Off the bypass, he found plenty of signs for the hospital. But it was a big, sprawling place and he had to ask for directions at the front desk.
When he arrived at his destination, Madeleine Betts was waiting for him in an office where they could talk privately. She looked at Murfin suspiciously, but he was used to that. She made a fuss about inspecting his ID as a civilian support officer and didn’t seem impressed.
‘They let me ask questions and write things down,’ he said. ‘But I can’t nick anyone now, more’s the pity.’
‘Do sit down,’ she said, with a frown.
‘You know, I don’t like hospitals much,’ said Murfin as he eased himself into a chair.
‘Too many sick people, I suppose?’
‘No, I think it’s all the rushing about. I can’t stand accidents, or emergencies.’
She smiled thinly at his attempts to break the ice. And there was definitely ice, a couple of inches of frost at least. Madeleine Betts looked like one of those women who’d been disappointed in life so often that she’d forgotten how to smile. Murfin had met quite a few of them.
He coughed and pulled out his notebook, brushing ineffectually at a small stain on the cover.
‘It’s about Reece Bower,’ he said, lifting a corner of his eye to catch the flicker of a reaction sparked by the name.
‘I thought it might be,’ she said.
‘When his wife disappeared, you told the investigating officers that the two of you had ended your relationship some time previously.’
‘Yes. Annette had left him, you see. Reece ended our relationship, so that she would come back to him. I’d moved to work in a different department by then, and I no longer saw Reece at all.’
Murfin nodded. Her wording was almost exactly the same as the statement she’d given ten years ago. He’d checked it before he set off. He was wondering whether Betts had written it down somewhere, maybe in a diary. No one’s memory was quite that good. Had she prepared her replies in advance? It was a pity he couldn’t threaten to take her back to the station. He’d already told her he wasn’t able to do that.
‘And is that still true, love?’
‘I’m not your love,’ she replied sharply.
Murfin smiled. He heard that a lot these days.
‘There’s time yet,’ he said.
Betts scowled and pursed her lips. Murfin squinted at her curiously. She wasn’t his type at all. Too humourless. But he supposed there could a certain attraction about the cool blonde look, the toned muscles and stylish clothes. There had been an attraction for Reece Bower at least.
‘So have you been seeing Reece?’ he repeated.
‘No, I haven’t seen him since then.’
‘Any contact at all?’
‘I just said—’
‘No, you said that you hadn’t seen him. You might have spoken to him on the phone, sent a few text messages back and forth, that sort of thing.’
‘No.’
‘So... Mr Bower’s phone wouldn’t show any contact with you recently at all,’ said Murfin. ‘Is that right?’
‘Yes.’
He turned a page of his notebook and made a note on a new sheet, forming the words slowly and carefully, then staring doubtfully at them for a moment before adding a large question mark. Madeline Betts watched every movement he made with an expression of horrified fascination.
‘Have you found him?’ she said finally.
‘Who, Reece? No, love.’
Of course, she wanted to ask whether his phone had been found, but she daren’t do that. It would look too obvious.
Murfin beamed again. He liked people to be in doubt. And this woman had underestimated him from the start.
17
Ben Cooper was waiting to make an awkward right turn in front of the bookshop in Bakewell. The road up the hill past the church reached Burton Moor, the only route to Over Haddon without heading further on towards Monyash.
From the top, he was looking down over Lady Manners School towards the house near Haddon Road.
In the valley, Haddon Hall nestled among the trees where the River Wye meandered through water meadows to join the Derwent. Haddon had been abandoned by the Vernon family as their residence in the early eighteenth century in favour of Belvoir Castle. The result was an unspoilt medieval mansion, which had remained unmodernised throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was a bit of a miracle that it had escaped the fate of so many grand country houses.
The Vernons had sometimes exercised their power through crude and violent methods. In the ancient ‘trial by touch’, a suspected murderer was made to touch the body of the victim. If the suspect was guilty, the victim would begin to bleed again. It was said that one local peasant panicked so much at the prospect that he tried to run away — only to be pursued by a posse and lynched in a field near Ashford-in-the-Water. The Peak District had been like the Wild West in those days.
Over Haddon was a small village perched on a ledge above Lathkill Dale, with a population of less than three hundred. At the bottom of a narrow road running down from the village, a clapper bridge crossed the Lathkill.
Cars parked along the side of these narrow village roads made driving a hazard. When two cars met from opposite directions, it was sometimes a test of politeness as to who would gave way. After three o’clock on a weekday, it was best to avoid the villages altogether. School-out time meant lines of extra cars as parents waited to collect their children.
The Swanns’ home was an eighteenth century stone cottage, with a conservatory added and a path leading into a cottage garden. Tubs and planters clustered round the front door and on a paved terrace.
Cooper had been obliged to phone and make an appointment with Frances Swann. Often he could call on people at work, but she was a teacher and schools were sensitive about the police coming on to the premises unless it was necessary. She had taken the opportunity of a free period to come home.
‘Thank you for seeing me, Mrs Swann. I understand you teach at Lady Manners School.’
‘That’s correct. I’m in the Modern Languages department.’
Cooper didn’t ask what languages she taught. He had no doubt she was fluent in several languages that he had never managed to learn. He also knew that being in the Lady Manners catchment area was one of the reasons that property in this area tended to be so attractive to buyers, and therefore expensive.
Frances Swann had sharply defined cheekbones, which might have made her face look attractive when she was younger. But age had narrowed her eyes and made her lips purse in disapproval. Cooper imagined she could be quite fierce, a forbidding presence in the classroom, a stern instructor if he got his French conjugations wrong.
Cooper was glad Gavin Murfin wasn’t here with him. Frances Swann would probably have disapproved.
She led him through into a dining room. They passed a kitchen with a Belfast sink and an Esse range set into a deeply recessed fireplace. The dining room had a wood-burning stove, though it looked more expensive than the one in his own cottage at Foolow.
Mrs Swann’s manner was brisk, and Cooper got the impression she would like to get him out of the house as soon as possible.
‘I’m afraid we haven’t heard anything from Reece, if that’s what you’re going to ask me,’ she said.
‘Well, that was one question,’ he said.
‘I have no idea why he should have left Naomi. We’re not privy to what goes on over there now, not the way we were when my sister was still here.’