The Various Haunts of Men (39 page)

‘When did you last see Mrs Chater?’

‘Yesterday morning. She was pegging out
and I called her for a cup of coffee. I’d just baked as well. I’d had a letter from the council and I wanted her to have a look at it. Then we talked about going on a day outing next month. A coach outing, you know? We used to go sometimes, all four of us, but after Harry was ill, of course, we couldn’t, but I’ve been trying to get her to do one or two things again, pick up the reins – you have to,
don’t you? She did the same for me when Clive went.’

‘Did she seem to like the idea of a day out?’

‘Yes, she did, she said it was time to look forward a bit. We talked about it a lot, I had a brochure. We liked the idea of Chatsworth. You can have a lovely day out there, they’ve beautiful grounds, you can have your lunch. It’s not too far. I was going to book, we’d just got to choose a date.’

‘So there was nothing to suggest she was going away somewhere else on her own?’

‘She’d never do that, never in a million years. Besides, you don’t go off without telling anyone, and in the evening, do you? Of course you don’t, whoever you are. And she’d only her handbag.’

‘I gather Mrs Chater had no relatives?’

‘No. They’d no children. It was always a sadness, that. Harry had a sister but she
died, oh, five years back and I don’t think Iris kept up with them, they live up in Scotland somewhere, Aberdeen, that’s it. No, she was on her own when Harry went. I’m different, I’ve two sons live close by.’

‘Has she other friends?’

‘Well, yes, not close, but we both know plenty of people round here, though not so many as we used to, of course, it’s all changing, isn’t it? She did used to
go to the cathedral but she stopped when she found it hard to get out. Harry had to be looked after all the time.’

‘Did you see her go out?’

‘No, I was in the bath. I heard her front door go and her footsteps pass … that was all. I didn’t think much of it, only that she hadn’t mentioned going out, but then, as I say, we don’t live in each other’s pockets.’

‘So you’ve no idea where she was going?’

Pauline had an idea but she didn’t want to mention it. Had Iris gone back to the medium? Iris had been so disappointed that Harry hadn’t ‘come through’. Had she given it another try? Well, it was up to her, private business, she’d clearly not wanted to talk about it. It didn’t seem right to mention it to two strangers, without Iris’s permission, even if they were police, and Pauline didn’t see
how it could matter. But she kept the thought in her mind all the same. Maybe later, if Iris didn’t come back. Only she was going to come back, of course she was.

‘How has she seemed recently? Was she still depressed after her husband’s death?’

Pauline looked hard at the young man. He had a face only a mother could love. ‘I don’t think that’s the right
word, you know,’ she said firmly. ‘There’s
too much talk of people being depressed. She’d had a bereavement, her husband of forty-one years had passed on. She wasn’t depressed, you aren’t, you’re grieving, you’re sad as you can be, but it’s normal, isn’t it? If you weren’t, what kind of person would you be? But not depressed like when you have to have tablets.’

‘Sorry, love.’ He may have that face, but he had a winning smile. Pauline
got up. ‘I’ll make us a pot of tea?’

‘Thought you’d never ask. Let’s give you a hand.’

Freya smiled, and stayed behind in the sitting room. Nathan could charm the birds off the trees as well as pots of tea out of ladies and it invariably helped him to find out little things that had been ‘forgotten’.

She looked round Pauline Moss’s room. Pity the original fireplace had been ripped out and replaced
with a hideous electric heater. Once there must have been a wooden sash window, now there was an aluminium, double-glazed monstrosity.

She heard laughter from the kitchen and the chink of china.

The pot of tea was accompanied by home-made scones and ginger cake, all borne through on a huge tray by a grinning Nathan. Freya rolled her eyes but he gave her a conspiratorial wink. So he had gleaned
something useful when chatting to Mrs Moss. Freya let him get round to it after tea had been poured, scones buttered, and Nathan had tucked in as though making up for lack of breakfast and pre-empting lunch.

Freya had a scone, and talked generally about the changes in these homely streets and how life used to be even thirty years ago when Pauline Moss and her husband had first moved in with their
two young boys, about
neighbourliness and its decline, working women and the loneliness of those who were left, retired and out of the loop.

