‘What do you think? There’s been a little girl murdered down your way,’ Hilda said as Cath let herself in through the front door.
‘A little girl?’ Cath echoed, aghast.
‘It’s on the news at the minute, come through and see,’ said Hilda. Cath followed her into the sitting room. As usual, Pete and Hilda had been sitting with their chairs turned to the corner where the fourteen-inch television set flickered black-and-white images rather than to the fireplace, which had been the former focus of the room.
‘The body of a girl aged between eleven and twelve was found in the Bishop’s park in Bishop Auckland. It was hidden in a patch of undergrowth on the hillside above the River Gaunless,’ the newscaster said. ‘The girl’s name has not been released as yet until her family have been informed. It appears she was a pupil at Bishop Auckland Girls’ County School, for she was wearing a bottle-green Burberry rainproof coat, and a school hat was found lying nearby.’
Cath listened, hardly able to believe what she heard. Her first thought was, thank goodness it couldn’t be Annie. But neither could the murderer be Ronnie Robson, for he was still an inmate in Winterton mental hospital. So there was a monster at large. She was lost in her own thoughts and fears, and at first she didn’t hear what Hilda was saying.
‘Cath?’ the older woman asked. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Sorry, sorry, yes, of course. What did you say?’
‘I was just saying how terrible it is. Whoever she is, she’s some mother’s bairn, isn’t she? What’s the world coming to if you can’t let your girl out on her own?’
‘I wonder who she is, where she’s from?’ said Cath. She had an awful feeling the girl would turn out to be from one of the colliery villages around the town. Since the 1944 Education Act more and more children from the villages had won scholarships to the grammar schools in the town, both boys and girls. And whereas before the war few of the miners could afford for their children to go to such schools, they were making good money now.
The Northern Echo had the story the next morning, blazoned across the front page. The girl was Carol White, aged eleven and a half, and she was from Coundon.
Carol had slung her schoolbag a little higher on her shoulder as she walked up Kingsway in the town. She had to walk home because she had lost her ticket and she had no money in her pocket at all. She had had threepence that morning when she set out but she had bought a quarter of bull’s eyes at the newsagents in Coundon as she waited for the bus to school. She would share them with the girls in her class and then maybe they would be friends with her. She had eaten only two of the sweets herself and then passed them round, and for this she had got a rollicking telling-off from Miss Macrae, her form mistress.
But none of the girls wanted to play with her when she went out to the playing fields after dinner. She was one of the last girls out and the ones from her old school, Penny and Margaret, had already disappeared down the far field. Not that they had been her particular friends when she was at junior school but she still hadn’t got to know the others really. A wintry sun shone today and it was fairly warm for February.
Some of the girls were turning somersaults on the grass beside the tennis courts. Gwyneth was there; she was a nice friendly girl.
‘Do you know where Penny and Margaret went?’ she asked her. Gwyneth shook her head.
‘You can play with us if you like,’ she offered.
‘No, she can’t,’ said Marjorie White. ‘Go and find your own friends. My dad said I hadn’t to play with pitmen’s children.’
‘It’s all right, I’m looking for my friends,’ Carol said to Gwyneth and walked on. When she found Penny and Margaret at the end of the far field they were with their new friends and didn’t really want her, she could tell. Perhaps they had been trying to get away from her by going so far.
Carol had got to the end of Kingsway and crossed the road. The tall wrought-iron gates of the park were still open so, instead of following Durham Road to Coundon, she decided to go by the path through the park. She felt sad; she wanted to be on her own. She and her mam and dad had been so excited about her winning the scholarship to the grammar school, and now she was without a real friend. Well, she would just have to get used to being on her own.
The gravel crunched beneath her feet and she hitched her schoolbag higher on her shoulder. It had a strap for both shoulders but she soon realised that the other girls wouldn’t be seen dead with both straps in use. It was heavy – she had her French textbook and English and geography ones too. Tonight they had two hours’ homework.
‘Some girls are skimping their homework,’ Miss Dixon, the French mistress, had said. ‘You should allow forty minutes for translation. I can tell if you try to do it any faster.’
