Beth dropped Megan home, then drove on to the police station alone. She was there for almost three hours, talking to the station sergeant for part of the time. He said that however strange the police and locals had found Reuben and the residents in his ‘commune’, they had never been any trouble until about eighteen months ago. They kept themselves to themselves, and were no threat to the community.
Since then, coinciding with Reuben’s absence, the police had been inundated with complaints. But there was little they could do as it was private property. A few months earlier, after finding themselves unable to contact Reuben to make him take responsibility for his rowdy guests, they had checked with the local council and the electricity board. They hoped that if the bills weren’t being paid, they might have some lever to work with. But the bills were being met monthly by direct debit through Reuben’s bank, so their hands were tied.
When Beth explained her interest in Reuben, the sergeant became more interested. He knew about the shooting in Bristol, but he hadn’t known that Susan Fellows was a former resident at Hill House.
Beth told him that she believed Reuben warranted an investigation into extortion, but the sergeant seemed doubtful. He said he had called at Hill House himself on a couple of occasions in the past and it had always struck him as a happy hive of industry, not a hideaway for lost souls. Along with the craft work sold at fairs and in shops all over Wales, the residents had grown their own vegetables, and Reuben had allowed local farmers to cut the hay in his two fields for their animals. He said that didn’t point to Reuben being a man with much to hide. As far as the sergeant was concerned, he just wanted Reuben to come back and evict his troublesome squatters. His only real concession was to say that now the man Tom had been arrested and charged with assault, he thought he could get a search warrant to check out the house and everyone living there.
Yet Beth got the distinct impression that all the policeman really hoped to gain by this was to see the squatters flee. He didn’t seem very anxious to pull anyone else in for questioning, much less help her.
Disheartened on leaving the police station, Beth went back to see Megan. She found her worried that the arrest up at Hill House might bring repercussions for her. She seemed aghast when Beth asked if she would be a witness for the defence, to put her side of how it was for Susan when she lived at Hill House.
‘It’s bad enough for me as it is,’ Megan said defensively. ‘Everyone round here thinks I’m a slapper, I haven’t got one real friend. I’d like to help Susan, but I’ve got the baby to think of.’
Beth talked to her for some time, pointing out that being a witness wasn’t going to reflect badly on her, and it would help Susan enormously. She also suggested Megan should go to the local council offices and see if she could get rehoused before the baby was born in April. Megan seemed unaware she could get help with rent, even grants for baby equipment. In fact, Beth felt she was a little simple and desperately in need of some guidance.
Then, just as Beth was about to leave, Megan suddenly began talking about the girl Zoë Reuben had brought into the house.
‘I never liked her,’ she said, becoming animated for the first time that day. ‘She was one of those posh girls from a rich family. I wondered what she wanted with Reuben, she weren’t his usual sort.’
‘How old was she and where did she come from?’ Beth asked.
‘I think she was about twenty-three. She came from Bath, her dad was a dentist. She looked down her nose at all of us, and she never did a hand’s turn about the place.’
Beth perked up. A dentist in Bath would be easy to trace. ‘Do you know her surname?’ she asked.
‘It was Fremantle,’ Megan said. ‘She showed me her passport once and it was in there. She was always boasting about how she’d been half-way round the world, and how she could always find a bloke to pay for her. I think that’s why she latched on to Reuben.’
‘So did she leave with him?’
Megan nodded and went on to say that this was after Susan left Hill House. ‘I guess Sue had had enough by then, pushed out of her bedroom, that tart always rubbing it in that she had Reuben now.’
‘Was she nasty enough to make Susan go what you called “loopy” again?’ Beth asked.
Megan looked thoughtful. ‘I didn’t see that, but then Sue weren’t one for scenes and shouting and bawling. She went really quiet, not saying a word, so she must have been really upset. It had come out of the blue, hadn’t it? Suddenly she was pushed out and someone young, prettier and all that took her place. I’d have been savage if I’d been her. But she was quite laid back about it. She just told us all one night while Reuben and Zoë were away somewhere that she was going. She left the next day.’
‘What did Reuben say when he found she’d gone?’
‘The bastard just laughed. He didn’t give a fuck. It wasn’t long after that he went off with Zoë and everything started to fall apart.’
‘Where did they say they were going?’ Beth asked.
‘They didn’t. Never said a word about going to anyone. Just upped and left. I never saw them again.’
Beth thought about that for a minute. ‘How did you all live after he’d gone then? Reuben brought in the money, didn’t he?’
‘We went and signed on at the Job Centre,’ Megan said. ‘We like explained to them that we had no money for food. So they gave us Giros. But then some of the others wanted more, and they claimed rent allowance too. That was when I got scared and left.’
‘What do you mean, you got scared?’
‘Well, it’s fraud innit?’ Megan replied, looking nervously at Beth. ‘Saying someone charges you rent when they don’t?’
There was an awful lot more Beth wanted to know. Details of where Reuben found Zoë, what Susan’s reaction had been at the first sighting of her, and how Susan was as she left the house. But she could see Megan had run out of steam, and it was so cold in her house that Beth felt as if she was turning into a block of ice. So after persuading the girl to go to the council, and the local welfare department, Beth left, leaving her card so that Megan could phone her if she thought of any more to tell her.
