Echoes of Silence Page 9

  He could see Manning getting hold of the idea, then shaking his head doubtfully, not liking it.

  ‘Putting the screws on would be a good way of supplementing her income.’

  ‘On Willie Muff, maybe. But the others – whiter than white, all of them. No way.’

  ‘The money was coming from somewhere.’

  ‘They couldn’t all have had something to hide.’

  ‘Supposing she came across the occasional one or two who had? She could soon have made herself a tidy sum. Blackmail’s a dodgy business, though. All right if you like living on the edge, but you never know when you might meet the worm that turns. We can’t discount any of them without talking to them, Steve.’

  There were seven books altogether on the shelf, and presumably another in the making, too – the as yet unpublished family history of the Denshaws, nothing relating to which had turned up so far. She’d told him she’d made notes, and there was a rough, far from complete, handwritten outline. He couldn’t find anything else, but maybe it was on disk. Manning could have the rest, but Richmond decided that was one he’d save for himself. The hint she’d given him could mean that someone in the Denshaw family, too, was ripe for blackmail.

  The sergeant, shuffling through a pile of what appeared to be scrap paper, said suddenly, ‘Before we start getting excited about that idea, take a look at this.’

  It was a letter, or rather a short note, undated, with no address at the top, written on a piece of paper torn from a lined scribbling pad, the biro having been pressed down so hard that it gave the impression of having been engraved. ‘Dear Wyn, Expect me Friday night, but don’t expect me to go away empty handed this time.’ Signed, Trev.

  ‘The bloke in the photo?’ hazarded Richmond.

  ‘Nah. Trevor Austwick, husband of the deceased, can’t be anybody else,’ Manning said, gratified.

  ‘The grieving widower?’

  ‘Don’t know about grieving, but I heard tell he’d got himself hitched – just before he went down, I think it was. Armley jail. Armed robbery, five years if memory serves me right …’ He stopped, did a few mental calculations. ‘Meaning that he’s been out some time if he’s been a good boy, though that’s doubtful, for a start. And if he hasn’t, he must be due out about now.’

  ‘“This time”,’ Richmond repeated, reading from the note. ‘Looks as though demanding money with menaces might run in the family.’

  8

  The outlook from her bedroom window, down into the valley, across the town and up to the opposite moors, never changed, except when it snowed. The same eternal prospect had dominated her view for forty years, the grey huddle of urban sprawl spreading up the sides of the hills from the valley bottom, the timeless sweep of the hills which Freya had once thought would drive her so mad with boredom she didn’t see how she could stand the sight another minute. Ironic that she’d welcomed this dreary landscape at first as an escape; the contempt with which she now regarded it, the stoic endurance it had forced upon her, was the price she’d had to pay for security.

  My life’s been nothing but a series of escapes, she thought bitterly. Ever since she’d taken flight from the poverty of those early years. She’d been born Freda Cassidy, and her mother had died when she was still a child, leaving her to the care of her Irish father, a railway worker in Swindon. Only that hadn’t been the way it had worked out. She’d been the one who’d done the looking after, caring for her adored dad as if he were the child and she the parent. A lovely man, even when he’d drink taken, or when he gambled his wages away before bringing them home, which was mostly, since his gambling was compulsive. Poor Dad, he hadn’t been able to help himself. After her mum had died, since there was no one else to do it, she’d managed the house as best she could. There was always escape into a world of fantasy, her father never averse to aid and abet her. One day - one day, he promised her, he’d come home rich – and she could have everything she wanted for the rest of her life, trifle every day and wine to drink like a lady, servants to make the beds and never have the washing up or the laundry to think about again.

  But, Michael Cassidy, gambler and eternal optimist, you were a born loser, Freya thought with a tolerant smile. Until that glorious day when it happened! He’d won nearly a thousand pounds on a horse, which in those days was a lot of money, to them unbelievable riches.

  ‘There we are, me darlin’, and didn’t I always tell you?’ he declared, waltzing her around the room. The brogue always came out more strongly when he was excited. To celebrate, he’d gone on a two-day drinking binge which had resulted in a drunken, fatal stagger into the path of an oncoming lorry.

