The traffic that morning was light, and Billy was glad of it. The old Morris he’d been allocated from the Yard’s car pool had tired gears and a tendency to stall. Not that he was complaining, mind you. Still clear in his memory were the days when motor cars provided for the use of detectives had been rarer than unicorns.
The very concept of mobile policing hadn’t taken hold in the Met until the early twenties. The first patrols had been restricted to bands of uniformed police who’d been ferried around the capital – stopping at prearranged points to telephone headquarters – in a pair of vans bought second hand from the RAF. Some wag had dubbed them the ‘Flying Squad’ and the name had stuck. Now a fleet of wireless-equipped cars roamed the streets of London day and night and the roof of Scotland Yard spouted a forest of aerials.
All that notwithstanding, the job Billy had been assigned wouldn’t normally have called for a car. He could just as easily have taken the train to Henley. But Chief Inspector Sinclair wanted him to have freedom of movement when he got there.
‘Don’t pay too much attention to what the local police tell you,’ he’d advised the sergeant. ‘They’ve got some explaining to do. Nose around on your own if you can. Bear in mind, if it’s the same man he would have had a car.’
The summons to report to the chief inspector’s office had come out of the blue, and Billy had responded to it with alacrity. After a dozen years with the Met he could look back on a varied career during which he’d been involved in a wide range of investigations.
None, however, had approached the drama of the Melling Lodge case, and Billy had never forgotten the nerve-racked weeks he had spent in the company of the then Inspector Madden as they’d searched for a savage murderer.
The inquiry had been conducted under Sinclair’s leadership, and, ever since, Billy had nursed the hope that the chief inspector might hold him in some special regard. Whenever they met, as they sometimes did, in one of the corridors at the Yard, the older man would pause for a word, and Billy retained the feeling, which dated from their very first meeting, of being perpetually weighed in the balance of Angus Sinclair’s steady flint-grey gaze.
His greeting when he’d arrived in Sinclair’s office the previous day had been warm.
‘Sergeant! It’s been a while. How are you?’ Sinclair had risen from behind his desk to shake Billy’s hand. ‘I spent last weekend with the Maddens. John was asking after you. I trust you keep in touch.’
‘Oh, yes, sir.’ Billy had taken the chair indicated. ‘I go down and see them quite often.’
Sometimes for a whole weekend, just like the chief inspector had done, he might have added, though on the first such occasion Billy had been so nervous at the prospect of a dinner party his host and hostess were giving that evening he’d barely found the courage to present himself in the drawing room beforehand, and it had taken all of Helen Madden’s skill in the art of gentle teasing to restore him to his usual cheery self.
‘You’re not married, are you?’ Sinclair had inquired. ‘Or am I mistaken?’
‘Not entirely, sir. Engaged, as it happens.’ Billy grinned.
‘Well, well! Congratulations.’ The chief inspector leaned forward and they shook hands formally. ‘What’s the young lady’s name?’
‘Elsie Osgood, sir. We met when I was posted to Clapham for a spell last year. She owns a small dress shop down there. We’re getting married next spring.’
‘I wish you both well.’ Sinclair regarded the younger man benignly. Then his expression changed. ‘You’ve heard about Madden finding that child’s body, I take it?’
‘The Brookham killing? Yes, sir. It was all round the Yard.’ Billy straightened in his chair. He guessed he was about to learn the reason for his summons. ‘And now there’s been another one, I see. Down Bognor Regis way.’
‘Quite right. That’s why you’re here. The cases are clearly linked and the Yard’s been called in. But there’s more to it than that. It’s possible the murderer has killed before. At Henley, three years ago. That’s where you’ll be going tomorrow.’
Billy felt a tingle of excitement. Mention of Madden’s name had reminded him of that day, far off, but still fresh in his memory, when the two of them had been sent flying to Waterloo station to catch a train bound for Highfield. He watched as the chief inspector picked up a buff-coloured folder from his desk, then paused before speaking again, as though to underline the importance of what he was about to say.
‘This is not only a serious matter, Sergeant. It’s one of particular urgency. As I’m sure you know, sexual criminals have a tendency to offend again, and that’s specially true when it comes to attacks involving children. The man we’re hunting is extremely dangerous. And violent. But what concerns me even more is that he may think he’s in the clear, that no one’s picked up his trail yet. You’ll grasp the implications of that, I’m sure.’
