It was 7.55, a sunny Sunday morning in July, and the first tolling of the bell for Morning Communion was followed by brief cawing and a flurry of wings as four black crows rose from their overnight perch on the tower of St Mary’s.
Ed hadn’t heard the Sunday-morning bells. After the events of Friday, she’d spent yesterday in her new home, relaxing and clearing her head. Today there was one more thing she needed to do. She showered and, dispensing with breakfast, drove to the Station to pick up the address of Grieves’s mother. It was a caravan park at Reculver on the north Kent coast.
The rows of mobile homes were marked by letters and each caravan had a number. C23 had once been white but it had weathered to a paint-peeling grey, which was not enhanced by dried trickles of red rust. Ed wasn’t sure exactly what she’d say but she was determined to tell the woman that her son had been arrested.
She knocked at the door of Mrs Grieves’s home. It rang like an empty can. There was no reply. Ed knocked again. There was still no sound from within. By now, a few people had emerged from some of the adjacent caravans to see what the noise was about. Visitors were an uncommon occurrence, even at weekends. After a third knock went unanswered, she tried the door. It opened with the squeak of rusty hinges.
Inside she was met by the mingled smells of alcohol, cigarettes and unwashed clothes. The sunlight barely penetrated the small, grime-covered windows. It felt damp and cold after the warmth of the sunshine outside. The bed covers had been thrown off in disarray, suggesting someone had rushed to escape their confines after waking from a bad dream. One half of the bed was empty, but on the other a single wasted body was half hidden by a tangle of sheets. Even before she felt for a pulse Ed knew that Rhona Grieves was dead.
Although she was sure it was natural causes resulting from an unnatural life, Ed called for SOCO, forensics and a pathologist. Stepping outside, she sat in a dilapidated chair and warmed herself in the sunshine. The heat felt good around her shoulders. As she waited, her message of Roger Grieves’s arrest undelivered, Ed wondered if Rhona had ever known that her son had grown up to become a teacher, a good teacher, a man who was highly regarded in the community, or, having abandoned him as a child, had she lost touch with him for ever?
When the teams arrived, DS Potts was with them. Grateful to get away, she left Mike in charge. As she walked to her car, her thoughts were dominated by two images: Lucy’s mother with her distraught face repeating, ‘I just want my daughter back,’ and the face of Tyler’s mother, radiant with a joy that enveloped her to the exclusion of all else when she was reunited with her daughter. Ed had never experienced such joy.
The life Rhona Grieves had led, separated all those years from her only son, was another matter. To be separated from a son was something Ed couldn’t bear to contemplate. She pushed it from her head, climbed into her car and kept the thought at bay by driving as fast as the law would allow with Britten’s Dies Irae at full volume.
For Ed, times like these were a day of wrath and, like the poet, she hoped that better men would come. There would always be men, but she knew there was one void in her life that sex would never fill. She remembered Teresa saying, ‘Celia is my daughter but she can never know.’ The words had torn Ed’s heart. She knew that pain. There was some relief in action, dipping the clutch, changing down and accelerating round a bend waiting for the Libera Me and some relief from a pain which would never leave her.
DI Ed Ogborne didn’t get back to Canterbury until late afternoon. As she drove down Rheims Way, her heart was lifted by the sight of the cathedral, its twin west towers dazzling in the summer sunshine. She was unable to comprehend the faith which had caused this magnificent structure to be built, but she could appreciate the wonder of human endeavour which had achieved that goal.
Tomorrow, at 09.30, there would be a team meeting. Ed made a mental note to stop at Deakin’s on her way to the Station. She’d get flat whites and Danish all round, plus an extra Danish for Barry Williams.