Wings over the Watcher (8 page)

As she reached the railings outside the library she passed a couple of uniformed lads struggling with a green bike and a pair of stout wire cutters. As she watched they freed the bike and, wearing gloves, she was glad to see, loaded it into the back of a police van.

She carried on in to the Nicholson Institute.

Two women were working in the office, a young, slim woman with poker-straight hair, no make-up and large, lugubrious dark eyes. The other was in her forties, a plump, motherly type, very like Beatrice herself. At a guess she would have been the one Beatrice would have confided in.

Joanna flashed her ID card for the second time today. “We’re making enquiries about Beatrice Pennington,” she began.

The two women looked at each other. She could sense their speculations. They looked enquiringly at her, waiting for her to speak first.

“Do you have any idea where she might be?”

“She hasn’t been at work yesterday or today.” It was the younger one who was trying to be helpful.

The older one nodded. “That’s right. It really isn’t like Beattie. She’s normally reliable. Doesn’t take time off at all. She didn’t phone in sick either.” The younger woman agreed vigorously. “We’ve had her husband on the phone. It seems she’s left home.”

They exchanged swift glances so Joanna knew they had come to the same conclusion as she.

“It’s really odd though,” the younger one said. “She must have
meant
to come to work. She’s come right to the door. Her bike’s locked to the railings. It’s still there.”

Not any more.

“What time does she normally arrive at work?”

“Well – we open at half-past nine. She generally gets here a few minutes earlier.”

“Did you see her on Wednesday morning?”

“No.” Again the younger one. “No – I didn’t. I was a bit late myself.”

“What time did you arrive?”

“Round about twenty-five to ten.”

The older librarian turned to her. “It was later than that, Lisa. More like a quarter to.”

Lisa didn’t argue. Joanna turned to the older librarian. “And you?”

“I got here early on Wednesday – at quarter past nine. Her bike wasn’t there then or I’d have seen it.”

So between the two sightings the precise time of Beatrice’s disappearance was narrowed down to between nine fifteen and nine thirty-five.

“Have either of you any idea where she could be?”

Both women shook their heads.

Joanna drew in a deep breath, thinking quickly. She needed names, a lead, some direction from these two women. Here and the Readers’ Group was the best possibility for finding Beatrice’s secret Romeo. Once she had confirmed his identity she was still confident that she could satisfy herself the wretched woman was safe and move on to more important things. But this could so easily turn into
a difficult and protracted investigation if people stonewalled them. And she didn’t know how discreet Beattie and her lover had been. Her colleagues might know nothing. Delicacy, she thought and planned her approach with devious care.

She tried the same sentences which had been so unsuccessful with Jewel Pirtek: that anything they said would be in confidence, that this would turn into a full-scale police investigation were Beatrice Pennington not found, that anything, however seemingly insignificant, could be of relevance.

She drew a blank. The two women gaped at her and said nothing.

She tried a different tack. “Mrs Pennington had recently changed her lifestyle,” she commented.

“Oh yes. Into dieting and exercise,” the senior librarian said comfortably. “It quite altered her. She’d been so
down
before Christmas.
Something
must have happened and whatever it was it did her the power of good. It seemed to change her into someone else almost. She seemed brighter, more optimistic. Almost as though…”

The two women looked guiltily at each other.

So they did know something.

Joanna waited, knowing what was about to be said.

But they needed prompting. “As though she had a lover?”

“I’m sure she didn’t,” Lisa said. “She wouldn’t. I mean – she wasn’t like that.”
Joanna glanced at her, amused. She was of the generation only ten years younger than herself who believed that anyone over the age of forty was over the hill and had ceased to have sex or sexual desires.

“Are you sure?” she asked gently.

“We did wonder,” the older woman said reluctantly “You’re right. There was something different about her since just before Christmas. She was sort of – lit up – from the inside.”

It was as good a description of a woman who had a surreptitious lover as any Joanna had heard. To her this seemed
to rubber stamp the theory. But the librarian had something more to say. “I even wondered if the doctor had put her on something for her depression.”

It fitted. Joanna recalled the mobile phone printout and the numerous calls to the doctors’ surgery.