Billy nodded. ‘It means, likely as not, he’s already on the lookout for another victim.’
‘Precisely.’ The chief inspector hefted the file for a moment, then handed it across the desk to Billy. ‘Most of what we know is in there. Take it away and read it. Then come back in an hour and I’ll tell you what I want you to do.’
Henley police station was situated in a double-storey brick building in the middle of the town, a few minutes walk from the riverside. The desk sergeant was expecting Billy – he’d rung to let them know he was coming – and directed him to an office upstairs where he found a sour-faced plain-clothes man called Deacon awaiting his arrival.
‘You’ll want to see this, I suppose.’ Deacon tossed him a file across the desk, the papers spilling out as Billy clutched at it. Grey-haired and in his fifties, he seemed put out to discover that they were the same rank, both detective sergeants. Discontent sat lodged at the corners of his mouth, which was turned down in a sneer. ‘So they’re calling it murder now…’ His shrug was defiant.
‘You don’t agree?’ Billy held out his packet of cigarettes to Deacon, who shook his head. Noticing there was no ashtray on the desk between them, the younger man pocketed his fags. He wanted to keep this friendly.
‘I’ve got no opinion one way or the other.’ Deacon’s pale brown eyes were expressionless. ‘They can call it what they want. But I’d like to see anyone prove it was murder.’
‘The injuries to her face, though? Is there any way those could have been accidental?’ Leafing through the file, Billy realized he was familiar with much of its contents. Sinclair had obtained a summary from Oxford. He remembered Deacon’s name now as that of the CID officer who’d been in charge when Susan Barlow’s body had been recovered from the water two months earlier.
‘Yes, since you ask.’ Deacon sat forward, elbows on the desk. ‘She disappeared originally during the month of July. You probably don’t know what the river’s like in summer. Let me tell you, son. It’s chock-a-block with boats. After she drowned, the body wouldn’t have surfaced for several hours, probably at night. She could have got knocked about, been hit over and over, and without anyone even knowing it.’
And every time in the face? Come on! thought Billy, but he continued listening with the same friendly, slightly puzzled air as Deacon tried to justify himself. Tried to explain how he could have made such a basic error as to mark down Susan Barlow’s death as accidental without stopping to think.
It was the sort of mistake Billy no longer made himself, and if his older colleague had been more observant he might have noticed an inner stillness in this fresh-faced detective from London as he sat nodding, apparently agreeing with every word Deacon said, taking no exception to the Henley detective’s bored, dismissive manner.
Billy dated his coming-of-age from the brief time he’d spent working under Madden. The foundations of his career as an investigator had been well laid then, but by his own reckoning, the most valuable lesson he had learned from his superior was that the work they did could never be just a job. That it was necessary to care.
‘I noticed her body was found half a mile upstream from the town. Was that a surprise?’
Deacon’s eyebrows, though raised, suggested no such response on his part. Rather, they implied disbelief at what he was hearing.
‘Not to me, son. You’ve got to start from the premise that she fell into the water, but you can take it from me there’s nothing unusual about that. Not hereabouts. Happens all the time, particularly with kids. The bank can be unstable… treacherous. You stray too close to it, or start reaching for something in the water, and next thing you know you’ve tumbled in and the current’s got hold of you.’
‘Yes, but that far upstream…’ Billy wanted to make his point. ‘The Barlow house was, what, less than a mile from the centre of Henley? Even supposing she walked back along the river and fell in somehow, wouldn’t her body have been swept down closer to the town itself, or even past it?’
Having gone through the file in London a couple of times, Billy had concluded there was little mystery about Susan Barlow’s movements that August day. All that was in question, really, was the route she’d taken to return home after running an errand for her mother, who had asked her to slip into Henley and buy some oranges; something she’d forgotten to do herself earlier. The house where the two of them lived – Mrs Barlow was a widow whose husband had been killed in the war – lay on a lane that followed the course of the Thames upstream, running quite close to it for a few miles before linking up with the main road to Reading. It was on the outskirts of the town and the walk to the shops would have taken the girl about fifteen minutes.