‘We’ve been very lucky, Iris and me,’ Pauline Moss said, ‘we’ve had the same houses, same streets, same shops, and each other … it helps you, you know, when you’re left on your own, that some things stay the same. You rely on that. I did, Iris has. I feel
for them on their own without knowing who’s next door, everything different, or being moved to some new place by the council. Not that it’s happened here, thank God, but in Bevham they pitched so many of them out when they did all that rebuilding, it killed a lot of the old people.’ She chattered on easily, occasionally reaching out to ply Nathan with another cup of tea, another scone, more cake.
Freya waited.

A nut feeder hung at the window from which blue tits came to eat with little, darting movements and bright, watchful eyes, before flitting off again. The garden was well tended, with a rockery down which a small waterfall ran into a pool. A contented life, Freya thought, the old-fashioned life still lived by so many people up and down the country in ordinary places … home cooking,
gardening, neighbourliness, shopping, a day’s outing on a coach to a stately home, perhaps bingo occasionally, and otherwise, evenings with the television and books from the library. Pauline Moss and Iris Chater played cards together.

Middle England, traditional values. Don’t knock it, don’t ever knock it, she thought. This is what we have come from, at bottom, this is what we are, and this is
absolutely what we, Nathan and I, are here to cherish and to protect.

Nathan picked a couple of crumbs off his plate and turned a beam of appreciation on to Pauline Moss.

Freya waited a few seconds more. Nothing. She glanced at Nathan. He wasn’t giving anything away.

‘Mrs Moss, you’ve been really helpful. Now, I wonder, do you have a key to Mrs Chater’s house? I’d like to take a quick look.’

‘I don’t think you ought to go poking into her things.’

‘Of course. But there may be something you didn’t notice or think was important. We want to find Mrs Chater as quickly as possible.’

Pauline stood up. ‘You’ve got to do your job. I’ll let you in.’

‘Thank you.’

Freya watched a blue tit dart away from the feeder, alarmed by the movements through the window. Imagine living your whole life
on the verge of a nervous breakdown, never being able to enjoy a quiet meal. Memory of the dinner she had enjoyed with Simon was a safe craft on which she was gliding through the calm waters of the day.

They followed Pauline Moss into 39 Nelson Street. Another empty house, belonging to a woman who had disappeared, another set of rooms full of another person’s life and private affairs. But there
was a warmth and a comfort here which had been so absent from Angela Randall’s sterile little house in Barn Close. Iris Chater’s rooms were crammed full of furniture, ornaments, pictures, knick-knacks, clocks, tapestries, fire screens, plants in bowls, standard lamps, doorstops, knitting, jigsaw puzzles, rugs, mats, tray cloths, photographs, bowls, vases, containers for everything, covers for everything.
Nothing was out of place, yet there was a pleasant muddle.

They looked round. In the hall, Freya examined coats and scarves, in the cupboard under the stairs looked at boots and shoes and a vacuum cleaner and suitcases. The bed was neatly made and covered with an embroidered satin quilt, the toilet seat with a fluffy lilac cover. On the bed were laid out some sensible clothes.

Iris Chater was
a home person. She had not gone away. She had meant to come back. The whole place gave out that message. It was as clear to Freya as was her certainty that this missing woman was linked in some way to the others. She did not need to probe further in this cosy, cluttered, comfortable little home.

‘Thank you, Mrs Moss. We don’t need to do any more here. If you remember anything you think might
be relevant, please ring. Here’s the station number – ask for either of us. DS Graffham. DC Coates.’

They went out into the sunshine. Pauline Moss closed the door of 39, making sure it was locked firmly, and turned to face them, the key in her hand. But it was Nathan she spoke to. ‘I don’t like to ask this, only I can’t help it, it’s been in my mind all night.’

Nathan put a hand on her arm.
‘What is it, my love?’

‘That missing girl there was a search for on the Hill …’

‘There’s nothing to say your neighbour has been up there, so don’t you worry.’ Nathan’s voice was soothing.

‘Thank you,’ she said. Nathan patted her arm again.

Freya pulled out into the road. ‘You missed your vocation, DC Coates. You’d make a lovely vicar. Such a way with the ladies.’

