Chapter Eight

It was a member of the NCP staff who first spotted the woman. She was lying, almost completely concealed, behind a large Buick. He could see that she was unconscious and badly injured and immediately notified Heathrow police station to which each of the car parks had a direct line.

The duty officer arrived, closely followed by a doctor from the Medical Centre of the terminal, who pronounced life extinct. They were followed by a police unit from the station proper and an ambulance. It having quickly been decided that the death could be suspicious, the body was covered, the coroner’s office contacted and the whole floor sealed off. At this point no one had any idea of the corpse’s identity.

The numbers of every car on that level were checked on the Police National Computer and attempts were begun to trace the owners. Quite a few of them turned up unsolicited within the first couple of hours of the investigation and were not best pleased at finding themselves unable simply to climb into their vehicles and drive away.

The Forensic Laboratory Liaison Sergeant came out and examined the body in queasily precise detail after which, some five hours after it had first been discovered, it was transported to the mortuary at Hillingdon Hospital. There its fingerprints were taken and all of its clothing bagged and sent to the nearest forensic department should analysis eventually prove necessary. Scenes of Crime then began an analytical assessment of the area.

By nine o’clock the following evening the police at Heathrow believed they had possibly discovered the identity of the dead woman. The owner of every vehicle but one on the level where she was killed had been traced and interviewed either in person or by telephone. The exception was the possessor of a dark brown Mini. This was registered under the name of Brenda Brockley at an address within the jurisdiction of Causton police who were duly contacted. It was this notification which led to the call that had so rudely interrupted Tom Barnaby’s sweet dalliance with his wife.

Heathrow police station is situated in a web of arterial roads about a mile from the airport proper and surrounded by an unlovely mass of hotels, petrol stations and factory buildings. In the office of Inspector Fennimore, DCI Barnaby and DS Troy were given the background to the discovery of the body. They in their turn gave what information they had on Brenda’s disappearance.

The postmortem was due to be carried out at eleven the following morning by a Home Office pathologist. Until then the precise cause of death would not officially be known but the doctor who had first examined the body was of the opinion that a savage blow to the head was to blame.

“There were other injuries,” explained Inspector Fennimore, “consistent with the girl being struck by a car. I think it’s likely this flung her to the wall against which she was found rather than her being put there after death.”

“You mean we’re talking about a hit and run?”

“It’s the most likely conclusion. Scenes of Crime photographs may help us there. Certainly there were tyre marks on her skirt. Why, have you any reason to suspect a deliberate killing?”

“Perhaps.” Briefly Barnaby explained the situation at Fawcett Green. “Is it possible you could run a check for us on cars parked there on Monday the tenth of this month? From around eight p.m.?”

“We can do that for you, yes. Are you looking for anything special?”

Troy passed over the registration numbers belonging to Alan Hollingsworth and Gray Patterson. Inspector Fennimore made a careful note and returned the card.

“Were you given any idea of the time of death when she was first examined?” asked Barnaby.

“Dr. Hatton thought it had probably occurred around three days ago. Which would put it at some time Monday evening.”

“It’s incredible she wasn’t found earlier,” said Barnaby. “Aren’t these places patrolled at all?”

“Good heavens, yes. Every hour, according to the NCP staff. But they don’t have time to go all round and in between every single vehicle. Mainly they’re on the look-out for any cars that have been damaged or dodgy people. Anyone dealing, passing stuff—that sort of thing.”

“Even so, sir,” interrupted Sergeant Troy. “A body—”

“You’ll see when you get there how it could have happened. She was lying in the corner at the junction of two walls hidden by this big American car. Our Forensic guy thought she had probably been thrown clean over it.”

“Christ,” said Barnaby.

“And though the place is designated short-term, people leave their vehicles for varying periods. The Buick has been there for nine days. The driver went on a weekend trip to Basle and ran it on a bit.”

As Inspector Fennimore now seemed to have come to the end of his information, Barnaby nodded to Troy who produced an envelope and handed it across the desk. The inspector drew out three photographs.

“I’d like all of those circulated around the Terminal One complex.” explained Barnaby. “Shops, cafés, check-in desks, bureaux de changes. And include the National Car Park staff, if you would.”

“No problem.” He studied the pictures. “That certainly looks like the dead girl. Is this the man you believe to have been murdered?”

“That’s right. The other woman is his wife, a probable kidnap victim.”

“Surely she won’t have been seen here then,” said the inspector.

“I’d still like it included.”

“Fine by me. There’ll have been some plane spotters on the top level during daylight hours. Several of them are regulars. We’ll show them the pictures as well.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate this.” The Chief Inspector spoke with sincerity. Generous and wholehearted cooperation between varying police authorities could never be taken for granted.

“I’ll arrange for a copy of Scenes of Crime findings and the postmortem report to be sent to you direct.”

“And the dead girl’s prints to be sent to our Forensics, if you would.”

As Barnaby rose to leave, Fennimore rang the airport and arranged for him to be met and escorted to the place where the body had been found.

The tape barriers had been dismantled. The Buick coupé, its examination complete, rested in all its glittering two-tone emerald and apple-green glory. Chrome fins, fenders and twin exhaust, their shining surfaces somewhat subdued beneath the residue of SOCO’s powdering, writhed and twisted around and about.

Sergeant Troy, vastly impressed, immediately saw himself in the car—hood back, naturally—coasting along, à la American Graffiti. Lightly caressing the ivory-padded steering wheel with his right hand, his left arm negligently draped along the back of the passenger seat. By his side an exquisite girl with a tumble of blonde hair, glossy scarlet lips and wearing shorts a man could tuck into his glove compartment and still have room for the halter top. Music blasting out of the car radio. “Earth angel, Earth angel ... Puleeze be mine ...”

“You in a bloody trance again?”

“No, sir. Of course not.” Troy was furious at being shown up in front of the policeman who had accompanied them. He stepped closer to the car, studied it intently and nodded several times. He pictured cool things, hoping this would bring his colour down.

“Where exactly was she found?”

“Just here, Chief Inspector.” The constable moved down the side of the car and Barnaby followed.

He could see now what Fennimore meant. The Buick was last in line almost parallel to the exit and flush against the wall. A body lying behind it could easily have remained unnoticed for several days.

There were smears of blood on the concrete about two feet above ground level, presumably from the injuries to her head. Whether she had received these after being run over or not until hitting the wall, later analysis would no doubt determine.

Crucial also was where the vehicle that struck her had been parked. It must have been going at a fair old lick. Travelling from the far side of the bay it would have been possible for someone in a hurry to pick up the necessary speed. The nearer one came to the point at which the body was found, the harder this would become. Really close and you were talking about a deliberate revving up and stamping on the accelerator.

