Blind to the Bones Read online

  Fry looked closer, searching the map for features she could recognize. Some of the moors had their own names – she saw Dead Edge Flat, Bleakmires and Withens Moss. She could make out the line of a disused railway tunnel running under the hills. But the moors themselves were empty.

  Then she laughed. Not quite empty. There were actually some features to be found marked among the brown contour lines and the tangled systems of cloughs and slacks. The features were labelled on the map as ‘mound’ and ‘pile of stones’.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ she said.

  But Murfin just smiled.

  12

  The Renshaws’ sitting room was almost colourless. There were no reds or blues in the décor or in the furniture, only shades of brown, cream and off-white, as if the life had been bleached from the house. Diane Fry wondered if it had always been like this, or whether the Renshaws had changed the look of the house since Emma had disappeared, consciously or unconsciously reflecting the draining of the colour from their own lives.

  Sarah Renshaw showed Fry and Murfin into the room and made them sit together on the leather settee. Murfin sat down gingerly, trying not to touch the teddy bear that sat at the end of the sofa, against the arm. It was about eighteen inches tall, and it had a red ribbon tied round its throat. Its eyes stared glassily at the Japanese screen in front of the fireplace, and one of its arms was raised as if to take an invisible cup of tea.

  Despite the washed-out look of the room, Sarah Renshaw seemed to gain vitality from the moment she was given a chance to talk about Emma. It was the one aspect of her life that seemed to mean anything at all to her now. That, and the endless analysis of her own guilty feelings.

  ‘We can still sense Emma in the house,’ said Sarah. ‘Can’t you?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. But I never knew her.’

  ‘The house is full of all the things that mean a lot to Emma. Her books, her drawings, and her poems. Her violin and her paints. And, of course, her teddy bears.’

  ‘Teddy bears?’

  ‘Yes. Emma was starting a collection. We gave her a big eighteenth birthday party here, you know. It was a wonderful party, with all her friends, and a disco and everything. Emma said it was the best day of her life.’

  Sarah Renshaw’s voice died, and her thoughts seemed to drift away for a moment. Fry could almost see the little black fist of reality that was trying to break through her bubble in those few seconds. It hammered, but failed to get in. Fry felt her throat constrict, and experienced a brief pain in the exact spot where the surgeon had left a small, fleshy vestige of her tonsils when he removed them years ago.

  But then Sarah recovered herself and was just as composed as before, smiling at Fry as if she had made some small social gaffe.

  ‘Anyway, Emma was starting a collection of teddy bears,’ she said, ‘and lots of people brought her teddies for her collection on her birthday. Most of them are in her room upstairs, but we keep her favourite ones down here. Edgar there was her very first one, and he’s rather special. We gave him to Emma ourselves. He’s sitting there waiting for her to come home.’

  Murfin looked at the teddy bear on the settee, and tried to edge further away from it. But he found himself nudging up against Fry. She gave him a look, and he edged back again, his trousers squeaking on the soft leather.

  ‘You know,’ said Sarah, ‘every morning when I wake up, there’s a moment when I feel like my old self again. It’s a wonderful moment, when Emma is about to arrive home, just as she was that day two years ago. And for a brief time it feels as though nothing was ever wrong at all. I always try to cling on to that moment and bring it into the world with me as I come awake. If only I could manage to hang on to it for long enough, I could make it real. But I’ve never been able to do it. Every time, the moment slips away from me.’

  Sarah sighed, and looked up at something above Fry’s head.

  ‘Then I open my eyes, and everything falls back into perspective. And suddenly two years have gone by, and here I am. Here, today. My new self takes over again.’

  Howard had pulled up another armchair to be near her. He leaned over and touched her shoulder.

  ‘She’ll be back soon,’ he said.

  But Sarah didn’t seem to notice him or feel his touch. ‘I always keep Emma’s clock going in her bedroom,’ she said. ‘I make sure I replace the batteries regularly. It’s important that the clock shouldn’t stop. As long as it’s ticking, it’s counting down the minutes until Emma comes home. It mustn’t stop, until then.’

  ‘Mrs Renshaw, when Emma went missing –’ said Fry.

  ‘When she didn’t come home,’ Sarah corrected her gently. But she had a resigned note in her voice that suggested she had said it often before, had said it too many times to too many people.

  ‘When she didn’t come home,’ said Fry, ‘you said you spoke to all her friends.’

  ‘Yes, of course we did.’

  ‘By that, do you mean the young people she shared the house with?’

  ‘Yes, and a few others, such as some of the girls she knew on the same course.’

  ‘Was that before or after the local police had spoken to them?’

  ‘Before,’ said Howard. ‘If they bothered to speak to them at all, that is.’

  ‘The West Midlands officers went through the correct procedures at the time, Mr Renshaw.’

  ‘I suppose you have to say that. You have to stick together.’

  ‘They’ve sent us copies of all their reports. I read through them yesterday.’

  ‘A journalist on one of the local newspapers told us nine months ago that the police had arrested a man for attacks on two other female students in the area around the same time,’ said Howard.

  ‘Yes, I’m aware of that.’

