Now she was fighting for an answer, and it was almost as important to know why she had to fight for it as to win the answer itself. So although it would be the easiest thing in the world to say, simply: 'I want you to say what you think, Mr Hedges', that wasn't good enough any more, because it would only win half the battle, and she needed to win both halves now.
So again it had to be instinct, the heart and not the head.
'Mr Hedges ... I've got a difficult job to do. I'm not sure that it isn't impossible - to be honest.'
Bad word - wrong word. She wasn't being honest.
'A dirty job.'
Better word. And ex-Detective Chief Inspector Hedges knew all about dirty jobs, too.
'She walked out of the front door. And she disappeared off the face of the earth - '
She could have put it better than that: the deadpan police reports, the dozens of minutes of inquiries by dozens of different policemen, all had the garlic smell of death on them, the smell of killing.
'Did he kill her, Mr Hedges? Could he have killed her?'
Even that wasn't enough. But did she have to give him everything, leaving herself nothing?
'He could have, Mrs Fisher. Physically, he could have.' He stared at her. 'Unless you have an alibi for him.'
'But you think he didn't?'
Still he wouldn't give her anything.
'Yet you treated it as murder from the start, Mr Hedges.'
'No.' He relaxed. 'We got to it quickly, that's all.'
She had made a mistake - she had let him get away from her.
He shook his head. 'Cases like this, Mrs Fisher - you have to bear in mind that a lot of murders start with missing persons. Or, to put it another way, every missing person is a potential murder victim. So every report, it's not just kicked under the carpet - it's taken seriously.
'On the other hand, having said that, it is a matter of the actual circumstances. With a young kid, for instance, even if there's a history of his running off, I used to get moving straight off. But with a woman ... saving your presence, Mrs Fisher ... you get quite a lot of women just sloping off, one way or another, and there are inquiries you've got to make first. Like, if there's been a row ... or if there's another man - you can't just jump straight in.'
'But this wasn't like that.'
'No, it wasn't - precisely. She just went off for a bit of a walk, and she said she wasn't going for long.' He paused, staring reflectively at a point just above Frances's head. 'She didn't even take her bag with her. ..'
'And it started to rain.'
'That's right ... It came on to rain quite heavily, and she only had a light coat with her.' Another reminiscent pause. 'It was the cleaning woman phoned us in the end -
she'd waited long past .her time, and she wanted to get home. But she couldn't leave the little one all by herself.'
Jane Butler, asked six. One of the identical peas. Not at school because she had flu.
Mother had sat up with her part of the night, which was why she had wanted a breath of fresh air...
He focused on her. 'But you know the details, of course.'
And there weren't really many details to know at that, thought Frances. In fact, that was the whole trouble, the beginning and the end of it: Mrs Madeleine-and-all-the-rest Butler, aged 41, had stepped out for a breath of air after having spent a disturbed night with a sick child, and it had started to rain, and she hadn't been seen again from that November day to this one, nine years later. And so far as the local CID and the Special Branch had been able to establish, she hadn't met anyone, or even been observed by anyone. She had taken nothing with her, no money, no cheque book, no means of identification; and she had left behind her no debts, no worries, no fears. She had turned a quiet piece of English countryside into a Bermuda Triangle.
'How did you get on to it so quickly, Mr Hedges?'
He half-shrugged, half shook his head. 'Routine, really. Like I said ... we don't take missing persons lightly.'
'Yes?'
'Well ... in a case like this it's usually the uniformed patrol officer who answers the call, and he's likely to be a sensible lad ... He'll talk to the person who called us, and have a bit of a quick scout-round, maybe. And if he doesn't like what he finds he'll phone his sergeant pretty sharpish - because if there is something badly wrong then time can be important - and he'll say 'I don't like the look of this one, guv'nor', like as not.'
'And in this case he didn't like the look of it?'
'That's right.' He nodded. 'You see, he knew there hadn't been any local accidents that morning - road accidents involving personal injury - which was the most obvious answer. And she wasn't the sort of woman to just go off and not phone back, if she'd been delayed anywhere ... There was the kiddie in bed, see ... And although it had stopped raining by then there isn't much cover on those country roads at that time of year - it'd be about the same time as now, with most of the leaves off the trees. So she'd have likely got quite wet, with just a light coat and a head-scarf ... It just didn't smell right to him.'
'Yes?'
'What did it smell of, you mean? Well ... he thought it might be a hit-and-run, with her in a ditch somewhere maybe ...' He trailed off.
There was something else, something left unsaid or something not yet said. Frances waited.
