Clarke banged the passenger door shut as he climbed out of the car.
“Is it this one?” He pointed towards the house opposite. It needed a lot of work. The little concrete garden had weeds growing between the cracks, the windowsills were fuzzy with mould, and the front door looked like it could be dislodged by one well-placed kick.
“That’s the one.” Rebecca nodded. She walked ahead of him and knocked briskly on the faded teal door.
A few seconds later, an elderly woman in a long navy cotton skirt and light blue cardigan opened the door. She was frailer than he had imagined — she must have been close to eighty years old. He suddenly felt embarrassed. Rebecca better not have brought him here to harass this old lady for no good reason.
“Good afternoon, Mrs Shepherd. My name is Detective Constable Rebecca Reynolds. We spoke yesterday?”
“Yes, dear, I remember you. I may be old, but I don’t have dementia.”
Clarke forced back a laugh. He loved a bit of fieriness in older people — it reminded him of his own grandparents. He’d learnt from a young age never to get Grandad started on immigration, benefits, or the youth of today — you’d never leave.
“Right, yes,” Rebecca said. “Well, I was hoping we could ask you some more questions.”
Mrs Shepherd sighed as she peered at them through her thick-rimmed glasses. “You know I’ve omitted something — you wouldn’t be back here otherwise.” She stepped back and gestured for them to enter. “You best come in.”
Ten minutes later, after Mrs Shepherd insisted she put on a pot of tea, the three of them were sitting in her front room, which had a clear view through the window into Chapelfield Gardens. The room was filled with all things horsey, including horse paintings on the walls, little tiny horses on pillows, and even the doorstopper was a miniature version of a Shetland pony.
“So, Mrs Shepherd. You’re right that I felt there was something you weren’t telling me yesterday, hence why I’ve returned with my colleague, Detective Sergeant Clarke.”
Mrs Shepherd was staring down at her fingers now, fiddling with what Clarke assumed to be her wedding rings. She wore a simple gold band and a gold engagement ring with a ruby, instead of a diamond. From the information Rebecca had gotten yesterday, he already knew she was a widow. Something they had in common.
He studied her for a moment. She didn’t look particularly ashamed for having been caught out lying to a police officer. She just had a look of overwhelming sadness about her. Her grey hair was short and curly, the same colour as the frame of her glasses. She smelt of a familiar perfume — he was sure it was the one his own mum used to wear, Anais Anais, or something like that. She looked like your typical grandma, the type who would bake cakes and always have sweets in her pocket for the grandkids.
“Here we go,” she mumbled almost inaudibly. “Well, first of all, I didn’t lie to you when I said I didn’t see that Teigan girl. Not that I know of, anyway. I see a lot of school kids walking past. I saw girls in that uniform who had long dark hair and whatnot. It’s possible I saw this girl,” she said as she gestured to the photograph Rebecca was holding, “but I can’t be sure, which is what I already told you.”
“Yes, I understand it’s difficult to pick one girl out of a crowd.”
She sighed, placing her wrinkled hands in her lap. “The thing is, there’s a little shop just down the road on the corner where a lot of them stop off to buy sweets on their way in. I was talking to my son about it, about how all the old-fashioned hard-boiled sweets are sold in there. They’ve got loads of rhubarb and custards — my favourites, they are. Though I do like a pear drop, too.”
“Right …” Clarke wasn’t sure where she was going with this.
“Anyway, I just started talking about the sweets and how we used to do the same when we were young’uns, my brother and me. I didn’t mean to draw my son’s attention to the girls. And, well …” She broke eye contact, clearly uncomfortable with the words she was preparing to say. “He went out for a walk very soon after that. I mean, I don’t think he would ever … but I can’t be sure.” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes looked back down to her hands. She was twisting her rings round on her finger, pulling at the saggy, wrinkled skin.
“What’s your son’s name and date of birth?” He got his pen ready, not that he needed it, as Rebecca was busily scrawling down notes.
“Monty. Well, we call him Monty. Full name is Montgomery Shepherd. Date of birth is thirteenth of September 1970. He’s forty-four years old.” She smiled as she picked up a framed photo on her coffee table. “This is my Monty.”
Clarke nodded as he took the frame from her hand. The photo had been taken probably a decade earlier by the look of it. Mrs Shepherd was smiling as a man in his thirties, Monty, he presumed, held out a birthday cake to her. Monty was singing her “Happy Birthday,” his mouth open mid-song. He looked like the ideal son — loving, caring. A typical family man. But for some reason, here was Mrs Shepherd, dobbing him in to the police for going for a walk.
Clarke cleared his throat as he handed the photo back. “Nice picture. Does he live here with you?”
She shook her head, pushing her glasses back up the bridge of her nose as they slipped down. “Oh, no, but he comes and sees me every day, bless his heart. Comes in the morning to make sure I’ve taken my meds and makes me a cuppa tea and toast. Always making sure I’m all right, he is. He’s a good egg.”
Clarke couldn’t help but think if he was such a good egg, why would she suspect him of anything?
“So, where’s his usual residence?”
“Oh, he’s got one of those posh new flats by Carrow Road Football Stadium. You know, the snazzy modern ones. It’s ever so swish.”
“Yes, they’re nice.” And expensive — clearly Monty didn’t do too badly for himself. “Let me be direct, Mrs Shepherd. Just because your son happened to go out for a walk at the time when Teigan may have been nearby, that doesn’t make him a suspect. You obviously love your son, so I know you wouldn’t drop him in it without good reason.”
“That’s true,” she said as she nodded solemnly.
“So, what else aren’t you telling us?”
She lifted her head up to meet Clarke’s gaze, with a deep sigh as she did so. “I love my son, Sergeant. But I couldn’t live with myself if he did have something to do with it, and I hadn’t said anything. Not if anything happened to that poor girl.”
Clarke leaned forward and gently touched her hand. “But why has it even crossed your mind that your son might have something to do with this?”
“Because,” she removed her hand from Clarke’s touch and pushed her glasses back up her nose again. “My son, through no fault of his own — I truly believe that — is a paedophile.”