Blind to the Bones

18

Carl was in his twenties. He lived at home with his elderly mother, worked in the family business, and led a prosperous life. One morning he answered a phone call, told his mother he had to go to Newcastle — and failed to return. He took neither his car, money or credit cards. Fifteen months later, when police were notified, he was still missing.

After enquiries drew a blank, the case was referred to the National Missing Persons Helpline, who distributed posters and checked their usual sources, but found no official records of Carl. So they appealed for news of him on their weekly page in the Big Issue magazine. Nearly twenty people called after seeing Carl’s photo, to say: ‘That’s the chap I buy the magazine from!’

The NMPH faxed a letter for him to the Big Issue, and Carl called. He knew the photo was of himself, but didn’t recognize the name: he had invented one for himself. All he could remember, he said, was being chased through the streets of Newcastle and then getting a lift from a truck driver. When they stopped for coffee, the driver said: ‘You’d better wash your face.’ In the mirror, Carl saw blood from a head injury he hadn’t been aware of.

The driver dropped him off in Manchester, where Carl wandered the streets for three weeks, still not knowing who he was. His sole possessions were a St Christopher medal and a keyring holding a snap of himself with a woman. Eventually he sought help from the Citizens Advice Bureau, who told him of a hostel in Stockport and gave him the bus fare. He lived there for a year, started selling the Big Issue under his alias, found a flat, began to build a life for himself — but was haunted by the fear that something terrible had happened in Newcastle. What had he done?

The NMPH reassured him that he wasn’t in trouble with the police. His brother said it sounded like Carl, and that he had had an accidental blow to the head three days before he vanished. The NMPH arranged a meeting. Carl recognized his brother, and it turned into a happy and emotional reunion. Finally, Carl went home to see his mother again.

‘You see?’ said Sarah Renshaw. ‘That could be Emma.’

Diane Fry handed back the paper. Her eyes had automatically been drawn to the next case study below it, which was headed ‘We find long-lost sister’. She didn’t want to read that one. She suspected how easy it would be for her, too, to become convinced that her case would be the next success story for the National Missing Persons Helpline.

‘We’re in touch with all the agencies,’ said Sarah. ‘They send us news regularly. We have Child Find and Missing Kids in the USA. The NMPH, of course. UK Missing Persons. People Searchers. We’ve listed Emma with them all, and we check regularly. If she turns up somewhere, they’ll let us know.’

‘You shouldn’t put too much faith in the system, Mrs Renshaw.’

‘Oh, but they get results all the time. I’ve looked at their websites on the internet. They have wonderful successes every week for somebody. They find missing persons who have been suffering from amnesia and don’t know who they are, or people who have gone off for some reason and then haven’t been able to get up the courage to contact their families. Every week, they find people like that. One week, it could be Emma that they find.’

‘But there’s no way you can keep up with every single missing or homeless girl in the world, is there?’

‘We have to try.’

Then Fry took out the photograph of Emma taken in Italy.

‘Who’s the other girl in this photograph?’ she asked.

‘One of the students on the same course,’ said Sarah. ‘I forget her name.’

Fry turned the photo over. ‘Emma and Khadi, Milan’ was scrawled on the back, with the date.

‘Her name seems to be Khadi. Do you know anything about her?’

‘No. I think she’s a local girl — from Birmingham, I mean.’

‘Did Emma know her well?’

‘I don’t think so. She isn’t one of the friends she socializes with. I think that’s a problem when students are local — they don’t live in the halls of residence, or in student accommodation, so they don’t mix in as much socially.’

‘Also, it probably means they’re still living at home with their parents,’ said Fry. ‘That can hinder their social lives a bit, in some cases.’

‘Yes, especially—’ Sarah Renshaw stopped.

‘Especially what?’

‘Well, she’s an Asian girl, isn’t she? I understand some Asian families don’t give their daughters quite as much freedom as we do. It’s different for sons, of course.’

