Walk a Narrow Mile Read online

  ‘Judith Olivia Yelland,’ Geoff Rhumer obliged.

  ‘Right. A little while later I was given the second cross, and the initials MJV, giving us Margaret, known as Meg, Jane Vickary. And the final cross, GGT for Gillian Gale Tinkerton. Known as Gilly.’

  ‘All of them missing, and two of them known to have complained about a stalker before they disappeared,’ Geoff said, reading from the notes. ‘Right, got it. Which is how you made the connection between the missing girls and your stalker.’

  ‘Which is when we went to Donleavy, and he called you in,’ Hillary said. ‘And here we all are. Ain’t that grand?’

  Steven leaned forward on his desk. ‘Geoff, it goes without saying that we need to work hand in glove on this. As Hillary said, she will keep you apprised of any leads she gets tracking down the last known movements of our missing women, their backgrounds, and anything else she may come up with. But in return, we need to be kept in the loop about what your team come up with in tracking down Lol.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ DI Geoff Rhumer said firmly.

  Hillary caught Steven’s eye and nodded reluctantly.

  It all sounded clear enough. Even so, she could still see trouble ahead. Maybe DI Rhumer was only making the noises she wanted to hear in order to keep her pacified. Maybe Donleavy had secretly given him, and maybe even Steven for all she knew, a set of far different instructions.

  Maybe they thought she was still traumatized by the attack on her and needed babysitting.

  Whatever the true state of affairs, she would just have to smile and nod and play nice and, in the meantime, just get on with it. Because she had a job to do, and neither Donleavy, the oh-so-accommodating Geoff Rhumer, or even Steven, were going to stop her from doing it.

  Once again she fought the impulse to stroke her still sore scars, and smiled briefly. ‘Right then, I’d better get started.’

  Steven said nothing as he watched her get up and leave.

  When she was gone, he was silent for a moment, then caught Geoff Rhumer watching him.

  ‘What?’ he demanded.

  ‘You and her an item then?’

  Steven smiled reluctantly. ‘That obvious, is it?’

  Rhumer shrugged and smiled. Then frowned. ‘You’re worried about her?’

  Steven Crayle’s already grim smile became even grimmer. ‘Wouldn’t you be? In my place?’

  ‘Oh hell yes,’ Rhumer agreed.

  Hillary glanced across at Jimmy, who was strumming his fingers idly against the steering wheel as they waited for a traffic light to turn green. They were in Jimmy’s modest little runabout on their way to Kingston Bagpuize where Judith Yelland’s parents still lived.

  She had briefed Jimmy on what was happening back at the office, and the old man was obviously still thinking things over.

  ‘So this all comes from Donleavy, right?’ he asked eventually, as they pulled away from the lights and headed away from Oxford. ‘I’m surprised he let you anywhere near it, to be honest.’

  Hillary smiled kindly. So that was what was puzzling him. ‘Oh, it comes with a lot of strings attached, believe me,’ she reassured him. ‘And it wasn’t easy convincing the commander to see it my way, either. And if I were still a serving officer, you’re right, I wouldn’t have been let within even sniffing distance of the case, let alone given this much leeway.’ She sighed heavily. ‘As it is, they’re trying to keep me on a very short leash.’ And she explained the new working arrangement to her deputy.

  ‘So anything we come across that leads back to Lol, we have to hand over to this Rhumer bloke?’ Jimmy asked carefully, shooting her a quick, questioning look. Hillary knew why he was being so wary, of course. He was wondering just how far she was willing to play ball with the DI being foisted on her by the brass. And the fact that his loyalties clearly lay with her, made her feel both uneasily proud and at the same time protective of him. The last thing she wanted was to get Jimmy in trouble because he was listening to her, and not to Steven. She knew how much this job meant to him. She’d feel perpetually guilty if he were fired because of her.

  ‘Yes. But I’ll decide when, and I’ll do the telling. Everything we learn goes through me first,’ she said. ‘That way, anything ricocheting back is my problem. But that shouldn’t be hard – I’m not going to let the youngsters in on this for a start. They’re to know nothing about my stalker at all, and it’s going to be a purely need-to-know basis on the missing persons case as well. The less they’re in the loop, the better I’ll like it.’

