An Unfinished Murder Read online

  He smiled. ‘How could life be boring when I’m married to you?’

  ‘I accept the compliment – I suppose it was a compliment? But watching you now, and listening to you after you’d spoken to Trevor Barker, I realise that what you do want – really want – is a proper problem to sink your teeth into, like this mystery of Rebecca… what was her surname?’

  ‘Hellington. Rebecca Elizabeth Hellington. Fair hair, blue eyes, five foot five in old measurements, and full of life. Everyone who knew her agreed about the last thing. She always had something planned, her father told me.’

  ‘But she didn’t plan to end up buried in the spinney behind Brocket’s Row,’ Meredith said.

  ‘No,’ Alan agreed soberly. ‘But this is more than just a mental challenge.’

  ‘I realise that.’

  After a moment, Alan got to his feet, crossed to his wife and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘I am not bored. I have never had the chance to be bored since the moment I met you. For that I thank you, really, very much indeed! But, if I’m honest, I have to admit Trevor Barker hit the nail on the head. I do want another crack at solving the mystery of what happened to Rebecca. I want it even more than I ever did, now that I know she died here, a mile away, behind Brocket’s Row. Or her dead body was brought there, and I didn’t find it! I let her down, Merry, and I let that family down.’

  ‘I know you did everything you possibly could have done at the time,’ she declared.

  ‘But this morning, out of the blue and twenty years later, Josh handed me a silver bracelet. He told me how he and his sister found Rebecca, something I wasn’t able to do. I can’t just hand it over to Trevor and let it go at that.’

  Chapter 3

  Ian Carter put down the phone and sat for a moment with his hand still resting on the receiver. Then he stood up and walked to the window. It wasn’t a great view, mostly showing the car park, an expanse of tarmac with half a dozen trees planted haphazardly here and there by way of a nod to landscaping. Nor was it a great day weather-wise. The sky was overcast, muddy in hue. A stiff breeze had sprung up since lunchtime. Probably the rain would sweep in tonight. Twenty years, he thought. The saying was that ‘time flies when you’re having fun’. In his experience, it flew by, anyway. If you were lucky, some of it was enjoyable, some of it routine and boring; and sometimes everything seemed to go wrong, as when his marriage fell apart.

  Yet, from the career point of view, he’d done all right. He’d reached the rank of superintendent and doubted that he’d go any higher. Frankly, he had no ambition to rise further. But he could still remember how elated he’d been, twenty years before, when he’d just made detective sergeant. At the time of this advancement – hailed by his late parents, as only to be expected – Carter himself saw CID as a panorama of opportunity, opening out before his mental view.

  Even then, things hadn’t started too well and he’d been quickly disillusioned. One of the first cases he’d found himself working on had been the disappearance of a student at a local teacher training college, Rebecca Hellington. The team had collectively put in long hours on that one case alone, and got nowhere. He had interviewed Rebecca’s boyfriend at length, uneasily aware that he, Carter, had not been that much older than Peter Malone, the young man being questioned. The theory advanced by Carter’s boss at the time was that Malone would talk more freely to a younger officer. Carter, for his part, would understand Malone’s thought processes – so went Inspector Parry’s reasoning.

  Carter’s own opinion (as a junior, he’d been unable to express it, of course) had been that Parry’s theory stood on shaky legs. If he’d thought it when Parry came up with the idea, he was sure of it after the first of several meetings with Malone.

  So many cases over the years. So much water had flowed under the bridge. Why does one particular case stand out? Because it’s gruesome? Because of its strangeness? No, thought Carter now. Because it’s unsolved. You never forget those: the long hours, the frustration, the ultimate inevitable moment when you have to admit to yourself, and to others, that you’ve failed.

  Also, over the years, some faces blur in recollection; but Carter could still picture Malone in extraordinary detail. Having been informed that Malone wasn’t an aspiring teacher, like the missing girl, but was working towards qualifications in business studies, Carter had expected to meet an outgoing, self-confident future captain of industry, or a city banker.

  He’d run him to earth in his lodgings where, in a room decorated with a carefully constructed tower of empty beer cans, he found a slim but sinewy, bespectacled youth with a mop of black hair. Malone’s features had been finely drawn and his skin had been unusually pale. Rather to his own embarrassment, Carter had found himself reminded of Renaissance frescoes seen on a trip to Italy. Delicate-featured angels painted on the plaster blew trumpets with such energy they’d appeared about to leave the wall, and soar up into the church roof. But here sat one of those angelic heralds in a scruffy sweater and jeans, chewing on the end of a biro and scowling at him. He’d pushed his spectacles on top of his head, where they nestled in his black curls. Definitely an artist, not a banker, thought Carter, and then he’d wondered what had attracted Malone to the world of finance.

  When Carter had arrived and introduced himself, Malone had clearly been nervous, which had been understandable. But he hadn’t looked or sounded guilty. Nor, initially, had he sounded unduly worried about where his girlfriend might be. He’d been ‘tetchy’, if anything. He’d certainly stuck to his story. Rebecca had told him she might be going to Bamford to visit her parents that weekend. It was her father’s birthday. No, he’d never been to Bamford himself but Rebecca had told him that was where her family lived. So, when he didn’t see her around, he assumed that was where she’d gone. Malone seemed to feel that Rebecca was being inconsiderate in causing any problem.

