In the Family Read online

  “I’ve looked up missing persons records for the period 1972–1978”, he said. “These are the ones that appear to fit. Valerie Stimpson, a mother of two. Disappeared in the Cowbit area in February 1972. She was in her early thirties, but I’ve included her anyway. The policeman on the case thought that she had been murdered by her husband. We have several photographs. This is the best of them, though it’s a bit grainy. Rachel Benyon, a student at Boston College. Reported missing by her parents in September 1972. Friends said that she had run away to the US with her boyfriend when she took fright at the approach of her exams, so the police didn’t take it all that seriously. The case is still open, though. She was never traced. She’s a bit young for our victim: she was only twenty-two when last seen. Shakira Khan, an Asian shopworker, who lived in Peterborough. She was twenty-five – exactly the right age. We may need forensics to do some more work to see if they give a more accurate picture of the race of the victim. Shakira was reported missing by neighbours in May 1975. Her family were not keen to help with police enquiries and said that a marriage with a cousin had been arranged for her in Pakistan, so she was no longer resident in the UK. Her employers said that she had not handed in her notice, however. I suspect that nowadays the police would have wanted to take it further, but the case was closed after some relatively cursory enquiries. We have no photograph of her. Annie Hart, who was quite a well-known prostitute. She was last seen working her patch in Lincoln in January 1976. It was thought at the time that she may have been one of the Yorkshire Ripper’s victims, but Sutcliffe did not confess to having killed her and concealing bodies so well that they couldn’t be found was not his usual MO. Obviously, she also lived quite a long way from his usual geographical orbit. We think that she was in her early twenties. There is a photograph, though not a good one, because she was already known to the police. Finally, Kathryn Sheppard, who was reported missing by her mother in the autumn of 1975. It was assumed by the police investigating her disappearance that she had been murdered, because she vanished without a trace.

  “ I have left Kathryn Sheppard until last, because her disappearance was investigated extensively by the police at the time. As I said, they concluded that she had been murdered, although they never found the body. Her boyfriend was arrested on suspicion of her murder, but the police had to release him for lack of evidence. His name was Charles Heward. One interesting twist to the case was that a former boyfriend of hers, Hedley Atkins, was the son of Dorothy Atkins, a woman who murdered her mother-in-law. Her case was famous at the time. Dorothy Atkins had been remanded in custody pending her trial at the time of Kathryn Sheppard’s disappearance, so she was never regarded as a suspect, though I’ve discovered that she was allowed temporary bail on several occasions while her defence was being prepared. The police interviewed Hedley Atkins, and reported him as being very co-operative, but it’s clear from the notes that the police really thought that either Kathryn had run away or, more probably, that Charles Heward had murdered her. They just couldn’t pin it on him.”

  “Thank you,” said Tim. “Let’s hope that we’re lucky enough to discover that the remains belong to one of these women. I assume that their files contain dental records, etc. Do we have any idea what they were wearing when they disappeared?”

  “There are dental reports in some of the files, sir. I’ve sent them to the pathologist, for comparison with the skull that was found. The Kathryn Sheppard case was also re-opened briefly in 1990, because her mother had preserved some hair and clothing and wanted to have her DNA profiled. The police were encouraging people to undergo DNA profiling voluntarily for the purposes of elimination at the time and they therefore arranged for profiles to be done of several murder victims, as a kind of showcase of how it helped their work. Kathryn Sheppard and Annie Hart were both profiled. Not the other women on my list, unfortunately – either they weren’t chosen or there was no suitable DNA material to use. Human tissue that might yield DNA was not routinely collected from crime scenes until the late ’80s.”

  “Obviously we need those results from the DNA service as soon as possible. What about Pathology? Do we have anything from them yet?”

  “They’ve promised a report this afternoon. From what they’ve said to me, I don’t think it will tell us much, except to confirm what they’ve already said: that the remains are those of a female adult aged 25 – 30, and have been in the ground about thirty years. But we shall see.”

  “Get on to them if they haven’t sent you anything by the middle of the afternoon. Juliet, you said that you had some information about the fragments of cloth that were found?”

  “Yes, sir. We think that it was blue denim-look cotton. It was imported to this country from Asia in great quantities in the seventies and eighties. Some companies in the UK still import it, but not the more reputable ones. The factory that makes it was exposed by an investigative journalist for exploiting child labour, and sales of it here dropped off immediately. They didn’t stop completely, though.”

  “Meaning that the cloth we have could be any age from the period that it was first imported?”

  “No, I don’t think so. The path lab says that it has probably been in the soil for at least twenty years to have reached that stage of decay, even though it is ordinary cotton and not denim, which would take longer to rot. There was also a fragment of a different type of material which has been sent for further analysis. It looks as if it might be part of a washing instructions label. If so, we might be able to track it back to the retailer who sold the garment.”

  “Well done. Is there anything else?”

  “Nothing yet, but I’m still working on the plastic Red Indian. I’ve consulted a model expert about it, and he says that he thinks that it was probably a free gift with breakfast cereal. I’ve had some life-size photographs of it taken, and I’m having them sent to all the main breakfast cereal manufacturers today. If we can get someone to identify it, we might at least be able to narrow down the time of death to the period in which it was distributed.”