  Jimmy nodded quickly in agreement. ‘I’m with you there, guv. I think Sam would be able to handle it all right, but that young minx we’ve been lumbered with wouldn’t know how to keep her mouth shut if she had sewing lessons in buttoning lips.’

  Hillary smiled briefly and stretched her arms over her head. She hadn’t realized how tense she’d felt, until now. It seemed as if she’d been waiting for months, instead of just a week, for Donleavy to give the go ahead for her to head up the cold case aspect of the assignment, and now that it was finally underway, she felt a trickle of unease.

  Was she really up to it?

  She caught Jimmy looking at her again, and wondered if he was thinking the same thing. Or was she just being paranoid now?

  Oh, she knew she had a good rep for having guts and gumption at the station house. Being awarded a medal for bravery tended to do that for you. But Hillary knew, in reality, that it did, in fact, mean very little in any way that counted.

  She’d been given the medal when a raid she’d been on had gone wrong, and her old friend and one-time superior, Mellow ‘Mel’ Mallow had found himself in the line of fire from a fleeing gunman. She’d had only a split second to react, and in that time had managed to shove him out of the way, and take the bullet instead. It all sounded very melodramatic and gung-ho when other people talked about it, but in reality, Hillary knew differently. For a start, the bullet wound had been anything but fatal – indeed, she’d come within a hair’s-breadth of being shot in the arse! And the flesh wound had quickly healed anyway.

  More than that, though, the stress had been minimal. She’d reacted purely on instinct, and it had all been over – quite literally – in a flash. A few days in hospital, one or two bad dreams, and that had been that.

  Nothing to it really. Anyone would have, and could have, done the same thing. It had required very little in the way of true grit or backbone.

  What was happening now, though, was a totally different matter. Lol was subjecting her to a prolonged, sustained and nasty psychological attack. And she knew her nerves were beginning to tighten up like piano wires in response – as much as she tried to stop it from happening.

  She wasn’t sleeping well either, which made her feel sluggish, as if she was constantly playing catch up with herself, and the world around her. Worse than that, she kept reliving that moment in the car-park when she felt the super-sharp blade of the knife slice into her neck. The blade had been so sharp, all she’d felt was the slightest of stings – and then the far more terrifying ooze of her own blood running down her neck and into the narrow valley between her breasts.

  The lightest warm breeze on her skin reminded her of the feel of his breath on her neck. She would never forget his voice either. The moment she ever heard it again, she’d recognize it. Which was good, of course. But constantly hearing it repeated in her mind, when she was trying to concentrate, was far from good.

  No wonder Jimmy looked at her and wondered.

  If that was, in fact, what he was doing.

  ‘So, what do we know about the Yellands then, guv?’ Jimmy asked now, sounding very much the same, pragmatic assistant he’d always been.

  She told herself that she had enough on her plate to start inventing problems that might not even exist, and shrugged briefly, focusing her mind on the case at hand.

  ‘Not much. At the time, very little follow-up was done on any of the three missing girls, because nobody thought it was a priority,’ she admitted.


  ‘So we’ve got very little to go on?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she agreed. ‘But in a way, that might be an advantage. We’re starting from scratch for a change, which means we won’t be going over old ground, or having to rely on an original investigation’s preconceptions.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ Jimmy said. And put his foot down to pass a trundling tractor.

  The Yellands lived in a small bungalow just before you entered the village proper, and Jimmy parked beneath a pale pink flowering cherry tree. The sky was that bright azure of approaching summer, and the sun, approaching noon, was beginning to get that bake-you-dry edge to it.

  Hillary removed her jacket and left it in the car. The bungalow was one of those neat, yellow-brick ones, set in a skimpy but well-maintained garden. A mat in front of the door bore the legend WELCOME TO OUR HOME.

  The windows sparkled cleanly and the double-glazed pvc frames were snow-white. As she pressed the doorbell it set off a cacophony of excited yips from within. Beside her she heard Jimmy sigh.

