Without a Trace Read online

  ‘You should teach your child to have some respect for the dead,’ he had raged at her mother. ‘Death is not a sideshow at the fair, something to snigger about.’

  She was very lucky that her father was out of the shop that day and he never got to hear about the escapade. She and Christine never dared go to the undertakers again, though.

  Molly rushed up the stairs, hoping Mr Weston hadn’t seen her from a window. She didn’t want him informing her father about this either.

  ‘Molly!’ Simon exclaimed as he opened the door. ‘What a delightful surprise. Come on in. I was getting very bored writing and was just going to make some tea. Nice to have you to share it with.’

  Molly handed him the buns and the honey. ‘A little present in return for some advice,’ she said.

  She loved Simon’s posh voice, and he looked lovely, in a creased, open-necked shirt and grey flannel trousers, with his feet bare and his hair all tousled.

  His flat was just a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom, all rather shabby and untidy. She glanced through the open door to his bedroom and, seeing the unmade bed, guessed he never made it.

  ‘Yes, I know I live in squalor!’ He laughed, guessing this was what she was thinking. ‘I really ought to get a housekeeper; I’m quite useless at the domestic stuff.’

  ‘I’d offer to come and do it for you,’ Molly said, ‘but I doubt my father would approve of that.’

  ‘Did he do that?’ Simon indicated her black eye.

  Molly hesitated; she might have known the make-up wouldn’t fool anyone. She wanted to deny her father had done it, but she guessed that Simon had already heard that her father was a bully. ‘Yes, and that’s why I need some advice. I want to leave home.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if I’m the best person to give advice, but I’ll do my best,’ he said.

  ‘Obviously, I can’t go right away, I’ve got to wait, as I’ll be called as a witness at Cassie’s inquest. Mind you, if they are as slow at organizing that as they are at finding out what happened to Petal, I might still be here at Christmas.’

  They sat at the kitchen table, which Simon hastily cleared of books and dirty tea cups, then, over tea and the buns, discussed the lack of effort the police had put into finding Petal. Like Molly, he didn’t think the police had been very thorough.

  She told him her idea about posters with a picture of Petal on them being printed, stuck up in post offices, railway stations and other public places.

  ‘I agree,’ Simon said. ‘A six-year-old isn’t that easy to hide. Someone must have seen her – unless, of course, she was killed and buried very soon after Cassie was killed.’

  ‘If the murderer was going to kill her, surely they would’ve done it at the same time as killing Cassie? It makes no sense to risk taking a child somewhere else,’ Molly said. ‘That’s why I think she’s alive.’

  ‘Then, logically, Cassie’s killer has to be someone who would care about Petal, like her father. If only we knew about him, and what happened between him and Cassie. It must have been something seriously bad for her to come and live in Sawbridge like a hermit,’ Simon said.

  Molly nodded in agreement. ‘Have the police tried to find her diary? Or who Cassie worked for on Thursdays? As I see it, there are many things they could follow up, but they haven’t bothered. I bet if Petal was the child of a policeman or a schoolteacher they wouldn’t have given up so quickly.’

  ‘What does your policeman friend say on the subject?’

  ‘I haven’t really had any opportunity to talk to him and, anyway, I think he’d tell me that was police business. But he did intervene the other day when my dad did this.’ She pointed to her face. ‘He warned Dad he was going to report him, and I think he scared him a bit, as Dad hasn’t been so nasty since. But then that’s what I came for advice on. I know it’s time for me to leave.’

  ‘You must,’ Simon said, nodding his head. ‘There’s a big, wonderful world out there waiting for you. Sawbridge is fine for a writer like me who wants quiet, but not for a pretty girl in her prime.’

  ‘I’m not pretty,’ she said.

