The Betrayal of Trust (24 page)

These incidents were taking all the resources of CID and Simon was the SIO of the burglary. They were short of both time and bods.

‘My name’s Mary Salway. Can you reassure me that my name won’t be made public please? I just think you might … you should know about the man – Ronald
… Ronald Pyment … he was clipping his hedge, it said, when she went by – the girl who’s disappeared … only he was cautioned for kerb-crawling … it’s a few years ago now but it’ll be in the records, won’t it? Only can you make sure my name doesn’t come out, we have to live with our neighbours.’

Which should have been picked up at the time, though Serrailler had found no mention of it. Now Ronald
Pyment was dead.

‘Joan Cook, 24 Pines Lane, Lafferton. I was on the bus. I remember seeing her at the stop, only … I’ve been thinking, racking my brains, you know, and I know I saw her at the stop, holding her tennis racket, but … this might be stupid but … I don’t remember her getting on the bus. I suppose she must have and I was looking out of the other window, only … I just thought I should
say. I don’t remember her getting on. Sorry, this is wasting your time, isn’t it?’

No. It was not. He put a ‘check’ beside it and went on.

‘Er … I don’t … I might have seen something to do with the girl. I might … she was at the bus stop. It was the girl who’s gone missing, I’m pretty sure … I was … nearby. That day. She had fair hair in a ponytail, tennis racket … funny, I noticed the name
on the cover, Slazenger, it struck me because I had one that same make – well, years ago … only … there was something else. I was … I was getting into my car … I saw her definitely. The thing is … I saw
the
bus … I’m pretty sure it was that same bus. Only she didn’t get on it. Definitely, she – I’ve got to go, sorry. (I don’t think she got on it …)’

There was a note.
Caller wouldn’t give name.
Tried to get number to call back but was a public phone box in Bevham. DC J. Peters
.

The others were about a man who was a known paedophile living in the same village as the Lowthers and one from a clergyman who thought he had seen Harriet with a boy a bit older than herself, leaning against the wall outside his church and seeming ‘intimate’, on the day before her disappearance.

Details about
the paedophile were noted but it took only a few minutes for him to find that the man had left the district altogether, to live in Spain. An A.T. Cook still lived at 24 Pines Lane. Simon could go there later. The last two callers were linked because both expressed doubt as to whether Harriet had actually boarded the bus. So why had no one checked them against each other? Perhaps they had, but if
so the reports of interviews were not in the files, he was quite sure.

The anonymous caller might not have been traced but Joan Cook should have been interviewed.

It was little enough but it was something. If Harriet had indeed failed to get on the bus for which she was waiting, why?

He read over the call from the clergyman. Katie had wondered if Harriet might have had a boyfriend, though she
doubted it; this call suggested she had been seen with one. Who was he? How serious was it – boyfriend, or friend who was a boy? Simon did not remember any other mention of a boyfriend in the files, but he made a note to himself to check back. Too much detail, too much reading and rereading.

The filming started early. He was there at seven o’clock, by which time the crew was assembled, and standing
beside one of the BBC vans was a girl resembling Harriet Lowther. Right age, height, colouring. Simon looked at the girl. Her features were not the same as Harriet’s. That didn’t matter. But something niggled in his mind as he watched her. Something. There was nothing wrong, as far as he could tell. The clothes, shoes, hair,
tennis
racket, all seemed right. No, nothing wrong. So why the niggle?

They had managed to get hold of a bus of the same model as the ones used in Lafferton at the time – they had all changed four years ago, but a few towns and cities still had some of the old type in service and the one they had borrowed was now parked up in a lay-by. Most other traffic had been diverted around this section of the road but the greengrocer’s van was beside the bus, and people who
had been driving, cycling or walking in the area at the time had been urged to attend. There were not many.

In the Cadsdens’ road, they had a man on a ladder, hedge clippings on the path.

Simon traced the route Harriet had taken, walking from the Cadsden house, past the hedge clipper, up to the main road and across it, and then along to the bus stop. The bus approached on its first practice
run. The greengrocer’s van was immediately behind. Anyone noticing Harriet Lowther waiting could have been on the same side of the road as her or on the opposite side, but once the bus pulled in, only a passer-by on the same side would have known if she had boarded it or not – the bus itself hid the view of the stop from the opposite pavement.