She tucked the fact away and moved to a different tack.

“You run a Readers’ Group from the library?”

“Yes.”

Remember the game Hot and Cold? Warmer, Warmer.
Joanna felt it now. But mentioning the Readers’ Group had sent her back into the cold area. Clearly, neither of the two librarians believed the answer was here.

Still – she pursued it.

“How many members do you have?”

Lisa answered for both of them. “Oh, it varied. Somewhere between sixteen to twenty.” The plump woman was perfectly comfortable chatting about the Readers’ Group.

“Could you provide me with a list?”

“Yes – certainly.” It gave them both something to do. They bustled towards a filing cabinet in the corner, helpfully searching together but they found no list.

“We’ll have to do a thorough search later for the list. Very much Beattie’s little baby the Readers’ Group was.”

“Who else works here?”

Both the librarians were startled into a response.
Warm, warm now. Getting hot.

“There are eight staff. We’re both full time. Adrian Grove is our chief librarian. He used to be a teacher in another life.” There was a distinct flicker through the eyes, an almost disapproving tightening of the mouth.

“I might want to meet him.”

“You can’t. He’s on holiday.”

“Where?”

“In Italy. Tuscany. On a walking holiday.”

“And when did he go?”

“Saturday or Sunday. He’s away for two weeks. He’ll be
back on the fifth of July.”

Joanna squirrelled the fact away. She recalled Jewel’s comment about Beattie’s desire to go abroad. To Italy.

But her passport was in the drawer at home.

Besides – Beatrice Pennington had not disappeared until the Wednesday. Three or four days after Mr Grove’s holiday had begun. Was it possible he had not gone to Italy but was still here, in the country, and had not set out over the weekend but waited for his lover until midweek to divert suspicion?

Innocently she asked, “Did Mr Grove and Beatrice get on well?”

A swift exchange of glances before the older woman nodded. “Oh yes,” she said. “Indeed they did.”

Sometimes the explanations are so-o-o simple.
“And is Mr Grove married?” she asked in the same, idly innocent tone.

“He’s divorced. Has been for ages. I never have met his ex-wife.”

“Nor me,” Lisa inserted.

“Has he gone on holiday alone?”

“I believe so.” Eyes round. “You don’t think…?”

But Joanna wasn’t falling for that one. She was not some junior police constable to start making public assumptions to feed the gossips.

Even so it was hard not to smile. “We’ll wait and see, shall we? Do you know which company he’s travelled with?”

“No,” the older librarian said. “But I do know he booked it with Wardle’s Travel on the High Street.”

But in her heart she believed she had teased the entire plot out of them. Beattie was with Adrian Grove, her colleague. Here in the Victorian library love had blossomed. Sometimes explanations are so obvious. Lift the stone and the entire plot comes wriggling out.

One phone call to the holiday company and Arthur Pennington’s wife would be found.

But life is not always so simple.

Metamorphosis.

Each week had wrought a subtle change in Beatrice as though she stepped from a chrysalis to a beautiful butterfly. On the second week she had joined the Femina Club, the week beginning June the 6th, she had definitely looked a size slimmer. She had dyed her hair to an attractive auburn which hid all the grey and took five years off her age. And she was wearing orange lipstick – an unfortunate statement which didn’t really suit her – but she’d learn. She’d made a clumsy attempt at eye make-up, clumping her eyelashes with brown mascara and sparkling gold eyeshadow. It reminded Joanna painfully of her own early forages into the sophisticated world of make-up – when she had been thirteen or so – and had slapped on bits and pieces without studying the final effect in the mirror. Women begin their quest for beauty in a clumsy, inept way. But most learn by trial and error. They are not born with the talent of the palette. Some never acquire it.

Unfortunately it reminded her too of Eloise Levin and a certain lunch in a pub at Warslow. And evoked the same emotion of exasperation, pity and affection that Eloise always inspired in her. But without the dislike that had marked the early years of their relationship.

The biggest change in Beatrice Pennington was in her face. She looked radiant – confident, happy with the biggest, hugest grin almost slicing her face in half. Her eyes sparkled and even her skin seemed tauter – younger.

She looked a different person.

Such is the inner light of love.