Her safe arrival there had been confirmed by the greengrocer who had sold her the oranges. She had left the shop well before half-past eleven with her purchase wrapped in a brown paper packet, having given no indication that she meant to do anything other than return home directly. When midday came and went with no sign of her daughter, Mrs Barlow had walked into Henley herself and spoken to the greengrocer, who confirmed the girl had been there recently. She had then wandered about the town for a little while, asking various friends and acquaintances if they had seen Susan, before returning home herself in the hope that her daughter had reappeared by now. Finding she had not, the distracted mother had finally rung the police and the wheels of an organized search had ground slowly into motion.
It was at that point that the question of how Susan had gone home, which route she might have taken, had become crucial. The quickest road back would have been the way she had come, along the lane, but she could also have walked further upstream along the river bank for anything up to a mile and then taken one of several footpaths, all of which connected with the lane, and so returned home by a roundabout route.
That she’d obviously chose this latter alternative was Deacon’s contention now. (It was also the answer the police had reluctantly come to three years earlier.) Somehow Susan Barlow must have stumbled into the river during her homeward walk and her body had been swept away by the strong current and failed to surface for some reason.
‘Like I say, she could easily have walked a mile up the river and then come across the fields and walked back down to her mum’s house. At least, that’s what she had in mind, only somewhere along the way she went into the river. After that, there’d be no telling what might have happened with the current. Sometimes bodies get brought down here, other times they get lodged in the bank, like this one did.’
‘She was spotted on that riverside path, was she?’ Billy still wasn’t clear on this point, despite having read Chief Inspector Sinclair’s file carefully, and Deacon’s reply did nothing to clear up his uncertainty.
‘Yes and no. There were witnesses who thought they’d seen her, or someone like her.’ He shrugged. ‘It was before my time here, but I know we had a description of what she was wearing from her mother. It was a pink dress. But have you any idea of how many young girls are running up and down that path all summer? And how many of them might be wearing pink dresses?’
Billy considered what he’d just heard. It made a difference.
‘I’ll hang on to this for a little while if I may.’ He tapped the folder on his knee. ‘But I’d like to go and have a look at the general area now. Would you care to come along?’
‘Couldn’t possibly, son. I’m due at the Magistrates’ Court in ten minutes. And I’m afraid my two detective constables are out.’
‘Never mind,’ Billy said, taking care to disguise his relief at the news, ‘I’ll manage on my own.’
‘Oh, we can’t have that. I’ve got a PC waiting to show you around. Name of Crawley.’ Deacon produced a thin smile. It was his first of the morning.
Billy took off his hat and wiped his perspiring face with a handkerchief. Although the October sun had lost much of its summer strength, his skin felt tender. The pale complexion he’d inherited from his mother, along with her reddish hair, made him prone to sunburn. ‘I’m not keeping company with a lobster,’ Elsie had murmured to him not long ago as she rubbed oil on his back and shoulders. They’d gone on a day trip to Brighton and were lying in their bathing costumes on the shingle beach. Recalling the softness of her fingers on his skin, Billy felt warmth of another kind flooding into his cheeks. He watched as a pair of swans floated by on the current.
‘Is that it, then, Sarge? Are we done?’
PC Crawley stood beside Billy with folded arms, his eyes busy beneath his helmet as a trio of young girls dressed in light rayon frocks, their arms and legs bare, went strolling by. Downy about the cheeks himself, he hardly looked old enough to be wearing a policeman’s uniform.
‘Not yet, Constable.’ Billy didn’t need to recall Deacon’s smile to realize he’d been handed a lemon. Even by the standards of the Henley plod this young copper was a dim bulb.
He let his gaze wander along the river bank. Close by, on their left, was the flagged terrace of a pub, its tables overlooking the bronze-coloured Thames. Just beyond it a bridge spanned the river, and past that, further downstream, lay the straight patch of water where the famous regatta was held each summer. Billy had come to watch it once with some pals a few years ago. They had spent the day drinking beer in one of the marquees erected for the occasion and cheering with the rest of the crowd as the narrow boats, propelled by flashing oars, shot through the water like arrows.
Most of the holiday activity was centred there, he noted. The regatta was long over, but there were still a few campers in the fields lower down, their tents easy to pick out against the green meadowgrass, while the river, though no longer ‘chock-a-block’, remained busy with pleasure craft and other waterborne traffic.