‘Is that right?’

Fry had dealt with many Asian families during her time in the West Midlands. She had encountered young women with Asian backgrounds who had every bit as much freedom as Emma Renshaw had been given. Probably more, in fact. But it was true that if the girl called Khadi had lived with her parents, that could have been the reason she hadn’t socialized with Emma and her friends, whatever her background.

‘We never spoke to her, did we?’ said Howard. ‘I don’t think she can be a particular friend of Emma’s.’

‘I’m sure the local police would have spoken to her anyway, if she was,’ said Fry.

‘Well, I’m not sure of that at all.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Khadi. It sounded like a shortened form of some other name. Fry racked her brain, trying to cast her mind back to Birmingham and the Black Country. She seemed to have lost most of her cultural awareness in just a few months spent in the Peak District. There were a few Asians in Edendale, but most of them were Chinese and ran restaurants and take-aways. Sometimes, there were parties of Japanese tourists. But seeing a person from the Indian subcontinent, or an Afro-Caribbean, was still quite a rarity.

Khadija. Was that it? She made a note to get someone to contact the art school in Birmingham and track down a student with that name. The school would grumble, no doubt, but it was worth following up. It felt like a loose end.

‘I take it you’ve heard about what happened to Neil Granger?’ she said.

‘Yes, we heard yesterday.’

‘Yesterday? The day he was found?’

‘Gail Dearden told us. She’s a friend of ours.’

‘The Deardens live up the road a little way out of Withens,’ said Sarah. ‘They bought the former gamekeeper’s lodge.’

‘Is that Alex Dearden’s mother?’

‘That’s right. She said her husband Michael saw the body, and he thought he recognized Neil Granger.’

Fry frowned. She remembered that Dearden’s car had been intercepted by officers at the scene where Granger was found. She hadn’t visited the air shaft herself, but she was surprised that Dearden could have been allowed close enough to identify the body.

‘What was Mr Dearden doing there?’ she said.

‘We’ve no idea.’

‘Alex doesn’t live with his parents now, does he? He has a house in Edendale.’

‘He never really went back home after he graduated,’ said Sarah. ‘He got a job with a computer company in Edendale, and he moved to live there. I don’t think Michael and Gail see as much of him as they’d like. But he has a girlfriend, and it seems serious, so he has other things to think about than his mum and dad.’

‘Unfortunately, I never did get the chance to speak to Neil Granger about Emma.’

‘That’s a shame. Do you think he might have known where she is? We’ve never asked him, not since we went down to Bearwood two years ago.’

‘You’ve asked Alex Dearden often, he says.’

‘Yes, but that’s different. The Granger boys weren’t people we talked to very much.’

Fry sighed. It didn’t make sense to her. It seemed the fact that Sarah Renshaw had pestered Alex Dearden for news of Emma, but not Neil Granger, didn’t actually mean she thought Alex was more likely to know something.

‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to go over that last day again with you,’ she said.

‘Last day?’

‘The day Emma went missing.’

‘Ah.’

‘As I understand it, she was planning to get a taxi from the house at 360B Darlaston Road, Bearwood, to New Street railway station in Birmingham.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you certain she was getting a taxi? It’s only a few miles. Might she have caught a bus, as she did when she went in to college?’

‘I don’t think so, do you?’ said Sarah.

‘Well, I don’t know, Mrs Renshaw. Emma was a student — she might have decided she couldn’t afford a taxi. If she was a fit girl, she might have preferred to walk to the bus stop, even with her bags.’

‘But the others said she was getting a taxi.’

‘But did Emma tell you that herself?’

Sarah looked at her husband for guidance, but he shook his head. ‘Well, I don’t think so. Not in so many words.’

‘OK, thank you. Now, we believe Emma was due to catch a train from New Street station a few minutes before eleven o’clock that morning, and she would have to change at Manchester Piccadilly to get to Glossop, where you were supposed to collect her at twenty past one.’

