or four, with her parents, a loving, happy, family group. The second had been taken a few years later. Karen stood beside her father, he had his arm round her shoulders. He smiled down at her with fond pride and she gazed out at the camera with a confident, open, trusting look.
The Chief asked if there were any recent likenesses of Karen, for use in the investigation. Christine produced a school photograph taken at the end of Karen’s last term in Wychford, together with some snapshots from a trip the three of them had made to the sea one Sunday in late September.
‘One other thing,’ Kelsey told Ian, ‘and I’m afraid not a very pleasant one. I have to ask you to identify the body.’
Ian made no reply but gave a couple of nods. His face was calm and controlled.
But some little time later, as he came out into the mortuary corridor, white-faced, shaken and trembling, all calm had forsaken him and he was desperately struggling to retain the last vestiges of control.
Yellow Pages and the Wychford telephone directory between them supplied the name P. A. Clayton, a manufacturer of electronic components with a factory on the Wychford industrial estate and a private address on a modern exclusive housing development on the western edge of town. As it was a Saturday morning the Chief directed Sergeant Lambert to drive straight to the private address.
A car was drawn up in the gravelled turning-circle by the front door; a medium-sized, cream-coloured saloon, a couple of years old.
Lambert’s ring at the bell was answered by Mrs Clayton, looking tense and flustered at the sight of them. She wore an apron over expensive, dowdy clothes, she glanced uncertainly from one to the other. An enticing, savoury smell of cooking drifted out from the kitchen quarters.
The Chief disclosed his identity and her expression grew even more anxious. He asked if the P. A. Clayton listed in the phone book was in fact Paul Clayton. She told him that he was.
‘You’re both acquainted with a Mr and Mrs Roscoe who act as foster parents for the local authority?’
She frowned. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘I wonder if we might speak to your husband?’
‘He’s not here,’ she told them. ‘He’s over in his office on the industrial estate. He always goes there on a Saturday morning to catch up on the paperwork.’ She fell silent for a moment and then burst out: ‘What do you want him for? What’s all this about?’
Her look of anxiety deepened as Kelsey studied her without speaking. At last he said, ‘We’re making general inquiries with reference to the death of a girl who was recently fostered by the Roscoes.’
Her mouth dropped open, she took a pace back. ‘Karen Boland?’ she asked. Her tone was agitated.
‘Yes, Karen Boland. Your husband’s name has been mentioned to us as someone who knew her. You will appreciate that we have to follow up every lead. We’d like to ask your husband a few questions.’
‘How did she die?’ She clasped her hands. ‘How did it happen?’
‘I think we’d better come inside,’ Kelsey said. She led the way in silence into the kitchen, turned to face them.
‘How did she die?’ she asked again. She appeared on the verge of tears. ‘When did it happen?’
‘There’ll be a post-mortem later today,’ Kelsey told her. ‘We’ll know more about it then.’
She grasped the back of a chair. ‘However she died it couldn’t have been anything to do with Paul. He never saw her after she left the Roscoes and went back to the children’s home. I’m certain of that, he gave me his sacred word he’d never see her again.’
Kelsey made no reply and she burst out again with increasing agitation: ‘It wasn’t Paul’s fault that he got mixed up with her, it was all her doing. That’s the kind of girl she was, sly, deceitful, absolutely no good–that’s why she was taken into care in the first place. She’d been in the same kind of trouble before, only much worse, over in Okeshot. Mrs Roscoe told me about it after the business with Paul, I never knew a word about it before. I’d never have let her set foot in the house if I’d had the faintest idea.’
Her face had taken on a deep rosy tinge, her eyes looked glassy bright. ‘Mrs Roscoe told me after Karen left that she was glad to see the back of her, she’d never liked the way she looked at Mr Roscoe.’ She grasped the chair so hard that it swung back on its legs, almost toppling over. Without pausing in her flow she jerked the chair back into position. ‘Any man, any man at all, I don’t care who he is, or how good a husband he is, can be led astray if a girl’s determined enough.’ Her voice brimmed over with vehemence and animus.
Still Kelsey said nothing. ‘She wasn’t under age,’ Mrs Clayton continued in a rush, by now half sobbing. ‘You can’t pin that on Paul. She was turned sixteen back in the spring. I know that for a fact.’
She broke off suddenly, she looked disconcerted by his silence. She made a strong, visible effort to take a grip on herself. The colour remained unabated in her flaming cheeks. ‘Of course it’s a terrible thing to have happened,’ she said in a voice she strove to keep level. ‘A young girl to die like that, all her life ahead of her.’
‘Like what?’ Kelsey asked.
She gave him a blank stare.
‘To die like what?’ he repeated.
She glanced uncertainly from one to the other. ‘You said there’s going to be a post-mortem.’ Thought raced behind her eyes. ‘That always means something’s wrong. And you wouldn’t be making inquiries if she’d died a natural death. Something bad must have happened to her.’
She appeared to have regained some command of herself. She put a hand up to her face, smoothed her hair. She drew a long, sighing breath and glanced up at the wall clock. She seemed all at once to return to her surroundings, an awareness of the day, the hour, the next chore.
‘I must go,’ she said in a lighter, more everyday voice, with a touch of conventional social apology. She removed her apron. ‘I have to pick my daughter up from her dance class, I mustn’t be late. And my son’s at the sports centre, I have to pick him up too.’
She went into the hall and took down a camelhair jacket from a peg. She slipped it on, tied a light blue, flowered headscarf under her chin and picked up a pair of gloves. Apart from the rosy flush still staining her cheeks she seemed perfectly in control.
Sergeant Lambert followed the Chief to the front door. ‘We’ll get along out of your way, then,’ Kelsey told Mrs Clayton. She gave a little hostessy nod and stepped aside for them to leave. She followed them out and closed the door.
She walked towards the cream-coloured car and stood beside it, watching with a detached, courteous air as the two men got into their own vehicle. She raised a hand in a gesture of farewell as Lambert drove off, then she got into her car and switched on the engine. Kelsey glanced back and saw the vehicle slip into motion after a conspicuously jerky start.
The Roscoes’ house was not far away but in a neighbourhood markedly less fashionable. A