  That was when she’d made her first actual escape. Shocked and bereft, she’d still known instinctively what to do: she gave up her hated job serving behind the counter in Woolworth’s, took a train ticket to London, and with her father’s winnings, plus what the contents of the rented house had fetched, enrolled with a model agency.

  It was what they’d all dreamed of at that time, the girls she knew – dazzled by the current cult that held up a beautiful face and figure as being the acme of any girl’s hopes, by the reputed, so-called glamour of the life. Fame, riches, adulation, wearing super-elegant clothes, their faces on the front of every women’s magazine, Heaven itself. She could tell them a thing or two, now! But I wasn’t fooled, even then, she thought, with a twist to her lips. Too much had already happened to me for that, things to be grateful for, in retrospect. Teaching her to look at the world shrewdly through those great violet eyes she’d been blessed with. She’d always known she wasn’t clever, but clung to her strong sense of survival, and the innate sense of knowing she might have something to offer.

  She’d been tall and gawky, but that was not seen as an impediment, and the model agency had immediately recognised her potential; she was accepted and taught to make the most of what assets she possessed – to emphasise her height and slenderness, her good bone structure – and to be thankful for her undoubted stamina. She’d been taught things she’d never forgotten - how to use make-up so that she seemed beautiful, to walk and posture and strut, parading and showing off fabulously expensive creations to clients on whom they would never look so good. From the moment she was launched on to the fashion world, she’d never looked back. She’d worked for Dior, Balenciaga, Hardy Amies, and the rest. The camera loved her, and her face, its haughty expression soon hardly recognisable even to herself, regularly looked out from the cover of Vogue. Freda Cassidy was told to call herself Freya Cass.

  Oh, the wonderful years that had followed! The bright lights and the glamour and becoming a household name, as well as the darling of the fashion press. It was only later that she’d seen how tightly the life had gradually enmeshed her in its toils. She was in demand everywhere, money, money, money, the getting and spending of it dominating her life. The life was sordid sometimes, the continual mad pace was gruelling, but possible because one knew one would be young for ever – until the slow realisation dawned that youth didn’t last, that everyone grew older.

  Escape again, this time in the form of Laurence Denshaw.

  He was considered a difficult man, Laurence, but other people didn’t see the tender side he showed to her, an understanding of which she knew no one else would ever have believed him capable. If he’d lived longer than the short twelve years they’d had together, helping her to bridge that gulf, that chasm, that no man’s land between herself and the people who surrounded her, she wouldn’t be sitting here now, at her bedroom window, filled with regret. He’d been twelve years older than she was, but she’d never imagined he would die so comparatively young, she had never quite forgiven him for leaving her with the long, long rest of her life to live out as Freya Denshaw.

  After his death, she’d felt too apathetic for any more serious bids for escape: only her little sorties down to London. Condemned by the terms of his will and the demands of her children to live among the hills that were always in front of her, behind her, surrou
nding her, imprisoning her, she’d understood how one might, quite easily, die of boredom. Ironic to think that she’d once thought that coming here would be a beginning, when in reality it had been an end – the end of freedom, of that glittering life she’d made her own. Shallow and ephemeral that life might have been, but it was vibrant and amusing – unlike this life, conditioned by the hard landscape of sad, grey-green, silent moors, rocky outcrops, and the deep valleys through which the busy industrial life flowed.

  Dot Nagle, arriving to help out after Laurence died, had been a lifeline, despite everything. Someone who spoke the same language, a robust personality who could snap Freya out of her depressions – though she could be a great trial at times, especially when she told Freya things she didn’t want to hear. She’d been proved quite right about the Austwick woman. Freya now bitterly regretted the impulse that had made her say yes to the woman’s request. An impulse, that’s all it had been, anything to relieve the eternal ennui. But what it had turned out to be was something quite other. Nothing she could do about that now, events must take their course, she was almost resigned to it. The woman was dead, gone, murdered. When she’d heard that on the radio an hour ago, she’d been stunned. And now she was even more afraid.