‘That’s right. We tried to call her mobile phone, but we only got the message service.’

‘Mrs Renshaw, would you have expected Emma to have phoned you at some stage?’

‘Well, if her train was late, or she missed one...’

‘But before that? Wouldn’t you have expected her to phone to tell you she was setting off? Or to call you from the train? Or to let you know she’d arrived at Manchester?’

‘Well, perhaps. But she might not have been able to reach us,’ said Sarah. ‘I think I was in and out of the house all morning. I had some shopping to do, because we were having a dinner party to celebrate Emma coming home, and there were a few things I had to get.’

‘No messages? You have an answering machine?’

‘Call Minder. But there were no messages. Anyway, I think Emma would have been more likely to ring Howard’s mobile, since she knew he was driving to collect her at Glossop. But Howard was out on business all morning. You had some meetings, didn’t you, dear?’

‘Yes. I was trying to pack everything into the morning, so I was very busy.’

‘No voice mails?’

Howard shook his head.

‘In fact, it was a bit of a rush for Howard to get back here and pick up me up before he drove to Glossop,’ said Sarah, with a smile. ‘He arrived a bit stressed, poor man, because he’d been battling through the traffic in Sheffield and he thought he was going to be late. He said it would have been easier for him to have gone to Glossop on his own, but I wanted so much to be there to meet Emma.’

Fry wanted to stare at Howard Renshaw to see what she could read in his face, but she resisted the temptation.

‘So you both went to Glossop to meet your daughter. You hadn’t heard from her, so you assumed she was arriving on the twenty past one train. And when she didn’t get off the train, you waited for the next one.’

‘Yes.’

Fry had a painful image of Sarah standing on the station platform at Glossop, getting excited as the diesel units pulled in from Manchester, her hand already half-raised, ready to wave the moment she set eyes on her daughter. And when Emma didn’t arrive? Had Howard reassured his wife, checked the time of the next train, and taken her across the road for a coffee while they waited? How had he coped as the hours dragged on, and Emma still hadn’t appeared? How had Sarah herself coped?

But Fry didn’t need to wonder about that. Sarah had remained hopeful. Her hope had never died — it still shone from her face now, as she was obliged to go over the story for the umpteenth time.

Every time she spoke to the Renshaws, Fry found their air of belief palpable, even contagious. A few minutes later, as she was sitting in their lounge talking about Emma, someone rang the doorbell. Both the Renshaws gave a sharp intake of breath, and Sarah looked immediately at the clock. While Howard jumped up and went to the door, his wife fussed with the cushions and smoothed her dress, as if an important visitor were about to walk in.

The expectation was so strong inside the room that Fry felt obliged to get out of her chair to look out of the window. She half-expected to see Emma herself standing in the drive, two years older than her photos, but restored to living flesh and still wearing the blue jacket and jeans that Fry had so often seen mentioned in interview reports. But it wasn’t Emma Renshaw. Instead, it was a pale woman in a green jacket.

‘Who was that?’ she said, when Howard returned.

‘Gail Dearden. She had some news.’

‘Oh?’

‘Another sighting.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of who,’ Sarah corrected her with a smile. ‘Gail helps us to collect cuttings for the album.’

‘What album is this?’ said Fry, with a sinking feeling.

The album was sitting right there on a bookshelf. It was a thick volume with heavy blue covers that had been well-thumbed. Howard picked it up almost reverentially and passed it to her, with a glance at Sarah for her approval.

Reluctantly, Fry opened the album and glanced at the first few pages. She had been right to be apprehensive. A few minutes ago, she had casually remarked that the Renshaws couldn’t keep up with every single missing or homeless girl in the world. Mrs Renshaw had said that they could try. And boy, how they were trying.

‘Take it away with you for a while,’ said Sarah. ‘There are plenty of possibilities for you there, I think.’