Upstream, in the opposite direction, the view was different. They were close to the outskirts of the town, standing on a section of paved path that soon petered out into a dirt footway which continued along the tree-clad river bank. For several miles, according to PC Crawley. Billy had already got the constable to show him the spot where Susan Barlow’s body had been taken from the water. He’d been able to do that, though not much more.
‘I only got posted here six months ago, Sarge,’ Crawley had explained defensively when Billy tried to find out how the original search had been conducted. He’d had to turn to the file for more, and discovered that the searchers had concentrated their efforts on the stretch of river below the bridge, which made sense. That was the direction a floating object would take, after all. It was pure chance alone that had brought Susan Barlow’s body to rest on the bank upstream.
Billy had spent some time studying the site, a small cove on an outer bend of the river. The log beneath which the remains of Susan’s body had been found was still there, drawn up on the bank now, a piece of rotting tree trunk, stripped of its bark. It was possible to imagine how the current, swinging around at that point, might have carried the body, semi-submerged, into this shallow inlet. Trapped beneath the log, half-buried in the mud, it would have remained unaffected by the subsequent rise and fall of the river. A belt of undergrowth, separating the cove from the path, screened it from sight on the landward side, and its presence there had not been noted until some weeks ago when a couple in a rowing boat had pulled in to the bank and been greeted by the grisly spectacle of the girl’s arm, or what was left of it, protruding from the mud.
Assuming it was a case of murder, how had she got there?
Not the obvious way. Not by walking up the river on her own and encountering some stranger bent on rape and murder. Having examined the route carefully, Billy was certain of that now. Though hidden from the water by brush and overhanging branches, the path was mostly visible to the open fields it skirted on its inward side, and these all showed signs of having been used as camp sites during the summer. What was more, it was clearly a well-used footway. Even today, when the holiday season was over, they had encountered two families with small children and had passed a group of hikers camping out in one of the riverside meadows. Billy simply couldn’t picture the man – this careful killer – seizing hold of the girl in broad daylight, overpowering her and dragging her off to some secluded spot, all the while with the danger of discovery hanging over him.
No, it couldn’t have happened that way.
‘Come on, Crawley.’
Billy turned his back on the river and led the constable up a flight of shallow stone steps and across a small gravelled garden, bordered by flower beds, to the lane where he’d left his car. This was the same road Susan Barlow had taken when she’d walked into Henley to buy her packet of oranges; and the one she’d used to get home, too. Or so he believed now. Only she’d never got there.
He paused on the pavement, looking up and down the narrow lane. A picture was forming in his mind, and the image wasn’t pleasant. He saw the girl in her pink dress, with her brown paper packet clutched in her hand, walking in the shade along the grassed verge. He saw the car drawing up quietly behind her…
What words had he got prepared, the smooth-tongued stranger? What invitation had proved so irresistible that Susan Barlow had been persuaded to climb into the car and join him in the front seat? Billy scowled at the thought.
‘Are we going back to the station now?’ Crawley asked hopefully. ‘It’s getting on for lunch-time.’
An hour later the constable’s stomach was rumbling with hunger and Billy, too, was unsatisfied. He was beginning to think Deacon might be right. There was no way of proving that Susan Barlow’s death had resulted from murder.
Sinclair had warned him of the likelihood that his journey would be wasted. ‘These old cases have gone cold, I’m afraid. We’ll be lucky if we find anything new. But keep an eye open for any similiarities to the Brookham murder.’
Billy had started from the supposition that Susan Barlow had been a victim of opportunity. There was obviously no way the murderer could have known she would be walking into town that morning. But he must have been hunting, all the same, Billy felt, on the lookout for prey, and that argued he’d had somewhere in mind to take any child who fell into his hands. Given where the body was eventually found, it meant he’d already reconnoitred the river bank and found some spot upstream where he could park his car discreetly.
Returning to his own vehicle, Billy had spent the next sixty minutes with an increasingly unhappy Crawley exploring the winding, tree-shaded road that led to what the constable assured him had been Mrs Barlow’s cottage. He already knew that the bereaved mother had moved away, unable to bear the associations which the place held for her. Pausing only briefly, he’d continued driving along the lane, noting several spots where a car might have been driven off the road and parked under cover of trees and bushes, but none which seemed to offer the kind of privacy that the killer would surely have wanted.
