Florence had passed her driving test years before, in a fleeting show of independence from her mother, but had never owned a car. When she had discovered the cost of buying and running a vehicle, she had thought better of it, and in any case she didn’t need one. A bus took her each morning from the stop at the end of the road right to the top of the lane that led to Bartholomew Manor, and a bus brought her home each evening. There was a small general store and post office in the village which answered most of her needs. She wasn’t much of a traveller. Once a year she went to London to have lunch with an old friend from schooldays, and for this she splurged on a taxi to Darsham station where she caught the train to Liverpool Street. A car would be a nuisance rather than a help, and an expensive one at that.
As good sense overcame her initial fears, Miss Girling found herself increasingly puzzled. Someone, somehow, must have found out the details of her unused driving licence and had been driving around pretending to be her.
She had read about identity theft in the paper and had heard them talking about it on Radio 4 but she had no idea how it was done. She thought it had something to do with internet banking but she didn’t do that; she used the branch of Barclays in Southwold. In fact, she didn’t use the internet at all. She used the telephone if she wanted to get in touch with anyone. So how could someone have stolen her identity? A mistake must have been made by someone – perhaps because she hadn’t used her licence, they’d issued her number twice? It wouldn’t have surprised her in the least. It was bound to be due to computers in some way or another, even if it wasn’t the internet.
She held a profound mistrust of computers. She knew that people younger than her, which meant virtually everyone at Bartholomew Manor, would dismiss her views, call her a dinosaur and point to the benefits computers were bringing to mankind. Name one, Florence Girling thought sourly. There was nothing they could supply that she wasn’t happy to do without. For her, the benefits of technology had ended with the invention of the wireless and the telephone.
It was not a view she thought it wise to share at work. Not since everything had changed at Bartholomew Manor. Once she had left home each morning full of enthusiasm for the day ahead. She had spent twenty entirely enjoyable years in what had been the most traditional private secondary school in this part of the country, helping to educate what she was certain would be the cream of the young men and women of their generation.
But over the last few months her job at Bartholomew Manor had become a nightmare. Once she had taught Geography and helped with the administration. Now she didn’t teach at all; indeed, there weren’t any pupils left to teach. Local families had all taken their children away.
Her job now was a sort of dogsbody role, and consisted mainly of showing prospective parents around. She was ashamed of the dilapidated state of the main school. The classrooms needed a thorough overhaul – painting, new furniture and general updating. Even she could see that. The only area where money had been spent was on the technology suite the new owners were so proud of. She had so far managed to mask her alarm at the computer-focused curriculum the school now offered, and tried to show to the prospective parents a pride she didn’t feel in the gleaming equipment. Not that there were many of them and none of them seemed to want to send their children there. She didn’t blame them. As far as she could understand it, the school seemed now to be relying on an intake of new students shortly to come from abroad.
The new owners remained a mystery to her, but she was certain they were foreigners, though she couldn’t have said where they were from. The Head was a strange man, much given to philosophising, with his assistant, the oddly named Cicero, whom she found sinister and frightening. She felt increasingly out of place and she sensed that they were just waiting for an opportunity to get rid of her. But she had decided to hang on as long as she could, since she knew they would have to pay her something to leave and she was also due her pension. Although she somehow sensed that if they moved against her first, she might be left with nothing at all.
30
Miss Girling knew most of Southwold like the back of her hand, but the address she had been given for the police station was a road on the outskirts of the town, on an unattractive 1950s housing estate which it had taken her two buses to reach. She got off the bus, cautiously looking round her. She dreaded meeting anyone she knew as she didn’t want to have to explain that she was out here visiting the police.
As she walked from the bus stop, looking for the number she had been given, she could see nothing that looked like her idea of a police station. She remembered the old one in the centre of the town, which had been closed for several years now. It had been a rather imposing red-brick double-fronted building with steps up the middle and a blue lamp over the door. But this was a street of single-storey buildings, some with small gardens in front and others with concrete for parking cars.
She found the right number house with no difficulty. The strange thing about it was that it looked very little different from all the other houses in the street except that its windows were covered with a fine metal mesh. As she approached, she could see that the building had been extended considerably, using all the space where the back garden had once been. Its front garden was concreted over and two cars were parked there, one an ordinary-looking silver car and one a police car. She walked up to the front door and noticed with some relief that underneath the bell was a small plate that read SUFFOLK POLICE. She rang the bell and the door clicked open.
Inside was a square hall with a low table and a couple of upholstered upright wooden-armed chairs – rather like the visitors’ chairs in a hospital ward. In one of these a young woman was sitting reading a magazine. As Miss Girling came in, she put the magazine on the table and stood up.
‘Miss Florence Girling?’ she asked smiling. ‘Do come in. I’m Diane Kingly. Thank you for coming. I hope you had no difficulty finding this place. It is a bit off the beaten track, I’m afraid.’
‘I had no difficulty,’ replied Florence, somewhat taken aback by the warmth of the welcome.
‘Well, if you’ll follow me, we’ll go somewhere a bit more comfortable.’
Florence followed the young woman along a corridor past several closed doors until she led Florence into a comfortable sitting room with chintz-covered armchairs and a two-seater sofa. Against the wall by the window was a small polished dining table on which stood a cafetière of coffee, cups and saucers and a plate of biscuits.
‘I should think you could do with a cup of coffee after trekking out here,’ said the young woman. ‘Do you take sugar? Biscuit?’
The coffee organised and delivered, the young woman sat down. By now Florence Girling had had a chance to sum her up. She looked most unlike a policewoman but Florence was modern enough to know that they came in all shapes and sizes these days. The young woman was wearing slim black trousers with ankle boots, and a soft grey cowl-necked sweater. Her hair was a shiny brown and held by a clip at the back of her head. She had very blue eyes.
‘Please call me Diane,’ said Peggy Kinsolving. ‘It’s a very strange story about your driving licence being found in Oswestry. Have you brought it with you and the letter I sent you, just as formal identification?’
Florence scrabbled in her bag and produced both documents. ‘Can you tell me what this is about? You see, I don’t actually own a car, and I haven’t driven one for over twenty years. So my driving licence has hardly ever been out of my purse since I got it and I’ve never been to Oswestry.’