Missing, Presumed Dead

  MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD

  J.M. GREGSON

  © JM Gregson 1997

  JM Gregson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1997 by Severn House.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Extract from Body Politic by J M Gregson

  PROLOGUE

  The body lay still beneath the water. Its wide, unblinking eyes stared upwards, towards the surface they could never see.

  This was quiet water, with little disturbance to its surface between the high, untrodden banks. A century and more ago, men had dug and blasted their way into the earth here, in search of the granite that had built the solid houses of the industrial towns. It had not been a large quarry, partly because the slabs of stone here were not extensive, partly because the red Accrington brick of the area had been more popular with the late Victorians.

  The pool which had long since filled the quarry was scarcely twenty yards across but the depth was almost as great. A few bold boys had swum here until the land was enclosed for its present purpose in the twenties. Since then the surface had been scarcely disturbed. The sun climbed high above the dark pond in the summer, but on many days its was the only face that looked down upon the unruffled surface.

  Once the body had reached the bottom of the pond, it was not disturbed. The weights which held it had been securely attached; they held it motionless when it became bloated with air after a few days, anchoring it against any rise. For a little while, the corpse pulled gently against the restraint. Then a few bubbles rose unhurriedly and sporadically to the surface. If the curlews wheeling in the grey sky above saw the tiny ripples, they showed no reaction. And certainly there was no human eye to remark upon the movement of the water. This was a quiet, well-chosen place.

  There were no fish in this high, landlocked pool. Dark weed flourished in the deeper centre of the pool, so that no one could have seen more than six or seven feet down into it, even when the light was at its summer best. With so little life in the pool to damage it and the temperature generally so low, the body lay intact for a long time, facing that cool surface many feet above it which it would never see.

  It was deposited in the pool at the end of October. In this high place, there were no trees to pollute the waters with their November leaves. The still surface froze quickly with the December frosts and the ice remained for most of the next two months, when the tracks of hungry birds and the occasional small mammal were the only blemishes on the thin layer of bright, untarnished snow which was the body’s last coverlet.

  As the days became weeks and the weeks stretched slowly into months, the murderer kept calm. It was an effort at first, but it was surprising how quickly the early speculation died. A nine-days-wonder, that was the expression. And it was surprising how accurate it was; when there was no further development to follow up the disappearance, other and spicier items of news soon replaced it, even in the local press and on the local radio.

  The police would have it on file, of course. But a missing person is merely one of thousands, dutifully recorded but not energetically pursued. Only a murder attracts the full intensity of police interest and resources. And there seemed no reason now why this disappearance should be transformed into anything as brutally exciting as that.

  When winter became spring and spring passed into summer, the murderer relaxed. Killers are supposed to return to the scene of their crimes, as if drawn by some undefined compulsion. This one went several times and looked into the pool, when it was safe to do so. But that was merely to check that all was well, as it clearly was. The intervals between these visits became longer. Then, with a little effort of will, they were abandoned altogether.

  When the months became years, the murderer began to feel safe.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Detective Inspector ‘Percy’ Peach was wishing he had never seen a golf course.

  Cricket was a much more sensible game anyway, and he had at least shown some competence at that. His short legs and nimble feet had danced down the pitch and chastened many a truculent bowler in his time. Then someone had persuaded him to try golf.

  At golf, you approached a dead ball, in your own time, dispatching it when you were ready into what had always seemed a generous area of ground, when he watched it on television. It had to be a doddle, a game for overpaid wimps and women with too much time on their hands.

  And yet you made a fool of yourself.

  Well, Peach had got used to that, reluctantly, over the months of his apprenticeship in this infuriating business. On the public course to which he had been lured by his colleague, there had been widespread evidence of incompetence, some of it much greater than his own. And amidst much hard swearing, none had been more intense or inventive than his own. In that respect at least, he could hold his own in this stupid new sporting world.

  He had got used to hacking his way round the public course, with mud up his trousers in the winter and balls bouncing off the hard-baked greens in summer. Life was a bugger (only effete southern poofs thought of it as a bitch) and for most of the time, golf seemed to Percy Peach a microcosm of life. And just occasionally, as when his ball soared high against an azure sky, the game offered a gratification to the soul, an aesthetic titbit to gratify that sense of beauty which Peach had long since decided it was appropriate for a copper to subdue.

  He never voiced any such mawkish idea, even to himself, but the idea must have got through to his companions; they had suggested that he join a golf club. They even put to him that most dangerous and unfair of propositions, that it might improve his game. Beguiled by this vision of a path to the Holy Golfing Grail, Percy had succumbed.

  Indeed, Peach had not only succumbed, but gone wildly over the top. He had applied for membership of the North Lancashire Golf Club. This was not only a private golf club, but the most exclusive one in the area. It would have been enough to set his old dad spinning in his grave, thought Percy. The old man’s only sporting hero had been Tom Finney, and he had thought golf courses the playgrounds of the plutocratic parasites who lived off the backs of the workers.

