She wore a headscarf and very few women wore headscarves these days, except the Queen – which is what passed through the desk sergeant’s mind as the woman came into the station.
‘Good morning. It’s Mrs …’
‘Still. Marion Still.’
Yes.
‘What can I do for you, Mrs Still?’
‘You know what, Sergeant. Nothing changes. I’m here to see the Detective Chief Superintendent.’
‘I’m afraid you’re out of luck, Mrs Still – the Super is on extended leave.’
‘That’s what you told me the last time. You or your colleague.’
‘Well, it was true then and it’s true now.’
‘He’s still on holiday?’
‘He’s on sick leave. And I have no idea when he will be back, but it won’t be tomorrow. Best I can do is see if anybody’s free in the CID room and can come down –’
The woman burst into tears. Looking at her body, sagging slightly forward, as if she were carrying something heavy, at her grey face, with its deep lines of worry, the sergeant felt real sympathy. He knew why she was here. She had been trying to see the Super for a while now.
‘Mrs Still … you can sit there a week for all it bothers me, I don’t mind, but you’ll be wasting your time because we don’t know when the Super is coming back. If you won’t talk to anyone else …’
‘It needs to be someone senior, and Mr Serrailler is the best, isn’t he?’
The telephone rang, and two uniforms came through the doors with a young man between them, in handcuffs. Mrs Still took a step back from the counter, but made no other move to leave.
And then the Chief Constable’s car drew up outside.
There were three ways to deal with someone like Mrs Still, Kieron thought. He could spend the rest of his days avoiding and evading her. He could fob her off onto someone else, with an instruction not to waste too much time on her.
Or he could see her himself.
On the following Wednesday afternoon, his secretary ushered Marion Still into his office at Bevham HQ, to which she had been fetched by a comfortable but unmarked police car. Kieron wanted her to feel that she had been given every possible attention, and a full and proper hearing. He had taken the files home with him and read them carefully. He had also called up a wide selection of press reports on the case, from the day after Kimberley had gone missing to the last time the press had referred to her. In general, as was always the way, media reports had thinned out and dwindled in number only a few months after the event. Kimberley Still was officially a missing person but so were hundreds of others and the media could not keep any one of them on the front page, though the cases of missing children usually got continued coverage.
‘I am very grateful to you,’ she said. There was tea. There was coffee. There were chocolate biscuits.
Kieron was not sitting behind his desk but in a chair beside hers.
Poor woman. There was nothing else to think about her, as there never was about people who had gone through years of distress, bereavement that was not yet bereavement, alternating hope and despair, who had woken every morning sick to the stomach. He had seen the look in the eyes of people like Marion Still so often. Every copper who had been in the job longer than a couple of years knew the strange deadness and sadness which clouded every spark of life and energy.
‘Mrs Still, I have brought myself right up to speed with this case. As you probably know, I wasn’t in this force when Kimberley went missing so I had to read it in detail for the first time – which is a good thing. I’ve brought a fresh pair of eyes to it. I’ve been able to give it deep thought and perhaps I can now ask some new questions. I hope so anyway.’
‘Do you mean you’ll start again, try and find out what did happen and where he took her, where he … where she is? I know who “he” is, Mr Bright, we all know. It’s just that nobody seems to think it matters.’
‘Of course it matters. I’m not going to pretend I can solve this, Mrs Still. Please understand. There were a great many people involved in looking for Kimberley, trying to discover what happened to her. A great many man hours were spent over a considerable period of time. Nobody gave up lightly, I can promise you.’
‘I know that. I know. I don’t have to say how grateful I am again, do I?’
‘Of course not. It was, it is, your right. It was owed to Kimberley and to you that we all did our best and then some. What I mean is that, even if there were a new investigation I can’t promise you a result. How could I? There isn’t any new evidence – not so far as I am aware.’
She put down her cup and looked directly at him, and for a second, he did see something in her eyes. A desperation, and a determination? No. A conviction. A terrible, fixed conviction. He had seen it before occasionally, in the mad and the obsessed.
‘Listen, he did it. Lee Russon. I can hardly bear his name in my mouth, it’s like a foul taste I want to spit out. He did it. I think he somehow got her into his car and then he drove off with her and then … then he did whatever he did. And I know he’s in prison for life, only not for my Kimberley. For those others. Those poor girls. You say there’s no new evidence but there is evidence … there always was.’
‘Yes. But when that evidence – and it really wasn’t very strong – was put before the Crown Prosecution Service, who are the people who make the final decision, it was found to be too flimsy. They advised that Russon should not be tried for this as well as the other murders because the case was so weak that it would be thrown out. And at that point, Russon might have asked for leave to appeal against the other convictions, as being unsafe, and that could – it’s unlikely, but it could – have led to those being overturned and Russon walking free.’
‘He did it.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you, having read everything. And the senior investigating officer at the time –’
‘Inspector Wilkins.’
‘Yes … he said that the police were not looking for any other suspect. The presumption was that Kimberley had been murdered, and possibly by Lee Russon. But without finding Kimberley’s body or indeed any trace of her at all, Russon –’
‘Who lied and lied and lied.’
‘Who denied that he’d had anything to do with it – or indeed that he’d ever been in or near Lafferton, let alone on that date – had no case to answer.’
‘I don’t believe they really wore him down. If someone’s guilty, they can be worn down all right – they can be made to confess eventually.’
That was not always true, the Chief thought. But there was no point in saying so to Mrs Still, firmly convinced that Russon was guilty and that someone could eventually break him.