if you let me …”
She sat quietly for a few seconds deep in thought then shook her head.
Roger locked the door on his way out.
Detective Constable Jackson, together with his partner from Watford police station, returned to Roger’s house mid-afternoon to check on the glazier’s handiwork, and surprised Edwards’ staff sergeant as he was letting himself in.
“What the hell d’ye think you’re doing?” enquired Jackson without subtlety, catching the man with the key in the lock.
“And who the hell do you think you are sonny?” sneered the sergeant drawing his warrant card and holding it up to Jackson’s nose.
Jackson miffed, but outranked, introduced himself, “We’ve already searched the place Serg. There’s nothing in there.”
Unconvinced, the sergeant shoved the door and they piled into the familiar hallway. “I looked myself yesterday,” he admitted. “But we may have missed something.”
“Something about the girl?” enquired Jackson.
“What girl?” queried the sergeant. He’d not seen the newspaper and knew nothing of Trudy. Jackson briefed him while his partner idly sleuthed around, kicking the thick layer of dust into a cloud that split the shafts of afternoon sunlight into a million glittering motes.
Trudy lay beneath them, her breathless body now in a coma. Her frantic efforts of the morning had finally exhausted her dehydrated body, and she no longer had the energy, or the will, to keep her mouth glued to the keyhole. The computer screen in the corner still gave out its faint rays of hope and still bore her final entreaty to her mother.
“MUM, MUM, MUM,” it flashed repeatedly and was programmed to do so until eternity.
The brief wartime diary of the Nazi sympathiser who had dug the shelter, together with his family’s little silver Swastikas, remained in the OXO tin in a corner of the dim, damp chamber. The underground cell, abandoned for nearly sixty years, had failed to preserve the lives of the family who built it, and was now preparing to become the permanent resting place of Trudy Jane McKenzie, aged sixteen years and a couple of months.
In the hallway above, Jackson and the staff sergeant pored over photographs of Trudy and Roger.
“Have you shown the neighbours?” enquired the sergeant.
“Not yet,” replied Jackson. “We’ve only just got the one of the McKenzie girl and we had to get this one of LeClarc from his mother. The picture in the Daily Express was one of LeClarc’s bosses. That’s why we’re pretty sure there’s a link between him and the missing girl.”
“Sergeant,” Jackson’s mate shouted from the front room, “take a look at this.”
“I bet this is where the bed was,” he said, pointing out scuffmarks on the floor, and they followed the trail to the cupboard under the stairs, the entrance to Trudy’s cavern. “It ain’t in there,” called Jackson, “I’ve already checked,” so he shut the door and moved toward the staircase.
“Let me look at that picture again,” requested the sergeant, sneaking it from Jackson’s hand. “I thought so,” he continued mysteriously, bending down to scrape a few long dark hairs from the floor.
“They come from a Greek woman who used to live here,” explained Jackson’s partner pompously, seemingly having an answer for everything.
“Who says so?”
“Bloke across the road … Mitchell at 71, told me this morning.”
“And you believed him?”
Doubt suddenly flooded the detective’s face and reservation crept into his voice. “That’s what he reckoned anyway.”
The sergeant held the hairs against Trudy’s photograph. “What do you think?”
“Possible,” breathed Jackson and his partner reluctantly nodded in agreement.
The stiletto heels of the dumpy waitress clicked in time to the old station clock as the sergeant and the two detectives sat down to order tea fifteen minutes later. The railway refreshment room was busier than it had been when Trudy and Roger had waited a week earlier. The uniforms had changed as well: Board meetings, business luncheons, and bottom lines were far from the minds of the Friday afternoon mob in their ripped jeans and offensively decorated T-shirts. The smartly dressed commuters wouldn’t be back for another two hours, leaving the refreshment room at the mercy of the unemployed and unemployable.
“At least they remembered LeClarc,” said the sergeant, referring to several of Roger’s neighbours who had identified him from the photograph.
“Old George Mitchell doesn’t miss much,” added Jackson. “You’d think he would have seen the girl if she’d been with Roger.”
“Yes,” demanded the waitress, making it clear from her stance that she was unlikely to stand any nonsense. “What do you want?” Her tone, and expression said everything: “No credit—don’t even ask; if it isn’t on the menu we haven’t got it, and even if it is we might not have it, and pinch my bottom and I’ll stuff your teeth down your throat.”
Not intimidated, the sergeant laid his hand expressively on her tubby forearm, looked her straight in the eye, and addressed her as if she were his maiden aunt. “Now my dear,” he said, “we’d like three cups of your finest China tea and some of your very best roast beef sandwiches.”
She melted.
“Oh, and by the way,” he added, “I don’t suppose you’d recognize either of these two?”
She did—both of them.
One hour later, Junction Road, Watford had become a circus, with Roger’s home the star attraction. Gaily coloured ribbons of red and yellow cordoned off the area outside the house. Brightly painted vehicles with flashing lights and musical sirens completely blocked the narrow street. The ambulance appeared to be entirely unwarranted but, as at any circus, somebody felt it wise to have one standing by. Why anybody summonsed the fire engine was unknown, but, in the initial panic following Detective Jackson’s call for assistance, someone must have thought it a good idea.
The official audience of residents, reporters, and cameramen were augmented by an ad-hoc bunch of busy-bodies, excited children, and a couple of drunks who had stopped to heckle the uniformed policeman acting as usher. Patrolling up and down inside the police perimeter with a stone face, he minutely scrutinized every scrap of identification before lifting the flimsy tape, and allowing the artists into the ring.
George Mitchell and Mrs. Ramchuran were waiting to play a fringe performance to an audience of several dozen television and newspaper reporters denied access to the main attraction. The press had been unable to prise any information from the police beyond two comments: One, from D.C. Jackson, “Just routine enquiries,” and the other, from a brash young sergeant, turned the face of the young female reporter prawn pink as he suggested an alternative use for her microphone should she stick it in his face again.
Now she wavered the microphone threateningly under George’s nose and the cameraman gave a signal. The sideshow began.
“How long have you lived at 71, Junction Road, Watford, Mr. Mitchell?” she asked, attempting to cram as much information as possible in a single shot.
“Sixty years,” he replied crisply.
“What can you tell us about Mr. LeClarc, at number 34, Sir?”
“Funny looking bugger …”
“Sir, this is for national television,” she reminded him.
George, with a vacant confused look, tried again, “Well he is a funny …”
“O.K., Sir,” the interviewer cut in quickly. “Can I ask you about the girl. Trudy McKenzie?”
“Never ’eard