‘Then I looked ’em up on the electoral register and the last census,’ Fathom went on. ‘He’s Derek and the wife’s Pamela June. No one else living there, just them and the girl.’
‘Well done, lad,’ Slider said, and if there was a note of surprise in his voice – because Fathom had not exactly shone like true specie so far at Shepherd’s Bush – Fathom didn’t seem to notice it.
‘Zellah Wilding,’ Atherton said. ‘It sounds positively Brontëesque. It’s an untamed beauty with flowing raven locks, rampaging about the moors in a thunderstorm.’
‘I wonder why they haven’t missed her,’ Slider said, ‘if she’s been gone two nights.’ Knowing the name only made him feel sadder. The unknown victim was now much more of a person: a person whose fate had become his intimate business, but whom he would never meet.
‘Maybe they have,’Atherton said. ‘You know Mispers don’t pass stuff along that quickly when it’s older girls. Or maybe she was staying away somewhere. It’s still school holidays.’
‘True,’ Slider admitted. ‘Well, someone’s got to go and tell them. Want to volunteer?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to go?’ Atherton wheedled.
‘I’ve got too much bumph to clear. You’re it. Go thou – and think like me.’
The houses on the floral estate were small, neat, almost cottagey, red brick with white trim and good-sized gardens front and back. Now that they were in private hands, they had lost some of their uniformity, as owners tried to obliterate their council past by changing the doors and windows in usually inappropriate ways, tacking on porches and bays, and in some cases even applying stone-cladding (for which Atherton knew Slider felt the death penalty ought to be re-introduced).
He conceived an embryo of respect for the owner of number 2 Violet Street when he saw that the new double-glazed windows had been made in size and style to match what they replaced, and the new front door was seemly and wooden and painted a modest dark green, in contrast to the all-glass, aliframed horrors of its neighbours.
The front garden had a neatly trimmed privet hedge, a small square of lawn, and a circular bed of well-tended roses. Behind there would be an unusually large garden, because the street was laid out at an angle, and this house benefited from the corner. Also because of the corner there was a separate side entrance to the back garden, shut off by a high wooden gate. As he got out of the car, the roaring of the traffic down the Westway – as this section of the A40 was called – became apparent. Along this side of the dual carriageway, a row of houses had been demolished back in the eighties for a road development that had never happened, and there was now a strip of wild land, the lost plots reverting to nature. The rear garden of number two backed on to this strip. Atherton wondered how a careful gardener would feel about having to live right next to a riot of seeded grass, bramble and willow-herb, all anxious to escape to civilisation. Well, they would have something worse to think of now.
From the other side of the car stepped Connolly, a uniform who had joined Slider’s team as a temporary replacement for Swilley and was keen to transfer permanently to the CID. She was from Clontarf originally, and though ten years in Putney had muted her Dublin accent, the cadences of her home town would never be eliminated from her speech. She was a green-eyed blonde, almost too petite to be a copper; attractive – though Atherton told himself she was not in the same class as Kathleen ‘Norma’ Swilley, who was away having a baby in the inconsiderate manner of womankind and, incidentally, breaking Atherton’s heart. Not that he wasn’t happy with Emily: it was just that he hated to see a work of art despoiled. Norma pregnant was like the Mona Lisa with a moustache scribbled on it.
He had brought Connolly along on Slider’s orders, because sometimes the bereaved wanted a woman around at a time like this; but on this occasion her uniformed presence, standing beside him, administered such a shock to the pleasant-looking woman who opened the door that he half regretted not coming alone.
‘Mrs Wilding?’ he asked as calmingly as he could. It was hard to inject warning, regret, compassion, trustworthiness, determination, honour and accessibility into two words, but he did his best.
She was a short woman, probably in her early- to mid-forties – it was hard to tell, because she was overweight, with a round belly straining at the smart grey trousers, and large breasts pushing out the pink cashmere vee-neck jumper. Nevertheless, there was no missing that she had been a beauty once. The face still had it; the eyes, large, blue and heavy-lidded, had known their power. She had full make-up, well applied, and her hands were manicured, with painted nails; she wore a heavy gold necklace, gold earrings and several diamond rings. But her feet, in velvet slippers, showed she was not dressed to go out. This was a woman who liked to look her best at all times. Her hair, cut in a jaw-length bob, was greying at the temples, and the colour was probably helped, but had obviously once been corn-blonde, and was the same texture as the victim’s: strong and heavy, and holding together as it moved, like an elastic bell. It was an indication that they were at the right address.
Mrs Wilding had automatically sized Atherton up and begun to react to him as a man, before her eyes leapt past him to Connolly’s uniform, and her inviting smile spontaneously aborted for a look of alarm.
‘Oh my God, it’s Zellah,’ she said. ‘What’s happened? Is it an accident? Is she all right? It’s a car accident, isn’t it? They went out in the car after all! Oh my God, what will her father say? He didn’t want her to go anyway, not to sleep over, but you can’t keep them locked up at their age, can you? Sophy’s only just got her licence, and Daddy stipulated they mustn’t go out in the car without a grown-up. He said Sophy was too young, but her father gave her a car as soon as she passed the test, and you can’t argue with how other people bring up their children. But Zellah promised she wouldn’t let Sophy drive her.’ She was wringing her hands now. Strange how people really did that, Atherton thought. ‘How bad is it? Where is she? Oh, how will I ever tell her father? He dotes on her!’
Atherton managed at last to interrupt the flow. ‘Mrs Wilding, we’re from Shepherd’s Bush police station. I’m DS Atherton and this is PC Connolly. May we come in?’
A new apprehension came to her. ‘Detectives?’ She stared from one face to the other. ‘Not drugs,’ she almost whispered. ‘Not our Zellah. Say it’s not drugs. This’ll kill him.’
But she let them in. There was a tiny hallway with stairs going straight up in front of them, a sitting room to the right, and the kitchen straight ahead, with a glimpse of the sunlit garden through its window. There was a smell of washing powder in the air, and the chugging of a washing-machine out of sight in the kitchen. Mrs Wilding walked before them in a rigid, apprehensive way into the sitting room. It was neatly but cheaply furnished, everything clean and polished, with a small upright piano occupying one chimney alcove, knick-knacks and ornaments along the mantelpiece and on shelves in the other alcove, and framed photographs on the walls instead of pictures. Central on the left-hand wall was the largest of them, head and shoulders of a remarkably pretty girl with shoulder-length, corn-blonde hair, smiling straight at the camera. The shirt collar and striped tie visible in the vee of the navy sweater said that this was an enlargement of a school photo. Atherton was impressed. Who looks good in their school photo? Only a real beauty.
‘Mrs Wilding, is that Zellah?’ he asked gently.
She was standing in the middle of the room, staring at them blankly. New and different fears were coming and going in her face. Her lips moved but she seemed for the moment to be out of speech. She nodded.