  ‘I’ve got enough on my plate!’ he’d said crossly, taking the biro out of his mouth and jabbing it in all directions to indicate the untidy heaps of paper and books in his room.

  ‘So have I!’ Carter had snapped back. ‘So, don’t waste my time! Just answer my questions. How did the two of you meet up?’

  ‘At a party!’ Malone had snarled.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Somewhere,’ Malone had said, vaguely.

  ‘I’m not here because I’ve got nothing else to do! So, let’s do it the easy way. I ask and you answer.’

  Carter had wondered, when he spoke so sharply, if he’d gone too far. But, surprisingly, Malone had removed his spectacles from his dark curls, squinted at his interrogator, and then smiled briefly.

  ‘You can ask whatever you like, mate,’ he’d replied. ‘But I don’t think for a minute I’ve got any of the answers.’ Malone paused, frowning.

  ‘OK, it happened like this,’ he’d said briskly. ‘I’m not the sporting type but I do belong to a local tennis club. Usually I play doubles. I know several other players, but generally only to play tennis. Otherwise we don’t usually socialise. But one day, I got a call from a chap called Nick. I’d partnered him a few times, otherwise I didn’t know him well. I was a bit surprised when he invited me to a party at his parents’ house. It was out in the country somewhere. His people were away on holiday and he was throwing open the doors of the family home and inviting us all in. We drew lots among the tennis gang for the designated driver and Nick’s mate, Henry, got the job. The rest of us piled into his car and he drove us there.’

  ‘Any damage done to the house? What did Nick’s parents find when they got back?’ Carter wouldn’t have been surprised if the unlucky homeowners had found the place trashed.

  ‘They’d moved most of the furniture out into the garden ahead of our arrival,’ Malone had said, defensively. ‘Not my problem, anyway.’

  ‘They?’ Carter had pressed.

  ‘Nick – the chap throwing the bash – and some of his friends. Anyhow, the downstairs rooms were practically empty of any furniture…’ Malone had hesitate
d. ‘Upstairs was probably furnished, but I didn’t go upstairs. Others did.’ Malone had grinned briefly, looking less like a herald angel, for the moment, and more like a fallen one.

  ‘But not you – and Rebecca.’ Carter’s scepticism had sounded in his voice.

  ‘No! I hadn’t met her before that evening! She didn’t like it, the party. She’d come along with others, as I’d done, and quickly decided it wasn’t her scene. She’s a student at teacher training college and hadn’t gone out much in the evenings since the beginning of term, so she’d thought the party would be nice. But it terrified her. Her people are very – um – respectable. There were so many partygoers and so much noise, everyone letting their hair down. That would be the polite way of describing it!’ Malone had given a brief grin. ‘I found her in the conservatory, hiding behind some big potted palm thing. She wanted to leave but she had no independent transport. She was on the verge of tears. I couldn’t borrow someone’s car keys and drive her back, because I’d been drinking. But I felt really sorry for the kid, so I said I’d organise something for her. She was pathetically grateful.’

  ‘That was chivalrous of you,’ Carter had commented. ‘What, exactly, did you organise?’

  ‘It wasn’t easy,’ Malone had grumbled. ‘I looked for Henry, but he’d disappeared somewhere. No one else wanted to leave, only Rebecca. But she’d got into a bit of a state, like I said. So, I went to find Nick, as he was the host, and told him Rebecca felt ill. I couldn’t tell him she was having a rotten time at his party, could I? Nick asked, “Who’s Rebecca? Can’t she go home with whoever brought her?” But I didn’t know who’d brought her. So Nick went off to see if he could find someone, and he came back with a tall blonde girl he introduced as a cousin. She lived locally. She said she’d take Rebecca over to her family’s place and Rebecca could doss down there until morning – use this girl’s room. Then, in the morning, Rebecca could make her way home somehow by bus. She – Nick’s cousin – said her parents were cool about that sort of thing. They were out for the evening, anyway, and if Rebecca used her bedroom, no one would know.’

  ‘And this plan worked?’ Carter had not so very long ago been a student himself, and he wasn’t unfamiliar with ad hoc arrangements.

  Remembering the conversation now, twenty years later, he realised how much older and wiser he’d grown. His daughter, Millie, was about to become a teenager – she’d be thirteen next month. He worried about her now. How much more was he going to worry in three or four years’ time? Was that what ‘wiser with age’ really meant? You just worried over things that would never have troubled you when young?

  Back then, Malone had been sanguine about the whole thing, and had said the plan worked out fine. Nick’s cousin –‘Don’t ask me her name, I haven’t a clue!’ – took Rebecca away and returned alone, saying it was OK; she’d left Rebecca in her bedroom. Malone himself had gone home by car, in the early hours of the morning – driven by Henry, who had just about managed to stay sober. But the next day, he went over to Rebecca’s hall of residence and asked after her.

  ‘Just checking, you know. She was there. She’d got back that morning on the bus. It had all gone to plan. I don’t think the other girl’s parents ever knew she was kipping in their house – or if they heard anything, they thought it was their own daughter.’