Billy took it for granted that the girl must have been rendered unconscious, chloroformed perhaps soon after she’d got into the killer’s car (if that was what had happened). Her abductor could hardly have driven his passenger past her own house without provoking some reaction on her part. But where had he taken his captive?
As he pondered this question, Billy’s eyes kept flicking towards the mileage indicator. They had already covered two and a half miles since leaving the town centre.
Not back to Henley, certainly. So it must have been beyond the Barlow cottage. But while this fitted the facts, such as they were – the girl’s body could easily have floated some way down the river before coming to rest on the bank – Billy just couldn’t picture the killer taking her any great distance.
Quite apart from the urgency of his desire, he must have been aware of the danger she represented for him. It didn’t matter whether she was conscious or not, every moment she spent in his car placed him in dire peril and he would have wanted to do what he had to do as quickly as possible, so as to be rid of her damning presence.
Billy’s glance went back to the dashboard. Three miles now. According to the map he’d studied before setting out, they would shortly be linking up with the main road to Reading. It was far enough. He looked for a place to turn round and noticed a signboard on the road ahead. It bore a name – Waltham Manor – printed in gold against a green background, and below that, in smaller letters, the words ‘Members Only’.
‘What’s this, then?’ he asked, braking to turn onto a strip of dirt road. Ahead of him he saw a pair of gates standing open in a high stone wall.
Constable Crawley, who hadn’t said a word for the past half hour, though his stomach had been audible, now produced a sound that in other circumstances Billy might have taken for a snigger.
‘Constable?’
‘It’s a sort of club, Sarge. They call themselves gym… gymnos
… gym somethings…’ He was quaking with suppressed laughter.
‘What are you trying to say?’ Billy demanded. Christ! Where did they find them? ‘What sort of club? What do they do?’
Crawley let out a hoot of laughter. ‘They take their clothes off…’ he gurgled.
‘You mean it’s a nudists’ club?’
The constable nodded, wordless now. His downy cheeks had turned bright red.
Billy stopped the car and stared at him. He shook his head, then started to reverse, intending to back onto the paved road, but at once felt a heavy drag on the steering wheel.
‘Bloody hell!’
They got out. Just as Billy suspected, the front near-side tyre had punctured on a sharp stone. A few moments later, having opened the boot, they made a further discovery.
‘There’s no jack,’ Crawley announced.
‘Brilliant deduction, Holmes.’ Billy kicked the flat tyre in frustration. He was thinking of the long drive he still had back to London. ‘Come on…’
Beyond the gates of Waltham Manor, where a sign warned them this was private property and trespassers would be prosecuted, an elm-lined drive led to an imposing stone mansion with a handsome portico. A further sign, marked ‘Reception’, directed them to a gravelled parking area at the side of the house from which point a long white paling fence was visible.
‘Is that where they take their clothes off?’ Billy asked. There were only a dozen or so cars in the parking lot. Business must be slack, he thought.
The constable nodded. ‘There’s a lot of ground fenced in at the back of the house. You can’t see in from any side. When they started up they used the whole garden, I was told. But then the local lads began shinning up the wall to peep over, so they had to build that fence.’ He emitted his peculiar hooting laugh. ‘Now everything goes on inside there and they’ve let the rest go.’ He nodded towards the parkland further off, where the bushes had grown into tangled thickets and the grass, uncut, was knee high.
A brick path at the end of the parking area led to a door in the side of the house. Billy opened it and was startled to see a young man, apparently wearing nothing, sitting at a long table in the middle of the room, reading a magazine. He glanced up as they entered, his bored expression changing to one of consternation at the sight of Crawley’s uniform.
‘My name’s Styles. Detective Sergeant Styles.’ Billy showed him his warrant card. ‘We’ve had a puncture outside your gates and we’ve got no jack. I was wondering if someone here could help.’
‘I’ll have to ask Dorrie,’ the young man said, getting to his feet; he was, after all, wearing bathing trunks. ‘Just a mo…’
He disappeared through a door at the back of the room, leaving them alone.
‘Cor! What do you think of that, Sarge?’ Crawley was grinning from ear to ear.
