Just What Kind of Mother Are You? (17 page)

They are walking down the main corridor of Windermere Academy. The place does bring back old memories for Joanne. Memories of being thirteen, of being shit scared she might trip up and make a fool of herself. Of catching the eye of a fifth-form boy and blushing hot for the rest of the day every time she thought of him.

The deputy head has made his office available for Joanne and Ron to speak to Sally Kallisto. Joanne looks around at the bland
decor, at the veneered desktop, at the once-white vertical blinds, now a soiled, creamy-grey.

She’d sat in here on one occasion before, way back, twenty-odd years since, when there had been a particularly brutal fight between two fourth-form girls. One had had her earring ripped straight from her ear, splitting the flesh of the earlobe in two, and Joanne was brought in because she’d seen it. But she didn’t say anything. She’d feigned ignorance because she’d been brought up believing that you never grassed on your mates. Ironic she was here now, about to ask Sally Kallisto to grass on hers – though, admittedly, the stakes were considerably higher in this instance.

Sally is ushered into the office along with a pasty-faced young teacher – Miss Murray – who looks more frightened than the child.

Sally looks nothing like her mother. She’s the spit of her dad. Straight, black hair, smooth, dark skin, beautiful, deep, chocolate eyes.

‘I’m Detective Joanne Aspinall … and this is my colleague’ – she gestures towards Ron – ‘Ron Quigley. You met each other yesterday.’

‘Hi,’ Sally answers quietly.

Joanne’s arranged the chairs into an L-shape. She sits with her notepad open on her knee, and Sally sits down on the chair next to her.

‘Before we ask you some questions, Sally, you’re quite sure you’re happy to be accompanied by Miss Murray? Because we can wait a little longer, try to get hold of your parents if you’d prefer for them to be here instead. Your mum’s out collecting cats, the shelter told us, so she should be back soon. But I can’t seem to get hold of your dad. He’s not answering his phone.’

Sally’s tights are bunched a little around her ankles. She pulls at the fabric of each leg as she answers, doesn’t make eye contact with Joanne. ‘Can we do it now?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s just … it’s just that—’

She doesn’t finish.

Joanne glances at Ron. They’re both thinking the same thing: Girl doesn’t want to talk in front of her parents? She’s got something useful to say.

Joanne smiles. ‘Let’s get straight to it then.’

Joanne begins by running through the events of Lucinda’s disappearance, to check nothing’s been missed by Ron when he spoke to Sally yesterday.

When she’s finished speaking Sally looks directly at Joanne. ‘Do you think she’s still alive?’ she asks.

‘I’m really hoping so. Do you?’

Sally shakes her head.

‘What makes you think that?’

Sally drops her gaze. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t see how she can be …’

‘Because—’

‘Because my mum says she’s probably dead.’

‘Your mum can’t know that for sure. Nobody can, can they?’

‘No, but I didn’t tell you – I didn’t tell the police – about the man Lucinda was seeing. I should have told you that, shouldn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ says Joanne, ‘you should. But that’s why we’re here, so you can tell us now.’

‘My mum says it’s my fault, she says that if Lucinda dies—’ She pauses, tucks her hair behind her ear: ‘… do
you
think it’s my fault?’

‘No.’

Joanne leans forward in her seat.

‘It is
not
your fault that Lucinda chose to get into the car of a stranger. But, Sally, listen to me, you’re going to have to tell us everything you know about Lucinda for us to be able to help her.
Even if you think you’re betraying her. Even if you think that she will be so upset and angry with you that she’ll never speak to you again. You’re going to have to tell us her secrets. Do you understand that?’

Sally nods and takes in a trembling breath. Suddenly she’s trying her very best not to cry, and the skin on the back of Joanne’s neck prickles. They are close. She can feel it.

Joanne prompts her. ‘Cry if you need to, Sally. Don’t hold it in.’

Ron produces a clean handkerchief from his breast pocket and passes it to Sally. ‘There you go, love,’ he says gently.

But Sally manages to hold on to her tears. ‘I’ve never seen the man she talked to,’ she begins. ‘I’ve never been with her when she met him. She said she’d seen him three times, and he wanted her to go somewhere with him, he wanted to take her shopping.’

‘Did she seem at all frightened of him?’

‘She was excited.’

‘So he hadn’t tried to hurt her?’

‘No.’

‘Did you ever see his car?’