Carol went through the cowcatcher gate, having to hoist her schoolbag over. She looked back when she thought she heard the gravel crunching behind her but she couldn’t see anyone. She quickened her pace and had got quite a long way into the park, past the deer house, down the hill to the wooden bridge over the Gaunless and so far up the other side, when she heard footsteps behind her. There was someone about. A man was there. In the failing light she saw, as he got close, that it was a man she knew, a workmate of her father’s from Winton Colliery.
‘Hello, Carol,’ he said. ‘Walking home, are you?’
He was a big man with pale blue eyes and a bristly chin. He slowed his pace to match hers. She began to hurry, anxious to get to the other end of the path where the main road ran to Durham and a side road ran off to Coundon.
‘Wait a minute,’ said the man. ‘I know where there is a badger sett. I’ll show you if you like.’
‘It’s getting dark, I’ll be late and Mam will be angry,’ said Carol but she slowed. She had never seen a badger, not close up, at least.
‘It won’t take a minute,’ said the man. ‘See that clump of bushes? It’s just behind there.’
It was only a few yards off the path and the man was a friend of her dad’s. She was probably being silly. She might not get another chance to see a badger.
‘Badgers come out about this time, when it’s nearly dark,’ he said. ‘Howay then.’
Carol looked up the path; it wasn’t far to the road and she could see streetlights had come on and were twinkling through the trees. That would be Coundon Gate. He was right, it wouldn’t take a minute. She was being silly.
It was a woman from Coundon Gate who had found the little body, or rather, it was her dog. She had crossed the road to the park, letting Gyp off his lead. He rushed about demented before suddenly forgetting what he was there to do and putting his nose to the ground and following it blindly. It led him to an overgrown coppice only a few yards from the path. There he stood, barking and barking and refusing to come to heel as his owned demanded. In the end she had to go and get him.
‘You bad dog, Gyp!’ she said. ‘Now I’ve got my feet all wet from the grass – what’s that?’
It looked like a bundle of dark green clothes, and beside it was a leather satchel bulging with books.
‘Whatever is the world coming to?’ Sadie asked. ‘It’s not safe out on your own any more.’ Cath had rung her to tell her she was coming home this weekend and naturally they had begun to talk about the murder of Carol White. ‘They say schools don’t allow girls to walk home on their own any more. They have to be in pairs at least. And the girls’ grammar school, well, they have started escorting them to and from the school buses.’
‘It’s a good idea,’ said Cath. ‘Pity they didn’t always do that with the juniors, anyway.’
‘They were always perfectly safe anywhere,’ said Sadie.
‘Annie wasn’t,’ Cath reminded her. ‘Mam, our Annie’s all right, isn’t she?’
‘Of course she is. Now she’s out, Patsy watches her all the time.’
‘I’ll see you on Friday, Mam. Cheerio.’ Cath put the telephone down and dropped a sixpence in the box Pete had recently put beside it.
‘Charges are getting higher and higher,’ he had said when he got the last bill from the post office.
Cath packed her bag for the weekend so that she could take it to work on Friday morning and go straight from the office. She didn’t like staying in Durham over the weekend now because, by accident or design, Mark always managed to bump into her.
‘We can have a meal together or go to the pictures,’ he would say. ‘We are brother and sister, and there’s nothing wrong in that, is there?’ But there was a look in his eyes that made her uncomfortable and she couldn’t forget that they had nearly become lovers.
As she took the bus to Half Hidden Cottage her thoughts returned to Carol White’s murder. The papers were saying she had been ‘interfered with’, and a full-scale hunt was on for her attacker. Cath’s thoughts turned to Eric Bowron. Could it possibly have been him, and not his cousin Ronnie, who had attacked Annie? No, it couldn’t be: there had been no attacks on girls for years, not since Annie, and there would have been, surely?
