Part 11 (1/2)

Claxby's smile was a tired parting of the lips. ”I could say a great many things, Simon, but that wouldn't get us very far, would it? I want to hear what you have to say. Did you quarrel?”

”Yes.”

”What about?”

Simon gritted his teeth. No way was he going to tell this man what they'd quarrelled about. He said he couldn't remember. ”We'd both been drinking.” Well, she had been boozed up. He hadn't been. He didn't think he could have done 'it' if he had been. Though perhaps he could have, he didn't know.

”So you were under the influence of alcohol?” Claxby observed.

”Not exactly. Just a bit ... sozzled ... sort of.”

”Did she allow you to take advantage of her when she was a ... bit sozzled?”

That anyone could take advantage of Sally, sozzled or sober, was hard for Simon to imagine.

”I didn't take advantage of her. We agreed.”

”So you had coitus?”

The last time Simon had heard the word had been in a biology lecture and was linked to the word 'interruptus'. It hadn't been interrupted. He didn't think he would have been capable of interrupting it - or that Sally would have let him. She'd had him clasped firmly to her and was making moaning, happy sounds. Oh G.o.d, what if she'd got pregnant?

Claxby noticed his look of alarm. If violence had occurred, it must have occurred then.

”Tell me about the blood,” he invited pleasantly. ”What blood?” Simon re-focused his thoughts to a different part of his anatomy. ”Oh, that blood. We'd cut our feet. I expect Chief Inspector Maybridge told you.” Claxby admitted that he had. ”Forgive me, but I need to hear it from you, too.” Simon told him.

Claxby decided to accept the explanation - for the time being. It sounded silly enough to be true.

”Was there an element of jealousy when you quarrelled? Another boyfriend, for instance?”

Simon shook his head. ”If she had anyone else, she didn't say. But I did notice when we went to the Avon Arms that she ... well ...” He broke off.

”She what!”

”Seemed rather interested in ... well, wanted to talk to ...”

”Talk to? Talk to whom?”

”Well, actually, he had a girlfriend with him, and I don't think he ... I mean it was Sally who ...”

Claxby poised his pen over his notepad. ”Name him,” he ordered brusquely. ”Doctor Cormack.”

Claxby replaced his pen unused. He wasn't a swearing man. 'Good heavens' was his strongest expletive. He refrained from using it. This lad's father had created emotional mayhem, and was perhaps linked to that other woman whose disappearance they had just started to investigate in liaison with the Metropolitan Police and her Bristol lawyers. Now Cormack, who had digs in the village, had entered the scene - and another woman had gone missing. What was wrong with the air of Macklestone that it should pollute the morals of forensic pathologists? It was difficult to believe that Cormack might be involved - but by finding it difficult he was falling into what he thought of as the village trap - the trap that Maybridge might fall into. City crime was anonymous. Usually. Village crime was like that poisonous plant that opened wide its petals and engulfed everyone, innocent or guilty. Perjury and protection, dissimulation and - what had the lad said - dismay? - coloured the scene. Villagers tended to clan up. Form a mafia. Had Hixon been a villager, not a member of a hard-nosed city community, he would probably still be roaming free, self-righteously murdering the 'fallen'. It was rea.s.suring to know that Miss Loreto wouldn't walk into him.

Claxby asked Simon to fill in her background for him. ”Tell me about her parents.”

He couldn't. She had never spoken of them. ”But she knew my mother.”

”Ah,” Claxby said, politely non-committal. ”And your father?”

”No. She'd never met him.”

”Did she ever speak of anyone - friend or relative - that she might have gone to?”

”No one I can remember.”

”Was she happy in her employment at The Mount?”

”She didn't say she wasn't.”

It was a line of questioning that Maybridge would pursue with the medical superintendent but sometimes an outsider's viewpoint was useful. In this case, apparently not.

”How would you describe Miss Loreto's personality? Happy? Sad? Well-balanced? Moody?” This was the medical superintendent's territory too, but he wanted the boy's response.

Simon said she was jolly. He couldn't think of any other way of describing her. Most of the time she had been. Most of the time she had been all right. He had always felt he should be grateful to her. and couldn't quite manage to be, though he had tried to laugh at her jokes. Had she been different in some indefinable way, he might even have learnt to be fond of her. That he couldn't feel any tenderness towards her made him feel an absolute heel. When they'd had s.e.x she'd been a mindless body beneath him. He'd closed his eyes. Had she spoken, he couldn't have done it. Moaning was the kind of noise anyone might make. Even Rhoda.