  It was his mother who had insisted on the forenames of Denis Charles Scott for him, in recognition of the teenage idol she had queued outside Old Trafford to watch in 1947, though even the old man had admitted under pressure that that effete southern Brylcreem Boy Denis Compton could bat a bit. And when the twinkling feet of the young Percy had danced down the wicket in the northern leagues, his dad had come to watch, had even shyly revealed to the spectators beside him, ‘He’s my lad, is yon!’ But he would never have countenanced golf. It was just as well, perhaps, that Mum had had the old man cremated.

  He had been told when he put in his application for membership that he could forget about it for a year or two. But surprisingly soon, he had been called for interview. Perhaps it had something to do with the young constable who had proposed him, who had a handicap of three and had been a member of the club since he was a boy. Perhaps it was the general desire of golf clubs to have friends in authority; many orga
nizations still hold to a pious hope that a detective inspector within the ranks is some sort of insurance against trouble with the law.

  Whatever the reason, Percy Peach now found himself pitchforked much earlier than he had expected into this evening’s embarrassing ritual. People who applied for membership of the ‘North Lancs’ were interviewed first by two members of the committee, that all-powerful male junta of the golf club. They had asked the expected questions, and Percy Peach, veteran of many a promotion board, had given them the expected answers.

  But then there was this. A cocktail party, to enable all members of the committee to meet the latest group of candidates for membership. ‘To enjoy a pleasant social exchange over a drink with them,’ the letter to the victims had said. And then to meet in private afterwards, to decide the fate of their applications for membership. To blackball them, if they chose, without redress, without appeal, however mistaken their decisions might be. No one pretended the system was fair, still less democratic. But if you didn’t like it, you could take your application elsewhere. This was a private institution, which could set its own rules. The North Lancs Golf Club made that defiantly clear.

  Percy Peach decided as the evening proceeded that he did not like this system. That he wished he had never applied. That he hated the hypocrisy of being assessed whilst he was supposed to be in a friendly social exchange. Percy had never been much good at friendly social exchanges.

  But he was here now, and stuck with it. He held the gin and tonic he had thought the diplomatic drink at the end of an arm crooked carefully at forty-five degrees, kept an increasingly glassy smile afloat, and listened. And whilst he listened, he sweated. His professional talent was to make others talk, and others sweat; he was not used to this, and he did not like it.

  Part of his problem was that he had little experience of the casual and friendly chit-chat which was supposed to be the basis of this exercise. As far as Percy was concerned, you asked questions when you wanted information. You offered opinions when they were asked for, or when you wanted to express some strong emotion. About queers or judges or women who lived off their ex-husbands. This gathering did not seem the right setting for his trenchant views on such things.

  ‘You’ll be welcome new blood in the club, if we accept you, that is. But I expect we shall. We’re looking to lower the age profile, you see.’ The florid moustachioed face in front of him barked these thoughts but added a yellow-toothed grin to signify they were friendly ones.

  It was some time since Peach had thought of himself as young blood. He was thirty-six, but for a policeman that was middle-aged. In any case, he looked older, with his baldness; Percy was used to playing the reactionary old sweat among his colleagues. Looking round the golf club lounge, he realized that he was one of the youngest people in the room. ‘I’ll try to behave well,’ he said with a nervous giggle.

  There were a hundred petty criminals in the area whose flesh would have crept at the horrid sound of a Peach giggle. This man seemed to take him perfectly seriously. The florid face nodded. ‘Standards are all to pot, everywhere. Caught a fellow trying to come in here without a tie last night.’ The watery eyes looked Percy up and down, until the detective inspector felt as though he were back in short trousers with his socks askew. ‘You’re a bit bloody short for a policeman!’ the mouth below the grey moustache said accusingly.

  ‘Yes. Well, the height regulations have been relaxed a little, you see. And I suppose in CID work it’s—’

  ‘All big buggers in my day, they were. Slapped you round the ear if you answered back. Bloody good thing. Taught you about life.’ Percy thought he detected a seam of reaction here which he might usefully mine, but the face said with what was almost a snarl, ‘Well, can’t let you monopolize me, young feller. Must get on and give the other poor buggers a chance, you see.’ Peach found himself staring at a broad dandruffed back, trying not to apologize for trespassing upon the old man’s time.

  Before he could recover, a voice trilled, ‘Ah, another promising recruit for our social functions.’ This was an accusation that Peach had never met before in his eventful life. He had never been an asset to any social function, as far as he was aware. He was rather proud of that.

  He struggled to answer the lady’s suggestion with the precision it seemed to demand. ‘Err…um…What? Oh, I don’t think – you know…’

  ‘Don’t be modest now; I bet you’re capable of some nifty footwork on the dance floor!’