Barnaby sighed. He went and stood in the centre of the white exit line and stared up the empty ramp and tried to picture Brenda Brockley in the last moments of her life. Had she been running after someone? Or running away? Plainly she had been knocked down by a moving vehicle but was it this impact that had thrown her over the gaudy Buick? Perhaps she had been crammed into that ugly grey stone corner by the driver, anxious to gain time to put some distance between himself and the result of, at the best, dangerous driving.

Two cars were now approaching at a sedate 5 m.p.h. Barnaby stepped to one side and watched them pass, thinking what an old cynic it would be who made any connection between their tortoise-like progression and the presence of a uniformed copper.

The next step was Hillingdon Hospital to which Sergeant Troy drove with no great eagerness. After a cup of tea and a longish wait in the security office, both officers were directed to the mortuary.

Though the experience was nothing new to either of them, they reacted in very different ways. Barnaby, though never completely detached, had over the years come to accept what now lay all about them with a certain amount of saddened resignation.

Troy who, until he was around twenty-five, had been convinced he was immortal, was still not a hundred per cent sure that he would be going the way of all flesh. He knew it was true but he couldn’t believe it. A bit like hearing Terminal Cheesecake had made the Top Ten. In any case, the way things were shaping up right now, what with science and all, some magical potion or process of suspended animation was bound to be discovered long before his turn came round. Perhaps he could be frozen. Rich people in the States were. One man had just had his head done—lowered into a cylinder accompanied by clouds of dry ice. Troy had seen it on the telly. He pondered now on what bit he might have preserved should the chance arise, on what portion of his anatomy had given the most happiness to himself and the world about him.

“Up this end, Sergeant.”

“Right, guv.”

The attendant had already folded back the unstained, white sheet. Barnaby stood looking down at a youngish woman of scarcely describable ugliness. Her head was lying at an unnatural angle along the twisted line of her shoulder. A great beak of a nose, no chin to speak of, a tiny puckered drawstring mouth. Although her eyes were closed they still bulged, fish-like, beneath swollen blue lids. Her brown hair, stiff with dust and grit, was short and plainly cut.

Barnaby had a sudden vivid recollection of his own daughter who was so insistently lovely there was no getting away from her. No one pretended life was fair but unfairness on this scale must indicate a quite savage whimsy on the part of the Fates. To what despair must such a profile have reduced this poor girl?

Having called Sergeant Troy over and now sensing his approach, Barnaby felt a need to shield Brenda Brockley from any comments. He flung the sheet over her face as he had once, long ago, pulled down the skirt on a corpse lying in a muddy ditch.


* * *

“Sorry, Audrey. I thought, as you’d already met and talked to them ...”

“That’s all right, sir.”

It was not the first time Sergeant Brierley had travelled alongside a male colleague on his way to break the news dreaded above all other. Not the first and, she had no doubt, not the last.

She sometimes thought her approach up the path or arrival on the doorstep might alone be enough to telegraph the reason for their visit. So many people realised now, from watching various police programmes, that a female officer invariably accompanied the bearer of ill tidings. A pastoral presence; that was the idea. Someone to make the tea. To listen while the bereaved wept and shouted, rambled with repetitive and confused anguish or brought out photographs of the newly dead. Sometimes they would just sit silently, grief breaking them apart, like a hammer shattering a stone.

Chief Inspector Barnaby rang The Larches’ bell. Two thirty in the morning but there was still a light on downstairs. Like Audrey, this was the part of the job he hated most. And it was not only psychologically uncomfortable, it could be dangerous. As in ancient Greece, the messenger’s report could sometimes bring about quick and savage retribution. Barnaby knew of an officer detailed to inform someone that his pregnant wife had been killed by a drunken driver. In a fit of agonised rage, the man had snatched up the first weapon that came to hand—a set of fire irons—and struck out with them. The sergeant had almost lost an eye.

As soon as Barnaby rang the bell, the dog had its paws up on the windowsill. She wasn’t barking this time. Just staring silently out. There was a full moon, a great circle of glowing alabaster. The close was flooded with cold, silver light.

Reg opened the door. He looked at them both. Stared into their faces, one at a time, with great intensity. His pallor, already very pronounced, deepened to a ghastly whitish-grey. He stood aside so they could enter.

Iris, wearing a quilted nylon housecoat over her nightdress, was seated bolt upright on the settee facing a blank television screen. She got up quickly when Barnaby entered. Unable to read his expression as her husband had done, her drawn face plumped up with anticipation.

“Is there any news?”

“I’m afraid it’s bad news, Mrs. Brockley. The body of a woman was found earlier this evening at Heathrow Airport—”

“No!”

“I’m very sorry but we believe it to be that of your daughter.”

A long pause. Then, with one swift movement, Iris doubled over and started to howl. Bloodcurding sounds interspersed with little snorts and grunts of agony. Audrey crossed over and tried to comfort her but was pushed away.

Reg remained standing, staring desperately around. He seemed to be seeking a third person. Someone perhaps with new information rendering that which had suddenly brought death into his house null and void.

Barnaby repeated himself. “I’m so sorry.”

“What ... how did ... ?”

“She was hit by a car.”

“Are you sure?” The words were blurred, spoken through flabby lips. “I mean that it’s Brenda?”

“Obviously the body has not been officially identified—”

“Well then!” shouted Reg, a parody of a sergeant major on parade with his ramrod stance and bristly moustache and unfocused, staring eyes. “You can’t know for sure. They don’t know, Iris. Not for sure.”

“Don’t know?”

This was terrible. Barnaby saw the beginnings of hope in Iris’s tortured face. He spoke quickly before it could gain any sort of focus.

“It is the person in the photograph you left at the station, Mr. Brockley. There’s no doubt about that.”

At this, Iris began to scream silently, opening and closing her mouth with great energy and drawing her lips back in a savage snarl.

Barnaby said, “I think you should ring your GP, Mr. Brockley. Is it Jennings?”

“You can’t do that. He might tell someone.”

“Your wife needs a sedative.” The Chief Inspector could hardly believe he had heard aright. “I imagine you could do with some help as well.”

When Reg did not reply, Barnaby picked up a tapestry address book by the phone and opened it under J. Then under D with more success. While he dialled, Sergeant Brierley asked if she could make the Brockleys some tea. Iris, even in extremis, was then compelled to do the correct social thing. Somehow she got herself into the kitchen but then just stood gazing blindly around, unable to remember where the teapot was, let alone the tea.

Shona, having long since appreciated the abandonment of all previous rules and regulations, was lolling in an armchair on a mass of scatter cushions. She jumped down when the two women left and followed with a melancholy swagger. As Barnaby replaced the receiver, Reg began to argue.

