‘I want to speak to the Chief Constable please.’
‘I’ll put you through to his office.’
Did they know it was her? Did they have some special police way of seeing who was calling, even though she knew how to screen out her number? Because it was barely a split second before ‘I’m sorry, the line’s engaged, can you call back please?’
‘No, I’ll hold on.’
‘It could be a long time, they’re very busy this afternoon.’
‘I don’t mind. I’ve nothing more important to do. There isn’t anything more important, actually.’
There was the usual jingle that went on a loop. Not proper music. Just a stupid jingle. Then a recorded voice, thanking her for holding and then telling her how many road accidents were caused each year by drink-drivers and then more jingle, and then explaining that she should not dial 999 unless her call to the emergency services was indeed a genuine emergency but instead to call …
‘Line’s still busy, I’m afraid. Do you want to continue to hold?’
She waited twenty minutes before the secretary spoke to her and then of course Mr Bright was out all day and she would take a message but she had no idea when he would get back to her, perhaps someone else … ?
She put the telephone down, and as she did so, something happened. Instead of going with the sense of disappointment and of being brushed off that usually overwhelmed her at these moments, Marion felt a strength and a new determination rising in her, at the same time as an entirely new idea formed. Why it had never struck her before that she could and would do this she did not know, but she wasn’t going to waste time on those ruminations. It didn’t matter. It had occurred to her, flashing like a brilliant light, and she acted upon it.
‘Newsroom.’
‘Oh. I’m not sure if I have the right … I want to speak to someone who’ll come round and talk to me. I’ve got … well, I suppose it’s a story only it probably isn’t news. Not new news, if you follow.’
‘Right. Maybe if you tell me what it’s about briefly, I can either carry on with it or put you through to the right person. Who am I speaking to?’
‘Mrs Still … Marion Still … mother of Kimberley Still.’ A beat. But why should she know?
And then, ‘Kimberley Still … Excuse me, there’s no good way of putting it … the Kimberley Still who went missing and could have been murdered?’
Her name was Dorcas Brewer and she was at Marion’s house in Mountfield Avenue within the hour. Marion had made tea and put out the fresh ginger cake she had bought at the new bakery the previous day.
‘It’s very good of you to come so quickly. I hadn’t expected that.’
‘You sounded worried.’
She was an exceptionally tall young woman, with very short hair dyed pink. But it had been well done, Marion thought. It suited her. It didn’t look common, as she had always judged brightly coloured hair to be, it looked smart. She wore an orange trench coat. Pink and orange? But that looked good, too.
She didn’t have a notebook, she had a mobile phone which would record their conversation, and when they first started, Marion found that it inhibited her. She kept glancing at it, wondering what her own voice sounded like, wondering if she had just said the wrong thing. But the girl was very relaxed and friendly without being too pushy, she drank two cups of tea with sugar, ate a slice of the cake and helped herself to another. That made it so much better. Her sort of girl might have asked for black coffee and looked at cake with disdain.
‘Just talk to me,’ she said, leaning back in the armchair.
‘It was this morning, when I rang the Chief Constable – Mr Bright, I don’t know if you’ve met him – he did see me once, and I suppose I’ve to be grateful for that. He’s a very busy man, I understand that, and he wasn’t even in the job when Kimberley … yes, he saw me and he said he’d look into it all again.’
Marion poured herself another cup of tea and drank half of it before continuing. The reporter just smiled and waited, not asking endless questions, not being impatient. It was reassuring. It helped.
‘But nothing’s happened of course. I’ve tried to phone him twice since that day and this morning they kept me on hold for twenty minutes and I still didn’t get to speak to him. I know, the police are all busy but it isn’t any good just fobbing me off. I know he’s in prison but he isn’t in prison for Kimberley’s murder, is he, and that’s what matters to me. Can you see that, Miss Brewer?’
‘Dorcas. Of course I can.’ She leaned forward, hands on her knees, and looked Marion not only in the face but in the eyes. And her own eyes, deep brown eyes, were warm with sympathy. ‘They have things they call “cold cases” – perhaps you know about them. They’re often part of TV crime dramas – all it means is that a crime was committed some years ago and was never solved but they have run out of leads and –’
‘Ideas.’
Dorcas smiled. ‘In a word. They stop working on those cases but they don’t close the book … they can’t until they have someone to arrest and charge and that person is found guilty. Even if the person is dead, they can still be found guilty, and the case can be closed.’
‘I wish he were dead. That’s a terrible thing to say.’
‘Is it? It seems highly likely that he murdered your daughter, Marion. I’d probably say the same. I can only struggle to imagine how it’s been for you all this time. Of course the police have got a lot of work and they have new cases every day – but they don’t actually have many murders. They have a duty to solve this one. How long is it – four years?’