Claxby pondered over the word jolly. If this lad had killed the girl, jolly would be the last word to come into his mind. She wouldn't have died laughing, heaven help her.

So give him the benefit of the doubt. He explained about the house to house search procedure. ”We're not singling you out. It's routine. I want you to write a brief statement of what you've told me. It's fresh in your mind now. Later, if she's not found, we may have to go into it again - unless someone saw her after she'd been with you.”

Writing a brief statement was extremely difficult. Simon hadn't the remotest idea how to do it. After several attempts, during which Superintendent Claxby absented himself, Simon wrote in what he hoped was Claxby's style:

Miss Loreto and I ate a meal at the Avon Arms, leaving the premises at approximately nine o'clock. We returned to my home where we watched television. Later Miss Loreto dropped a jar of paint in the studio. We had coitus and inadvertently walked on gla.s.s. The blood on the quilt was from our feet. The blood on Miss Loreto's shoes was from her feet. I believe she borrowed my trainers to walk to The Mount. I didn't see her go. I was in the garden. She didn't say goodbye.

Claxby, returning, read it through and wasn't pleased. He told Simon to do it again. ”And put in the dates. Friday was the twenty-third, in case you've forgotten. She may have left you in the early hours of the twenty-fourth. If you're not sure, then say so. Today's date is the twenty-sixth. Put it in, then sign it.” He wondered if it was a deliberate parody, but decided the boy hadn't the wit for it. He was as odd as his mother, but she was reputed to be highly intelligent when normal. Admittedly, when your girlfriend is missing you're not normal.

He told Simon that Sergeant Radwell would drive him back. Then asked him a final question. ”Where do you think the search should begin ... if she doesn't return?”

Simon looked at him blankly. What was he supposed to say? Craxley Copse, where Rapunzel Number Five had been found? In the grounds of The Mount? In Millington's farm? In Paul Creggan's tepee? He said stiffly that he had no idea. It sounded off-hand, as if he didn't care.

Sally's father certainly didn't care. He wasn't in the least alarmed, he told the local police officer when he was eventually traced to a new address in the Birmingham suburbs. His daughter had a habit of going away and not getting in touch. He hadn't had a penny piece from her since she had walked out of the house when she was seventeen, all of five years ago. He could have been dead and buried for all she cared. She wasn't dead and buried, was she? Just gone. So what was all the fuss about? She'd spend all her life going - here - there - anywhere. But not coming back. Oh, no. Never coming back. Not to him.

The old man had become suspicious then. What had she done? Why were the police after her? If there was bad blood in her she didn't get it from him. He was as straight as a die - always had been.

a.s.sured that she wasn't on the run, he lost interest. Some made their beds, he said, and lay on them. Others picked them up and walked. And kept on walking. Like Felix, the cat. Her mother had walked off, too. And there was no use the police thinking Sally might be with her. She'd emigrated. Yes, emigrated. No, he didn't know where. Somewhere far off. She'd gone with a coloured bloke. A waiter. Could be in North Africa. Could be dead, of course. Smoked fifty f.a.gs a day. Or used to.

Some families, the police officer commented over the phone to Maybridge, deserve to be left. Her father was a miserable old whinge-bag.

Not a very professional remark, but heart-felt.

Maybridge told Donaldson they'd drawn a blank and that a full-scale search would be put into operation immediately.

”And I want to have another look at her room. Is there a woman member of staff who might know her well enough to notice if any of her clothes are missing?” Donaldson had accompanied him the first time and had let him into the bedroom with the staff key - he had locked the room that morning - but he hadn't been of much use. Maybridge had noticed the suitcase on the wardrobe and a pink plastic mug holding a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste on the shelf over the washbasin. Most civilised people departed with their toothbrushes, he believed, even if they left everything else behind.

Though Sally had been liked well enough by the staff, Donaldson said, she hadn't developed a close friends.h.i.+p with any of them. Her working relations.h.i.+p with Mrs Mackay had been affable despite, or perhaps because of, the older woman's maternalism. ”She tends to be concerned about her moral welfare, as her own mother should have been when Sally was considerably younger. She's almost obsessive about this. It was at her request that I stopped Sally taking Paul Creggan his morning tea.”