Requiem (3 page)

“Is that so?” he said. “Well, you’d better tell me all about it.”

Chapter Three

Elodie Duncan lived
—had lived—with her parents in a house on the grounds of Rawlwood College. The house was named Rawlwood Cottage, which was something of a misnomer, as Kate and Olbeck discovered. They drove up the long and winding gravel driveway to the impressive Victorian building that stood in a clearing of evergreen and deciduous trees. Hidden from view from the main road behind a bank of trees, the house was very large, the gables and window frames painted black, original stained glass in the front door. There were two cars parked neatly side-by-side in front of the house: a dark purple Volvo and a newer model Beetle in silver.

“Did Elodie have a car?” asked Mark as they made their way to the front door.

“I don’t know—” Kate was unable to say more, as the door opened before she’d even raised a hand to the doorbell. The man who had opened it was in his late fifties: tall, rather handsome and dressed in a well-cut tweed jacket. There was something slightly wrong with his appearance, something so subtle that Kate could hardly put her finger on what it was. Then she realised it was his tie. It was a colour that clashed slightly with the tweed of his suit and the knot was tied badly, obviously in haste.

“May I help you?”

“Mr Duncan? Thomas Duncan?”

“Yes? What’s the matter?”

Olbeck and Kate showed their warrant cards. “We’re police officers, sir. May we come in for a moment?”

Mr Duncan remained where he was for a moment, one hand on the half-open door. He closed his eyes.

“What’s happened?” he said, in a voice almost too faint to be heard.

“May we come in, Mr Duncan?” Kate wasn’t going to do this on the doorstep,
whether or not the house was isolated.

The headmaster opened his eyes.

“Yes, of course,” he said. He seemed to pull himself together a little. “I’m sorry. Come through…”

They followed him through the hallway and into a sitting room to the left. A woman was
perched there on the very edge of the sofa, clasping her hands together. She was blonde, petite: an older, faded copy of Elodie.

“This is my wife, Genevieve Duncan,” said Thomas Duncan.
Kate had the impression that the two of them had been sitting there all night, waiting. Were they waiting for their daughter, who was never coming home? She took a deep breath. This was the worst part of her job, the very worst. It never got any easier.

“Mrs Duncan, Mr Duncan, I’m very sorry to have to tell you that I have some very bad news.” Say it quick, don’t ever drag it out. People at this point know the worst has happened, there was never any need to prolong the agony. “This morning, we found the body of a girl which we believe to be your daughter Elodie. I’m so sorry—
”

Mrs Duncan burst out in screams,
in full-blown hysteria: piercing yells, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. Mr Duncan knelt by her, his face grey. She threw her hands over her face, writhing and kicking like a toddler having a tantrum.

Kate looked at Olbeck. He met her eyes
, but there was no need to say anything. There was nothing they could do but wait.

After a seemingly endless stretch of time, Mrs Duncan’s sobs tapered off into gasping breaths. She lay back against the cushions of the sofa, still hiding her face. Kate had seen that
impulse in people before: the wish to shut out the knowledge, an attempt to physically block off the horror.

Mr Duncan sat by her, his hands dangling between his knees.

“I’m so very sorry,” Kate said, quietly. “This must have been a terrible shock to you. I’m afraid I will need one of you to come with us to identify her.”

She looked directly at the headmaster. “Mr Duncan, are you able to do that?”

Mr Duncan got up from the sofa, moving like a man twenty years older than himself.

“Me? I don’t know if I could bear it.” He looked at his wife, helplessly. “No, I must, I can see that I must.”

“Is there someone who could stay with your wife to give her some support? DS Olbeck will stay here as well, but perhaps a friend…”

“I don’t know, I—
”

“I don’t want anyone,” said Mrs Duncan
, in a voice ragged with tears.

Kate nodded slightly at Olbeck. She stood back slightly to let Mr Duncan make his slow and shaky way past her to the hallway.

At the mortuary, he stood in silence
, with Kate beside him, regarding Elodie’s body. His gaze lingered on her pale face. The dead never look as though they are sleeping, not when looked at properly. Something—call it the soul, the spark of life—something indefinable has gone. The dead look truly dead.

Kate thought of her first glimpse of Elodie
; the girl’s impish grin and vivid personality shined out from the stage. And now this, a whole person reduced to a hollow shell, lying on a cold metal table. She felt tears come to her eyes.

As if he could sense her pain, Mr Duncan began to speak, falteringly, almost as if he were talking to himself.

“She was always special. She had a glow about her, something special—everyone around her could feel it. She was eight years old when I met her, and I could see it then. Oh yes,” he interjected as Kate made some kind of noise in response, “I’m her stepfather. But that never mattered. She always felt like mine, just as if she were my real daughter. Yes, mine…”

His voice faded away. Kate sense
d a huge tidal wave of emotion, held back by the flimsiest of barriers.

“Always special,” said Mr Duncan, his voice shaking. The dam broke. He put his hands up to his face, tears running down between his fingers. Kate put a hand on his trembling arm.

“It shouldn’t be like this!” he cried, and then his words were lost in a torrent of sobs. Kate, feeling her uselessness, kept a steadying hand on him, muttering the usual soothing words.

 
Later, after driving Mr Duncan home, Kate and Olbeck conferred briefly with the family liaison officer now stationed at the house. Mrs Duncan was sat at the kitchen table, staring out at the garden, a cup of tea untouched before her. Kate wondered whether to interview the parents now or whether to wait until the first shock had worn off a little. She decided on the latter.

“God,” said Olbeck as they got into the car. He leant his head against the back of the car seat and closed his eyes. “That was a bad one.”

“Especially on a hangover,” said Kate unsympathetically.

