Stone Cold Red Hot - страница 40

I was stunned. Everything had been resting on Keele. Jennifer’s last known residence. Except it hadn’t been. I’d hoped to find a firm lead there, a forwarding address, perhaps the names of course mates who might still be in touch. I made another coffee and tried to work out what this meant. Jennifer never went to Keele. Everyone assumed that she had. There was more to it than that. I dug out my earlier notes and went back over them. Both Roger and Mrs Clerkenwell had spoken about Jennifer dropping out of her course, so had Lisa MacNeice. And who had told them that Jennifer had left Keele? Mrs Pickering – Jennifer’s mother. And who had told Mrs Pickering? Had Jennifer pretended to be at Keele when she was really elsewhere? Or had the Pickerings invented the story for reasons of their own? I had to talk to her. She must be able to tell me more about where Jennifer went at the end of that hot, dry summer. When I saw Roger later that day I would insist on meeting Mrs Pickering as a condition of carrying on with the case.

I looked at the letter again and tried to adjust my view of events to fit. I must erase the part about Jennifer going off to university. Why hadn’t she gone? Her grades were good, people said she was excited about the move away, looking forward to it by all accounts. The pregnancy must have changed things. Did this mean she hadn’t had an abortion but had decided to keep the baby, or at least continue the pregnancy? Where had Jennifer gone if not to Keele? To a mother and baby home? Couldn’t she have deferred her course for a year while she had the baby?

I picked up the little mosaic vase that Mrs Clerkenwell had given me and turned it to and fro, examining the tiny fragments of glass mosaic the glinting gold pieces, the irregular colours of the small tiles. It felt cool to the touch. Together the broken pieces made something whole thanks to the craft of its maker. My work felt like that, lots of bits that needed matching together; facts, secrets, hearsay, rumours, all needed fixing in the right place, juxtaposing with the others until the true shape could be discerned. I was re-creating truth not beauty. And truth could be hideous or poignant or whimsical or mundane.

I felt uneasy about the job. It had been hard enough at the outset with so many years since anyone had seen Jennifer but now to find that one of the few facts I had to work with was false made it feel even more of a lost cause. I shivered. The office suddenly felt small, cold and confining.

I rubbed my eyes, got up and switched on the heater, looked at the list I’d made first thing. Tell insurance, borrow car. Who from? Diane didn’t have a car, she roped me in everytime she had to transport frames or canvases or collect new tubs of inks and chemicals. Ray hadn’t got one at the moment, he borrowed mine too and more recently made use of Laura’s. Everyone I could think of who had a car actually used it and wouldn’t be prepared to lend it out. I thought about the next few days. Most of my appointments could be done by bicycle. I should be able to manage. If Mr Poole rang again I’d get a taxi.

That reminded me to get the tape off to Mandy Bellows. I’d brought it to the office. I replayed a section of it in the camera to check that it was reasonable quality. It was. I could make out the individuals, cocky faces sneering as they took turns to ram the ball against the house. I packed the tape in a jiffy bag and rang the courier service I use.

Then I rang the insurers and began the long, slow process of giving them all the details they needed about my stolen car.

Once the courier had called I got ready to leave. There was a noise upstairs, someone coming in. Unusual, as Grant and Jackie Dobson are teachers and rarely home when I am there, and their daughters are at school.

I went upstairs quietly, feeling foolish at how hard my heart was beating. There was someone in the kitchen. I positioned myself near the front door before calling out, “Hello?”

“Sal?” a husky voice replied and Vicky Dobson, the eldest daughter, popped her head round the door. “Hiya. I’ve just got back. Don’t come too near, I need a bath, seriously.” Vicky had been doing the festivals; Glastonbury, Reading, WOMAD and had gone backpacking round Europe in-between. She looked the part; muddy blonde dreadlocks, a set of rings in each nostril, enough in her ears to hang curtains on, a stud in her eyebrow, distressed clothing, acid green Doc Martens. She looked great.