‘Not properly. Just the back of it one time.’

‘When was this?’

‘Two weeks ago?’ She phrases it as a question. ‘I’d stayed to talk to a teacher, so I was late.’

‘Can you describe it for us?’

‘It was silver.’

‘Definitely silver?’ Ron cuts in. ‘Could it have been white?’

Sally looks to the side. ‘Maybe,’ she admits. ‘I’m not completely sure. I didn’t know it was him until I got to Lucinda, and she told me he’d just asked her out.’

‘Asked her out?’ Joanne repeats. ‘Does that mean to be his girlfriend, or to go somewhere?’

‘She didn’t know. We talked about it a lot, but we were never
really sure if he meant it, like, as in to be his girlfriend, or what.’

Ron says, ‘So you’ve never actually seen this man for yourself.’

She shakes her head. ‘Never.’

Joanne jots down the car colour and raises her head. ‘What else can you tell us?’

‘Not much.’

‘Nothing at all?’

Sally shrugs.

‘Come on,’ Joanne encourages. ‘I know what girls are like – you discuss
everything
. Every tiny detail to do with boys.’ Sally is momentarily wounded, so Joanne adds quickly, ‘It’s no different when you get older, you know,’ and she shoots a glance at Miss Murray. ‘Is it?’

‘Oh no,’ replies Miss Murray, flustered. ‘I can spend hours and hours talking about my boyfriend.’

Sally doesn’t take the bait, though.

She stares down hard at her lap. Her body’s rigid, and it’s almost as if she’s been threatened not to divulge anything.

‘What is it, Sally?’ Joanne asks finally. ‘Has Lucinda told you something about him, something you’re frightened to tell us?’

She shakes her head. ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

‘You’re certain about that?’ Joanne asks this while at the same time feeling deflated. She was certain there was more to be had here.

‘I’m sure,’ confirms Sally.

Ron goes to shift in his seat but, without thinking, Joanne reaches her hand across to his knee, a gesture to tell him to stay put.

‘Sally,’ she says carefully, ‘remember what I said. You need to tell us everything, or we can’t find her. You’re not helping Lucinda by keeping her secrets safe. Not now.’

Sally looks up, and all at once begins blinking rapidly. She
tries to take a breath in, but the air shudders into her lungs as if there’s a blockage inside her trachea.

Her eyes lock with Joanne’s. Then suddenly brim with tears as the words come spilling out of her in a rush.

‘It’s to do with her dad,’ she says.
‘That’s
her secret. That’s what I’m not allowed to tell anyone.’

20

I
’
M BACK AT WORK
trying to syringe-feed some fluids into these kittens, but it’s no use. I know I’m hurting them, and I’m reaching the stage when it’s going to be kinder to go ahead and get the vet to give the blue juice. I’m pissed off and sad, but trying not to let myself get angry about the bastard who’s left them like this. It takes too much out of me. One good thing to come of it, I suppose, is that we know Banjo the Staffy is okay with cats. That’ll improve his chances of rehoming. Even if prospective owners don’t have a cat, they’re not keen on the idea of adopting a dog who’ll happily eat one.

The buzzer goes, meaning there’s someone outside in the office, so I leave the kittens and go on through. I could do with a break from them anyway, maybe have a cuppa.

It’s Mad Jackie Wagstaff.

People call her Mad Jackie because she was prone to thumping people on a regular basis, particularly when she was going through a bad time a couple of years back.

Her husband frittered away all of their money – re-mortgaging the home without Jackie knowing it – and getting them into a whole heap of financial trouble. To get them out of it, he had the bright idea of raffling off the house. It was a nice property, valued at about three hundred thousand, and everyone (including me and Joe) bought tickets at twenty-five pounds a go. Apparently, they sold close to eight thousand
tickets, after putting adverts in the
Gazette
and dropping fliers about the village, which gave them close to two hundred thousand pounds in total.

Then Mad Jackie’s husband ran off with the money. Disaster.

And suddenly everyone was gunning for Jackie. She says people still cross the street when they see her coming; she’s lost the friends she’d had for over thirty years.

Now Jackie works as a carer, bringing me the pets of those that have died.

I look at her surprised when I see she’s standing in the office, empty-handed.

‘What?’ she says, then realizes. ‘Oh, don’t panic, I’ve not brought you anything today. I’ve come to see you. See how you are. Our Joanne said that missing girl was staying with you when she disappeared.’