“You have no idea.” He sat up again, rubbing his temples. “Actually, I need a drink.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do. A bloody big one.”

“I’ll buy you one.”

Olbeck looked at her in surprise. “You will?”

“A giant coffee,” said Kate, smiling a little. “Perhaps even a muffin to go with it.”

“Huh.” Olbeck slumped again. “We’d better get back, anyway.”

Later that afternoon, Kate, Olbeck and Anderton returned to Rawlwood Cottage. Normally, the three of them would use the time in the car to discuss the case, bring forward points they thought worthy of discussion, make suggestions
about where to go next. Today, though, they sat in silence, all three of them busy with their own thoughts. Kate stared out of the window as they turned into the driveway, past the crumbling stone gateposts and through the banks of trees still clothed in their autumn leaves. She was thinking about the painting. When was she going to mention it? 
Was
 she going to mention it? Wasn’t it just a coincidence that the crime scene so closely resembled the picture?
The body was found in the river
, she told herself, trying to ignore that small voice inside that told her that it could still be important.

“Kate! Wake up. We’re here.”

Anderton’s voice made her jump. She gave herself a mental shake and got out of the car, smoothing back her hair and trying to get herself back into the right state of mind for this interview.

The Duncans were sitting in the living room
. Mrs Duncan hunched into an arm chair; her husband perched on the edge of the sofa. The family liaison officer, a PC called Mandy, stood up as the other officers came into the room.  Anderton introduced himself and his team.

“I’ll make us all some tea,” said Mandy. Kate smiled at her as she walked past to the kitchen. Briefly
she wondered how many millions of cups of tea the liaison officers made in the course of their careers.

Anderton began with a few words of sympathy. Mrs Duncan kept her eyes on the arm of her chair, her fingers rubbing and picking at the fabric.

“I don’t know what we can tell you,” said Mr Duncan. “We don’t know any more than you do. Elodie went out last night—she was in a band and they were playing at a pub, The Black Horse. I don’t know what happened.”

“Did you expect Elodie to come home last night?”

“She was meant to.”

Anderton leant forward a little.

“Does that mean that you did expect her home, or not?”

The Duncans exchanged a glance. Then Mr Duncan said, reluctantly, “We did expect her home but…we weren’t sure whether she would be or not.”

Mrs Duncan gripped the edge of the seat arm, the bones of her fingers showing bluish-white through the skin of her hands.

“She’s been so odd recently
…” she began falteringly, and then obviously realised the mistake in her use of the present tense. Tears began to stream down her cheeks, but she kept speaking. “She was so secretive, moody—we used to get so upset with one another, I don’t know…I didn’t know what to do.”

Anderton looked at Kate
, and she responded to his unseen cue, taking up the baton.

“Were you worried when Elodie didn’t come home, Mrs Duncan? Had she done this before
—stay out all night without letting you know when she’d be home?”

Mrs Duncan nodded.

“The past few months have been particularly bad. She was so argumentative. Nothing her father or I could do was right. Ever since her eighteenth birthday, she’s just run wild.” She stopped abruptly and put her face in her hands.

Kate turned to Mr Duncan
, who was staring blankly at the carpet.

“Did Elodie have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

He said it harshly, almost angrily. Then he seemed to recollect himself. “I’m sorry. She did have a boyfriend for a few months
, but that didn’t last long. There wasn’t anyone else.”

Kate glanced at Olbeck, who looked back at her expressively. How much did these parents actually know of their daughter? She wouldn’t have been the first teenager to hide an unsuitable boyfriend from their knowledge.

“We’ll need the name of Elodie’s ex-boyfriend, please, and also the names of her friends, the people she used to spend a lot of time with.”

Neither of the Duncans spoke for a moment. Then Mrs Duncan, fingers unconsciously pulling at the fabric of the chair on which she sat, said
, “His name was Reuben, Reuben Farraday.”

“Is he a pupil at Rawlwood College?”

“He is not,” said Mr Duncan. “He and Elodie met at a concert. I’m afraid I have no knowledge of where he is now.” He and his wife exchanged another look. “I’m afraid I didn’t much approve of him.”

“Was that why they split up?”

“I don’t know.” His tone indicated that he would prefer not to continue talking about this particular subject, which normally would mean that Kate and the team would start to push harder. But these parents had just lost their daughter and, after a tiny shake of the head from Anderton, Kate switched subjects.

“You mentioned Elodie’s behaviour had changed over the past couple of months, Mrs Duncan. Did you know why that was?”

Mrs Duncan shook her head. “Every time I tried to talk to Elodie about how badly she was behaving, she just got worse. Eventually, I just didn’t dare to bring it up anymore.”

“How was she behaving badly?”

Mrs Duncan wiped her face. “I thought I’d already said. She was rude, moody. Such hard work to be around. She didn’t want to do anything with me, with Tom, with anyone.”

“So she didn’t go out much?”

An incredulous look. “She went out
all the time
. She was never at home. But she would never say who she was going out with.”

“Did she ever bring any friends home?”

“Amy came over sometimes.” Mrs Duncan sniffed. “She’s known her for years. She’s a nice girl.”

“Amy is Elodie’s best friend? What’s her surname?”

“Peters.” Mrs Duncan hesitated, pulling again at the arm of the chair. “She hasn’t been round for a while. I think Elodie and she had an argument.”

“An argument? What about, Mrs Peters?”

Mrs Duncan shook her head.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

There was a moment’s silence. Kate thought back through the conversation, making a mental list of the words used by Elodie’s mother. 
Moody, difficult, secretive...
 She recalled the manic glitter she’d seen in Elodie’s eyes, and her heart sank a little. As if reading her thoughts, Mr Duncan asked in an almost inaudible voice, “How did she die?”