Back at the station in West Street, DC Gavin Murfin was watching the TV news with two other detective constables. They were waiting to see an interview with DCI Kessen about the Neil Granger enquiry.

‘What’s all the interest?’ said Ben Cooper, draping his jacket over a chair.

‘We’ve got a bet on about how many times he states the bleedin’ obvious,’ said Murfin. ‘I’m backing him for a full half-dozen.’

‘Oh. Well, for goodness’ sake, don’t let Diane catch you.’

‘Nah. She’s miles away. She’s gone to see the Renshaws again. They’ll be skipping happily through Wonderland together for a while yet.’

‘Well, be discreet, Gavin.’

‘Hey, here he comes,’ said Murfin. ‘Somebody get a notebook out and write them down.’

‘The murder of a young man is totally unacceptable,’ said DCI Kessen from the screen.

‘There you go!’ said Murfin. ‘That’s a cracking start. In fact, I think it should count as two.’

‘No way,’ said one of the other DCs.

‘Well, no worries. He’s got plenty of time, like.’

‘The police will be taking measures to identify the person responsible for this crime.’

‘Two!’

‘And we’re hoping to get the full co-operation of the public in this matter.’

‘Three!’

‘Hold on.’

‘That’s obvious, isn’t it?’

‘Not to the public.’

‘True, my son. But we’re not the public, are we? If I was having a bet with the general public, it’d be different, like.’

‘Make it half a point.’

‘Give over.’

‘Shh!’

‘Neil Granger’s family and friends are very distressed,’ DCI Kessen was saying, ‘and everyone who knew him will be saddened by what has happened.’

‘Four. And five,’ said Murfin. ‘That’s my boy. Now see him go for the big finish.’

‘We’re keeping an open mind on the motive for this crime.’

‘No,’ said the DC. ‘Not that one.’

‘Mmm.’

‘But we’d very much like to hear from anyone who was in the vicinity of Withens Moor on Friday night or early Saturday morning.’

‘I hope you’re not going to let me down, sir,’ said Murfin. ‘There’s a pint of beer riding on this.’

‘He’s not going to do it,’ said the DC. ‘Start getting your money out, Gavin.’

‘A young man is dead.’

‘Yes! I knew you could do it. You beauty! What a finish! Here’s Detective Chief Inspector Oliver Kessen to talk about the progress the police are making in the enquiry into the murder of twenty-two-year-old Neil Granger, “A young man is dead,” says Mr Kessen. What a genius!’

‘And we believe we are seeking an individual who is prepared to resort to violence.’

‘Just a minute, that’s seven.’

‘Oh, damn. The daft bastard. Why couldn’t he have stopped when he was winning?’

‘When you were winning, you mean.’

‘Seven. Who had seven?’

‘Nobody.’

‘No one had enough confidence in the lad. Who’d have thought he could manage seven statements of the bleedin’ obvious in one minute?’

‘Has he done much media work before?’ asked Cooper.

‘I dunno, Ben. But he won’t be doing much more, if he performs like that. The one thing HQ like in their senior officers is a good media image.’

‘What about the media liaison officer?’

‘Dan Simmonds?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Murfin sighed. ‘Ah, well. Better get back to work on this murder enquiry, I suppose. I believe we’re seeking an individual who’s prepared to resort to violence, like.’

The rest of the CID team were already starting to drift away home for the night by the time Diane Fry got back to her desk. She barely noticed them leaving as she logged on to the website of the National Missing Persons Helpline and looked through the photos of missing people. Ironically, Emma Renshaw was one of the most recent additions. The other cases made Fry very depressed, but there was no denying that they were compulsive reading.

There was Kevin, who had vanished in 1986, aged sixteen. He had left his home to buy some eggs for a cookery exam at school the next day. Before he went out, he’d had a bath and emptied his pockets, so he took only £1 with him to pay for the eggs, and nothing else. Kevin hadn’t been seen since.