‘Comes in handy. There’s
something Pauline Moss hasn’t told us yet.’

‘Yet?’

‘Oh, she’ll come out with it. I’ll pop back later.’

‘Time it right, she’ll have made a fresh tray of scones.’

Simon Serrailler listened as attentively as he always did to any of his team – it was one of the best things about him that he was never dismissive, never poured scorn, even if in the end he came down on the other side. He leaned back
in his chair while Freya filled him in.

‘No obvious links, I recognise that, but this is just one too many.’

‘I agree. Mrs Chater had been bereaved and that is sometimes a reason why people go missing … But I’m not arguing with you. High priority then, please … house-to-house, hospitals and stations, radio appeals, get the press on to it.’

It was not his fault. He was methodical and cautious, he took his time and he planned everything. He had always disliked acting on impulse and right now he could not afford to do so. That was the way mistakes were made and, besides, he despised those who blundered into situations, or allowed their emotions to fire up and cause them to lose control of their thinking, those who killed
because their inner selves were in turmoil and their passions had control over them. Such people murdered when they were drunk or out of their minds on drugs. Such people killed their neighbours, because they lost their tempers over an argument about noise, or their wives, in a fleeting fit of jealousy, or else they murdered prostitutes in the throes of sexual rage. He despised them all. When he
read about them he wanted them caught and punished and would have offered his services to the police if that would have led to such an outcome.

So, it was not his fault then, he was clear about that. The police had cordoned off the Hill and crawled over it. The public had been first barred from it and afterwards
were too afraid to go there and who could blame them?

But it had spoiled his plans.
He had had things so well worked out and everything had gone so smoothly, but now there was no plan and so he had done what he had sworn he would never do and acted on impulse, without preparation.

It seemed to have been successful but he was not settled, not satisfied. He felt on edge, he needed to go over and over it all trying to spot the flaw, the tiny mistake which might prove his undoing.
There did not seem to be one and yet he could not rest, could not sleep, did not feel, as he had felt each of the previous times, calm and in control. He could not enjoy himself.

To begin with, he had not planned to go out that night. But he had been writing cheques to pay bills, doing accounts, going over his records and VAT returns, and the room had been stuffy. He had been cramped. He wanted
fresh air. He had simply walked down to the letter box and the air had indeed felt good, had cleared his head and soothed him. Something smelled new, something smelled of spring. It had excited him, so that when he had reached home again, he had been filled with a restless need to do something else, go somewhere else and the restlessness had felt like something effervescent in his blood.

The
van, of course, was at the unit. He had locked his front door and taken the car, and begun to drive, slowly, aimlessly, about the streets. He was not going anywhere, nor looking for anything. Or anyone.

When he saw her, everything clicked into place. He knew at once.

Elderly woman.

She was leaning against a wall, as if to get her breath. Anyone might have been concerned for her, and stopped,
any conscientious passer-by. As he got out of the car, she began to slump and slide sideways, down on to the pavement beside the wall. The street was empty. No one walking, no car. Every house had curtains drawn.

He bent over her. She seemed to have suffered either a stroke or a heart attack. He knew the signs. But when he raised her up, she was still alive – barely breathing, her colour bad,
but alive.

He lifted her and opened the back door of the car and watched her fall heavily sideways on to the seat.

He did not know at what moment it happened. He was driving, fast, but by the time he reached the unit, she was dead. Then he had had to be quick, because of the security patrol that came round intermittently … though, he knew, not as often as they were paid to – most of the night,
they parked up and drank from flasks of tea and watched porn channels on tiny televisions in the cab. Once, perhaps, they sailed round the empty streets of the business park without getting out. He knew. He had spent weeks sitting in the dark in the office of the unit, checking their movements, plotting them on a time sheet. But he did not know whether they had already been round tonight and, he
was in his car, which they would not recognise. Supposing they came and in a guilty fit of efficiency, logged his number?

He worked very quickly, which he hated. It made him sweat and he hated sweating.

He carried her round to the side of the unit and unlocked it, swung up the door. It was a struggle to keep hold of her and switch on the light. It was not as usual. He did not do things like
this.