Cath got off the bus at the drive for Half Hidden Cottage. There was an outside light now by the cottage, she saw, an imitation old-fashioned street lamp that shone out on to the grass, showing that there was already a touch of sparkling frost. It showed something else: the clumps of snowdrops by the gate, and sown at random in the grass, were now scattered about as though someone had slashed at them with a knife or something.
‘Mam! What happened to the snowdrops?’ Cath called as she went into the house and through to the kitchen, where her mother was sitting at the table smoking a cigarette and drinking tea.
‘Heck, Cath, you made me jump coming in like that. What are you talking about, any road?’
‘The snowdrops. Someone has cut them. They’re all dead.’
‘How could anyone have done that? I haven’t been out all day. Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure, come and see for yourself if you like,’ said Cath.
Sadie followed her out of the front door. ‘Well, blow me,’ she said. ‘I never heard a thing. It’s a bit creepy, isn’t it?’
‘I told you to watch out. That Eric Bowron has it in for us because of his cousin Ronnie. Next time it could be worse.’
‘Aw Cath, stop trying to frighten me, it’s likely just some kids done it. Little vandals, all of them. Howay in the warm. By, I don’t know what kids are coming to nowadays.’
‘But did you say anything to Henry? I bet you didn’t.’
‘I did. That’s why he had the lamp put up outside. He looks after me, does Henry.’
She wasn’t worried, but disquiet ran through Cath’s thoughts. ‘Please be careful, Mam,’ she said earnestly.
Sadie shook her head impatiently. ‘You always were full of doom, our Cath. Come on, help me with the dinner. Henry’s coming down.’
Cath had decided to have a word with Henry, tell him of her concern about Eric Bowron. But it was driven out of her mind when Henry came and they went into the dining room to eat the meal – rabbit in herbs, courtesy of Henry and cooked into a stew by Sadie. He walked over to the fireplace and held his hands out to the blaze.
‘A bit parky out there,’ he commented before his eye fell on a letter propped up against the clock. ‘Hello, there’s a letter here for you, Cath. And do you know, it looks like Jack’s handwriting.’
Cath went hot and cold all over; she stared at the envelope. Henry was gazing steadily at her, she was aware of that, but of little else that was happening.
‘Oh yes, sorry Cath, I forgot about it,’ said her mother. ‘I meant to tell you. It came a day or two ago. I would have sent it on but I knew you would be coming home this weekend probably.’
‘Why is my son writing to you?’
For a moment Cath couldn’t think of an answer for Henry. Then she said, ‘I wrote to him and said I was sorry he had been hurt.’
Henry looked sceptical but said no more. Cath took the letter and stared at it before putting it into her handbag, which was on the sideboard.
‘Aren’t you going to read it?’ asked Henry.
‘Later, I think. It won’t be about anything in particular.’
‘Well, forget about it for now. Come and eat before the food gets cold,’ Sadie commanded, coming to Cath’s assistance without realising she was doing so. The meal seemed interminable to Cath, but at last it was over and the washing-up done and she could make her excuses and go to her room.
‘Dearest Catherine,’ she read when at last she could open the envelope and fling herself down on her bed to read the letter:
As you will see by my address I am back in England. I was wounded a few weeks ago and the medics have sent me home for treatment in England. Soon I am to be transferred to the RVI in Newcastle. It is nothing serious, just a facial wound, but I need further surgery.
I don’t know what happened before I left, Catherine, I had to go so suddenly but I sent a message with Mark and I expected to hear from you. Mark told me that he gave you the message, so why? I did not think, Catherine, that you were the sort of girl who would change her mind so easily and so quickly.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that as a recrimination, but I think you owe me an explanation at least. The weekend we had together meant so much: I thought you loved me, as I loved you. In fact, I would stake my life on it.
I do not mean to badger you, Catherine. But please write to me to let me know what is happening with you, if you still think of me. If you are happy now with someone else, then so be it.
With love,
Jack
A surge of joy ran through Cath that he still wanted her. But it was quickly followed by a rush of fury that Mark should have withheld Jack’s letter from her. She felt like murdering him … She remembered her letter to him – in the end she had not posted it. She ought to have done.