There was Dan, from a village near Southampton. He was only fourteen, but the eldest of five children. He was last seen in January 2002, after spending an evening fishing with some friends. An adult thought he had seen Dan in the village square later that night, but Dan never returned home.

And then there was Carly, twenty-six, who vanished from Sheffield in November 2001. She had just returned from travelling abroad and was busy sorting out her things. When her mother came home, it looked as though Carly had popped out. She had taken her keys with her, but little else. She never came back.

Fry sat back, staring at the windows of the CID room without seeing them. At one time, that gallery of missing children on the NMPH website would have included Angela Fry, aged sixteen, last seen in Warley, West Midlands.

Diane had been fourteen in 1988, when Angie had left the foster home they were living in. It had been the year of the Lockerbie bomb, the year Salman Rushdie went into hiding and George Bush Senior had become president of the USA. But it had also been the year that Angie had left the foster home where they lived, and she was never seen again. Not by her sister, anyway.

Other kids remembered that year for Mutant Ninja Turtles and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, for Cagney and Lacey, and the Goss brothers with their mascara and lip gloss. Some of Diane’s friends had been such huge Bros fans that they had worn black puffa jackets and ripped jeans, and Doc Martens with Grolsch bottle tops attached to the laces. But Diane had been fourteen then, and her foster parents hadn’t allowed her to wear ripped jeans. She had made do with a Garfield toy with sucker pads on its feet that she had stuck to the window of the car when they had gone anywhere. Garfield had been helping her look for Angie in the Black Country streets they drove through.

But even Garfield had failed her. At nights, she had sat in her room and listened to pop music, wondering where Angie might have gone. Angie had mentioned Acid House raves, taking ecstasy and KLF. But Diane was listening to Belinda Carlisle ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’ and Bobby McFerrin — ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’. The world had seemed a grey place. School had lost any interest for a while. West Bromwich Albion had been swilling around in Division Two, changing managers nearly every year. Ron Atkinson was the manager the boys had been talking about.

The small details were impressed on Fry’s mind as if they might have been immensely important for capturing the memory. The last memory that she had of her sister, unusually excited as she pulled on her jeans to go out that night. She was going to a rave somewhere. There was a boy who was picking her up. Diane had wanted to know where, but Angie had laughed and said it was a secret. Raves were always held in secret locations, otherwise the police would be there first and stop them. But they were doing no harm, just having fun. And Angie had gone out one night, with their foster parents making only a token attempt to find out where she was going. Angie had already been big trouble for them by then, and was getting out of control.

Looking back, Fry knew she had worshipped her older sister, which was why she had been unable to believe anything bad of her. Every time they had been moved from one foster home to another, it had been their foster parents’ fault, not Angie’s.

And when Angie had finally disappeared from her life, at the age of sixteen, the young Diane had been left clutching an idealized image of her, like a final, faded photograph.

When he got home to 8 Welbeck Street that evening, Ben Cooper found Mrs Shelley standing in the tiny hallway shared by the two flats. She was clutching something in a paper bag with mauve stripes, and she looked a bit surprised to see him.

‘Oh, it’s you, Ben.’

‘Yes, I still live here, Mrs Shelley. Were you waiting to see me?’

‘No. I’m going upstairs.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘She’s very nice. You’ll like her.’

‘Will I?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Who will I like?’

‘Peggy,’ said Mrs Shelley, raising her voice a bit, as if she thought he might have gone deaf.

‘I don’t know any Peggys. Wait a minute... is this somebody who’s moving into the upstairs flat?’

‘Of course. I told you it was all arranged.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘Well, it’s all arranged anyway.’

‘Who is she, Mrs Shelley?’

‘Quite by chance, I have a friend who lives in Chicago. She emigrated to the USA with her family nearly thirty years ago.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘We’re old schoolfriends. I was very sad when she left. But her husband lost his job here during the seventies when the company he worked for went out of business, and they wanted to make a new life for themselves. I can’t blame them really. He’s in research.’