“Photographs aren’t real life. You should get someone who knew her to do a proper identification. Try Mr. March-banks, from the office. Or Miss Travers from Personnel. They thought the world of Brenda.”

To his shame, Barnaby became aware of a flicker of irritation, as if this man’s refusal to accept the loss of his only child was somewhat irrational. After all, it was not as if such a reaction was out of the ordinary. Shock took different people different ways and one of the most common was an inability to believe that what had truly happened, had happened. And who would not use every ounce of energy to hold the smashing of their entire world at bay? How would I cope if it was Cully? wondered the Chief Inspector. And knew that it would finish him.

“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Brockley?”

“Yes.” Reg walked hesitantly to the nearest chair, running the tips of his fingers over the arm before lowering his body, like a blind person. He said, almost to himself, “Why on earth would Brenda have been at Heathrow?”

Unable to answer, Barnaby asked if there was anyone Reg would like the police to contact.

“What?”

“A neighbour? A relative perhaps?”

“What for?”

“You and your wife will need some support, sir.” Silence. “And help, if only of a practical nature.”

“We’re a very private family.”

It seemed unnecessarily cruel to point out that they would not be very private for much longer. The fact that their daughter had lived next door to a couple who were themselves currently making lurid headlines would not be missed by the tabloids. In next to no time journalists and photographers could be swarming all over their neat little pea shingle drive. Barnaby wondered if he could perhaps prepare the Brockleys for this invasion without being too blunt about it. He suggested they might like to go and stay with friends for a few days. Dully, Reg explained that they had no friends.

Audrey, having brought Iris back into the sitting room, was handing round cups of tea when the doorbell rang.

Barnaby had been brief on the telephone, simply telling the Brockleys’ GP that they had received very bad news and that his presence was urgently required. Audrey let Dr. Jennings in and spoke to him in the hall, explaining the situation in more detail. He entered the room looking deeply shocked, went over to Iris and began to talk quietly. Eventually he persuaded her to get up and he and Audrey half led, half carried her upstairs.

As soon as they had gone, Barnaby began to speak. He did this from regretful necessity knowing, from long experience, that there was no way to make the sudden transition from the personal to the practical sound anything but crude, even heartless.

“I was wondering, Mr. Brockley ...”

Reg did not respond. He was sitting quietly, resting his elbow on one knee and his forehead in the heel of his hand, as if shading his eyes from an unspeakable catastrophe.

“... if you feel up to answering one or two questions.”

“About what?”

“Well, Brenda. Time is very important in a situation like this. Your daughter has already been dead for perhaps five days. The sooner we can start to gather information, the better our chances are of catching whoever brought this tragedy about.”

In normal circumstances this sort of fudge-up would have rung an extremely loud warning bell, for there was no logical reason why knowing the background to a random hit and run victim’s life would help trace the driver responsible. Barnaby was banking on Reg’s devastation not to spot this. And on his remarkable subjection to authority.

“So if you could tell me a little—”

“She was very highly respected.”

“I’m sure—”

“You won’t find anyone to say a word against her.”

“Forgive me if I recap on ground you may have covered at the station,” he would look over the couple’s earlier interview when he got back, “but it’s obviously very important that we get every detail absolutely right. She dashed out of the house—I think that was how you put it—at around about seven thirty.”

Watchdog was on.”

“Did Brenda say anything at all as she went out?”

“She just ran off.”

“Nothing about meeting anyone?”

“No.”

“Did she take a coat?”

“No.” He was becoming querulous. “I told them all this.”

“Yes, I’m sorry, Mr. Brockley. You said Brenda had no special friends. Was there anyone at work perhaps she was close to?”

“No person more than another. She got on with everyone.”

Barnaby took this with a grain of salt. No one got on with everyone, but the pitifully unattractive needs must develop their own defences and stratagems against rejection. Perhaps Brenda’s had been a continuously compliant and ingratiating manner. Well, he would soon find out.

“They bought her a lovely brooch,” said Reg. “With her name on.”

“What about telephone calls at home? Or letters?”

“From men, you mean?”

“Not necessarily, sir.”

“Brenda was very choosy.”

Barnaby narrowed the circle, asking about possible acquaintances in Fawcett Green. He got nowhere. Brenda Brockley had got up, gone to work, come home, had her tea, walked her dog and gone to bed. That was it. The life plan.

“Although ...”

“Yes?”

“It’s nothing, really. Just that, over the last few days, she has been, well, different.”

“In what way?”

“Abrupt. She’s always had a lovely way with her. Mummy and I insisted. Courtesy costs nothing. But then she started getting all reserved. Not joining in the conversation. Refusing to answer questions about her day. That sort of thing.”

Barnaby, who lived half his life in just such a manner, much to his wife’s annoyance, hardly knew what to say. But it was interesting that this change in Brenda’s behaviour seemed to have taken place around the time of Simone Hollingsworth’s disappearance.

“I suppose we’ll never know what the problem was now.” Reg’s voice had become strained and forlorn.

There seemed little point, at this stage, in being any more precise or stringent. It could even be counterproductive. Iris, when she was in any sort of state to answer questions, might well be more helpful.

Barnaby explained that it could be necessary to make Brenda’s room available for examination some time during the next few days. Bearing this in mind, would Mr. Brockley have any objection if he, Barnaby, had a look around right now?

“Normally I’d have to say no,” replied Reg. He got up quickly, as if glad to have a definitive objective. Almost bustling across the carpet. “Her door was always locked, you see.”

“Oh?” Barnaby was immediately intrigued as to why a blameless spinster, long past the adolescent “Keep Out—This Means You!” phase, would do such a thing.

“But she dashed off in such a rush she didn’t take her bag.” As they climbed the stairs he added, unhappily, “We’ve spent a lot of time up here, over the past few days.”

He hovered wretchedly just inside the door while Barnaby, who would much rather have had the place to himself, looked around the silent, abandoned room.

A pink candlewick dressing gown was draped over the back of a chair. The curtains and bedspread were of a matching trellised print of insipid leaves and flowers. There was a clock radio and a couple of framed country scenes so completely characterless they could have been set almost anywhere. Above the bed was a large framed print of two small street urchins, a boy and a girl, holding hands and crying. Tears, in the form of several tiny, clear glass beads, were glued to their cheeks.

Barnaby, who had seen the likeness more than once before, remained bewildered. What sort of person would want, permanently displayed in their home, images of distressed children?

He opened the wardrobe and looked briefly inside. Duncoloured suits, a single patterned dress (brown and olive green), several pairs of highly polished black and navy court shoes, all on trees. A drab overcoat. Dressing-table drawers revealed some plain cotton underwear and several pairs of heavy denier, flesh-coloured tights. They held no perfume or make-up. Perhaps she had long ago recognised the futility of any attempt at cosmetic improvement, let alone transformation.