It wasn’t much of a detail but he noted it.

Now,
the girl playing Harriet was being walked down and positioned at the bus stop, the bus itself having been driven off and turned a couple of hundred yards higher up the road.

Serrailler looked at the double. Fair hair. Shorts, blue sweatshirt, trainers, small bag. Tennis racket.

Tennis racket.

He texted Cat. ‘
Medical query. Can teenager with 4 toes excel @ tennis? Good sprinter 2. Si
.’

Pines
Lane was not a lane but a street of 1930s semi-detached houses that had seen better days. Hedges and several patches of lawn had been removed from the fronts, the occasional car or motorbikes parked there. But 24 was neat. A picket fence, a wrought-iron gate, clean windows.

He rang the bell, memories of door-to-door flooding back. Other people’s houses, other people’s lives – he had learned to
look, take in, assess, store away, snippets of this or that, details seen or heard. They were useful.

The man was holding an electric iron and a plug.

Serrailler showed his card. ‘I wonder if Mrs Joan Cook still lives here?’

‘She does.’

‘Is it possible to have a word with her? I‘d like –’

‘About that girl?’ He held the door open. ‘She wondered if you’d come. I said you wouldn’t bother. Wrong
as usual. Joan?’

There was a polished oak table. A standard lamp. A Turkey-red carpet runner. A small brass gong. It smelled clean. They could have been standing here forty years ago and everything would have fitted.

‘You were right. This is a Detective Chief Superintendent. Do you want to go in the front room? I must get the plug back on this. Shall I make something?’

He wore a beige sleeveless
pullover. She wore beige slacks. Grey hair. No make-up.

Forty years ago? Sixty. Nothing had changed in houses like this.

‘Mrs Cook?’

The front room. Brasses. Fire irons. Another gong. A small bell. Indian civil service somewhere along the line. His father? Hers? More Turkey red. Moquette upholstery. An upright piano. Photographs in frames standing on a linen cloth.

‘Do sit down. I knew you’d
come. I should have telephoned again really, shouldn’t I? But when I said to my husband, he thought not. It isn’t that I have anything new to say. What I said when I rang at the time is all there is, I’m afraid. Poor girl.’

She sat on the edge of her chair, opposite to him.

‘I can remember it very well. I don’t know why it stuck in my mind at the time but once it had I couldn’t get it out. That’s
why I rang of course. And then when I read about you finding her … I knew you’d come.’

The door opened.

‘Tea or coffee?’ the husband said.

Serrailler knew the sort of coffee he might get. ‘Tea please.’

‘Make a big pot, Peter. We’ll all have it.’

The door closed.

‘Can you tell me why you were on the bus that afternoon, Mrs Cook?’

‘I can. I‘d been to visit my aunt. She’s gone now, went the
year afterwards. She was getting on for ninety then. She was in the residential home – it’s closed now – Leafield Lodge. I came out and walked up to the bus stop – that’s about four or five away from the one … where the young girl was waiting. The bus wasn’t long coming.’

‘Did you always get the bus to and from seeing your aunt?’

‘Yes. We don’t have a car. Neither of us drives. We’ve never seen
the need for a car, we believe in public transport.’

The Cooks probably believed in quite a few things. And did not believe in even more.

‘Can you tell me where you sat?’

‘On the pavement side halfway down. I always try to sit in the middle of buses and trains. My mother had it that you were safer in the middle. Why is that? My husband says it’s true of planes too but I’ve never flown in one
so I wouldn’t know. Yes, in the middle of the bus I‘d have been.’

‘I’m going to take this all down as a fresh statement, Mrs Cook. So if you remember anything new or want to change what you said originally, this is the time.’

But there was nothing new and she did not change anything. The statement was almost word for word the same as the one she had made just after the disappearance.