  ‘I’ll bet they’re those little rat-on-rope things that like to show you their teeth and’ll have your ankles, given half a chance,’ he predicted dourly.

  Hillary grinned, then quickly wiped the smile from her face as the door was opened. The woman looking back at them was in her late fifties, Hillary gauged, with a carefully dyed blonde perm, and was wearing a silvery-grey summer dress and matching sandals. She was free of make-up, but wore a nice gold watch and several rings with semi-precious stones set in them. Her face though, was tight and pinched, and she looked like one of life’s constant worriers.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked faintly.

  Hillary introduced herself and Jimmy, and they both showed their IDs.

  ‘Are you Mrs Yelland? Frances Yelland?’ Hillary asked.

  The woman, who was already looking a little bewildered, looked even more so. ‘Yes,’ she agreed uncertainly, as if she’d been asked a trick question.

  ‘We work for the Crime Review Team for the Thames Valley Police, madam. We’re here about your daughter. She is still on our files as a missing person. I don’t suppose she’s turned up, has she?’ Hillary asked. And then had one of those weird, almost Twilight Zone little moments, when she wondered what she’d do if the other woman smiled and said that yes, as a matter of fact, she had.

  Probably faint, or start laughing and not be able to stop, she supposed.

  Of course, Frances Yelland said nothing of the kind. Instead, she took a sharp breath, and then sighed. ‘You’d better come in then,’ she said, with a quick glance around to see if any neighbours were watching. None were. In this day and age, Hillary could have assured her that most people were too busy working or trying to sort out their own dysfunctional lives, to care about their neighbours’ woes.

  ‘Max, my husband, is in the back garden tying up the runner beans. Since he retired he’s been growing all our own vegetables. They all say that it’s so much better for you, and good for the environment too.’

  Frances Yelland opened the door and stepped back. Hillary and Jimmy entered, glad to get into the relative coolness of the tiny hall. From another room, they could hear tiny snouts sniffing under the door, and Jimmy for one was glad that the mutts had been shut away.

  Without another word, they were ushered through to a small, tidy lounge in shades of apricot, cream and mint green. ‘Please, sit down. I’ll make us some tea and get Max.’

  Hillary glanced around, her eyes halting on the mantelpiece, where a whole range of family photographs was arranged. She saw a wedding photograph of a much younger Frances and a handsome man staring solemnly at the camera. There were several baby pictures, then those unmistakable school photographs, where a travelling photographer comes and takes a head-and-shoulders shot of every kid, regardless of whether or not they wanted their photograph taken. The Yellands had three children, she knew from the file, but there were only photographs displayed of two of them: a boy and a girl.

  And the girl was not Judith. Did they already think of her as dead? If so, did they know something that she didn’t? Or was it just too painful for them to be constantly reminded of their missing child?

  ‘You notice there aren’t any pictures of our MisPer?’ Hillary said quietly to Jimmy, who followed her gaze and grunted quietly in assent.

  Just then Frances came back with a tea tray, and an older version of the man in the wedding picture.

  ‘My husband, Max,’ she introduced him nervously. Hillary could tell by the way that she looked for approval from her husband, that Mrs Yelland had lived all her married life very much under the thumb. It made Hillary’s hackles rise, and she forced herself to smooth them back down.

  She was not a marriage guidance counsellor, she reminded herself firmly.

  Maxwell Yelland was lean, not particularly tall, and had silver hair and pale-grey eyes. He was still a handsome man, even though he’d never see sixty again. He glanced at Hillary, then at Jimmy, and then back at Hillary again. He took a seat, and then accepted a cup and saucer from his fluttering wife.

  ‘I understand this is about Judith? Do you have news of her?’ he asked, but without any sense of urgency. He looked, if anything, more wary than concerned.

  ‘No, sir. I’m afraid not. But we’re investigating her case, along with that of several other missing women, and we just have a few questions for you, if you don’t mind.’

  Hillary sensed Frances Yelland was now hovering nervously behind her, and wished that she could see her face. ‘Mrs Yelland, perhaps you’d like to take a seat?’ she said, half turning in her chair and indicating the sofa space available beside her husband.