  She desperately needed to talk to Dot, but Dot wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. She’d set off, first thing, to attend the funeral in London of some ancient relative, someone she’d never seen for years. She’d been doubtful about going, but Eddie had egged her on, no doubt hoping there’d be something in it for her.

  Freya plucked at her petit point (the last of a set of eight seats for the dining-room chairs, though they were rarely used), unable to avoid the hated sight of her hands with the wrinkles and liver spots. Her face she could keep looking comparatively young, with creams and massages and skilful make-up, and becomingly arranged hair, but there was nothing she could do about her hands. Or about the wretched stiffness and pain in her knees and feet … She levered herself from her high-seated orthopaedic chair and made her way to the bedside cabinet to check that Dot hadn’t found her stash of tablets. One day, when she could no longer bear it, they’d provide the final escape.

  Suddenly unable to be alone with herself any longer, she grasped her stick and began the painful journey downstairs.

  Eddie Nagle looked up from leathering down the Rover when Freya came out into the yard. Sloppy as he was in other directions, it was a point of honour with him to keep anything he had to do with – his car, or his dogs, even his clothes, for that matter - clean and in good nick. She was leaning heavily on the silver knob of her cane, silver hair sleek and elegant, wrapped in the full-length mink coat she’d had for years and never wore when her daughters were around, because they didn’t approve.

  He leaned insolently against the bonnet, arms folded, legs crossed at the ankles, waiting, watching her hobble across the uneven flags in the yard. He didn’t go over and give her a hand. He hated to touch her, to feel the old bones like a bunch of dry sticks under the skin.

  Despite the temperature, he was wearing only a pair of tight jeans and a snow-white singlet which showed every ripple of his taut, compact, muscular figure. He was very proud of his physique and worked out regularly to keep in shape. He knew his appearance was against him, his square, shiny bald head, his thick, rubbery lips, and the menacing, rolling gait he’d cultivated. All to the good. People shrank away from him and he enjoyed that, seeing them afraid of him even before he’d said a word. It gave him a sense of power. Besides, not everyone avoided him. There were plenty women his blatant sexuality appealed to.

  Freya stopped within a couple of yards of him, noticing the bruise on his upper arm, hoping that it hurt. ‘I want to go for a drive,’ she said peremptorily. ‘How soon can you be ready?’

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  They never addressed each other by name, never willingly at all if it could be avoided. ‘I’ll be in the morning room, then,’ she said, and turned to make her slow way back to the house.

  He slapped the wet leather into the bucket, rinsed it, and with one quick twist, as if he were wringing the neck of a chicken, screwed it as dry as a piece of blotting paper.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked, when they were ready to start off, Eddie in the driving seat wearing the leather jacket which was as far as he’d go in the way of concessions when he drove her, Freya sitting in the back like a duchess.

  ‘Anywhere, I don’t care.’

  He was accustomed to this, she never stated any preference. He understood she couldn’t be bothered to say where, didn’t really care. He knew she simply wanted to get away from the house. Sometimes, when he was feeling well disposed and had time to spare, he drove her out along pretty, tree-lined valleys to places like Knaresborough, or Bolton Abbey. When he wasn’t, he took her to the top of the moors and the big, windy spaces where there was nothing to see except more moors, and ugly, industrial towns huddled in the bottom. On these occasions, she’d refuse to get out of the car and simply order him to drive back home. She knew he’d done it on purpose to annoy her. But she never reprimanded him.

  He decided this was one of those days, and drove her towards Huddersfield and through the busy town and eventually up to the top of Holme Moss, pulling the car off the road, facing a long descending view down into the valley with glimpses of pewter-coloured reservoirs tucked in between the hills. Like a petulant child, she refused to look at it, but turned her head and stared at the television masts on the other side of the road. He half turned in his seat to face her and said, in the Estuary-speak she hated, ‘I think it’s time you and me had a little talk.’

  Her face drained of colour under the make-up.

  He grinned. He was pleased to see Mrs bloody Denshaw jump when he barked.

