Waiting for Wednesday

FORTY-FOUR

In the morning Jim Fearby called on the family of Philippa Lewis. They lived on a new estate in a village a few miles south of Oxford. A middle-aged woman – she must have been Philippa’s mother, Sue – slammed the door as soon as he identified himself. He had read about the case in the local paper, the usual story of walking home after staying late at school and not arriving; he had seen the blurry photo. She had seemed a plausible candidate. He put a tick after her name, followed by a question mark.

Up towards Warwick, Cathy Birkin’s mother made him tea and cake, and before the first mouthful he knew that this was a name he’d be crossing off the list. She’d run away twice before. The cake was quite nice, though. Ginger. Slightly spicy. Fearby had started to notice another sort of pattern. The mothers of the runaway girls were the ones who would invite him in and give him tea and cake. He could almost remember the houses and the girls by the cake he’d been served. The one up near Crewe, Claire Boyle, had been carrot cake. High Wycombe, Maria Horsley: chocolate. Was it as if they were still trying to prove that they had done their best, that they weren’t bad parents? The ginger cake was slightly dry and stuck to the roof of his mouth. He had to wash it down with his cooling tea. As he chewed, he felt his own pang of conscience. He’d been putting it off and putting it off. It was on the way and would only be a small diversion.

He almost hoped that George Conley would be out, but he wasn’t. The small block where he had moved to was neat enough. When Conley opened the door, he gave only the smallest flicker of recognition, but Fearby was used to that. When Conley had talked to him over the years, he had never seemed comfortable looking at him directly. Even when he talked, it was as if he was addressing someone slightly to the side of Fearby and behind him. As soon as Fearby stepped inside he was hit by the warmth and the smell, which seemed part of each other. It wasn’t really identifiable and Fearby didn’t want to identify it: there was sweat, dampness. He suddenly thought of the sour smell you get behind garbage vans in summer.

Fearby had lived alone for years and he knew about life with surfaces that never got properly wiped, dishes that piled up, food that was left out, clothes on the floor, but this was something different. In the dark, hot living room, he had to step around dirty plates and glasses. He saw opened cans half filled with things he couldn’t recognize, white and green with mould. Almost everything, plates, glasses, tins, had stubs of cigarettes on or in it. Fearby wondered whether there was someone he could call. Did someone somewhere have a legal responsibility to deal with this?

The television was on and Conley sat down opposite it. He wasn’t exactly watching the screen. It looked more like he was just sitting in front of it.

‘How did you get this place?’ said Fearby.

‘The council,’ said Conley.

‘Does anyone come round to help you? I know it must be difficult. You’ve been inside so long. It’s hard to adjust.’ Conley just looked blank, so Fearby tried again. ‘Does anyone come to check up? Maybe do some cleaning?’

‘A woman comes sometimes. To check on me.’

‘Is she helpful?’

‘She’s all right.’

‘What about your compensation? How’s it going?’

‘I don’t know. I saw Diana.’

‘Your lawyer,’ said Fearby. He had to speak almost in a shout to be heard above the television. ‘What did she say?’

‘She said it’d take time. A long time.’

‘I’ve heard that. You’ll have to be patient.’ There was a pause. ‘Do you get out much?’

‘I walk a bit. There’s a park.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘There’s ducks. I take bread. And seeds.’

‘That’s nice, George. Is there anyone you’d like me to call for you? If you give me a number, I could call the people at the council. They could come and help you clear up.’

‘There’s just a woman. She comes sometimes.’

Fearby had been sitting right on the edge of a sofa that looked as if it had been brought in from outside. His back was starting to ache. He stood up. ‘I’ve got to head off,’ he said.

‘I was having tea.’

Fearby looked at an open carton of milk on the table. The milk inside was yellow. ‘I had some earlier. But I’ll pop back soon and we can go out for a drink or a walk. How’s that sound?’

‘All right.’

‘I’m trying to find out who killed Hazel Barton. I’ve been busy.’

Conley didn’t respond.

‘I know it’s a terrible memory for you,’ said Fearby. ‘But when you found her, I know you bent down and tried to help her. You touched her. That was the evidence that was used against you. But did you see anything else? Did you see a person? Or a car? George. Did you hear what I said?’

Conley looked round but he still didn’t say anything.

‘Right,’ said Fearby. ‘Well, it’s been good to see you. We’ll do this again.’

He picked his way carefully out of the room.

When Fearby got home, he went online to find the number of the social services department. He dialled it but the office was closed for the day. He looked at his watch. He had thought of calling Diana McKerrow about Conley’s situation, but her office would be closed as well by now. He knew about these compensation cases. They took years.

He went to the sink, found a glass, rinsed it and poured himself some whisky. He took a sip and felt the warmth spreading down through his chest. He’d needed that. He felt the staleness of the day in his mouth, on his tongue, and the whisky scoured all that away. He walked through the rooms with his drink. It wasn’t like Conley’s flat, but it was a distant relation. Men adrift, living alone. Two men still trapped in their different ways by the Hazel Barton case. The police had no other suspects. That was what they’d said. Only George Conley and he knew different.

Suddenly the dirty glasses and bits of clothing, the piles of papers and envelopes scared him. People hardly ever came to the house, but the thought of anyone coming into this room and feeling some part of what he had felt in George Conley’s flat made him flush with a sort of shame. For the next hour he picked clothes up, washed glasses and plates, wiped surfaces, vacuumed. At the end, he felt it was closer to some sort of normality. It needed more. He could see that. He would buy a picture. He could put flowers in a vase. Maybe he would even paint the walls.

He took a lasagne from the freezer and put it into the oven. The back of the packet said fifty minutes from frozen. That would give him time. He went to his study. This was the one part of the house that had always been tidy, clean and organized. He took the map from the desk, unfolded it and laid it out on the floor. He opened the top drawer of his desk and took out the card covered with red stickers. He peeled off one sticker and carefully placed it on the village of Denham, just south of Oxford. He stood back. There were seven of them now and a pattern was clearly forming.

Fearby took a sip of whisky and asked himself the question he’d asked himself many times before: was he fooling himself? He’d read about murderers and their habits. How they were like predatory animals that operated in territories where they felt comfortable. But he’d also read about the dangers of seeing patterns in random collections of data. You fire arbitrary shots at a wall, then draw a target around the marks that are closest together and it looks as if you were aiming at it. He examined the map. Five of them were close to the M40 and three to the M1, no more then twenty minutes’ drive from a motorway exit. It seemed completely obvious and compelling. But there was a problem. As he’d read through newspapers, checked online, for missing teenage girls, one of his main criteria in weeding them out was looking for families near motorways, so maybe he was creating the pattern himself. But he thought of the girls’ faces, the stories. It felt right to him. It smelled right. But what good was that?