Dead Man’s Footsteps

50

Cassian Pewe took another tentative sip of his tea, wincing as the hot liquid touched his teeth. Last night he had slept with whitening gel on them and today they were sensitive to extremes of temperature.

Putting the cup down in the saucer, he said to Sandy’s parents, ‘I do want to make one thing clear. Detective Superintendent Grace is a well-respected police officer. I have no agenda other than to discover the truth about your daughter’s disappearance.’

‘We need to know,’ Derek Balkwill said.

His wife nodded. ‘That’s the only thing that matters to us.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘It’s very reassuring to know we are all on the same page.’ He smiled at them. ‘But,’ he went on, ‘without wanting to cast any aspersions, there are a number of senor officers in the Sussex CID who feel that a proper investigation has never been carried out. This is one of the main reasons I have been drafted in.’

Pausing, he was satisfied by their receptive nods, and a little emboldened. ‘I’ve been studying the case file all day today and there are many unanswered questions. I think, if I was in your shoes, I would be feeling less than satisfied with the work of the police to date.’

They both nodded again.

‘I really don’t understand why Roy was allowed to review the investigation himself, when he was so personally involved.’

‘We understand there was an independent team appointed a few days after our daughter disappeared,’ Margot Balkwill said.

‘And who was it who reported their findings to you?’ Cassian Pewe asked.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it was Roy.’

Pewe opened his arms. ‘There, you see, is the problem. Normally when a wife goes missing, her husband is instantly the prime suspect, until cleared. From what I have read and heard, it doesn’t seem to me that your son-in-law was ever formally regarded as a suspect.’

‘Are you saying that you regard him as a suspect now?’ Derek asked.

He picked up his teacup and again Pewe noticed the tremor. He wondered whether the man was nervous or it was the onset of Parkinson’s.

‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, at this stage.’ Pewe smiled smugly. ‘But I’m certainly going to take radical steps to eliminate him from suspicion – which is something that has clearly not yet been done.’

Margot Balkwill was nodding. ‘That would be good.’

Her husband nodded, also.

‘Can I ask you both a very personal question? Has either of you ever, for a moment, suspected that Roy might be hiding something from you?’

There was a long silence. Margot furrowed her eyebrows, pursed her lips, then clenched and opened her hands several times. They were coarse hands, Pewe noticed, a gardener’s hands. Her husband sat still, his shoulders hunched, as if being slowly crushed by a huge, unseen weight.

‘I think you should understand,’ Margot Balkwill said, ‘that we don’t have any animosity towards Roy.’ She spoke like a schoolmistress delivering a report to a parent.

‘None,’ Derek said emphatically.

‘But,’ she said, ‘a little bit of you can’t help wondering… Human nature. How well do any of us really know anyone. Isn’t that right, Officer?’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ Pewe agreed silkily.

In the silence that followed Margot Balkwill picked up her spoon and stirred her tea. Pewe noticed that although she didn’t take sugar, this was the third time now she had stirred it. ‘Was there ever anything you noticed in the way Roy treated your daughter,’ he asked. ‘Anything that bothered you? I mean, would you say they had a happy marriage?’

‘Well, I don’t think it’s easy for anyone being married to a police officer. Particularly an ambitious one like Roy.’ She looked at her husband, who shrugged assent. ‘She had to put up with being on her own a lot. And being disappointed at the last minute when he got called out.’

‘Did she have her own career?’

‘She worked for a travel agent in Brighton for a few years. But they were trying for a child and nothing was happening. The doctor told her she should do something less stressful. So she left, got a part-time job as a receptionist at a medical centre. She was between jobs when she…’ Her voice tailed off.

‘Disappeared?’ Pewe prompted.

She nodded, tears welling in her eyes.

‘It’s been hard on us,’ Derek said. ‘Particularly hard on Margot. She and Sandy were very close.’

‘Of course.’ Pewe pulled out his notebook and made some jottings. ‘How long were they trying for a child?’

‘Several years,’ Margot replied, her voice choked.

‘I understand that’s hard on a marriage,’ Pewe said.

‘Everything’s hard in a marriage,’ Derek said.

There was a long silence.

Margot sipped her tea, then asked, ‘Are you implying there is more behind this than we’ve been told?’

‘No, I wouldn’t want to speculate at this stage. I simply have to say that the methodology underpinning the investigation of your daughter’s disappearance is, in my view as an officer of some nineteen years’ experience in the top police force in the UK, wanting. That’s all.’

‘We don’t suspect Roy,’ Margot Balkwill said. ‘Just so you don’t jump to the wrong conclusions.’

‘I’m sure you don’t. Perhaps I should make one thing clear from the outset. My investigation is not a witch hunt. It is merely about closure. Enabling you and your husband to move on.’

‘That will depend, won’t it, on whether our daughter is alive or dead?’

‘Absolutely,’ Cassian Pewe said. He drank some more of his tea, then cleaned his teeth with his tongue. He pulled his card from his pocket and laid it on the table. ‘If there is anything, at any time, you think of that might be helpful for me to know, call me.’

‘Thank you,’ Margot Balkwill said. ‘You are a good man. I can feel it.’

Pewe smiled.