It had been too late to catch the travel agent on the previous evening so nine o’clock found her and Mike parked
outside, waiting for the doors to open.

She was in for a disappointment.

The girl was helpful. Yes, Mr Groves had booked his holiday through them. A fortnight’s walking through Tuscany, departing from Gatwick Airport on Saturday afternoon. A quick phone call confirmed that he had been on the flight – travelling alone. She gave Joanna a brilliant smile. “Does that help you, Inspector?”

Actually – no.

With a deep sigh she realised they were no nearer solving the thorny, irritating little problem.

It was to be a day of telephone calls.

Beatrice’s daughter, Fiona, was difficult to get hold of. Joanna had two tries and received either an engaged tone or the answering machine. On the third attempt, however, she was connected and made a brief introduction. Fiona was initially frosty and brisk then frankly incredulous. “What do you mean my mother’s disappeared?” Joanna could hear the sharp derision in the daughter’s voice.

She answered patiently and steadily. “She set off for work on Wednesday morning but never arrived.”

“Well, where’s her car?” Fiona was still impatient.

“Her car is at home, in the garage. She’d been using her bike recently.”

“Her bike! My mother?” This time the derision was frankly cruel.

Again Joanna felt that wash of sympathy for the missing woman. While there was more than a tinge of contempt in the daughter’s response she failed to detect any hint of affection or worry.

“That’s right. She’d been on a bit of a keep fit drive.”

“OK,” Fiona said impatiently. “So where
is
her bike?”

She could have been grilling a six-year-old.

“Currently impounded by us. We removed it from the railings outside the library.”

“So you’re saying that she got to work safely and then vanished?”

“That’s right.”

“Well surely
someone
saw her lock the damned thing up?”

“We haven’t found anybody who admits to that yet.”

“Ri-i-ght.” Joanna gained the impression of a telephone tucked under her ear, scribbles on a pad and scant attention. “So for two whole days no one’s seen my mother?”

“That’s right.”

“Not even Dad.”

“No,” Joanna answered patiently.

“Well what about her mobile?”

“It’s switched off or the battery’s flat. We’ve called and called but had no response.”

“Does my brother know where she is?”

“Not according to your father. I shall be ringing him after you.”

“I suppose you’ve tried her work – and her friends?”

“Yes.”

“And my aunt and grandparents?”

“Your father’s spoken to them all. We shall be following through with a visit.”

“This is all I need.”

It was the response of a truly selfish, busy person. To perceive the effect of disaster on you alone without regard for anyone else. Joanna did not trust herself to make a comment.

Fiona Pennington gave an irritated sigh. “She must have had some sort of a break down or something.”

“It’s possible.” It was at least an opening, a suggestion. “Do you know of anything that’s been troubling your mother recently?”

“No.” Said crossly. “– Well I wouldn’t, would I?”

“When did you last speak to your mother?”

“Goodness knows. I don’t. Months ago, probably. I can’t remember but whenever it was she seemed the same as always.”

Beatrice’s daughter must have realised she was not responding terribly well to the crisis and even, maybe,
wondered how her behaviour was striking the detective. She turned hotly defensive.

“We weren’t terribly close, you know. We had nothing in common. I mean – her and Dad. Well – they led such boring lives. Provincial. You know what I’m saying?”

Oh yes. I know exactly what you’re saying.
Joanna felt hugely glad that she knew about the Ann Summers underwear and suppressed a smug smile.
Your mother’s life was not as boring as you think, clever daughter.

She heard noises in Fiona’s background, followed by a reedy voice making shrill complaint. “Look – I’m sorry,” Beatrice’s daughter said. “I can’t help you. I’m really busy at the moment. I have a meeting. I’ll ring Dad. See if I need to come home. Though how the hell I’d wangle that with a new advertising campaign about to be launched I don’t know. Oh, well,” she said brightly. “Not your problem, Eh? I guess your remit is to find my mother.”

For the first time Joanna almost warmed to Beatrice’s daughter. For all her brisk ways she obviously did work under pressure. Where do you squeeze a missing mother into a frenetic work schedule?

“That’s so,” she said very calmly. “We just want to find her and make sure she’s safe. That’s all. And if she does make contact you will let me know, won’t you?”