  “Whoever left it there had not necessarily just acquired it,” said Andy Carstairs. He knew that he was being ungenerous: it was just that Juliet Armstrong’s blue-eyed Goody Two-Shoes image got on his nerves on occasions like this.

  Tim gave him a level look.

  “Agreed,” he said, “but I’d say that the balance of probabilities would be in favour of such an assumption. And it’s one of the few things we have: there’s precious little else to go on. Well done, Juliet,” he added again.

  “What next, sir?” asked Ricky McFadyen. Ricky was a solid detective constable who would probably not make further progress in his career. He offered few opinions on the cases that he worked on and certainly could not be accused of trying to hog the limelight. He was, however, excellent at pursuing a line of enquiry once someone else had set him on the right track.

  “We wait for the results,” said Tim. “If necessary, we will mount an investigation without knowing the identity of the victim. But it will be a bloody sight easier if we can find out who she was before we go any further.”

  Tim was about to break up the meeting when Juliet’s cellphone rang.

  “You’d better take that call,” he said, in response to the question in her look. “It might be the laboratory.”

  Juliet moved away to the window, ostensibly to get better reception, but partly, Tim guessed, because she was nervous at suddenly finding all eyes fixed on her. The conversation which followed was short and intense.

  “You’re quite sure?” she repeated twice. “Yes, we’d be grateful for a written report. Thank you very much indeed, Professor Salkeld.”

  She switched off the phone and laid it on the windowsill.

  “That was the lab, as you thought, sir,” she said. “They say they’ve got a perfect match. The remains found on the slip-road are those of Kathryn Sheppard. They’re going to send us a report, but they say there can b
e no possible doubt.”

  Ricky whistled.

  “There must be a link with the Dorothy Atkins case. It’s too much of a coincidence that Kathryn Sheppard was formerly Dorothy’s son’s girlfriend – isn’t it? Surely this indicates that Dorothy was a serial killer?”

  “It might,” Tim agreed. “But there is barely even circumstantial evidence, since Dorothy was probably in custody at the time that Kathryn Sheppard disappeared. We don’t know exactly where or how Kathryn died and we’re unlikely to find out. And for that matter, we don’t know the exact circumstances of Doris Atkins’ death, either. Dorothy Atkins consistently refused to say anything about her mother-in-law’s murder.”

  “If Dorothy Atkins did kill Kathryn Sheppard, presumably there is no chance of making an arrest?” said Ricky. “She must have died a long time ago.”

  “On the contrary,” said Tim. “I got Katrin to check out what happened to her after Andy e-mailed me with details of his list of possible victims. He had a bit of a hunch that the dead woman might be Kathryn Sheppard. Dorothy Atkins was sent to Broadmoor, and then eventually released into a care home in Crowland, where she still lives. I think you’d be correct in assuming that we’d be unlikely to get a conviction, given her age: but we owe it to Kathryn Sheppard to find out if she was indeed killed by Dorothy. And of course, if we find evidence that it was Dorothy, that would make her a serial killer, as you say: which means that there might have been other victims as well, ones whose deaths have either not been connected to Dorothy Atkins, or have remained undiscovered.”

  Chapter Six

  Peter has been here for almost one week now. I’m not sure how I feel about it. It is not exactly relaxing having him here – in fact, I feel quite tense almost all of the time. But there are moments of pure – joy? Is that the word? I’m not sure. There are certainly moments of release – and moments of much more shocking vulgarity than I had expected. Peter is quite a dark horse under that civilised veneer!

  Can I stand it for ever, though? I discussed this with Peter before we took the plunge and he said that I would not have to if I did not like it; that he would ask me once a month if I wanted him to leave. Things are rarely as cut-and-dried as that, though, are they? One moment I might want him to go, the next moment, to stay. Asking him to leave would be as difficult as asking him to move in was in the first place.

  There has been a lot in the news about the skeleton that the police found on the motorway. They haven’t identified it yet – or if they have, they are still claiming not to know who it is. Something tells me that it must be Kathryn. I suppose I always knew in my heart of hearts that this would have been what had happened to her: that she would have died violently. She was such a tart. I’m surprised that no-one from work has ‘come forward’ to volunteer the information that it might be her. People like being busybodies when they have nothing to lose or gain – except five minutes of glory, perhaps. And Kathryn is still remembered there.

  In a funny sort of a way, I did love Kathryn. If I could have married anyone, it would have been her. I’m far from certain that she loved me, however. I was very young, but I had made rapid progress since I had joined the company, and I was certainly regarded as one of the movers and shakers of the future. Despite the advantages conferred by her degree – though, to be honest, within the company university degrees were regarded with a certain amount of ambivalence at the time – I’m sure that she saw me as a passport to a glittering career for herself. She paid me in full, though. The sex with her was amazing – far more sensational than anything I have experienced with anyone else, Peter not excepted: even at the time I realised that it was a tragedy that my heart was not in it.

