hope that they nurtured for two years, like the candle that burned in the Renshaws’ window, which Sarah would never allow to go out.
The phone rang in the next room. Fry watched Sarah Renshaw look immediately at the clock, staring at its face as if to imprint
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I
on her memory that one second of the day. Fry had seen her do ,1
it before, and knew without asking that it was a ritual connected
with Emma. Time was being counted down in the Renshaws’ lives.
Sarah Renshaw expected.
‘The one thing we can say is that it brought some feeling into ij
our lives,’ said Sarah. I?
‘What do you mean?’
‘Our marriage had become very cold, you see. There was very |.
little emotion between Howard and I. Whatever is between you f
at the beginning of a marriage sort of fades away over the years, so that you hardly notice it going. But, when it’s gone, you realize one day there’s something missing. It’s more of a sense of dissatisfaction.’
‘I see.’
‘And when this happened with Emma, it was suddenly different. It made me realize what was missing. After all that time, there was feeling again. There was emotion. And not just mine, I mean, but from Howard, too. I’d forgotten that he was capable of feeling things. But after Emma, he was a different man, the man I remembered marrying. You might not understand how comforting that was. No - more than comforting.’ if
‘It sounds almost as though you were pleased that your daughter ?1
went missing.’
‘No. That would be very shocking/ said Mrs Renshaw.
‘But?’
‘All I’m saying is that the past two years have brought us much closer together. There was a moment in the early days, when the police told us that they hadn’t been able to find Emma. I got very upset, more at the idea that they were going to give up and stop looking for her, rather than anything else. The thing I remember most is that Howard put his arm round me and gave me a hug. I don’t think he even knew he had done it, it was so natural, without any of the awkwardness I would have expected. But there was so much warmth in it, for me. I suppose that sounds trivial, doesn’t it?’
‘A small thing, but I suppose they can mean a lot.’
‘It did in this case. Because it was the first time Howard had touched me for years.’
Fry realized she had been listening to Sarah Renshaw with a growing numbness, as if a protective shell had gradually been
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forming over her own emotions. She was mentally putting on the body armour, slipping on an invisible bullet-proof vest. A police officer’s first priority was her own survival, unharmed. She didn’t need to take on even the smallest share of Sarah Renshaw’s guilt. ‘You started to have doubts about your husband?’ ‘Yes, when the remains were found in the churchyard. Howard seemed to think it was Emma, which was ridiculous. It was then I realized Howard believed she was dead.’
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m
36
Diane Fry read through all the Emma Renshaw files again. It was 1 the third time she’d been through them. More than ever, the gaps
in the enquiries seemed to stand out. Khadi Gupta had never been H interviewed. Perhaps the other students had never mentioned her,
because she hadn’t been one of their social group. But she had been in the photograph with Emma that the Renshaws had given the police.
The possibility that Emma had been given a lift to the station had been raised, but only in relation to Neil Granger and Alex Dearden, and a couple of other students she had known. There had been no attempt to eliminate the other options. In particular, no one seemed to have raised their eyes from their local area and looked north for the possibilities. No one had checked on Howard Renshaw’s movements that day.
Fry thought about the relationship between the Renshaws and their daughter. On Sarah’s side, it was characterized by guilt. Anything that happened would be because she had done something wrong. At least as regards her daughter. There was nothing that Emma could have done which would not have been Sarah’s fault in some way. Sarah had made sure of that, with her memory of rejecting her child at the breast. For heaven’s sake. How much self obsession and brooding had it taken for her to come up with that?
But Howard was more complicated. Or perhaps he was just more opaque. Fry recalled Gavin Murfin’s verdict on Howard. He had described him as a man whose brain was ahead of his mouth. Howard never said anything he hadn’t thought about first.
The Renshaws had been expecting Emma to arrive home that day. They had waited for her at Glossop railway station. But until
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then, had both of them been at home all day? No, Howard had said he’d been out on business.
What she’d really like would be to get Howard Renshaw in to make a statement, but without his wife present. Fry had listened to Sarah Renshaw enough.
It’s very sad/ said Ben Cooper later. He had hardly finished following up calls from the public about potential occupants of shallow graves before Fry had raised