“Oh yes. Sure. Of course. I will. What did you say your name is?”

Joanna supplied it.

“And number?”

Joanna reeled off her direct dial, heard the scratching of a pen over paper and then there was a pause.

She waited.

“You’re not. I mean – you aren’t. There isn’t any suggestion. You don’t think anything’s
happened
to her, do you?”

So – for all her sophistication Fiona had once been a vulnerable little girl who had wanted her mummy. Provincial or not. Maybe then she had not made such a harsh judgement on her mother.

But that had been before she had grown up.

Joanna was honest. “No-o, there aren’t any worrying features but we’re really anxious to find her.”

“Ye-e-s. I see. I understand. OK then. Byee.”

Joanna waited for a minute before dialling the number given for Beatrice’s son.

She connected this time with a sleepy-sounding Scot who promised to fetch Graham, “Right away.”

A few seconds later she was speaking to Graham Pennington. He sounded gruff, with, surprisingly, considering his Staffordshire origins, a faint Scottish accent. And he sounded as disinterested, initially, as his sister had been. In fact he echoed the very same words. Angrily. “What do you mean, my mother seems to have disappeared?”

Patiently Joanna repeated the story almost verbatim and Graham’s lack of concern rose even more to the surface.

“Oh, she’ll turn up, no doubt. I shouldn’t worry. Some menopausal crisis.”

Joanna didn’t have a son. But if she had she would have been bitterly disappointed to have provoked this cold response to an unexplained disappearance for forty-eight hours.

“We’re not worried, Graham,” she said primly. “We deal with many disappearances, but your father is. I think he would appreciate a phone call from you.”

“Oh, aye,” said the son and she put the phone down. And started doodling, thinking.

Korpanski was eyeing her warily from the other side of the room, waiting for her to speak first, unsure what was in her mind.

“Strikes me,” she said finally, “that although Beatrice Pennington had a family she led a very lonely sort of life. No one seems to have cared very much about her.”

“Her husband does,” Korpanski pointed out.

“Does he?” Her pen sketched a decreasing circle, spiralling inwards to the centre of the snail. “As much as most husbands?”

“I think so. He seems gutted at her going anyway.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Korpanski’s dark eyes were fixed on her. “What do you expect? Kids get on with their own lives, Jo. The fact that her son and daughter didn’t have a lot to do with her and don’t seem that bothered that she’s beggared off for a couple of days is nothing unusual. I’d say it’s more typical. Maybe they think she and their dad had a bit of a row.”

“He hasn’t said so.”

“Yeah – but kids are intuitive.”

She was pacing the room. “She wanted more out of life than simply being seen as a nuisance, Mike.”

For some reason the vision of Beatrice determinedly pedalling up the hill, her face scarlet with effort, her breath coming in deep gulps, caused her pain. She wished now that they had cycled more slowly on the three occasions she had joined them, made it less obvious that they were so much fitter than she. There had been something so admirably gritty about the firm tightness around her jaw, the set of her mouth. Something which, according to her friends, had been a new ingredient.

So what had changed her?

Answer, the lover.

So who was he, this magic man?

She and Korpanski had a mountain of paperwork to do and plenty of other enquiries pending and the disappearance of Beatrice Pennington was hardly top priority. It was simply a frustration. They grabbed a sandwich for lunch and worked through.

From Arthur Pennington they heard nothing. Every time the phone rang Joanna expected it to be him but it wasn’t; to her relief he stayed silent. She resisted the temptation to ring him and almost managed to push the missing woman to the back of her mind.

Until four o’clock in the afternoon.

When she stood up, restlessly wanting an answer to the question. “I think I’ll visit Beatrice’s other friend,” she said.
“See what she’s got to say. She’s on night duty at the hospital so she should be just getting out of bed. If she’s working tonight, that is.”

Mike barely looked up. He was checking through some personal details of a man who had applied to be a classroom assistant.

Detectives have so many more responsibilities these days. They are expected to anticipate crime by screening the entire population for evil intent. It makes it easy then, to find someone to blame, if a criminal swims through the net.

The police.