But as Beth lay soaking in a hot bath later, she felt dejected. She had a bigger picture now of how it was for Susan at Hill House, yet without meeting and talking to Reuben, what had she got? Only what she’d set out with yesterday, a grief-stricken woman joining a bunch of cranks and losers. Even if Megan did agree to be a witness, she wasn’t really sure the girl’s input would help that much. While she had said Susan was ‘loopy’ when she first arrived, she had recovered, become ‘mumsy’ and kept the place together. A woman who could stand for being replaced by a younger woman without causing a big scene, and leave quietly, looked sane enough. But then Susan had always been very good at hiding her true feelings about things.
Beth remembered how on one of their holidays, probably the third one because they’d been at senior school for a year, Susan had stiffened at the sight of a slightly older girl. They were in Stratford that afternoon, just hanging about by the river because they hadn’t got any money to spend.
‘Let’s go for a ride on our bikes,’ Susan said, grabbing Beth’s arm and pulling her along.
As it was normally Beth who made all the suggestions about what to do and where to go, she immediately guessed that this sudden need to rush off had to have something to do with the red-haired girl in checked Capri pants and a tight sweater.
Beth was no stranger to bullies herself, so after they’d got right away she asked Susan about the girl. ‘What’s she done to you?’ she asked point-blank.
Predictably, Susan pretended she didn’t know what Beth was talking about. It wasn’t until they’d reached their little camp in the woods where presumably she felt safe that she admitted she was frightened of the girl.
‘She calls me “Wrights”, she said with a sigh. ‘She got that from the register I suppose, it says Wright, S. Anyway, she’s always yelling out things like “Human Wrights” a
nd “Animal Wrights”, stupid stuff really, but it’s embarrassing. She’s in the year above me, her older sister used to work in Daddy’s office and he sacked her for something.’
‘Is that why she picks on you?’ Beth asked. She too got taunted about her father, and she knew how hurtful it could be.
‘I think so.’ Susan hung her head and Beth saw a tear rolling down her face.
‘Why don’t you confront her and ask why she takes it out on you?’ Beth asked. That was how she always tackled bullies, and mostly they backed off.
‘Daddy’s always sacking people,’ Susan whispered. ‘Mummy said most clever men aren’t very patient. I don’t suppose her sister did much wrong and I feel bad about it.’
‘Well, tell her that then,’ Beth said, thinking that was quite simple.
‘I can’t say anything about Daddy!’ Susan exclaimed, looking horrified.
‘Then just go up to her and ask why she’s mean to you, and point out you’ve done nothing to her.’
‘She’d hit me if I even walked up to her,’ Susan replied.
Beth couldn’t remember what happened beyond that. Maybe it was resolved, maybe the girl got bored with taunting Susan, because she never mentioned it again. But what stayed with Beth was a kind of wonder that even girls from ideal families could be picked on too.
Of course she knew now that the Wrights were far from ‘ideal’. Mr Wright was a bumptious, self-centred man, and his son took after him. They’d had such bad luck too. Susan wouldn’t have had anyone at home to confide in, if her mother was preoccupied with the grandmother. Keeping her thoughts, anxieties and feelings to herself must have become a way of life to her.
Beth reflected on this for a little while. However bad her own home life was, she had always had Serena and Robert to confide in. Also, she had a more volatile nature, mostly able to give as good as she got when angry or hurt. Gentle Suzie just didn’t have that safety valve.
After a late supper, Beth rang Roy, suddenly desperate to hear the sound of his voice. He was horrified she’d been struck by the man at Hill House, and she had the feeling he would have driven straight over to Wales to be with her right then if she’d needed him.
‘I’m fine, I really am,’ she said and went through everything she’d discovered during the day. ‘But could you do something for me? Could you possibly run a check on Zoë Fremantle? I know it’s a long shot, but we might be able to find Reuben through her.’
‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ he agreed.
Roy arrived at the police station at six on Sunday morning, and the first thing he did was to run a check on Zoë. He discovered she had one conviction for possession of cannabis, back in 1986 when she was eighteen and at art college, and a further conviction for shop-lifting the following year. In both cases she received a fine, and she gave her parents’ address as 19 Widcombe Hill, Bath.
If it hadn’t been so early in the morning, he would have telephoned Mr and Mrs Fremantle straight away to ask where their daughter was living now. But with time on his hands, and nothing more pressing to do, he thought he would just check the missing persons’ list.
She was there. Reported missing by her parents in May 1993.
When he opened the file on the girl he found very little police action had been taken, and that appeared to be understandable. Zoë had moved away from home on innumerable occasions – by her parents’ own admission she was wild, bad at keeping in touch, and she only stayed in any job long enough to get money to go travelling. The year before she was reported missing, she’d been in Thailand. Enquiries had been made among her old friends in Bath, but no leads had been found. In the light of reports from some of these old friends that Zoë didn’t get on too well with her parents, her lack of communication with them didn’t seem in any way suspicious.