  ‘And since then you’ve started seeing one another?’

  ‘Yes, off and on. It isn’t that serious.’ Malone had shrugged.

  The first Malone knew about Rebecca’s disappearance being treated officially as suspicious was the moment Carter had turned up to quiz him. He had become aware that people, other than himself, couldn’t find her, because it was going round ‘on the grapevine’. But there could be any number of reasons for that, he’d pointed out. ‘I don’t know anything!’ he’d concluded. ‘If I did, I’d tell you. But I don’t, OK?’

  If Carter had been curious at Malone’s manner, he’d put it down to the callousness of youth.

  But there was no sign of Rebecca over the following days. So, Carter went back to talk to Malone again – and again. Eventually, Malone had become resigned, up to a point, to seeing Carter appear in front of him. The young man’s original nervousness had gone and he veered now between visible exasperation and a sort of world-weariness.

  ‘Do you know if Rebecca has ever gone missing before?’ Carter remembered asking. He had been getting desperate himself by then.

  ‘No, not missing exactly,’ Malone had replied, testily. ‘Look, quite often she says she’ll do something and then changes her mind. It’s like that party I rescued her from. She’d wanted to go and then decided she didn’t like it. Or she’ll be sidetracked by something she’s found more interesting or urgent, or has just forgotten about. Ask anyone.’

  He could account for his own movements, even though a lot of the time he’d been in his room with his head down, poring over his books. He’d been due to deliver a piece of written work to his tutor. He still hadn’t finished it and Carter was taking up valuable time. Malone had grown steadily more resentful the more Carter spoke to him. When Carter kept returning to question him again, his resentment became barely concealed anger.

  ‘Why me?’ he had demanded querulously on yet another, later visit. ‘Why do you keep coming back and asking me?’

  ‘Because you are close to her,’ Carter had replied. And because he didn’t have any other leads, he might have added, if he’d been honest. They’d still been working on the assumption that Rebecca was alive. Inspector Parry, a man of long years’ experience, was saying he thought she was dead, but he had yet to put it in any report.

  ‘OK, she’s my girlfriend!’ howled Malone. ‘That doesn’t make me her bloody minder! We don’t go round everywhere holding hands! It’s a relaxed sort of relationship. I’ve told you, I don’t always know where she is. You’re supposed to be looking for her. Why don’t you go and do it?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ Carter had pointed out, doing his best to keep his temper. ‘I am just wondering why you aren’t out looking for her. Aren’t you worried about her safety? You worried enough to organise her escape from that party when you’d only just met. This has now been almost two weeks. It isn’t a question of a missed lecture or a broken date. No one’s seen her. Her bed hasn’t been slept in. There is no sign she’s been in her room, and her post hasn’t been collected from the pigeonhole. The police are asking for her. Surely you realise it’s serious? You can’t still be that relaxed, to use your word, about it!’

  Malone had already been flushed with anger, but now he turned a deep red. ‘Of course I’m worried now, with time going by and all that! You keep turning up! No one has any idea where she is. But what can I do? I’ve asked around her hall of residence. I’ve been to a couple of pubs we used to visit and asked there. Do you know what one barman said to me? He said all “student types” looked the same to him.’ Malone had scowled ferociously. ‘I nearly punched him.’ He’d caught Carter’s eye. ‘But I didn’t.’

  As days passed Carter realised that, even though Malone had not been unduly worried at the outset, the young man was deeply worried now. Moreover, he was getting very twitchy. Whether this was on Rebecca’s account – or on his own, because now the police had become involved and they might consider him a suspect in some as yet unspecified crime – Carter didn’t know.

  ‘You have no suggestions as to where else she might have gone if she changed her mind about going home?’ he’d asked in one of their very last conversations, alarmed to catch a note of desperation in his own voice.

  ‘How should I know?’ Malone had leaned forward and spoken slowly, emphasising his words. ‘We met at that party I told you about. We’ve gone around together a bit after that. We aren’t a fixed item. We have friends in common here, sure. But I don’t know how many friends she had before she came here, or has back home in Bamford. Half the town there probably knows her. She probably has dozens of friends. Why don’t you track them down and ask the
m?’

  ‘Someone at the Bamford end of police enquiries is doing that,’ Carter had assured him.

  That ‘someone’ had been Inspector Alan Markby. He’d reported exhaustive enquiries, all leading nowhere. Mr and Mrs Hellington were frantic with worry. It was quite out of character for Rebecca to take off like that. Yes, she’d mentioned coming home for her father’s birthday. They’d waited for her to let them know the arrival time of the National Express bus. She never did.

  She never contacted them again.

  Markby had expressed his regrets at the failure of his team to turn up anything further. But from the career point of view, thought Carter now, it hadn’t done Markby any harm, because six months afterwards Markby had gained promotion. He must have been successful in other cases. Indeed, over the years, Carter had learned this was so, because Markby had risen to superintendent and become something of a legend. In a weird sort of way, for Carter, this had been a small consolation. If the great Markby couldn’t track the girl down, it wasn’t such a disaster that he, Carter, couldn’t.