  ‘He told us that the police had tried to make out a case that this man had done something to Emma, too. He said they had no evidence, but they were connecting it. “Tying it in,” he said.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think they’ve given up. They decided to use that as an excuse.’

  The man convicted of attacking the students was in the files, too. One of his victims had died some days later, and it had become a murder charge. Those incidents had been in Birmingham, a few miles from Bearwood, but within easy reach. The defendant had refused to accept responsibility for the disappearance of a third student, and the police had been unable to prove a connection. They said this was probably because the body had never turned up. Fry hoped they hadn’t said that to the Renshaws.

  ‘We looked through her diary for clues,’ said Howard. ‘We’d heard it was the sort of thing the police do. We were looking for indications of her state of mind, mentions of people she might have been meeting up with. The names of any boyfriends.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She was planning on coming home for Easter. That was all.’

  ‘When was the last entry in the diary?’

  ‘On the Wednesday, the day she rang us.’

  ‘No appointments for the following couple of days?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Emma wrote in her diary a lot,’ said Sarah. ‘She is a very thoughtful, sensitive sort of girl. Very artistic, you know. She wrote about her feelings all the time. She wrote poems, too, sometimes.’

  ‘In her diary?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This diary of Emma’s – did you find it at Bearwood?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And where is it now?’

  ‘In her room here, with the rest of her things.’

  ‘I wonder if I might see it?’

  ‘You’d be welcome to.’

  ‘She won’t need it when she comes back,’ said Sarah. ‘We’ve bought her a new one for this year.’

  And now Fry thought she could guess the answer to her next question, but she asked it anyway.

  ‘Have you kept Emma’s room as it was?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sarah.

  ‘May I see that, too?’

>   ‘I’ll show you,’ said Howard, and jumped up, as if relieved to have an excuse for moving around again. Perhaps the atmosphere had become that little bit too cloying for him. Fry was certainly glad of the cooler air in the hallway and the light from the big picture window at the top of the stairs. In the kitchen, she glimpsed a despondent-looking black Cocker Spaniel – presumably the source of the dog hairs on Sarah Renshaw’s skirt.

  ‘How long have you lived here, Mr Renshaw?’ asked Fry.

  ‘More than twenty years. Before that we lived in Marple, over in Cheshire.’

  ‘Nice place?’

  ‘It’s a very nice place, yes. We had a lovely house, too, and lots of friends there.’

  ‘But Emma always lived here, until she went to the Black Country?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you like it here?’

  ‘Certainly. The only problem we’ve ever had was a burglary a few months ago. But everybody has had them around here. We didn’t lose very much. The sad thing is, we wouldn’t even have been out of the house at the time, but we’d had some guidance on where we should look for Emma. Sarah was a bit upset about that.’

  ‘Of course.’

  As Fry had expected, Emma’s bedroom was a shrine, complete in itself. There were pictures on the wall and stacked on a desk, and there were framed photographs of Emma as a girl, from a toddler of about two through to a teenager with long hair. A small dressing table contained bottles of scent and pots of make-up, and a bathrobe hung over the chair, as if it had just been draped there a few minutes ago. No doubt the wardrobe was packed full of Emma’s clothes. The bed was neatly made and ready for use, apart from the fact that the duvet and pillows were partly occupied by teddy bears of various colours and sizes.

  ‘By the way, I’m sorry about Edgar,’ said Howard.

  ‘Oh, the bear?’

  ‘At first, Sarah used to hide him when people came to the house. She was embarrassed to be asked questions about it. But it was more embarrassing for visitors, when she saw the look on their faces and could see they didn’t know the right words to say. After a while, though, we decided to leave the bear where it is. Now, it would seem like an insult to Emma to hide it away. It’s just our way of coping. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I thought your colleague looked a little uncomfortable.’

  Fry was going to explain that Gavin Murfin didn’t do sensitive, but she held her tongue and asked instead about the items the Renshaws had brought back from the house in Bearwood.

  ‘These are the pictures on her desk, here.’

  ‘Do you mind if I take a look?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Fry flipped through the pictures. Some were pencil or charcoal drawings; some were done in watercolours or gouache. There were landscapes and abstract designs, and some of them seemed to be sketches of fashion models in bizarre clothes, or simply fancy typefaces with 3D effects. Others were computer graphics in odd colours, like photographic negatives. Fry didn’t consider herself any kind of expert, but she saw very little that she would have considered talent.

  ‘Those are the best ones,’ said Howard. ‘We’ve been sorting them out ready for bank holiday Monday. We’re holding an Emma Day.’

  ‘You’re doing what?’

  ‘We’re holding an Emma Day. We’ve found all Emma’s drawings and her poems, and we’re going to display them for everyone to see, so they’ll know what she is like. We want to share her with people. Share her talent. We’ve advertised it in the local paper, and in the shops, and we’ve put posters up in the village hall and at the pub. We’ve phoned all our friends and sent invitations out. We’re going to make all Emma’s favourite food, and play her favourite music, so that it will be a complete experience. And then people will be able to know her, almost as we do. It’ll be wonderful.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Fry, cringing inwardly and trying not to show it. She stared at a drawing of a hillside with a full moon coming up behind it. In the middle foreground was a figure in a floaty dress and with floaty hair, walking up a long, winding path towards the top of the hill. The picture was done in watercolours, with carefully toned blues and greys. But it looked as though it hadn’t quite been finished, as if the artist might, perhaps, have lost interest in the idea. The journey towards the rising moon had never quite been completed.