Roy studied the photograph of Zoë on file. It was taken on a beach, with her wearing a bikini top and a sarong. She was a very pretty girl, with long blonde hair and blue eyes, around five feet eight and slender. He wondered what a girl like her, from a wealthy background and with a good education, would have in common with an ageing hippy. Drugs were the one thing which sprang to mind.
Roy then ran a check on Reuben Moreland, and found nothing. But he had a hunch that wasn’t the man’s real name anyway.
He thought about it for a while. While there was no evidence that this man had committed any crimes, Susan had on her own admission handed over all her property willingly, just as the others had done. But Moreland was certainly a dubious character, and Roy’s long police service had taught him that such men usually warranted investigation. The ‘commune’ in Wales could very well be a cover for drug-dealing. Maybe Zoë, with her looks and good background, had encouraged him to expand this further. As she was now missing, Roy had a first-class excuse for poking around a little more.
Later on that morning, after ringing Mrs Fremantle and discovering Zoë was still missing, Roy had a consultation with his governor, who gave him permission to visit her parents in Bath.
*
Driving back from Bath to Bristol later that day, Roy felt saddened by the Fremantles’ lack of real concern for their missing daughter. Their attitude appeared to be that Zoë owed them for having been born into an elegant Georgian home and educated at the best private schools. They had reported her missing in May 1993 only because she hadn’t contacted them around the time of her birthday at the end of April. This, they said peevishly, was out of character.
Roy had heard a litany of Zoë’s failings, her ‘rough’ friends, her endless travelling and her failure to get a ‘proper’ job. The last time her parents had spoken to her was New Year’s Day 1993, when she’d phoned them from a pub. They didn’t know where it was, or who she was with. They said they’d never heard of Reuben Moreland, and then they didn’t know any of her friends’ names. Roy had heard similar stories from other parents with missing children, but all of them had made some effort privately to find their children, if only to reassure themselves they were alive and well, and to send a message that they were concerned.
The Fremantles could easily afford to hire a private investigator, but they hadn’t done so. Their excuse was ‘We assume she is leading a life-style we wouldn’t approve of.’ Roy could hardly blame Zoë for staying away, if all she ever got when she came home were recriminations. He fervently hoped she was having a good time somewhere like Thailand, preferably having dumped Reuben for someone younger and less manipulative.
He thought it would be divine justice if the man arrived back in England with his tail between his legs to find his house in ruins. He thought Beth would like that too. She hadn’t sounded like herself last night on the phone, but then he supposed it wasn’t reasonable for anyone to sound bouncy when they’d been punched in the face earlier in the day.
Although he had never had the opportunity to observe Beth working with any other client but Susan, he sensed she had never gone right out on a limb as she was doing with this one. It seemed to be more than just the childhood friendship thing too, almost as if she was working through her own past and problems as she raked through Susan’s.
Roy considered himself to be a simple man. Even as a young man he hadn’t yearned for fast cars, foreign travel or wealth, all he’d wanted was to be a good policeman, husband and father. The death of Peter, his son, and the subsequent break-up of his marriage a couple of years later, had come close to breaking him. For quite some time he’d constantly asked himself, Why me? He had met so many men who were almost oblivious to their children and unfaithful to their wives, but such things didn’t happen to them. He still had no answer to why it had to be his son who had died, and he still mourned him. But in time he had come to see that it was only Peter who held Meg and him together, that their relationship was one of habit, rather than like minds, passion or even real friendship.
But with Beth he felt all that and more. She was on his mind constantly, just a day without a phone call or seeing her seemed too long. He admired her ke
en brain, her often wry sense of humour – even her coolness excited him.
He wanted her passionately. He dreamed nightly of those long, slender legs, her narrow hips and her glorious black hair, but he knew too that he must wait for her to make the first move. But it was so hard waiting, knowing she was afraid because some man out there had hurt her badly. The need to know was tearing him apart, yet he was also scared that once she did tell him, he might not be able to make it better for her.
Beth opened the downstairs door at Roy’s ring right on seven o’clock and went out on to the landing to look down the stairwell.
He was carrying a bunch of white lilies and a bottle of wine, but it was the weariness in his step that touched her most. She had got home from Wales just after twelve that lunch-time, and had a little snooze, and apart from her sore jaw she was feeling fine. Roy on the other hand had worked a twelve-hour shift.
‘Hullo, Mr Detective Inspector,’ she called out.
‘Hullo, Miss Defence,’ he called back, and managed to bound up the last few steps. ‘Oh shit, what a nasty bruise!’ he exclaimed, reaching out and touching it tenderly. ‘I hope the Welsh police put him in leg irons and beat him with their truncheons.’
Beth laughed. ‘It looks worse than it is, as my mother always said when Father clobbered her. But every cloud has a silver lining. If I hadn’t had to call the police there, I wouldn’t have got them interested in checking out Reuben’s house.’
‘I’ve got a bit of news on that score,’ Roy said, giving her a hug. ‘But let me have a drink first.’
Beth made him sit down on the couch and poured him a glass of wine. ‘We’ve got fillet steak, salad and baked potatoes,’ she said. ‘Everything’s ready but the steak, that only takes a couple of minutes. So just say when you want it, you look very tired.’