‘Have you heard nothing from her in four years?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a long time,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high. She could be anywhere by now.’
Conversation ebbed and flowed around them. He looked up at the clock; it showed five minutes to seven. In twenty minutes he was due to pick up the parents of a lad he took an interest in, a lad on probation, making a strong effort to go straight. He was going to run them up to the infirmary where the lad was recovering from pneumonia following a severe attack of influenza.
‘I haven’t much time,’ he told her. ‘I have to go in a few minutes. Have you some special reason for wanting to find your sister?’
‘I must find her,’ she said with force. ‘There’s some money involved. My aunt died before Christmas – she lived up north, we hadn’t seen her for years. We had a letter from a solicitor. My aunt didn’t leave a will, and it seems my sister and I are the only relatives, her money will all come to us. Not that she had a lot to leave, a few thousand pounds, but it would mean a great deal to me. I went up north to see the solicitor. I explained about Helen, that we didn’t know where she was. They won’t pay the money out till she’s found – or at least they will in the end, but it would take ages, and I don’t want to wait for the money.’
‘You need it in a hurry?’
‘Yes, I do. I want to go abroad.’
‘For a holiday?’
‘No. To study art, in France and Italy. I never thought I’d get the chance.’
‘We?’ he queried. ‘You said just now: We didn’t know where she was.’
‘I live with my stepbrother.’ She pulled a face. ‘I can’t wait to get away.’
‘He’s older than you?’
‘Oh yes, he’s turned forty. He’s as mean as sin. I’d have to wait one hell of a long time if I waited for him to give – or even lend – me the money to go abroad.’
‘What’s his attitude to all this? Did he encourage you to come over here to look for your sister?’
‘He certainly did not. He told me I was a fool, I was wasting my time.’
‘Do you definitely know that your sister came to Cannonbridge when she left home?’
‘No, I don’t know that. I have no idea where she went, she didn’t tell me anything. I only knew she was leaving because I happened to go into her bedroom the evening before she left and found her packing. I was only a kid at the time, thirteen, and we’d never been very close. She wouldn’t say where she was going or what she was planning to do. She told me I could have any things she left behind, she wouldn’t be coming back for them. She said: You want to clear out yourself when you’re old enough.’ She laughed. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’
‘Did your stepbrother ever try to find your sister?’
‘Not he. He was glad to see the back of her. He wouldn’t care if he never clapped eyes on either of us again.’
‘What made you decide on Cannonbridge to start looking for her?’
‘A girl I know, a girl from school, she told me about a year after Helen left that she’d seen her in Cannonbridge one Saturday when she was over here shopping with her mother. She saw Helen coming out of a café. She didn’t speak to her but she got a good look at her. She was quite certain it was Helen.’
‘Helen what?’ Lambert asked.
‘Mowbray. I’m Joanne Mowbray.’ Her look altered suddenly, became wary, tinged with incipient hostility. ‘Are you a copper?’
‘Yes.’ There was a brief silence. ‘I have to pick up some people,’ he said. ‘I can’t keep them waiting. Your best chance is to call in at a police station. They’ll do what they can to help you.’
She set her jaw. ‘I don’t want the police dragged into this. And I’m sure Helen wouldn’t either.’ She picked up the photographs. ‘If she’s here I’ll find her. She took a secretarial and book-keeping course at school, she worked for an agency before she left Martleigh. I’ll call in at the agencies here in the morning, she could have gone to one of them.’
‘I’m at the main police station here in Cannonbridge,’ he told her. ‘My name’s Lambert. Detective Sergeant Lambert. If you call in there tomorrow morning—’ She was already shaking her head. ‘It doesn’t have to be me,’ he added. ‘You can see someone else – or you can call in at one of the other stations if you prefer. I’m sure you’d find it useful.’
‘No, thanks,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I’ll manage on my own.’ Without looking at him she added, ‘Thanks, anyway, for taking the time to talk to me.’ She glanced up and flashed him a sudden smile. She had small, even teeth, very white; she looked all at once open and vulnerable, scarcely more than a schoolgirl. ‘At least you showed more interest than the barman.’
March came in with a whirl of sleet and snow. The weather kept up its manic mood: gale force winds, showers of hail, sudden mild sweet days vanishing abruptly twenty-four hours later in fog and rain. Sergeant Lambert was kept pretty busy, no one case of consuming interest, just the steady unrelenting pressure of the old faithfuls: breaking and entering, thefts from cars, vandalism and hooliganism, minor fraud and embezzlement, assault and violence of greater or lesser degree.
On one of his sorties he found himself driving past the Railway Tavern. He had a brief surge of memory: the black-haired girl flinging back the hood of her anorak, scattering raindrops, glancing determinedly around the bar. Joanne Mowbray. If she’d called in at the main police station she certainly hadn’t come his way. She might have found her sister by now; it was three weeks since that Sunday evening. The lad had left hospital, was convalescing at home with his parents.
At the thought he glanced at his watch. He might take five minutes to look in on them while he was over this way. He turned left at the next intersection. The memory of Joanne and her bundle of photographs dropped away into the recesses of his brain.
The Easter break threatened to be bitterly cold; night frosts, daytime temperatures kept low by brisk north-westerly winds. The evening of Good Friday was dark and overcast. At about eight o’clock a twelve-year-old lad by the name of Graham Cooney, living on the Parkfield council estate on the southern edge of Cannonbridge, a run-down area well represented in local petty-crime statistics, phoned the main police station from a call-box – to do this he had to run a quarter of a mile, all the Parkfield kiosks being, as usual, vandalized and out of action – to report the fact that his brother Jason, a child of four, had not come home since leaving the house at two in the afternoon to play with other children on the estate.
Mrs Cooney had not become seriously alarmed until the early evening. She had then sent her daughter, a girl of eight, chasing and calling round the estate, knocking on doors, asking if anyone had seen Jason. All without success. At about seven o’clock Graham had returned home and joined in the search. When he could discover no trace of the missing child it was he who had taken the decision to ring the police.
This was a routine matter for the uniformed branch. The usual drill went into operation, with some added drive because of the sharp frost forecast: patrol cars asked to keep a look-out, detailed tours of the area, broadcasts from the local radio station, asking householders to search cellars and outhouses. None of it produced any result.
At first light a more thorough and urgent search began. A troop of Scouts undertook a yard-by-yard sweep of neighbouring woodland, police cadets examined the area around the railway line and along the banks of the river. Another sharp frost was forecast for Saturday night. It was thought unlikely that a child of that age, in the clothes he was wearing when he left home, would survive a second night