  ‘I think, then, you must have a distorted mirror,’ he retorted, leaning forward and touching her cheeks lightly. ‘You are also bright, kind and adaptable. I know girls are conditioned into thinking that getting married and having babies is the be all and end all. But that isn’t so. Since the war ended there are so many opportunities arising for women. Everyone knows how well women coped when all the men were off in the army, and I don’t think any right-minded person would want to push you all back into the kitchen.’

  ‘You sound like Cassie,’ Molly said.

  ‘She made me aware of things I’d never considered before,’ he admitted. ‘I hadn’t ever noticed that women got a different deal to men, not until I met her. I suppose I was like every other male, brought up to think women were there purely to serve us.’

  ‘Yes, Cassie was quite militant. She raged on about women getting a lower wage than men when they did the same job. That was something I hadn’t even thought was unfair – I just accepted it.’

  ‘I got the impression she’d been pushed around, and that was why she was the way she was. Maybe she’d had a tough childhood, or it could’ve been her experiences since she had Petal. Mind you, she always evaded questions about her past. I’d have given anything to have got her full story. Did she tell you much about it?’

  Molly shook her head. ‘No, she could never be drawn on it. I asked her once where she’d met Petal’s father and she told me very bluntly that it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about.’

  Simon chuckled. ‘She could crush you with a couple of words, couldn’t she? But then she must’ve taken an awful lot of stick for having a mixed race baby. I don’t know why that should horrify people so much. I think I’d prefer a black one – they’re very cute, with a better finish than white babies.’

  Molly laughed at that. She’d always thought Petal was far more attractive than any other child of the same age she knew. ‘People seem to be scared of anything or anyone that’s a bit different. I heard a couple of women talking in the shop a while ago about someone they knew who was going to Italy for a holiday. “I wouldn’t want to eat any of that foreign muck,” one said. The other one said she’d be afraid she’d catch something nasty. You could go to Weston-super-Mare and catch something nasty, couldn’t you?’

  Simon smiled. ‘During my stint in the army, lots of the other chaps had a real phobia about trying any food different to what they’d had at home.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you in the army,’ said Molly with a smile. ‘You just don’t seem the type.’

  ‘You mean I look like a milk-sop?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she insisted. ‘It’s the guns thing, and needing to be very fit.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m stronger than I look and, for your information, I learned to use a shotgun at eleven and used to shoot rabbits and ducks. But if you’d seen the lads who were called up at the same time as me, you’d have thought none of us would make soldiers. But then it was the same in the First War – farm lads, bank clerks, carpenters and plumbers, not fighters. Few of us welcomed call-up, but we had no choice so we buckled down and made the best of it.’

  ‘It must have been scary thinking you might be killed.’

  ‘I never allowed myself to dwell on that. The army was the making of me. It made me more self-sufficient, I learned to value what it is to be English, and to be grateful to my parents for giving me such a good start in life. If you’d seen the plight of all the refugees in Germany at the end of the war! They’d lost everything – their homes, families, their health – they were hanging on by a thread. I tell you, Molly, it made me realize how lucky I was that England was safe and I had a home and family to go back to.’

  She was touched by his sincerity. ‘I can imagine. Cassie often talked about articles she’d read about how it was in Europe – all those displaced people, cities smashed to piece
s. Did you talk to her about it?’

  ‘Yes, I told her about seeing survivors of the concentration camps and all the horrors that went with that. It was good to get it off my chest, as it had preyed on my mind. She was incredibly well informed. Goodness knows how she became so.’

  ‘She used to go into the library and read the newspapers after she’d taken Petal to school. I asked her once why she hadn’t gone to university, because it was obvious she was bright enough to go. But she just laughed.’

  ‘I suspect she came from the kind of middle-class background where women don’t have work,’ he said. ‘She never spoke about it, but she had that sort of genteel manner, didn’t she?’

  Molly thought about this for a moment. ‘You might be right about that, but I’d say she went out of her way to hide it. She was such a mystery.’

  Simon smiled at her. ‘You’re a mystery, too. I can’t imagine why you haven’t been snapped up by someone and got a brood of little ones.’