Billy ignored him. Instead he turned his attention to a framed scroll got up to look like parchment that was hanging on the wall behind the table. Headed The Gymnosophist’s Creed, it went on for several paragraphs.
The door opened and a young woman entered, wearing a white linen robe, belted at the waist and reaching to her knees. She had short brown hair, fashioned into rolls at the back of her neck, and a quick, birdlike glance.
‘Hullo, boys. What’s the problem?’ She grinned, as though to excuse the familiarity.
Billy explained their predicament again.
‘Sergeant, is it?’ Smiling, she eyed him with interest.
‘Yes… Styles. And this is Constable Crawley.’
‘My name’s Doris… Doris Jenner.’ She held out her hand to Billy and as she did so her gown fell open and one of her breasts, quite bare, was revealed for a moment. Unflustered, she covered it swiftly. ‘Sorry about that… you get careless working here.’ She remained smiling. ‘It’s a jack you need, then? Mr Rainey would have one – he’s the manager – but he’s out at present. Tell you what, I’ll see if one of the members can help. Wait here.’ Her glance shifted for an instant to the constable, beside Billy, and she smothered a laugh. Then she turned and went out.
Billy looked at the young PC. He was staring after her, mouth hanging open, face the colour of a ripe tomato.
‘For Christ’s sake, Constable!’ Billy’s patience snapped. ‘Pull yourself together. Haven’t you seen a naked woman before?’
‘No, Sarge, I haven’t.’
‘Bloody hell!’
A minute later Doris Jenner returned with a set of keys and they went outside into the parking area where she retrieved a jack from the boot of one of the parked cars. Billy handed it to the constable.
‘Off you go. Change the tyre, then bring the car up here.’ He felt a compelling need to dispense with the other’s company, if only for a quarter of an hour.
‘What, me, Sarge?’
‘Yes, you, Crawley.’ A sudden suspicion struck Billy. ‘You can drive, can’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’ The young man was affronted.
‘Get on with it, then.’
Hands on hips, Billy watched him stride off, boots crunching on the gravel. He turned to find Doris Jenner observing them with a crooked grin.
‘How’d you get landed with that one?’
Unable to think of a fitting response, he changed the subject. ‘You wouldn’t have such a thing as a cup of tea, would you?’
‘Of course, Sergeant. Come inside.’
She led him through the outer room, where the young man in the bathing trunks had resumed his place at the table, into an adjoining office furnished with a desk and some easy chairs grouped around a low table. The walls were hung with paintings showing men and women as God made them dancing in the open air or stretched out on the grass in decorative poses.
‘Nymphs and shepherds,’ Miss Jenner said drily, cocking an eye at them. ‘Make yourself at home. I’ll be back in a minute.’
Billy used the time she was away to run through in his mind the results of the day’s inquiries. They were scant. He felt he could report to Sinclair with some assurance that the circumstances surrounding Susan Barlow’s death were suspicious enough to warrant further investigation. But beyond that he could only offer speculation unsupported by evidence.
‘Is this your first time in a nudists’ club?’ Doris Jenner had returned with a tea tray and a plate of biscuits. She declined Billy’s offer of a cigarette, but pushed an ashtray over to his side of the glass-topped table.
‘Yes, but I’ve read about them.’ Billy reached out for his cup. ‘I thought the fad was dying out.’
‘It is.’ She’d seated herself opposite him, modestly drawing the robe tightly around her, but tucking her bare feet up on the chair so that Billy found himself gazing at a pair of rosy knees. There was a teasing look in her eye and he was glad he wouldn’t have to report this encounter to Elsie Osgood, who had a jealous streak which he didn’t take lightly. ‘A couple of years ago the parking lot would have been packed. We were turning people away. I give them another year at most.’
‘Have you been here since it opened?’ Billy lit a cigarette.
She nodded. ‘I was working in an office in Henley when I heard they were looking for staff. It’s not a bad job, if you don’t mind taking off your clothes.’ Her crooked grin displayed the tips of her small, pointed teeth. ‘Well, most of them. Only the members strip down completely.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ Biting into a piece of shortbread, Billy returned her grin. The thought of Constable Crawley’s hunger pangs aroused no tremor of remorse in him.
