‘Jenny Summerskill.’ She paused and looked round to make sure they were all listening. A fire could make you sleepy and she needed their full attention. ‘Fourteen years old, bright as a button and sharp as a knife. Given to independent thought, partly because of the way she was brought up. She was the youngest of a big family, known locally as the raggle-taggle gypsies. They lived in a rackety former pele tower close to the wall. Mother was a shepherdess, two sisters were famous folk singers, brother a sculptor.’ Vera paused again. She knew how to pace a story. She glanced at Charlie who knew what was coming. ‘And a father known to us. A green activist, who’s taken on fracking companies and developers, stood in front of his fair share of bulldozers and security guards.’
‘Nothing illegal in that.’ Holly might have stood in front of a few bulldozers herself. Before she joined the force of course.
‘Ah, but his non-violent protest also involved releasing a load of animals from a lab in Newcastle and spray-painting slogans on Hadrian’s Wall. Water soluble so it came off with the first rain, but it didn’t make him popular with the archaeologists and academics.’ Vera paused. ‘Jenny was very much her father’s daughter: bright, compassionate, impulsive.’
‘When did the building stop being a chapel?’ That was Holly again. She was the brainy one. Because that was the most important question, the one Vera had been asking since she’d found what was left of the girl.
‘Ten years ago, at around the same time as Jenny went missing.’
‘So, Jenny could have been lying in the font since she disappeared?’
‘I suppose it’s possible.’
‘But nobody checked at the time the lass went missing?’
‘Why would we?’ Vera tried to curb her impatience. ‘There was no connection between the chapel and the Summerskill family. None that we knew about.’
Silence.
Vera broke it first. ‘The liaison officer who first worked with the family visited this afternoon to let them know we’d found a body. No confirmation yet but they know it’s likely to be their Jenny. I’m going first thing. Holly, you come with me. Joe, you keep on top of the forensics, get the CSIs moving. That poor lass who runs the bookshop won’t want it closed in the weeks running up to Christmas. Charlie, get me a history of the building. What’s happened to it since the chapel closed down. Dates and the contact details of all key-holders.’ There were nods, another silence.
‘Well, piss off home then,’ Vera said. ‘I don’t know about you lot but I need my beauty sleep.’
There’d been a snow shower in the night, then the sky had cleared and there’d been a sharp frost. Vera had slept like a baby, but she’d lived in the hills long enough to understand border country weather. She’d arranged to meet Holly outside the Summerskill family home and when she arrived the woman’s car was already there, pulled onto the curb, crushing the frozen grass.
The house hadn’t changed much since Vera had last visited, parts probably hadn’t changed much since the tower was first built hundreds of years before to protect against the Reivers, the border clans that had scrapped over every last bit of land. It had been extended later, so now it looked more like a fortified farmhouse, but the tower was still there, grey and brooding against a clear blue sky. The family were waiting for them. All the family, which was more than Vera had been expecting. She’d thought the younger members would have moved away, made a life of their own.
Vera stood outside for a moment and watched them. They were sitting at the kitchen table and looked much as they had when she’d first visited. The offspring looked older now, real adults rather than unformed young people, but the parents were much the same – they’d always been gaunt, tough, lined by time spent in the wind and the sun. She tapped on the door and went in, followed by Holly.
The range was lit but the kitchen wasn’t warm; cold penetrated through the ill-fitting windows. These were hardy souls.
‘Is it her?’ Jan, the mother, spoke the moment they went in. ‘Have you found her at last?’ She got up and pushed a huge kettle onto the hot plate. It hadn’t long boiled because it started hissing immediately.
‘I think it is.’ Vera could sense Holly’s disapproval. They should wait until there was a formal confirmation. ‘She’s still wearing the plaited leather bracelet. And the boots.’
‘Can we see her?’
‘Eh pet, there’s not much to see.’ She took a seat at the head of the table and looked around. Holly leaned against the wall, still standing. She’d be making notes as they went along. Jan sat opposite, next to George, her husband. On one side of the table were Alice and Daisy, not twins but looking so similar that they could be. Vera did the simple sums in her head; they’d be twenty-seven and twenty-eight now, in their late teens then, but already famous if you were into folk music. On the other side of the table, quiet and brooding, the brother Matt. He’d been the oldest, artist and sculptor. Surely some of them should have partners, kids even?
‘Are you all still living at home?’ Making it a question, not a judgement.
But Matt’s one word came out as a challenge.