  Fry saw that there were poems too, written out carefully on pages taken from an exercise book and mounted on coloured card. She took in a few lines, felt her stomach clench in reaction to their sentimentality, and couldn’t bring herself to read any more.

  But Mr Renshaw had picked one up and was reading it himself. As he read it, the tears were already starting to form in his eyes.

  ‘It’ll be wonderful,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  He turned to Fry. ‘Will you be here on Monday?’

  ‘Er, no, I don’t expect to be on duty next Monday,’ said Fry.

  ‘If you aren’t working, you can come. You will come, won’t you? The house will be open all day.’

  Howard handed her a hardback diary, of A5 size. Fry glanced inside and saw it was a day to a page, and Emma had found a lot to say.

  ‘Thank you. You’ll have it back safely.’

  Although the bedroom contained so much of Emma’s, it was obvious that there were also things of hers dispersed all around the house. A pair of her shoes stood next to one of the chairs in the sitting room. Another of Emma’s teddy bears sat on one of the spare chairs at the kitchen table, where the Renshaws usually ate breakfast. And as they walked from the sitting room to the dining room, they passed a bookcase, full of books in perfectly neat rows.

  ‘These are Emma’s books,’ said Howard, though it was unnecessary by now.

  Fry was starting to see the way the Renshaws’ minds were working. They were trying to convince themselves that Emma still lived with them, every moment of the day. For them, each teddy bear contained a lingering fragment of Emma’s personality, just like the shoes and the books, and the scent bottles on her bedside table. And perhaps they were right. Perhaps each of their daughter’s possessions retained faint strands of her spirit, her essence and her memories, locked inside their plain physical reality. And no doubt the Renshaws prayed that all these small parts of Emma might one day be brought together to re-create her, in the same way that scientists could bring extinct animals to life from the DNA traces in their bones. Fry felt sure that Sarah Renshaw believed it could happen. She believed with all her heart that it could happen.

  ‘Mrs Renshaw, do you really still believe Emma is going to come home one day?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you, sir?’

  Howard laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder again. ‘No one has shown us any proof otherwise,’ he said.

  Sarah nodded. ‘People seem to think that we should give up hope. But how can we? We’d be letting Emma down, if we did that. We have to do everything we can for her. We have to keep trying all the ways we can think of. Because if we stopped trying, we might miss the one little thing that would lead us to her. I couldn’t bear the thought of that.’

  Gavin Murfin had been very still for a while. Fry looked at him to make sure he was awake. She was amazed to see that he was surreptitiously trying to wipe moisture from his eyes with his finger. Sarah Renshaw had noticed, too, and passed him a box of tissues from the side table without a word.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Renshaw,’ said Fry, ‘I know you’ve gone over all this many times before, but I have to ask what Emma’s exact relationship was with Alex Dearden and Neil Granger.’

  ‘The only relationship Emma had with Neil Granger was that he was a fellow sufferer,’ said Howard.

  ‘Sufferer?’

  ‘Migraines. Granger has them, too. Apparently, his are so severe that he can black out completely.’

  ‘I see. And Alex Dearden?’

  ‘We had hopes of Alex. But he has another girlfriend now.’
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br />   ‘Oh? Someone he met at university, or since he came back?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  But Fry remembered Alex Dearden complaining that Mrs Renshaw rang him every week. What was she really trying to find out from him? Did she really think he might hear from Emma? Wouldn’t she ask him about his new girlfriend? Or was that another thing she didn’t want to face – another indication that life had moved on and left Emma behind?

  ‘I understand you’ve had counselling,’ said Fry.

  Sarah laughed. ‘Oh, yes. We learned phrases like “Letting go”, “Moving on”, and “Closure”. But all the time I kept asking myself: “How could I have allowed it to happen?”’

  ‘We’ve talked about it a lot,’ said Howard. ‘We thought it was important to talk. We decided it isn’t about letting go, but about getting a new perspective on your life. It’s more like turning over a piece of earth. Everything on the surface disappears, and new things appear in their place. But it’s still the same piece of earth, isn’t it? It’s still the same life.’

  Fry had been told different. She had been advised that sometimes people felt the need to clutch their suffering to them, fearing that if they ‘let it go’, they would themselves vanish. Their suffering began to define them.

  But Sarah Renshaw was right – commemoration was important. A person you had lost could touch you sometimes, in unexpected ways. You might glance into a room and see her sitting on her bed, or catch a fleeting trace of her familiar scent passing along the corridor. You could hear her voice in the silence at night, or her footsteps crossing the floor above your head as you watched television in the evening. Commemoration was an important thing. It was like reaching out to let her know you were there for her. Commemoration was like returning the touch.

  On their way back through Withens from the Renshaws’ house, Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin noticed the police Vauxhall immediately.