‘So what brings the law up this way?’ She put down her cup.
‘Routine inquiries.’ His comic policeman’s voice brought a bubbling laugh from her lips. ‘It’s true, though.’ He went on in more serious vein. ‘A young girl disappeared in Henley a while back, and her body’s only recently been recovered from the river. We’re trying to establish her movements, based on where it was found. It’s no easy job. She went missing three years ago.’
Doris Jenner was gazing out of the window. Her eyes had grown misty. ‘Poor kid… I remember when it happened… Susan… Wasn’t that her name?’
‘You’ve got a good memory.’ Billy was impressed.
‘Not really… it was something else, something that happened to me that day… or rather it didn’t…’ She smiled mischievously. ‘Now don’t get me started, Sergeant.’ She reached across the table for his cup and refilled it.
Billy waited for her to go on. He was enjoying their conversation. There was a flirtatious edge to her manner that flattered his male vanity. ‘Go on,’ he prompted.
‘You don’t want to hear about it.’
‘Maybe I do.’ He was half-flirting himself, but his words held a germ of truth. One of the reasons he was a good detective – quite apart from the skills he’d acquired – was a basic curiosity in his nature. He was interested in people – why they were who they were. He didn’t have to force himself in that direction. It came naturally. And he listened as he always did, out of habit now, as he had once observed John Madden listen.
Doris Jenner collected herself in her chair. Her brown eyes twinkled. ‘All right, then. But remember – you asked.’ Her glance was provocative. ‘It all has to do with a boyfriend I had then – his name was Jimmy. He was a member here. That’s how we met. Jimmy lived in Birmingham, but he used to drive down every Saturday in a big fancy car. You couldn’t mistake it, and I used to sit at the desk outside and watch for him through the window.’ She smiled, her eyes hazy with reminiscence.
‘We never let on, of course. The staff’s not allowed to fraternize with members. But I always had Sundays off and when I’d finished work on Saturdays I’d leave on my bike as usual and cycle down the road to Henley, and after a few minutes Jimmy would roll up behind me in his big car and we’d load my bike into the back and off we’d go!’ She laughed. ‘I thought he was going to marry me, I really did… he’d sort of hinted at it…’ She stretched her arms and sighed.
‘Well, anyway, that particular Saturday I sat there at reception all morning waiting for him to turn up and he never did. I kept looking out of the window hoping to see him arrive. Once I thought I’d spotted his car, but it wasn’t his, it was someone else’s, and I almost burst into tears. I couldn’t believe he’d let me down. I’d had my birthday two days before and Jimmy had promised to take me to London that evening. We were going to go dancing. I was sure he was going to pop the question…’ She lifted an eyebrow and shrugged. ‘I can laugh about it now, but I’d never been so miserable in my life, and when I went back to Henley that evening I was ready to jump into the river myself. That’s when I heard about the girl… Susan…’
She stared at her hands. Billy sat silent.
‘I was living in lodgings at the time and my landlady told me the police had been knocking on doors up and down the street asking if anyone had seen her. She knew the girl’s mother, my landlady did. She said although they were still searching in the town, everyone knew the poor kid must have fallen into the river. I went up to my room and lay face down on the bed, and I must have stayed that way for half an hour when suddenly it hit me! There I was, snivelling and feeling sorry for myself, but what that girl’s mother must have been going through! And at that very same moment! So that’s why I remember that day, because it taught me something.’ Her look was defiant.
Billy put out his cigarette. He thought about what she had told him. ‘What happened to Jimmy?’ he asked.
Doris Jenner rolled her eyes. ‘He wrote me a letter full of excuses and said he didn’t know when he’d be able to get down again. I made some inquiries and found out he was married. I don’t know how he’d managed to pull the wool over his wife’s eyes for so long, coming down to the club every weekend, but I never saw him again.’
The door opened and the young man from reception put his head in. ‘Your constable’s here,’ he said.
‘Tell him I’ll be out in a minute.’ Billy kept his eyes on Doris Jenner. He waited until the door had shut, then he spoke to her. ‘You mentioned a car, not Jimmy’s, another one. Can you tell me more about that?’
‘What?’ She blinked. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You thought you’d seen his car, you said, when you were waiting. But it was someone else’s…’
‘Yes?’ She stared at him. Her glance hardened. ‘Are you being a copper now?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I’m being a copper.’ He met her gaze.