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ Frances Yelland responded with immediate obedience and sat down beside her husband, then took a sip from her teacup.

  Hillary could feel Jimmy tensing up beside her. Just as she had, he’d picked up on the atmosphere in the house. And didn’t like it.

  ‘When was the last time you saw your daughter before she disappeared?’ Hillary asked, directing the question at Mrs Yelland, but in fact watching her husband closely.

  ‘Oh not for a while.’

  ‘A few weeks?’ Hillary hazarded.

  ‘Oh no. Much longer. Months, wasn’t it, Max?’

  ‘Yes. Nearly a year, I would have said.’ He spoke with a concise flat tone that was probably designed to hide some strong emotion. But what it might have been, Hillary had no clue. But Max Yelland’s grudging co-operation wasn’t about to put her off.

  Instead she nodded. ‘That seems rather a long time. Had there been some sort of a problem?’ she asked delicately.

  Max Yelland smiled bleakly. ‘Nothing specific, Inspector.’

  Hillary didn’t bother to correct him about her lack of official status. ‘But you would say that matters were somewhat … strained … between you?’ she persisted doggedly.

  ‘My daughter was always a wayward child, I’m afraid,’ Max finally admitted, pausing to take another sip of his tea. ‘Unlike our other children, she became difficult. Defiant. It started when she was a teenager and, alas, she simply never grew out of it. When we heard she’d left her flatmate in the lurch with the rent and gone off somewhere, frankly, we weren’t really surprised.’

  Hillary glanced across at the missing girl’s mother, wondering what she had made of this harsh assessment of her daughter, but she was studiously sipping her own tea and avoiding meeting anyone’s eyes.

  ‘I see,’ Hillary said. ‘So you don’t know if her behaviour had changed in the months before she disappeared.’

  ‘No,’ Max agreed shortly.

  ‘And she never talked to you about being afraid of anyone, of being pestered by strange phone calls, or letters or gifts?’

  ‘I doubt Judith would have objected to being given gifts, Inspector,’ Max said, still in that same pedantic, careful tone. ‘She always was materialistic. We tried to drum that out of her, but without success. Sunday School was wasted on her, I’m afraid. Meredith n
ow,’ Max said, looking with pride at one of the photographs on the mantelpiece, depicting a beanpole-thin woman with her mother’s hair and eyes, ‘she volunteers at several different charity shops. I doubt that Judith ever knew the meaning of the word.’

  Hillary smiled briefly.

  No wonder it had been noted in her file that Judith Yelland had left home at the age of seventeen. ‘I see. And I take it you haven’t heard from her in the three years since she went missing.’

  ‘No. And I really rather doubt that she is in fact missing, Inspector,’ Max said with a tight smile. ‘I think you’ll find that she’s simply shacked up somewhere with some man. Judith always did take the easy options in life. Why work, if you can play, that was always her motto.’

  Hillary nodded again. She could see that there was no way that Judy Yelland would have gone to her parents for help when she began to be stalked. Her mother was too timid to be of any help, and her father far too judgemental. She would have been well and truly on her own.

  It was also as clear as day that she was going to get nothing of use in this arid environment.

  ‘I see. Well, thank you for your time.’ Hillary put her cup down, noting that Jimmy eagerly followed suit.

  Frances Yelland shot up from the sofa and showed them out. But, on the doorstep, she cast a quick look over shoulder, then leaned forward and all but whispered, ‘When you do find her, you will let me know that she’s all right, won’t you?’

  Hillary felt as if someone had just sucker-punched her, and she had to force a brief smile. ‘Of course we will, Mrs Yelland,’ she promised softly.

  But never had a promise seemed so hollow.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘Bloody hell, guv,’ Jimmy said, as they climbed back into the car. ‘That place gave me the willies.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. It’s not hard to understand why their daughter legged it, is it?’ she agreed.

  ‘If she wasn’t missing the way she is, I’d be inclined to say that she’d just written off her family as no-hopers, and decided to get herself a new life,’ Jimmy opined.