Close to the narrow, single bed was a glass shelf supported by curly metal brackets, painted white. This held soft toys and a small stack of romantic novels.

Barnaby turned his attention to the pretty antique desk placed by the window. He lifted the lid. The desk was empty but for a flat, dark green, beautifully marked book which he took out and opened. An action that finally provoked Reg into speech.

“Inspector, if you wouldn’t mind. I think that could be rather personal.”

“It’s the personal that might help us the most, Mr. Brockley.” Barnaby switched on the little goose-necked lamp, adjusted the pink shade, opened the pages at random and began to read.

April 3rd: Today a new departure. A has discovered where I work! Emerging from the office I literally “cannoned” into him. And there was something about his expression—slightly guilty but at the same time eager and excited—that told me this was no coincidence.

After this accidental (quote unquote) collision there was nothing for it but that he absolutely must take me to lunch. We went to the Lotus Garden where much hilarity ensued due to my complete incompetence vis à vis chopsticks. He insisted on advising me which, needless to say, involved a lot of “hands on” tuition. His fingers are slender but so strong. Did they press a little too firmly and with unnecessary warmth? He has such laughing eyes. When they met mine I think we both realised that something hugely significant had just occurred.

The Chief Inspector, his expression one of amazed disbelief, flicked through several more pages of vivid green script that should surely have been purple, and picked up the thread.

May 7th: Strictly against instructions A has started to ring me at the Coalport. Need I say “raised eyebrows all round”? Trish Travers commenting on his sexy voice, everyone asking questions. I maintained a discreet silence, simply saying “no comment at this stage.”

I’m determined not to succumb but he is so good-looking. Persuaded into another lunch—this time at the Star of India. He confessed then what I have long suspected. That his marriage is an empty sham and his life desperately unhappy. Little does he know that I also have experienced loneliness, that special He having proved elusive. Until now. Much against my better judgement and purely out of sympathy, I allowed my hand to rest briefly on his. Those laughing eyes became deadly serious and seemed to look directly into my soul. I think I knew then that there was no turning back.

Barnaby dipped into the saga three or four more times. The gist, style and content did not change. On the point of closing the diary, he noticed a photograph pasted inside the front cover. He passed the book over, saying, “Have you seen this, sir?”

Reg’s stretched out hand was tentative. Longing to be privy to his child’s innermost thoughts when she was alive, he now experienced feelings of severe unease at such an intrusion.

“It doesn’t seem right.”

“Just look at the photograph, if you will.”

Reg stared at the picture, his eyes and mouth circles of stupefaction. He handed the diary back. “It’s Alan.” Then, as if trying to clarify an impenetrably murky situation, “From the property adjacent.” He walked, stiff-legged, to Brenda’s pretty little mother-of-pearl seat and leaned on it. “What does this mean? What is she writing? I don’t understand.”

“There are several meetings of a romantic nature described here, Mr. Brockley. A courtship, as it were.”

“With Hollingsworth?

“No name is mentioned in full.” Though a closer reading, he hoped, would prove otherwise. “But the initial A does recur from time to time. And this, coupled with the photograph—”

“But we hardly knew them. I told you that the other day.”

“You and your wife may hardly have know them but—”

“Oh God! You don’t think it was Alan who ...” Reg’s face was contorted, crazed with pain. “Could that be why he took his own life?”

At this point Audrey appeared in the doorway to say that Iris was now asleep and that Dr. Jennings had left but would call again first thing in the morning.

Reg cried out, “My little girl. Brenda, oh Brenda.”

Audrey helped him up and persuaded him to go downstairs. As the two of them left the room, Barnaby thought about Reg’s agonised suggestion. Until the motorist responsible was apprehended, no one would know precisely when Brenda Brockley died; even after a post-mortem, there was always a certain amount of uncertainty. But if she had been killed last Monday night before, say, ten thirty Hollingsworth could have been responsible. He was out and about and on wheels. And it was certainly possible, given reasonable traffic conditions, to drive to Heathrow and back in under three hours.

So, means and opportunity may turn out to be not so problematical. But motive? That was a facer. Barnaby found it difficult to believe that Alan Hollingsworth was sexually involved with the Brockleys’ daughter. His guess was that her secret writings were as much a work of fiction as the Mills and Boon novels on the little glass shelf. Not that extremely ugly woman were inevitably unable to hold a man in thrall: history had plenty of examples to prove otherwise. The Duchess of Constantinople, whose lovers were legion, was said to have warts on her nose, one shoulder higher than the other and breath to set the Bosphorus on fire.

But in this particular instance Barnaby felt convinced he was right. Perhaps because Hollingsworth’s obsession with his wife was so consuming as to make an interest in any other woman appear unlikely. But how had Brenda viewed next door’s marriage? Did she, keeping herself to herself in this sad little cell, really know anything about it at all?

Working on the open mind principle, Barnaby considered, for one wild moment, the idea of the Brockleys’ daughter as Simone’s kidnapper. She may well have been jealous of Simone, and even wished to do her harm. And deliberately driving Alan half mad with anxiety was also not entirely out of the question. Unrequited love could spawn behaviour both cruel and perverse. But when would she have had the time? Unless subsequent interviews at the Coalport and National proved absenteeism, every moment of her blameless, tightly organised life seemed to have been accounted for. Which meant an accomplice.

Rapidly painting himself into a more and more impossible corner, the Chief Inspector shook the whole muddle from his mind and turned once more to the diary.

The viridian script, tightly crammed, jigged about on the page. He flicked back and forth and then, suddenly, there was a breathing space. A cool expanse of blank lemon paper. It was broken by two lines, calmly written in pencil. He addressed himself to the brief paragraph and the words flew like arrows, straight to his heart.

People say what you’ve never had you never miss. That isn’t true. You dream of what you’re missing all night long. And then you ache, all through the day.

By 8 a.m. on Monday morning the incident room was as busy as a hive of bees. There was still a certain amount of fresh information coming through regarding the Hollingsworth case, including several sightings. Desk staff, civilian and uniformed alike, listened and transcribed.

In Brick Lane, Simone had worn a gold and scarlet sari and bells on her toes. In Telford she posed as a him, in Devizes as a traffic warden. Near Stratford-on-Avon she sported on the deck of a canal barge in Gipsy earrings and little else.

More sensibly and closer to home on the day of her disappearance, Mrs. Hollingsworth had appeared at Uxbridge Tube station loaded with Marks and Spencer’s shopping and constantly looking at her watch “as if she was waiting for a friend.”