‘Very interesting.’

Cooper had learned just to make neutral noises while Mrs Shelley was speaking. Eventually, she might get round to telling him what he wanted to know, with a bit of nudging. But it was best to let her talk and get there at her own speed, otherwise she felt harassed and got irritable.

‘And this is the lady who’s taking the upstairs flat?’

‘No, of course not. Peggy is her daughter.’

‘I see.’

‘Now, Ben, I don’t want you to be rude to her.’

Cooper raised his hands. ‘Why on earth should I do that?’

‘Well, she’s American, you know.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Americans.’

Mrs Shelley looked doubtful. ‘I’m not sure about that. She seems rather, well... exuberant.’

Cooper smiled. ‘I’m sure she’ll be fine.’

‘She doesn’t seem anything like my old friend, considering she’s her daughter. I don’t know what could have happened to her in Chicago. I suppose she must have got it from her father’s side. What do you think of this? I bought it in a craft gallery in Buxton, near the Crescent.’

Mrs Shelley opened the striped bag and showed him the contents.

‘What on earth is it?’

It looked like an empty wooden shuttle from a cotton mill, but with dozens of little openings along its length, like tiny mouths with pouting lips. There was something slightly obscene about it. But maybe that was just his own imagination.

‘It’s an Australian Banksia nut,’ said Mrs Shelley.

‘A what?’

‘Well, that’s what the label said. An Australian Banksia nut. It cost me £4.’

‘A bargain.’

‘Do you think she’ll like it?’

Cooper raised her eyebrows. ‘Is this for my new neighbour?’

Mrs Shelley hesitated. ‘It’s a house-warming present. I thought it might make a talking point.’

Cooper looked again at the object. The tiny mouths pouted and smirked, as if they were forming lewd words.

‘Well, I suppose that’ll work,’ he said.

As soon as he had settled in at Welbeck Street, Ben Cooper had asked Mrs Shelley if he could have bolts put on the front and back doors of his flat. The locks were OK, but they didn’t give much security on their own. Diane Fry had warned him about living too close to the patch where he was so well known, and had advised him to have a spy-hole fitted on the front door, too, so that he could never be surprised by a caller. But that seemed to be going a bit too far; it was a little too paranoid. This was only Welbeck Street, Edendale, after all.

When the ring came on his bell, Cooper almost jumped with surprise. He had not thought a spy-hole was necessary. Now, though, he experienced a strange reluctance to open the door without being able to see who was on the other side. He couldn’t call it foreboding exactly, more a need to be careful, a suspicion that opening the door could change his life.

The woman who stood on the doorstep was a complete stranger. She was in her thirties, thin, with straight fair hair. A battered blue rucksack was slung over the shoulder of her cotton jacket.

‘Oh, I think you rang the wrong bell,’ said Cooper. ‘You’ll be for the upstairs flat, won’t you?’

She looked confused. ‘Are you Ben? Ben Cooper?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, it’s you I’ve come to see.’

‘Aren’t you my new neighbour?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Sorry. You’re not Peggy, then?’

The woman shook her head. With each moment that she stood on his doorstep, she was starting to look more and more familiar. Each movement rang a bell in the back of Cooper’s mind. Yet he was sure he had never met her before.

‘No, I’m not Peggy,’ she said, ‘whoever she is.’

‘I don’t really know who she is,’ said Cooper. ‘Just that she’s supposed to be moving into the flat upstairs. Are you sure you’re nothing to do with her?’

‘Sure.’

‘So you must be selling something?’

‘No, not that either. My name’s Angela. They call me Angie.’

‘I’m sorry, but I really don’t know you.’

She laughed. ‘Angie Fry. Does that help?’

Gradually, Cooper began to recognize the resemblance around the eyes, the slim shoulders, and the way she stood, all the things that had rung so many bells. But he was still completely unprepared for the shock when she finally explained.

‘I’m Diane’s sister,’ she said.