Anna that made him feel awkward and he wanted to take the edge off his nerves. The man went over to kitchen area, took a glass from the shelf and came back to the table where he poured out the wine, which he handed to Alex.
‘There you go. Sit down and make yourself at home. There’s a paper somewhere over by the sofa, if you want to look at something while you wait. Anna will be with you when she can.’
Alex sat down and, taking a sip of wine, opened the early edition of the Standard, which was lying on the floor on the far side. It was difficult to read in the half-light and he had to move closer to the lamp to see. The front page was filled with copy about the three murders, following on from a police press briefing held that morning, but it was all a re-hash of what had been in Anna’s article, with nothing new. No doubt there was a lot she had kept back. He had been sitting there a while and had started to wonder when Anna was going to appear, when the man came back into the room. ‘She’s ready for you,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go out, but you’ll find her through there and down the stairs. Door’s at the bottom.’
The man went out, slamming the door behind him. Alex knocked back the rest of his wine and got to his feet. The door at the back of the room opened onto a landing, with stairs going up to what he assumed was the bedroom area and another narrow flight leading to the basement. The dull throb of music was coming from below. It was dark and he couldn’t see very well, nor could he find a light switch anywhere and he more or less had to feel his way down. A door faced him at the bottom. It was a funny place to work, he thought, but creative types liked their own space and maybe it was more private. He pushed open the door and went inside. It was some sort of a darkroom, painted black, with a naked red bulb hanging from the middle of the low ceiling. Akon’s Sexy Bitch thudded from a player sitting on a chair in the middle of the floor, but there was no sign of Anna anywhere. Wondering if he was in the wrong room, he switched off the music and called out her name but there was no answer. The room was stiflingly hot and airless and he felt suddenly a little dizzy. He was about to leave when he noticed a row of black and white prints hanging above some cupboards along the wall. The faces of two girls had been superimposed on a grainy background. They were heavily made up and were hugging each other, grinning, the same image repeated over and over again. He gazed at them for a moment, finding it difficult to focus in the poor light. He blinked and shook his head but it made no difference. There was something about the faces . . . something familiar . . . He pulled one of the photos off the line. He didn’t recognise the blonde, but the other one . . . He felt a draught behind him and heard the door close. As he turned, the lock clicked into place and the light went out.
Donovan thanked Reenie for her time and the photographs and went downstairs. Chang was waiting on a yellow line at the end of the road. She climbed in and told him about Colin Henderson. ‘She’s given me a photo of him, although it was taken about twenty years ago. I’ve spoken to Carolyn and they’re going to try and trace him. But if he’s behind this, there’s still a lot of stuff that doesn’t add up. I mean, how did he know what happened out at the lake and why start this only now? And why those men?’
Chang nodded. ‘It’s not clear. Who’s that?’ he asked, noticing the photo of Danni and Amber.
‘The blonde one’s the dead girl, the way she didn’t want her mother to see her.’
‘May I?’ She passed him the photo. ‘She certainly doesn’t look anything like the schoolgirl in the missing person report,’ he said, after studying it.
‘Amazing what a bit of slap and attitude can do for a girl.’
‘I’ve always thought so. Who’s the other girl?’
‘That’s Amber Wiseman, the daughter of the lady we saw in Chelwood and owner of the handbag.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘That’s what Danielle’s grandmother said.’
He stared at it for a moment, then said, ‘Well, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say that looks like a young Anna Paget.’