‘Is this about Jimmy? Is he in trouble?’
Billy shook his head. ‘No, it’s about the car. That’s all I’m interested in.’ He paused. ‘You see, you said before that Jimmy had a fancy car. “You couldn’t mistake it,” you said. But you did. Does that mean you hadn’t seen another like it before that day?’
Flushing, she stared out of the window. Her lips had thinned to a hard line. ‘If you came here to ask questions, you should have said so.’
‘I didn’t. It was hearing your story.’
‘I thought we were being friendly.’ She wouldn’t look at him.
Billy sought for a way to heal the breach between them. ‘Let me tell you what this is about, Doris.’ He leaned forward. ‘It’s to do with that young girl, Susan Barlow.’
She turned to face him then, a deep flush still mantling her features, but with a glance that was less hostile. ‘I don’t see how,’ she said.
‘I need to know if a stranger came and parked his car here that day. Please, try and think back. Tell me exactly what you saw.’
Doris Jenner swallowed. She seemed to be in two minds as to whether or not to respond to his question. But then she shrugged. ‘I was sitting at reception, as I said, and I saw what I thought was Jimmy’s car drive into the parking area, so I waited, expecting him to come through the door, but he never did. I couldn’t understand why – it’s the only way into the club – so I went outside and looked for his car and saw what I thought was it parked away down the other end under a tree. I still thought it was Jimmy’s. You’re right – I hadn’t seen another like it – not at the club, nor anywhere else.’
‘What make of car was it?’
‘Don’t know. Can’t help you there. It was foreign, that’s all I remember.’
‘Foreign? Are you sure of that?’
She nodded. ‘Jimmy was proud as punch of it. Said there weren’t many like it on the road. It had lovely leather upholstery.’ She laughed cynically. ‘Do you know what it smelled of to me? Money.’
‘To go back, you saw this car parked at the far end of the lot… ?’
‘Yes, but there was no sign of Jimmy. I wondered if he’d gone into the gardens, though I couldn’t think why. They weren’t kept up even in those days. Anyway, in the end I walked down to have a closer look at the car, to make sure it was his.’
Billy shifted slightly in his chair.
‘Well, it wasn’t.’ She shrugged.
‘How did you know that? Was it a different colour?’
‘No, that was it.’ She waved a hand impatiently. ‘That’s how I made a mistake in the first place. It looked just like Jimmy’s. Dark blue. But when I got closer I saw they were different. It was the upholstery. Jimmy’s was light brown. This one’s was blue. Dark blue, like the chassis.’
‘Did you wonder about the driver at all?’
She seemed puzzled by his question.
‘Why he never came through reception?’
‘Oh, I see what you mean.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I never gave it a thought. I only had one thing on my mind… Jimmy!’ She rolled her eyes again.
‘So you looked inside the car?’
‘Did I?’ Her good humour had returned, along with her crooked grin.
‘You saw the upholstery. You must have noticed if there was anything lying on the seats.’
‘Give me a break, officer.’ Her American accent came from the cinema. ‘It was three years ago.’
Billy lit another cigarette. He seemed to have relaxed himself. ‘Come on, Doris. You can’t fool me. What did you see?’
She laughed. ‘Not that much. There was a man’s hat lying on the passenger seat. I remember that. But I can’t tell you what colour it was, or anything.’
‘How about the back seat?’
She put her head on one side, inspecting him through lowered lashes. ‘Just how important is this, Sergeant Styles?’
‘I don’t know. I’d have to hear it first, wouldn’t I?’ He returned her grin.
‘What if I told you there was a body lying there?’
‘I’d say you had a good imagination as well as a good memory.’
She tossed her head, laughing once more. ‘Well, it wasn’t a body. Just a packet of fruit.’
‘Fruit?’ Billy went very still. She hadn’t noticed.
‘Yes, in a brown paper packet, but the packet had split and the fruit was spilled out on the seat. I can see it lying there now.’ She was smiling, pleased with herself.
‘What sort of fruit?’ Billy asked casually. ‘Can you see that?’
‘Of course I can. I’ve got a good memory, haven’t I?’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘They were oranges. Lovely golden oranges…’