On a Country Route bus to Aylesbury a passenger had sat next to someone wearing a shocking pink linen jacket over a flowered dress with a pattern similar to Simone’s. Though this person had auburn hair and was wearing dark glasses, she still bore a close resemblance to the kidnapped woman. As the informant left the bus at Flackwell Heath she had no idea of the woman’s final destination.

Thirdly, and most promising of all, Simone had been spotted getting into a shabby white van parked only a few yards from the department store where she had last been genuinely sighted. The person who reported this had not noticed the number but did recall that the vehicle was unmarked. In other words, not trade.

Barnaby, refreshed after a Sunday spent pottering in his garden and lying in the deck-chair, caught up with all the other salient stuff, then asked that an “anxious to trace” notice be put out on the van driver. Also that every store in Causton, including charity shops, be questioned over the sale of an auburn wig and a pink jacket. For Mrs. Hollingsworth had certainly not been carrying either item when she boarded the market bus at Fawcett Green.

Finally he asked for some posters of Simone showing the relevant time and date of her supposed sighting to be plastered all over Uxbridge Tube station, entrance hall and platforms. You never knew your luck.

After this he retired to the quietest corner he could find. A briefing had been called for eight thirty which was in about twenty minutes’ time. The Chief Inspector took with him some strong coffee and Brenda Brockley’s diary which he had been perusing, on and off, since breakfast.

A closer reading had not revealed the significance of the gold and silver asterisks and little scarlet hearts and Barnaby doubted now that he would ever understand their significance. But if they remained mysterious, Brenda’s adventures were proving to be sadly conventional. There was no breaking of banks in Monte Carlo or skiing in Gstaad. No yachting on wine-dark seas beneath a brazen Aegean sky. She did not even go to Ascot or Cowes.

She had wanted so little, poor girl. Dinner at a pub on the river bank at Marlow, “with white swans so very graceful bobbing at their reflections in the water. Daintily they ate some petty fours straight from my hand.” A concert at High Wycombe with a slow drive home in the moonlight “which Alan begged and pleaded might never end.” Yet another Chinese, this time at the Kyung Ying.

The room was filling up. Some people had gathered in front of the notice-board on which were pinned blow-ups of Brenda’s studio photograph along with the SOCO pictures of Alan on the hearth rug, the happy nuptial portrait and the Polaroids of Simone. Others were making themselves familiar with the latest developments to date. Barnaby closed the diary and returned to his official place.

“All right, everyone.” The jabber lessened only slightly. He gave the surface of the desk a smart blow with his fist. And tossed a cold “Thank you” into the ensuing silence.

“Now, this is what we’ve got and so far it isn’t much. Brenda Brockley was last seen by her parents at seven thirty last Monday evening. She left the house in the clothes she was wearing when she died. She said nothing as to where she was going. Just jumped into the car and drove off ‘like a mad thing,” to quote her father. She didn’t even take a handbag and scraped the gatepost as she went by.

“At nine o’clock she called to say she had met a friend and was going for a meal and they weren’t to wait up. Her father, who took the message, got the impression, from the background noise, that she was ringing from a railway station. We now know that it was almost certainly Heathrow. All of this information is already on a Four Two Eight which is being photocopied and should be up here shortly, so make yourselves familiar.

“The body was found on the top level of the Short Stay Car Park that serves Terminal One, as was her car. The injuries are commensurate with being struck by a vehicle moving at some considerable speed. The PM’s being done this morning so we should know more by tomorrow at the latest. Her photograph, together with that of Hollingsworth and his wife, are being circulated at the airport. She could have had the meal she was referring to on the concourse itself, in which case she may well have been noticed. She was an ... unusual looking girl.”

Someone said something at the back of the room and someone else laughed.

“What was that?” Barnaby’s voice cracked like a whip.

“Sorry, chief.” A throat was cleared. “Got a bit of a cough.”

“We can’t all look like Ava Gardner, Constable.”

“No, sir.”

“The Heathrow police are being very cooperative and, as more stuff comes in, we shall know better how to proceed. Now, as to the Hollingsworth inquiry, any more catching up for me to do? Yes, Beryl?”

Detective Sergeant Beryl, whose surname was the bane of his life, said, “I talked to someone in St. Chad’s Lane yesterday, sir. A Mr. Harris. He was working in his front garden and actually saw Alan Hollingsworth drive away at the time Dawlish said he heard him.”

“Excellent. Get in touch with him again, would you? Find out if he saw the Brockley girl leaving as well. It sounds to me as if they set off within minutes of each other. And bear in mind, everyone, that this was the evening of the day that Hollingsworth received the money. I don’t think it’s stretching matters to assume that he was on his way to hand it over. And if she was following him ...”

There was an interested and lively murmur of speculation then a plainclothes inspector, leaning against the water cooler, said, “Has there been any feedback from her parents at all? I mean, any suggestion as to why she might have been pursuing Hollingsworth?”

“She fancied herself in love with him.” Barnaby glared around the room as if daring it to respond risibly. Everyone was quiet. “As far as we know, she never even went inside the house, though once we’ve got her prints, we may find otherwise.

“I’m holding back on any large-scale inquiry at this stage mainly because it’s possible we might simply be looking at an accident. But I would like her photograph, together with Hollingsworth’s, shown at all the cafés and restaurants in Causton. See if anyone remembers seeing them together.” Though Barnaby firmly believed the diary to be a complete work of fiction, he couldn’t risk not checking the matter out.

“I shall be visiting her place of work in half an hour and hope to fill in the background somewhat. The next briefing’s at six o’clock. So, go to it. Gavin?”

Sergeant Troy picked up his jacket and followed his boss from the room. As the door closed behind him, the man who had laughed said, “Who the hell’s Ava Gardner?”

Approaching the Rover where his chief was already installed, Sergeant Troy, carrying two cans of iced pop from the iced pop machine, was laughing silently to himself. His expression was bemused and his head moved back and forth in disbelief as he climbed into the driving seat.

“Thanks,” said Barnaby, holding out his hand. “I could do with one of those.”

“Oh. Right.” Troy, who had bought both cans for himself, handed over the least pleasant. “This one’s supposed to be pretty good.”

“I wouldn’t deprive you, Gavin,” said Barnaby, seizing the alternative. “What were you chortling at?”

Troy explained. “There was this old tramp downstairs trying to make a complaint. Apparently he’d been sitting on the pavement, everything he owned in the world packed into a fraying carrier, when some smart Charlie walks up. ‘I represent Sainsbury’s,’ he says. ‘Penny for your bag?’ Chucks the coin down and walks off with all the old geezer’s stuff. They were still wetting themselves in reception.”

“Made your day, did it?”

“Pretty near,” said Sergeant Troy, opening his Cherryade and taking a long swig.