  I can see her now, sitting at her desk that first Christmas Eve. We were supposed to be leaving work early, but the phone kept on ringing. She leant across me as I grabbed the receiver and, snatching it away from me, pushed the cradle back down. “There”, she said. “That’s put a stop to that. Now we can concentrate on indulging in a bit of privacy for a change.” She was sitting on my desk, and she leaned right back across my shoulder. She was wearing a vee-necked sweater, and her breasts were swelling against the fabric. It was a pearly sort of colour. Gently I pulled her on to my knee, and she kissed me. I put my hand on one of her breasts, and she did not make me take it away. I went home with her that evening and we made love. Afterwards, I lay in the dark worrying about whether she had noticed how inexperienced I was and it may have been because of this that I did not stay; or maybe I just needed to be on my own. I came home in the early hours, before Christmas had properly begun. In the year that we were together, I never once spent the whole night with her.

  She was always very curious about my family, which of course was difficult for me. I did not want to answer her questions, and I certainly had no intention of introducing her to either of my parents. Eventually I agreed that she should meet Bryony. We all met at the White Hart for a drink. She and Bryony hit it off immediately. There was quite a big age gap between them, though not as big as the one between me and Kathryn. But Kathryn and I were both working, while Bryony was planning to go to university a year later than her friends at school, so she must have been nineteen; and Kathryn was twenty-two, and had graduated the year before. She was almost four years older than I was, just as Tirzah was four years older than Ronald.

  What is it about girls that makes them stick together in that infuriating way? I had been close to Bryony as a child – we were united against the horrors if our parents’ rows – and was now close of course to Kathryn, in the physical sense, anyway. But no sooner had they met than they developed this very intimate relationship which not so much excluded me, as made fun of me: it put me firmly on the outside. They didn’t seem to see how much it upset me. It also made me very angry. When I’m upset, I often can’t act; but when I’m angry I certainly can.

  It was Kathryn’s fault, of course. She was that much older: and Bryony looked up to her. Bryony was such a little waif. Her hands were tiny. You could have taken one of them in yours and crushed the bones just by squeezing. Kathryn was quite different: she was buxom and curvy and would have been blowsy and overweight by now. Perhaps dying young is a gift. Never to get old, never to have to compromise, never to be full of the sorts of doubts and fears that have beset me both before and after Peter’s arrival.

  Bryony was upset when Kathryn and I split up. She seemed to blame me, even though it was obvious that it could not possibly have been my fault. It was in vain that I told her Kathryn’s story of meeting Charles Heward on the train. She didn’t believe it for a minute; and when I thought about it, neither did I.

  It was a Monday. I had not seen Kathryn in private for a few days, because she had spent the weekend with her mother in Derby. She had taken the day off work and planned to travel back in the afternoon. We had been going to meet friends for dinner. I had left the office early and Kathryn said that when she arrived she would pick up a pineapple and some flowers to take with us and come round to the flat later.

  I knew as soon as she knocked on the door that there was something wrong. The fact that she did not use her key should have alerted me, but she could have forgotten it and it was only when I went to let her in that I knew that something unpleasant had happened. She was empty-handed, for one thing; and, for another, there was a kind of stricken look on her face. I realised later that it was simple guilt: but at the time I thought that she was ill, or that someone had distressed her. I went to kiss her, but she dodged me.

  “Darling,” I said, “are you ill? What is it?”

  She remained standing.

  “Hedley,” she said, “I don’t know how to tell you this . . . I might as well come straight out with it . . . I’ve met someone else.”

  At first I could not take it in. I thought that she must mean that she’d met a friend and couldn’t come to dinner that evening. Then it dawned on me that she was leaving me. I could not unders
tand how she had managed to meet someone so quickly, or where they had met. She had told me in such a clichéd way, too.

  “I will try to understand,” I said quietly. “But you must see that I’ve been pitched into the middle of what for me, if not for you, is a crisis, and I’m not sure how to cope. Can you explain to me? Who is it, for God’s sake?”

  I had started calmly – and in fact, if I were honest with myself, I had begun to tire of Kathryn – or, perhaps more accurately, to realise that she and I were incompatible – but when I thought of her with someone else, it took me all my time not to let her see the rage that she had provoked.

  She backed away from me. Perhaps she did see it. It made me want to hit her.

  “His name is Charles. I met him on the train when I was going to Derby. I know that it is corny and phoney to say ‘love at first sight’, but it is the closest I can come to describing it. We were attracted to each other immediately. The journey was over far too soon, so we arranged to meet on Saturday evening for dinner. And – well – you don’t want me to spell it out, do you?”

  Chapter Seven

  It didn’t take Andy Carstairs very long to track down Charles Heward. He had become a very successful corporate lawyer and, latterly, an MP and there were many entries about him on Google. Andy decided to obtain his address and telephone number from the Law Society, as being a more respectable source of information than stuff on the web which might be wrong or out of date. The Law Society was extremely co-operative, once he had faxed a formal request from South Lincolnshire Police, signed by Tim Yates. They faxed back a reply almost immediately. He noted that Charles Heward, QC, ran his office from Gray’s Inn: the ultimate address for one of his profession.