She was in luck. Friend number two was home. As she drew into Harbinger Crescent she could see a white Citroen C3 in the drive of number 54. A woman dressed in a pair of unflattering cotton shorts and a blue t-shirt answered the door. Her hair was tied back, sunglasses pushed to the top of her head. She was wearing no make-up, her feet were in thick-soled red flip-flops, the toenails painted in chipped red nail varnish. She looked in her early fifties and very very bleary-eyed.

The night-nurse.

“Mrs Saunders?”

“That’s me.” Her response was more of a sigh.

Joanna introduced herself and was invited into the garden.

It was a warm, golden afternoon, peaceful, with a background of chirruping birds and buzzing insects. A soft breeze was moving the stems of the bushes so the leaves whispered their secrets around the flowerbeds and some tall, pink flowers clumped at the end of the lawn performed a slow, elegant dance in the sunshine. French windows opened out onto some green-stained decking on which stood bright blue china pots and some garden furniture – a table and four chairs topped by a jolly parasol. It was obvious someone in the household was a keen and skilled gardener. The lawns were immaculate, bright green, with ruler-straight edges, as neatly striped as the picture on the front
of a packet of lawn seed. A Joanna Trollope novel lay face down on the table. It is nice to know what people read (if they read). It tells you more about them than they will tell you themselves. You unearth the romantic, the intellectual, the thrill-seeker.

The introductions over, Marilyn settled back down on one of the chairs and Joanna took the seat at her side.

“Now what can I do for you, Inspector?”

Surely – she must already know about her friend’s disappearance?

But Marilyn Saunders shaded her eyes by dropping the sunglasses. Joanna eyed her suspiciously. Sunglasses are a great way to conceal your expression. Leek is a small town. News travels as fast as a forest-fire. And Jewel Pirtek had struck her as a woman who would find it hard not to spread gossip, particularly to such a close friend. If she could have read Marilyn’s eyes she knew she would know whether she was telling her a stale story or hot news. But with the sunglasses in place even this would remain a mystery. As succinctly as possible Joanna gave her the benefit of the doubt and outlined all they knew about Beatrice’s disappearance, distracted by the dual image of herself mirrored in the sunglasses. Marilyn Saunders listened without giving anything away, her head tilted to one side. She was a good listener, nodding and responding with an, “Ah-ha”, at all the right moments without interruption. There was a reassuring balance about her manner and the way she gave Joanna her undivided attention. She must be an ideal nurse, someone who would listen, and give a thoughtful, unbiased, professional and informed opinion.

If Beatrice had been tempted to confide in anyone it would surely have been in this woman who was so patently close to her in age and outlook and had the stable character of an agony aunt?

Or was there something more complicated behind those blocked-in eyes?

Joanna stopped speaking and sensed that the nurse’s
attitude had changed.

“I see,” Marilyn said quietly. “So she’s gone. That is what you’re saying?” Her face was turned away. She looked as though she was staring out across the lawn. And now her mouth looked slack, unhappy, uncertain; her hands were draped over the arms of the chair, her legs tightly crossed, her ankles jerking so it looked as though she was tapping out some swift panicked rhythm.

Joanna’s answer was set at a deliberate tangent. She wanted to winkle out the truth that she sensed this woman knew but was reluctant to tell. She leaned back in her chair and shaded her eyes from the dazzling sun. “In some ways,” she said, watching the nurse from lowered lashes, “this is the sort of disappearance which does not give the police cause for concern. But in others –” She stopped deliberately short.

Marilyn rose to the bait and nibbled at it gently. “Can you explain?”

“This is a middle-aged woman, Mrs Saunders. Not a child or a vulnerable person. There’s no history of mental illness – depression or acute anxiety. If anything her recent mental state has been more robust in the last few months than it had been.” She noticed that Marilyn did not argue. “She lives a bare mile from her work in a town that is generally considered quite safe. She disappeared some time between nine fifteen and nine forty-five in the morning on a busy market day when there would have been plenty of people around. I don’t believe she could have been forcefully abducted in that time without somebody seeing and intervening. It was light; the entire area is well populated and she was on a bicycle, which was carefully locked up. It is much more likely that she went voluntarily, either alone or with someone she knew.”