  He’d been thrown in at the deep end, plunged right into a murder inquiry, and commiserations for it came from all sides, but Richmond preferred it this way. For one thing, the frenetic activity this demanded helped to cover up the awkwardness of being a new boy in a new job, when nobody had quite got your measure and you weren’t yet sure of yourself. For another, total immersion was the watchword he’d set for this investigation, especially in these crucial first days – and with nobody waiting for him at home, no reproachful glances to contend with, he meant to work if necessary round the clock.

  Having made do with a cup of coffee for breakfast in his impatience to get started, he’d begun to feel hungry by mid-morning, after the briefing meeting where he’d already set his mark on the investigation, established lines of inquiry and seen tasks allocated. So he welcomed the biscuits and a pot of tea – thick, Charlie Rawnsley tea that he’d better get used to again – brought in by a young DC, a bouncy, good-humoured sort of young woman called Sally Jenner.

  ‘Don’t think I make a habit of this, sir,’ she warned him, smiling, putting it on his desk as he was booting up his computer, loading the disk bearing the label ‘The Denshaws of Steynton’ he’d found among Austwick’s other disks. ‘I’m only doing it because you’re new and I want to get in your good books.’ Cheeky, testing him.

  Her grin was infectious. She had a round, open face, a generous bosom and nice legs. He smiled back. ‘Thanks, I like to know where I stand, Constable.’ Letting her know he’d understood, setting limits beyond which she wouldn’t go.

  ‘Oh, and I’ve brought this as well. What we’ve been able to find out about the victim. It’s not much, so far,’ she said, leaving him with a neatly typed report which she placed on his desk next to the three-inch-thick paper-stuffed folder which contained all the official documents to do with Beth’s disappearance, the inquiry, and the subsequent discovery of her body. In it were recorded verbatim reports, details of every interview, every question put, every answer received. He noted the lack of hard evidence, the failure to trace the blanket she’d been wrapped in, or the pillow. He’d already read it through several times. He was very nearly word perfect.

  Dan Brearley had gone about it in the wron
g way from the first, in Richmond’s opinion. Bully boy tactics weren’t likely to have cut much ice with the sort of people he’d been dealing with. He’d been convinced from the first that Peter Denshaw had murdered Beth. Fair enough, the obvious solution usually was the right one, and policemen did develop an instinct for a killer. But Brearley had gone against all accepted wisdom, formed his theories and sought facts to prove them, and when this hadn’t worked he’d been stymied, and willing enough when Isobel had made her ‘confession’ to accept it as an answer, and have the case closed. After all, the Denshaws still had a high profile in the area, somewhat lower than it had been at one time, but still not to be disregarded.

  The file would have to stay where it was for the time being. There was as yet no reason to requestion those who’d originally been interviewed in connection with his child’s death, questions that had failed to reveal the truth then. They were unlikely to change their testimony now – not yet, at any rate. But he’d chosen to go up to Low Rigg himself this morning to see Freya Denshaw and talk to her about her work with Wyn Austwick. Unproductive maybe, or maybe not. If anything turned up through it, well and good.

  He picked up the report WDC Jenner had left and absorbed what it had to say about Wyn Austwick, then willed himself back to the computer and began accessing the Denshaw file, hoping he wouldn’t be interrupted, but not sanguine about it. The station outside his door was humming like a beehive as the routine of a murder inquiry got under way, doors banging, printers clacking, telephones ringing, an excitement generated by the sort of crime rare in Steynton, where murder, if it happened, was usually the result of a pub brawl or a domestic, grown out of hand.

  Half an hour later he sat back, accepting disappointment. He’d learned considerably more than he wanted to know about Freya Denshaw and her glamorous career, but damn all about the Denshaw family history, except what was surely a matter of public record – unless that part of it was still to be filled out for the proposed book. Had it ever been finished, it would have turned out to be ill balanced, or overlong. But there appeared to be no plan for its completion. The notes stopped abruptly, just before Christmas, ten years ago … that Christmas he’d spent alone, when Beth had come to him for New Year … He stared at the blank screen, unseeing …