She had
been seated on the left-hand side of the bus and as it had travelled down Parkside Drive she had seen a girl at the next stop, with fair hair and carrying a tennis racket. There had been no one else there. The bus had slowed down and had been overtaken by other traffic as it pulled in but she had not registered any vehicles in particular. She had been looking out at the stop, and became aware that
the automatic doors had swung open but that no one had got on, and after a moment the driver had pressed the button to close them and pulled out into the road again. That was all. She had barely registered that the waiting
girl
had not got on the bus after all. It was only when she had read about Harriet’s disappearance, and her description and last-known movements, that she had recalled her,
thought about it, talked to her husband – and then rung the special police line. But if Harriet Lowther had not boarded the bus, Joan Cook had no idea what else she might have done or where she had gone. Nor had Serrailler.

Back in his office he pulled out the record of the call that had come in anonymously. A man.
I saw her definitely. The thing is … I saw the bus … I’m pretty sure it was that
same bus. Only she didn’t get on it
.

Why had no one linked these two calls at the time? They had been flagged up as possibly important but no one had visited Joan Cook or, apparently, made any serious attempts to trace Mr Anonymous – if they had, it would have been in the reports. Why hadn’t they? Yes, there had been hundreds of calls, but these two had been singled out and yet not pursued. It
was always in the detail, he thought, pulling his jacket off the chair. It was always somewhere in the tiny detail.

He went downstairs to see the press officer. For years there had been two of them, plus a secretary, in what had been a decent-sized office. Now, there was only Marianne in a cubbyhole. Things were never quiet but handling the usual daily events plus Serrailler’s two high-profile
cases was as much as she could cope with, and if she had not been efficient, experienced and very cool-headed, there would have been chaos.

‘Can we put out a request? Is tomorrow morning possible?’

‘Glad you don’t want it now. Yes, can do.’ She opened a new file on her computer. ‘Did you go down to see the recon by the way? I won’t be sorry to get them off my back – nice guys but …’

‘Demanding?’

‘You could say. Looking forward to the programme though.’

‘Be interesting to see what it turns up.’

‘The usual, I dare say. Where do you want this to go, Simon?’

‘Everywhere. OK, here we go: “Lafferton Police, investigating the case of the missing schoolgirl Harriet Lowther … blah blah –” the usual general call for info – but then: “In particular they
are
anxious to hear from the anonymous
caller who contacted the special information hotline after Harriet’s disappearance. The caller claimed to have seen her waiting at the bus stop in Parkside Drive, but he stated that he did not think she had actually boarded the bus when it pulled in. If you were this man, the police would like you to ring them again urgently. Please contact –” then give the hotline number and add my name as well,
would you? I want to flush this guy out. He knows something or he saw something and he might respond to a name rather than a general request.’

‘Anonymous usually does. I’ll put it out to catch the local news bulletins first thing.’

‘Wonder woman.’

It occurred to him as he went out that Marianne actually preferred to have the job, and the office, to herself, even if the work pressure was intense.
She was one of the best of their civilian staff – and the best tended to like to hold the reins on their own. And it also occurred to him that, other than missing the extra pairs of hands in terms of time, he too preferred to have his job to himself.

The programme went out the following night. In the end, the other two-thirds of it were given more prominence than the Lafferton section and very
little of the reconstruction was used, though what they did show – the girl waiting at the stop and the bus drawing up to it – was the vital part. Simon watched it, drinking a glass of beer, the window open onto the cool evening, and wondered if being a BBC producer was even more frustrating than trying to solve a cold case.

He remained slouched in front of the television, beating both Jesus
College, Cambridge, and the University of Warwick on
University Challenge
.

‘
What was the name given by the British to the metal foil used to baffle German radar during World War II
?’

‘Window,’ Simon said as his phone rang.

‘Evening, guv, duty switchboard here. I just had a call, anonymous, about the Lowther case. He asked to speak to you personally.’

‘Can you trace?’

‘Trying, but he said
he’d call again.’

‘OK. When – if – he does, do your best to keep him. Can you replay him to me?’

‘Hold on.’

The man sounded local, middle-aged, hesitant. He was not muffling his voice but he spoke as if he had his head turned slightly away from the receiver.