  ‘My dad puts off any potential suitors.’ Molly laughed. ‘That’s yet another reason to leave home and why I needed advice.’

  ‘Is that about what to do, or where to go?’ he questioned.

  ‘Both, I think,’ said Molly, blushing, because she knew she sounded a bit drippy. ‘I’ve never done anything but work in the shop, and how do I find a place to stay and a job all at once?’

  ‘First, you get the job,’ he said. ‘Seeing as you know shop work, you could apply to Selfridges, Harrods – or even Fortnum & Mason, the posh grocery shop. Once you’ve been offered a job you could get a place in a girls’ hostel.

  ‘You make it sound so easy,’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘The only tough part is making the decision to go and sticking to it. It will all fall into place once you know that’s what you really want.’

  She got to her feet, suddenly aware she’d been there for over an hour. ‘I must go now, Simon, but thank you for the chat and the advice. Once the inquest is over, I’ll do it.’

  ‘You can come and talk to me any time, if it helps,’ he said.

  As Molly walked home, she realized that talking to Simon had had an effect similar to that talking to Cassie had always made on her. Both gave her the ability to see her life and the path ahead a little more clearly. He was such a nice man; a bit too posh and sophisticated for her – but a girl could dream.

  The inquest was held in Bristol a week later. Molly had to be there to give evidence about finding Cassie’s body. George took her in a police car because, although he didn’t have to give any evidence, he had to drop off some papers at Bristol’s Bridewell police station.

  At the inquest, the pathologist who performed the post-mortem confirmed that Cassie had died of a fractured skull, the result of her head being hit against the stone hearth several times with considerable force. He said that there were bruises on her neck, arms and a blow to her cheek consistent with a violent tussle prior to her being knocked down on to the hearth and the final blows which killed her.

  Molly had to confirm the date and time when she found Cassie’s body, and she was asked a few questions about Cassie’s private life. As Molly had never met any of Cassie’s other friends, she could offer no information about them. All she could give were her views on her friend’s character.

  As a result of the findings, the coroner recorded the death as Murder by a Person Unknown.

  Molly was glad of the verdict, as she thought it would force the police to renew the investigation, but when she met up with George afterwards for a cup of tea in a café near the Coroners Court, he sounded doubtful.

  ‘There’s a possibility that, if the killer is still holding Petal, it might make him panic and release her so he can get away,’ he said. ‘But it’s just as likely he’ll feel he must kill her, too.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Molly exclaimed.

  ‘I certainly hope it won’t come to that,’ George said. ‘Everything about Cassie and this case is so mysterious. I know you think the police have done nothing at all, but that’s not true. We can’t find a record of her birth, trace her parents, find out where Petal was born – nothing. We don’t think Cassandra March was her real name but, normally, when we make an appeal for information in the press with a photograph, someone comes forward. But no one has – well, except the four men who had got to know Cassie since she moved to Sawbridge.’

  ‘Were they the ones I told you about? Her lovers?’ Molly asked.

  ‘Yes. They’d all had a relationship with her, but they knew precious little about her. They came forward voluntarily, and they all had firm alibis for the time of her death, so we could rule them all out. From what we’ve gathered from them, Cassie wasn’t one for talking about herself and her past. She certainly didn’t tell any of them who Petal’s father was or why they weren’t together. Each one of the men said she was fun to be with, didn’t take life too seriously, that she was warm and amusing. I think we can assume that meant she was sexy, too.’

  Molly blushed. She had a feeling these men in Cassie’s life had cared more about the sex than anything else. ‘We all – you, me, the whole village – assume it’s Petal’s father who took her. But what if we’re all barking up the wrong tree?’

  ‘We’re assuming that because he’s the most likely candidate. For one thing, he must have been a bad lot for Cassie to be hiding away from him in Stone Cottage.’