  Percy didn’t know the answer to that. The last time he had shown nifty footwork on the dance floor had been in pursuit of an arrest. Three arrests actually, and successfully achieved. He could remember the satisfaction of frog-marching the thugs to the car with their arms up their backs. But this hardly seemed the moment or the audience for graphic recollections of ‘Toothmug Johnson’ and ‘Poface Munro’.

  He peered at the tag attached to the mohair in front of him, hoping that it did not look as if he was assessing the rounding of the breast behind it. It told him that he was speaking to the Ladies’ Captain of the North Lancs. She was shorter than him, so that even from the height which florid-face had just found so suspect he could look down into the humorous brown eyes. These were assessing him with a disconcerting amusement. The face had small, well-formed features, of which the most obvious was a nose which turned minimally upwards at the tip. The figure beneath the face was trim but certainly not straight.

  It was another blow to his expectations on this disturbing evening. Golfing females who attained the office of captain were supposed to be ageing Amazons, without discernible waists or senses of humour. This one could only be in her early forties and he doubted if she weighed more than eight stones. ‘Christine Turner,’ she said, holding out a slim white hand. ‘I tried “Tina” for a few years, but then that inconsiderate pop star came along and my children made me change.’

  Peach made a despairing attempt at insouciance. ‘I’ve only really thought about playing golf. But I expect I shall use the clubhouse facilities, when I get to know a few people. They’re’ —he looked round desperately — ‘they’re very nice, aren’t they?’

  She grinned at him: he had a disconcerting perception that she was reading most of his thoughts. If so, she was finding them amusing. ‘Quite posh, aren’t they? In a suitably bourgeois sort of way.’ That was an adjective he didn’t associate with golf club women. ‘Does your wife play?’

  ‘No. She’s…well, she’s—’

  ‘No longer around?’ It was true then: she could follow his mind. Peach, who spent most of his day convincing criminals that he followed their every squalid thought, squirmed his toes beneath their shining black leather. She said, ‘It’s becoming the rule rather than the exception, isn’t it? Have you a current companion?’

  ‘No. I—well, the job doesn’t really lend itself to long-term relationships.’ He was fleetingly proud of that phrase: those damned social workers had given him something at last.

  ‘I can see you’ll be a danger to all our ladies who haven’t got long-term relationships, Mr Peach.’ She threw his phrase back at him, the corners of her neat mouth crinkling upwards.

  Before he could decide how to refute this outrageous suggestion, she was gone, moving on resolutely to surprise the next unthinking applicant who had brought his preconceptions to the club with him.

  He was left with the secretary of the North Lancs, Paul Capstick. He talked of the petty pilfering which had beset the club and its car park, with the obvious implication that the admission of a detective inspector to the membership would eliminate such problems overnight. Percy was on more familiar ground here. He thought it diplomatic not to deprecate the suggestion completely, as it seemed it might help his sinking chances of membership.

  Peach left it to the secretary and another committee member, who was drawn as if by a magnet to the discussion, to lead the way over the virtues of birching and a revival of National Service. Then he pointed out modestly that you had to catch the buggers first,
and laid the first foundations of a reputation as a realist with wit.

  It was only the last man he spoke to, an anxious-looking stooped figure whose label proclaimed that he was chairman of the Greens Committee, who mentioned his handicap. Percy had to confess that it was a modest eighteen, though he was ‘hoping to improve with regular play on an excellent course.’ That was a phrase he had rehearsed carefully before he came; he was rather proud of its mixture of sturdy confidence and unashamed creeping. This was a compound that had stood him in good stead at more formal interviews with his superiors in the police force.

  He delivered the sentiment with all the aplomb he could muster but it still seemed to drop with the hollowness of its preparation into one of those sudden silences which fall unaccountably upon a crowded room. He did not like the collective smile with which the committee members greeted it as their heads turned towards him. They had the air of men who had heard such falsities many times before.

  Percy Peach drove away from the golf club with the taste of crisps and gin and tonic like ashes in his mouth. He had not made a good impression, he decided. Not on those bigwigs in their golfing citadel; and still less upon himself. He was surprised how hard it had been to dissimulate, and how rusty he had become at the business. He was used to being himself, warts and all. With the criminals who were his means of life, he had even become accustomed to playing up the warts. Disguising them had not come naturally tonight.

  He decided that he wouldn’t be all that disappointed when his application was rejected by the North Lancs. Bunch of out-of-touch wankers, he declared robustly to himself.

  He felt more at home as he approached the rougher streets of the older part of the cotton town. On other nights, he would have driven swiftly past the police car at the kerb and the raucous crowd outside the pub. Tonight he stopped and climbed out of his car. It was an assertion of a certain sort of integrity, though Percy Peach would never have recognized it as that.