‘Nearly five.’
‘Time for them to open it up and look at it again. A lot’s happened since then.’
‘Like what?’
Dorcas looked vague but still said, ‘New techniques for examining evidence,’ which impressed Marion Still.
‘But what can we do … what can you do?’
‘I think calling the police to account, reminding them about Kimberley, bringing everything to the full attention of the public all over again – all of that will actually do a great deal. They don’t like to be wrong-footed, you know. They certainly don’t like any sort of bad publicity and who can blame them? So here’s a chance for them to show us they are going to pay more than lip service to what the Chief Constable said to you … let’s shine some fresh daylight onto this.’
‘I’LL NEVER REST UNTIL I GET JUSTICE FOR MY KIMBERLEY’
Mrs Marion Still tries to put on a brave face and she gives me tea and a slice of delicious ginger cake in her bright, immaculate semi-detached house in a pleasant part of Lafferton. There is a clock with a smiling sun face on the mantelpiece and cushions with ‘The Cat Sleeps Here’ and ‘Beware Flying Pigs’ on the comfy sofa. Mrs Still wears a blue cardigan and her hair has been freshly set. But when I look into her eyes, I see sadness, and next to the clock there is a photograph of a pretty girl whose own face is full of life and laughter.
‘Yes,’ her mother says, taking it down and handing it to me. ‘That is my beautiful Kimberley. Who could have taken her life? Who could have done such a thing?’
Yet even as she asks the questions, she is certain that she knows the answer.
‘She was murdered by Lee Russon,’ she says firmly. ‘He is in prison for the murder of two other girls and the police know he killed my Kimberley as well, everybody knows. But they say there wasn’t enough evidence.’ Her expression is angry, even though her eyes are brimming with tears.
When I ask her if she thinks the police did enough after Kimberley’s murder, she says reluctantly, ‘They worked very hard, I’m sure of that. They all did and of course they got Russon for the other killings, didn’t they? Maybe they think that’s enough – I mean, he’s in prison for life so …’ She pours us both another cup of tea and I look again at the photograph of her daughter.
‘But what I’m asking is, why can’t they start again? Why can’t they look back, go over the whole thing? I know it’s done, I’ve read about murders being pinned on the guilty person twenty or thirty years later, when something new has come to light. And that’s been when they haven’t even had anyone in mind as a clear suspect. Well, they’ve got one now, haven’t they?’
I ask her if she wants revenge – and who would blame her for that? She fidgets with a corner of the tray cloth, but she says that it isn’t a question of revenge.
‘It’s about justice … I want him to confess what he did, and if he won’t, I want them to show him they know – that there was enough evidence, they just didn’t find it.’
Who does this determined but broken-hearted woman feel is to blame for the fact that after five years no one has reopened the case?
‘I don’t know whose responsibility it was then so I couldn’t say.’ She hesitates. Until this moment, Marion Still has spoken quietly but now her voice rings loud and clear. ‘I only know whose responsibility it is now. And that’s the present Chief Constable. Mr Kieron Bright.’
She flushes, with anger and with pain, as she tells me that she has seen the Chief Constable in person and pleaded with him to reopen the case against Lee Russon.
‘He was very pleasant,’ she says without any irony. ‘We had a cup of coffee, he couldn’t have listened more carefully. But since then – nothing. He’s done nothing.’
Has she tried to talk to Chief Constable Bright again? ‘Oh yes. I’ve tried. I just get fobbed off. He’s never there, they can’t put me through. I was on the line twenty minutes yesterday. I asked for him to ring me back but of course he never did.’
She now despairs of anything happening. ‘He’s not interested,’ she says to me, ‘it was before his time. He doesn’t see what it’s like for me. I suppose I can’t blame him.’
But I am well aware that she does. I can understand why. I would be asking the same questions.
Why do the police not reinvestigate the murder of lovely, bright-faced Kimberley Still, aged 24, who had everything to look forward to? Why do they not look to see if there is any new evidence, of whatever kind, against the man they must surely know killed Kimberley? Mrs Still says quietly that it is probably all down to money. ‘They say they don’t have the resources. That’s terrible, don’t you think? That justice is all about hard cash?’
She shows me out. In the hall, there is another photograph of Kimberley, this time as a laughing, pigtailed little girl of nine, dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, at the Lafferton Jug Fair.
‘She won first prize,’ Marion Still says. And touches her finger gently to the photo. ‘And let me tell you this. I won’t leave them alone. I will pester and pester the police and anyone else to do with it. I won’t rest until I get justice for my Kimberley.’
She means it.