“Well, you’re not here to enjoy yourself so knock that back double quick and get a move on.”

“Right, guv.” He drained the can, wedged it behind the gear box and turned on the ignition.

They had been asked to go to the back entrance of the Coalport and National but, on arriving, found it locked. Barnaby peered over half-mast lace curtains into what proved to be a kitchen/rest area. A girl who was washing up dried her hands on a tea towel and let them in.

“Sorry. I was supposed to watch out for you.” Easing past them, she opened the inner door revealing a large, high-ceilinged room with several desks and a counter at the far end at which one person was standing. “I’ll just let the manager know you’re here.”

After the customer had left, Mr. Marchbanks, a Lowry stick-figure with a mass of pale lemon curls, eyes like boiled gooseberries and a handshake like a damp flounder, admitted the two policemen to the main office.

“I was sure you would wish to discuss matters undisturbed,” he said, indicating the notice on the glass door. The side facing them said Open. “But I do hope ...”

“I’ll try not to take up too much of your time,” replied Barnaby. “May I?”

As he sat down at an empty desk, a great sepulchre of a woman, very tall and wide with more bristles on her top lip than an Oral B, came out of an office marked Personnel. The Chief Inspector presumed this to be Trish Travers.

Everyone looked subdued but not overly distressed. Not even Mr. Marchbanks, who had thought the world of Brenda.

“This is devastating news,” he said, with the air of a man about to pare his nails. “The whole office is in a terrible state of shock.”

“I understand,” said Barnaby. “And I do appreciate your cooperation.”

Troy selected a high stool at the counter, laid his notebook down next to the Day At A Time calendar and took stock of the talent. Four in number (you couldn’t count Adolf) and of variable delectability.

There was the very short one who had let them in: a proper little butter ball, completely round with long eyelashes and a ginger fringe. Fringes, Sergeant Troy thought, always made a girl look saucy. An only half-decent looker with floppy wings of silky fawn hair, a complexion like the wrong half of the Flash floor ad and a long pointed nose. Fine if you liked Afghans. An irritable, harassed looking one with worn hands, too much jewellery and a habit of screwing up her face and blinking. And Troy’s fancy; tall, red-headed like himself, wearing enormous tortoiseshell glasses perched on the tip of her pretty nose. Long fragile legs folded away beneath her chair. A juicily deluscious eye-boggier. Viewing alone fair brought a lump to your trousers.

He waited till the smoky lenses glinted in his direction and gave her a brilliant, uncomplicated smile.

She parted her own lips, wet and glistening like newly washed cherries, in acknowledgement.

“It would be helpful,” the Chief Inspector was explaining, “if we could discover a little about Miss Brockley’s background and private life. I know that girls often—”

“Women, I believe you mean,” put in the tired hands.

“Indeed,” said Barnaby. “I beg your pardon. Women will sometimes tell their colleagues in the workplace things they might not discuss with immediate members of their family. I wonder if Brenda perhaps ...”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Barnaby took the room’s temperature and was not encouraged. He had already suspected that the sterile pattern of Brenda’s life as described by her parents indicated the type of withdrawn personality that did not communicate easily with others.

“Was she ... well-liked here?”

“I wouldn’t say well-liked,” said Mr. Marchbanks.

“But not disliked,” the roly-poly girl, Hazel Grantley from Accounts, interrupted quickly.

There was an immediate chorus of over-emphatic agreement which died down into another awkward pause.

Barnaby recognised their collective dilemma, for it was not uncommon. Many people who thought nothing of speaking ill about the still woundable living could not bring themselves to breathe a syllable against the indifferent dead.

“So no one here was what you would call close to Brenda?”

There was a negative mumble. Not a single person looked directly at him.

“What about outside the office? Did she ever mention anyone she regularly went about with?”

“Not to us.”

“A boy friend, perhaps?”

Everyone looked surprised and then ashamed of looking surprised and then cross at looking ashamed.

“I don’t think she had a boy friend,” said Mr. March-banks.

“Brenda didn’t go in for that sort of thing.”

“She was a born singleton,” said the girl with the Bambi legs.

Barnaby winced as much at the casual unkindness as at the excruciating terminology. “What about personal telephone calls? Did she receive or make many?”

“They’re not allowed.”

“Officially,” said the girl with the long nose and everybody started to giggle until they remembered how solemn the occasion was.

“She got one,” corrected the woman clanking with jewellery. “The first morning she didn’t come in. A man rang and asked to speak to her. About nine thirty, it was.”

That would have been her father. Barnaby asked then how long Miss Brockley had been working at the Coalport and National.

“Since she left school,” said Mr. Marchbanks. “That would be thirteen years.”

Unlucky for some, thought Sergeant Troy. Appreciating the fan standing next to the calendar, he eased it more directly towards him, loosened the collar of his check sports shirt and flicked over the first page of his notes.

“What about when she was up at the counter?” persisted the Chief Inspector. “Did she have any long conversations with anyone in particular? Perhaps the same person on more than one occasion?”

“Well,” Mr. Marchbanks cleared his throat, “she didn’t do a lot of, erm ...”

“One-to-one customer relations.” The Afghan helped him out.

“That’s right. She seemed to prefer to work more quietly.”

“By herself, like,” said the woman from Personnel.

Barnaby had a quick apprehension of the abyss of loneliness on the edge of which Brenda must have existed at the Coalport and National. Arriving in the morning to conversations about boy friends, problems at school, family rows, how would she have responded? By nodding and smiling while listening to described situations completely outside her own experience? Perhaps, appreciating that any attempt properly to participate must necessarily be known to be false, or even condescending, she had pretended not to hear—and may well have been thought stand-offish for her pains. Perhaps she simply sat quietly at her desk, hoping not to be noticed—no doubt the empty one in the far corner of the office on which now lay a solitary bunch of roses, swathed in shiny, white-spotted paper. He wondered if they had ever bought flowers for her when she had been alive.

Barnaby asked about the midday break. Had anyone ever called to take Brenda out to lunch? No. Never. Did she perhaps spend time during this period with any of her workmates?

“Not really. We all had things to do, you see.”

“She’d stay here, make herself a coffee and eat her sandwiches.”

“Sometimes she went to the library.”

“We’d come back absolutely fagged. Racing round the shops buying food and stuff. She’d be sitting there, feet up, reading one of her romances.”

“I think her mother did everything.”

“Yeah, she had it dead cushy.”

“Wouldn’t do for me. Nearly thirty and still living at home.” The needling words were delicately shaded with spite. Troy directed a glance of warm admiration at this lovely girl, so after his own heart. She recrossed her slender, breakable legs and smiled to herself. He noticed that her identity brooch read “Jacqui Willing” and hoped it wasn’t having him on.

