Killing Me Softly

Thirty

I bought a phonecard in a newsagent’s, the most expensive in the shop, and then found a phone-box.

‘Police station,’ said a metallic female voice.

I had prepared an opening sentence. ‘Can I talk to whoever is in charge of the Adele Blanchard file?’ I said, authoritatively.

‘What department?’

‘God, I don’t know.’ I hesitated. ‘Criminal?’

There was a pause at the other end of the line. Exasperation? Bemusement? Then I heard a dim sound of talking. Obviously she had her hand over the receiver. Then she was back with me. ‘Let me see if I can connect you to somebody.’

There was a beeping as she transferred me.

‘How may I help you?’ said another voice, male this time.

‘I am a friend of Adele Blanchard,’ I said confidently. ‘I’ve been away for several years in Africa, and I just wanted to know what progress has been made on her case.’

‘Could you give me your name please?’

‘My name is Pauline,’ I said. ‘Pauline Wilkes.’

‘I’m afraid we can’t give out information over the phone.’

‘Have you heard of her?’

‘I’m sorry, madam, do you have anything to report?’ ‘I… no, sorry, goodbye.’

I put the phone down and dialled directory inquiries. I found the number of the Corrick public library.

As I arrived in Corrick for the second time, I felt a slight unease. What if I met Mrs Blanchard? Then I dismissed the thought from my mind. What did it matter? I would lie, as usual. I hadn’t been to a public library since I was a child. I think of them as old-fashioned municipal buildings, like town halls, dark, with heavy iron radiators and tramps hiding out from the rain. The Corrick public library was bright and new, and next to a supermarket. There seemed to be as many CDs and videos as books, and I was worried that I would have to fiddle around with a mouse or a microfiche. But when I asked at the front desk about the local paper, I was directed to shelves where eighty years of the Corrick and Whitham Advertiser was stored in huge bound volumes. I hauled out 1990 and dropped it heavily on to a table.

I checked the four front pages for the month of January. There was a dispute about a bypass, a lorry crash, a factory closure and something to do with the council and waste-disposal but nothing about Adele Blanchard, so I went back to the beginning of the month and skimmed the inside news pages for the whole of January. Still nothing. I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t have much time. I hadn’t been inclined to go by train again and had borrowed the car belonging to my assistant, Claudia. If I left at nine, drove straight there and back, then I could be back in time for a two o’clock meeting with Mike and the pretence of a proper day’s work.

I hadn’t reckoned on the search through the papers taking such a long time. What was I to do? Perhaps Adele had lived somewhere else, except that her mother had talked of Tara as the first to move away from the area. I read through the first February issue. Still nothing. I looked at my watch. Almost half past eleven. I would read the February papers and then I would leave, even if I found nothing.

Such as it was, it was in the issue of the last Friday of the month, the twenty-third. It was a small story at the bottom of page four:

LOCAL WOMAN ‘MISSING’

Concern is growing over the fate of a young Corrick woman. Adele Funston, 23, has been reported missing. Her husband, Thomas Funston, who had been working abroad, told the Advertiser that Adele had planned to go on a hiking holiday while he was away in an undetermined location: ‘It was when I didn’t hear anything that I started to get anxious.’ He joined with his father-in-law, Christopher Blanchard, also of Corrick, in expressing a hope that Mrs Funston was just on an extended holiday. Detective Superintendent Horner told the Advertiser that he was ‘not unduly worried. If Mrs Funston is safe, I would like to appeal to her to come forward,’ he told us. Mrs Funston was best known locally as a teacher at St Eadmund’s primary school in Whitham.

Missing. I looked round. Nobody was nearby. As quietly as I could, I tore the item out of the paper. Malicious damage, I thought to myself grimly.