‘Yeah, she was, kind of,’ I tell her. Then:
‘Your
Joanne? You mean Detective Aspinall? Is she your daughter?’

‘Niece.’

‘You never said.’

‘Yeah, well, she doesn’t like me advertising the fact. Paranoid, if you ask me. She thinks if everyone knows she’s CID she’ll have her tyres slashed. Anyway, our Joanne said you were pretty cut up about it – the girl – so I thought I’d just look in on you, see if you’re okay, since I was passing.’

‘Trying not to think about it, if I’m honest. Well, trying not to imagine what’s happened to her. It’s helped coming in here. You don’t want a cat, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Kitten?’

‘We’re not allowed any pets.’

‘You could sneak one in. No one’d know.’

Mad Jackie laughs. ‘The landlord would. Anyway, it’s Joanne’s house, not mine. She’s only letting me stay there ’cause
I can’t afford to live on my own. She won’t let me have a cat.’

‘Fair enough. I’ve got to try. We’re stuffed to bursting at the moment and I just brought in a load of half-dead kittens … I’ve got nowhere to put them if they
do
survive. What a day,’ I say to her. ‘What a bad couple of days.’

‘What do they think’s happened to the missing girl?’

‘You probably know more than me.’

‘What? You mean Joanne? Oh, she tells me nothing. She’s not allowed to and she’s a stickler for the rules. How’s the mother doing? Joanne said you and her were friends.’

‘Did you see the press conference?’

Jackie nods.

‘I couldn’t watch it,’ I say sadly. ‘It’s bad enough knowing the agony I’ve put them through, I couldn’t stand to watch them go and—’

I stop because the door opens and a woman walks in with a West Highland Terrier.

She’s wearing one of those padded gilets in shiny fabric, expensive jeans tucked into pink Hunter wellies and a silly furry hat with ear flaps – like she’s been out trapping beaver.

Mad Jackie gives me a look, moves away from my desk to let the woman approach.

‘Good afternoon,’ she says. She’s about mid-forties. ‘I’ve brought Hamish in because we’re relocating – we’re moving to the Middle East – and I wondered if you would like to buy him from me.’ She says this in such a bright, sunny manner you’d think she was offering me a free holiday.

Jackie coughs.

‘That’s not really what we do,’ I explain, and the woman tilts her head to one side.

‘But he’s ever such a good dog, very clean and well-behaved. I have his pedigree papers right here,’ she says, and gives a little wave of an envelope.

Patiently, I tell her how we work and what we do and, though I’d like to say this is a one-off occurrence – someone wanting payment for a pedigree – it’s not. It happens at least once a fortnight. They really think the same rules apply as if they were selling a plasma TV. Why would you not want to buy it when they’re offering it at such a reduced rate? When it’s such a bargain?

I give a kind of helpless shrug. ‘Sorry,’ I say to her, ‘but we’re a charity.’

Her pleasant, jolly demeanour is suddenly no longer there and her expression is one of deep concentration. She’s faced with a problem she wasn’t anticipating.

‘You could still leave him with us,’ I try. ‘I have space for one more dog, and I’m sure he’ll find a lovely home.’

‘I told my husband we’d be reimbursed,’ she says, frowning. ‘We’ve spent a great deal of money on him and we were hopeful of recouping some because—’

All at once Jackie pipes up. ‘You’re dumping this poor animal here, and you want
paying
for it?’

I could feel it coming, could feel Jackie getting heated, but I had hoped she would keep it under wraps.

The woman’s indignant at Jackie’s tone. ‘I am not
dumping
anything,’ she replies. ‘My husband has been headhunted and we have no choice but to relocate.’

‘There’s always a choice,’ answers Jackie. ‘Just depends on your priorities.’

‘My priorities are with my family – that is why we’re going! Now,’ she says, turning back to me, ‘we paid fourteen hundred pounds for this dog, it will make someone a lovely pet, it doesn’t need much walking and it’s very clean.’

Jackie’s eyebrows are raised. ‘ “It”???’ she’s mouthing.

‘I’m quite sure someone would be happy to pay for it,’ the woman continues unabated, ‘and if this shelter is not prepared
to offer me some money, then I’ll simply put an advertisement in the Westmorland Gazette. Somebody will.’

Jackie wanders over to the door and looks out. Then she turns round, all innocent. ‘That your Lexus out there, then?’