Mr. Marchbanks began tousling his limp curls with a worried hand at this point, Trish Travers looked at her watch and the heavily ringed fingers on the tired hands crept towards the nearest keyboard. Someone knocked on the glass front door.

Realising there was probably little else to be gained at the Coalport and National, Barnaby thanked the manager, handed over a card should any of the staff remember anything that they might consider helpful, and prepared to leave.

Bambi was detailed to show them out. As she opened the back door, with Troy’s zealous and quite unnecessary assistance, she said, “Poor Brenda, she was really oversensitive about her looks. Many’s the time I’ve tried to cheer her up. ‘Bren,’ I used to say, ‘beauty’s only skin deep.’ But you just can’t help some people, can you?”

Barnaby could have hit her.

By the time the Chief Inspector had concluded his building society interview, the Evening Standard had already published its midday edition under the headline “Mysterious Death Of Kidnap Woman’s Neighbour.”

This time the village, genuinely and deeply shocked, kept its distance when invaded. Journalists, asking in the Goat and Whistle for the Brockleys’ precise whereabouts, got nowhere. The fact that the couple were not well liked did not enter into the matter. As is the way of the fourth estate, they quickly sussed the address anyway and were soon giving The Larches’ push button bell some really serious stick.

Shona jumped up at the window, barked and had her picture taken. Next day it appeared under the caption “Dead Girl’s Pet Pines Away.” Several people rang the Mirror wanting to adopt the dog.

Few people could cope easily with such an onslaught. Brenda’s grief-stricken parents were prodigiously ill-equipped. They cowered behind their starched net frills. Iris wept, Reg wrung his hands and rained blows on the walls and furniture. The poodle, desperate to go out, scratched and whined for half an hour then did a puddle in the hall. When a bearded face pressed up against the kitchen window, Iris started to scream.

It was at that moment that Constable Perrot, accompanied by the vicar, arrived. Perrot, alternately cajoling and threatening arrest for trespass, eased the press out of the Brockleys’ garden and back into the lane. Then supposing, rightly, that the door chimes must have by now worn out their welcome, he ignored the bell and reprised his earlier star turn at Nightingales. Bending down he spoke, very clearly, through the letter box.

“Mr. Brockley? This is Constable Perrot. I’m your local community police officer.” He felt this explanation necessary as he had never actually spoken to Brenda’s parents before. “The vicar is with me. We’re anxious to help in any way we can. Please open the door.”

Reg and Iris looked fearfully at each other. Having heard the noise from the army of pressmen diminish slightly, Reg had peeped through a narrow gap in the curtains and seen Perrot firmly shepherding them away. Gratitude alone thus inclined him to admit the visitors. Common sense reinforced the idea. After all, sooner or later he and Iris would be forced to let someone in. Or, horror of horrors, go out themselves. And at least these people’s interest would, hopefully, be impersonal.

It was nothing new for the vicar to enter a house of mourning. Years of experience had equipped him with suitable responses and to spare. To give him his due, he tried to empathise afresh in every case and not sound platitudinous or mechanical. But as soon as he stepped into the Brockleys’ private hell, he knew that the situation was beyond him. Childless himself, he understood that anything he might have to say could only be cruelly impertinent. He hovered in the hall, one foot spongily sinking into the dog’s puddle. Shona herself crouched on the stairs, isolated and lonely, her nose between her paws.

Perrot, quietly and with concerned sympathy, took charge. In the lounge Iris lay full length on the sofa, her stout legs stretched out, her arms by her side. She looked as if she was on a bier. Reg stood in the centre of the room. He seemed lost, as if waiting for someone to tell him what to do.

Perrot made some tea and cut some bread and butter. As he did this, he asked one or two questions in a soft, uninsistent way. Had the doctor been? Was there a prescription to be filled? Could he make any telephone calls on the Brockleys’ behalf?

Reg said, “We’ve stopped answering the phone.”

Watching Perrot’s skilful ministrations, the vicar began to feel not only de trop but utterly useless. He moved awkwardly across to where Iris was lying, sat down on the fringed pouffe and took her hand. In spite of the hot, stuffy room, it was icy cold. She did not open her eyes or appear even to notice his presence.

He was reminded of that other occasion, ten days ago, when he had found himself in a similar position at the house next door. He had been of no help there either. And the result of his daily prayers for the restoration of order and the wellbeing of each and every parishioner in Fawcett Green had been yet another violent death. If the Reverend Bream had ever doubted that God worked in mysterious ways, he doubted no longer.

“My wife,” he said, clearing his throat with nervousness. “Food. Anything at all, happy to bring. If you would like to come and stay, just for a few days. I mean, that is, as long as you like ...”

Everyone ignored him.

Perrot, having placed a cup of tea in Reg’s hands and made sure he was grasping it firmly, sat close by, talking quietly. He also offered plenty of encouraging silence, which Reg occasionally broke. Perrot explained that the police might very well need to talk to both him and Iris again, but there would be no pressure. He, Perrot, would ask to be present if they felt it would help. Should they go to stay with relatives or friends, please make sure to let him know.

The vicar whose eye, having once been snagged by the leaping butterfly clock, found it could now settle on little else, was glad when the dog started whining and scratching again and he had a practical task to perform.

On Perrot’s advice he took her into the back garden. Shona, already shamedly conscious of her disgrace in the hall and desperately afraid she was about to disgrace herself even more profoundly, streaked off down the path with a yelp of gratitude. She relieved herself on Reg’s flawless green lawn, dragged her bottom around on the grass then stood up. She looked expectantly at the vicar who stared uncertainly back. Neither he nor Mrs. Bream cared for animals although they did look after the Sunday School hamster when the necessity arose.

There was a sudden flash. Rightly suspecting a concealed photographer and mentally composing the subsequent headlines, “Vicar Abducts Bereaved Parents’ Sole Comfort,” the Reverend Bream hurried back into the house.

Barnaby was in the canteen squaring up to two tomatoes, some wholewheat bread, a small wedge of Double Gloucester and a Cornice pear when the news came through from Heathrow that a witness had come forward. Someone who had seen not only Brenda Brockley on the night she died but also Alan Hollingsworth. A double whammy. The girl, a counter assistant in an ice-cream parlour on the Terminal One concourse, finished her shift at three thirty.

The first part of their second drive to the airport in as many days took place in virtual silence. Barnaby was lost in recollections of the case so far, mixed with hopeful anticipation of what might shortly be thrown in his lap. Sergeant Troy was seeking a grievance to while away the fleeting hour.