  ‘But we don’t know that is who she was hiding from. Petal’s father could be just a man she slept with once and never saw again! Maybe the killer had some entirely different grievance with her? She’d run out on him, stolen his money, told his wife he’d been a naughty boy? Anything.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a good point. But can you tell me, Molly, if the murderer wasn’t Petal’s father, why would they take her with them? She would only make the culprit’s escape harder and, like you said earlier, it would be far less risky to kill her there in Stone Cottage.’

  ‘Okay, so if it was Petal’s dad, what do you think his plan was?’

  ‘I don’t think he had one. I suspect it was just instinct to flee with her.’

  ‘He was organized enough to take some clothes and her toy with him.’

  ‘Yes, well, maybe he stopped for long enough to think that through. And there are places that a black man could be invisible – an area like St Pauls, for instance,’ George said. ‘She’d be just another child of an immigrant. He could always say her mother had died or run off. So many people come and go there, no one would think anything of it. And they aren’t likely to tell tales on anyone either.’

  St Pauls was an area of Bristol quite close to the Coroners Court. With its elegant, large Georgian houses and close proximity to the city centre and the docks, it had once been a very desirable place to live. But back in the thirties the owners found their property too expensive to maintain and many sold it on to people who turned the houses into flats or lodgings. As there had always been a sizable proportion of black people in Bristol because of the docks, many of them gravitated towards St Pauls and its cheap rooms.

  Bristol had suffered a great deal of bomb damage during the war and this had made housing very scarce. The local council had concentrated its efforts on building new homes in the suburbs of Bristol, ignoring inner-city areas like St Pauls. At the same time, immigrants from the West Indies were flooding into England, too, lured by the prospect of work as nurses, as bus and train drivers, and in factories. Unable to find homes in the better parts of Bristol, they, too, made for St Pauls, and unscrupulous landlords were quick to exploit the situation.

  St Pauls was now a ghetto. The poorer tenants had no choice but to share their accommodation to pay their rent, and the ensuing overcrowding and unsanitary conditions were shameful.

  ‘And I suppose there is no accurate record of everyone living there either?’ Molly said.

  George shrugged. ‘It’s impossible to keep tabs on everyone,’ he said. ‘We think there must be many babies born after the parents arrived in England th
at were never registered, purely out of ignorance. People come to join relatives, then move on to other cities. The children might be in school for a year, then they’re gone. It’s just not possible to check up on them all. I just hope that whoever it is that’s got Petal – if someone has got her – he’s taking good care of her. Of course, he could’ve taken her to London, Birmingham, or Cardiff – anywhere with a sizable immigrant community – and finding her will be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

  ‘But Petal was a very bright little girl. I couldn’t imagine her not telling someone about her mother. And if she saw what happened to Cassie, she’s likely to be distraught,’ Molly said.

  ‘That has occurred to me,’ George said. He looked hard at her face, as if taking in the fading but still visible black eye. ‘It also occurs to me that you are avoiding discussing what you’re going to do about your violent dad!’

  Molly was embarrassed. ‘I’m planning to leave home as soon as I can get a job. I’d put off applying for any until after the inquest, and now there will be the funeral. As soon as that’s over, I’m going. But don’t tell anyone, because if it gets back to Dad, he’ll go mad.’

  ‘I thought perhaps you were waiting for the posh writer chap to sweep you off your feet.’

  Molly looked at him. Had someone seen her go into Simon’s flat? She couldn’t think of any other reason for him saying such a thing. ‘Simon’s just a friend,’ she said indignantly. ‘I’m surprised at you. I never had you down as a nosy parker.’

  ‘I’m not, but I have to confess I’ve been keeping an extra sharp eye on you, what with the murder, and your dad.’

  ‘That’s very kind, but unnecessary now. Thanks to you, Dad has calmed down. I like Simon, and it’s good to talk to him, because he’s the only other person in the village who liked Cassie. But if you want to keep your eye on someone after I’ve gone, I’d appreciate it if it was my mum. Could you do that?’