After picking a few over, he settled for an old favourite, the iniquities of the car mileage system. Or: Why Did They Always Have To Use The Rover? Forty-two point one pence a mile allowance straight into the gaffer’s pocket. A nice lump sum every twenty-eight days, even after you’d taken the petrol off. And it wasn’t as if he needed it. Fat salary, pension assured, no kids, mortgage paid off, but would he be driven around in Troy’s Cosworth? Would he buggery. OK, OK, he’s a big bloke and the Cossie might be a bit of a squeeze but the response had been the same whatever car Troy had had.

Course he was music mad, old Tom. And there was no doubt the equipment in the Rover was stellar. Waste of space, though, with the tapes he’d got. So-called singers warbling and gargling like canaries on speed. Musicians—musicians—scraping and sawing and twanging away.

As if reading his sergeant’s mind, Barnaby reached out, slipped a tape in the deck and turned up the volume. Rich and full, the singer’s voice filled the confined area of the car and poured out of the window on to the still summer air. She kept it up until they were entering the slipstream of traffic aiming for the Short Stay Car Park. Troy had to admit it was one of the less offensive numeros. At least she stayed in tune, which was more than you could say for some. Big Lucy and his football aria excepted.

“She can give it some welly, chief,” said Sergeant Troy as he searched for a parking space. “That that Cecily Bertorelli, is it?” He tried to remember the odd name. Show an interest.

“No,” said Chief Inspector Barnaby. “That’s my wife.”

Barnaby had decided to talk to the girl in her place of work, where she would be more relaxed, rather than in the police offices. Also he would need, at some stage in the interview, to look at the scene from her point of view.

They were offered delicious iced coffee in the Haagen-Dazs spotlessly clean kitchen. Eden Lo, a pretty Chinese girl, was taking off her maroon overall and yellow-banded forage cap. The three photographs which the Causton CID had circulated lay on a freckled Formica table with those of Alan Hollingsworth and Brenda set a little apart.

“These are the people that I saw.” She pointed at the two pictures.

“They were here, in the café?”

“Not together. He was in the café. She was, well, sort of hiding. At least I got that impression.”

“How was it you saw her then, Miss Lo?”

“I came out to clear just after I had served this gentleman with his coffee. She was standing behind the notice-board outside the fish restaurant next door. I noticed because she was so,” she hesitated, being a kind girl, unlike Bambi, “different looking.”

“Quite.”

“Also she was peering over this way. As if she was keeping an eye on someone.”

“And the man you served. Tell me about him.”

“That was rather strange as well. He took his coffee to the middle table. The circular one that runs—”

“Show me, would you, please?”

They left the kitchen to stand behind the chill cabinet and Eden Lo pointed out the round rim table overlooked by the blow-up of the radiantly lascivious half-dressed guzzlers. Sergeant Troy had a knee-jerk reaction (well, to be honest, it wasn’t his knee) and transferred his jacket to his other arm where it could be more tactfully disposed.

“And then,” continued the Chinese girl, “he didn’t drink it.”

“You mean he just sat there, waiting?”

“No. He sort of leaned against the stool for barely a second. Put the cup down and walked away.”

“Which direction?”

“Towards those stairs. When the girl who was watching realised he’d gone, she rushed after him. I saw her on the steps staring down all over the floor. She was really upset. I heard her cry out, ‘Oh, what’ll I do? What shall I do?’ ”

“Was that the last you saw of her?”

“Of both of them, yes.”

“And what happened to the coffee?” asked Barnaby, leading the way back to the kitchenette.

Sergeant Troy raised his eyebrows at the frivolity of such a question. If he’d asked it there’d have been a bloody lecture afterwards on how not to waste a witness’s valuable time.

“That’s the odd thing,” said Miss Lo. “When I looked again there was this old woman drinking it. I thought, what a cheek!”

“What was she like?” Barnaby leaned forward, intent and purposeful.

“Really dirty. Some old bag lady.”

“Had you seen her before?”

“No. The airport police are quite strict about people like that. They usually move them on.”

“I meant before, that same evening. In the restaurant.”

“Not really. She just seemed to appear out of nowhere. To tell you the truth, I wondered if she’d been hanging around in Garfunkels. Or maybe the Tap and Spile next door, keeping an eye out for a half-empty glass, that sort of thing. It’s all open here, as you can see. She could have spotted a coffee going begging and just nipped across.”

“How tall would you say she was?”

“Oh dear, I don’t really ...”

“You don’t have to be precise. Just a general impression.”

“For a woman I would say tall. Quite a bit taller than me.”

“And did you talk to her?”

“Well, I started to go over but when she saw me coming she picked up this grotty string bag and hurried away.”

“Now, this could be very important, Miss Lo. Did you notice if the man who bought the coffee had a bag or case of any sort with him?”

“He certainly didn’t have one with him at the counter. He used both hands to carry the tray.”

“But he could have put it down by the table he intended to occupy?”

“He could have but I didn’t see that. I’m sorry.”

“So the first time you caught sight of the string bag was when this old woman ran off with it?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you get any idea of the contents?” Barnaby didn’t have much hope. The whole incident seemed to have happened within seconds.

“Um, just newspaper, really. Parcels wrapped in newspaper.”

“Little parcels?”

“I’m sorry.” She opened her arms, turned up the palms of her hands and shrugged.

“Did you clear the coffee cup away then?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you’re sure of the date on this?”

“Quite sure. My friend on the Air Indonesia desk has been trying for ages to get me a cheap flight to Hong Kong and it was Monday it came through.”

“Could you give me a time at all?” asked the Chief Inspector.

“Not really. I came on at eight and I’d been here maybe an hour. Maybe longer.”

Brenda had rung her parents at nine o’clock. Barnaby tried to fit this into the fragment of knowledge, far too slight to be called a pattern, that had just now come his way.

It wasn’t easy. If she was trailing Hollingsworth, she would hardly have risked losing him by taking time off to make a phone call. So it must have been made later after Brenda, by then “really upset,” had completed her survey from the top of the staircase. Had she spotted Hollingsworth in that great swarming mass of people? Caught up with him? Arranged to go for a meal? It seemed unlikely but if she hadn’t, who was the friend she had talked about?

“Was there anyone else on duty with you, Miss Lo?”

“Yes, but not out front at the time it happened. They were working in here.”

“Right. I’m going to ask you to come along to Heathrow police station and sign a statement. And you may also be asked if you could assist in compiling an Identikit picture of this elderly lady.”

“But 1 only saw her for a second.”

“That doesn’t matter. Just do the best you can.”

She collected a white lacy cardigan and they left together by way of the steps that first Alan and then the frantic Brenda had descended.

But Barnaby was never to know about the dark-skinned boy in the sweaty T-shirt. The boy who had agitated the war machines and asked for change and laughed at Brenda’s distress and who could have helped them most of all. For he had long since taken a flight into Egypt.

Загрузка...