Free The Altered Case by Peter Turnbull Page B

Blossom Street, being a ribbon of nineteenth century terrace development. So, she thought, Dr D’Acre was correct, two daughters and a third non-related female of the age group of the daughters of Gerald and Elizabeth Parr. That meant more searching to be done. Somewhere in the pile of missing person files was a file in respect of a young woman who had been reported missing at approximately the same time as the Parrs.
    Carmen Pharoah returned her attention to her desktop and the pile of dusty manila folders. ‘So this is how it was before the days of the microchip,’ she said to herself, ‘all written up in copperplate long hand.’ It was, for her, like touching history. ‘But ten days,’ she whispered, ‘surely there must be something within those days? It’s in there somewhere, girl, it’s in there somewhere, so look for it. Then . . . then,’ she said, ‘a visit to DC Clough, if he is still with us. Human memory is often better than dry details in an old file.’
    â€˜There was just nothing, nothing at all, and so nothing else I could do. I wasn’t best pleased about closing the case after just ten days but the order to do—’
    â€˜Close . . . close the case?’ Carmen Pharoah questioned. ‘Close it?’
    â€˜Sorry.’ Adrian Clough smiled. ‘A slip of the tongue; of course it wasn’t closed but it was left to go cold. The order to let it go cold came from the top floor, pressure of work; it was just a very busy time.’
    â€˜I see.’
    â€˜I wasn’t happy, none of us were. With the suspicion . . . no . . . no . . . the real certainty of foul play we felt we should keep the case in the media, but with a lot of work to do . . . and . . . well, you’re a copper and you know you can’t act on just nothing, and that’s all we had . . . nothing. So I dare say the top floor was correct. They took the hard decision, and the case of the missing Parr family was consigned to the vaults, “to await developments”, was the official line.’ Ex-Detective Constable Clough, by then just plain Adrian Clough, was a gentleman in his seventies. He sat in an old, deep leather-bound armchair in the living room of his modest three bedroom, semi-detached house in Bishopsthorpe. He had, as Carmen Pharoah noted, reached the stage in life where he had begun to smell old, as some elderly people are wont to do, some earlier than others. Adrian Clough, she saw, had heavily liver spotted hands and a gaunt, drawn face as if, she sensed, he was fighting an internal growth. He also seemed to her to have some difficulties in his breathing and to have lost much weight, being in her view much too slight to be taken for the police officer he had once been. Carmen Pharoah discreetly read the room with a series of glances and saw the room was very neatly kept. She thought that she detected a woman’s touch, as in that of a dutiful daughter, or a kindly granddaughter. There certainly was no evidence of the presence of a Mrs Clough.
    â€˜Is there a Mrs Clough?’ Carmen Pharoah braved to ask the question.
    â€˜No . . . sadly, not any more, our Mabel went before, she’s passed on, our lass. She saw me get my promotion to Detective Sergeant and she saw me collect my pension, and we had a couple of years together in my retirement before she went in her sleep. She was still only in her fifties, no age at all. These days it’s no age at all. God rest her.’
    â€˜I am so very sorry.’ Carmen Pharoah found herself beginning to warm to Adrian Clough, Detective Sergeant (retired).
    â€˜Thank you, miss, but I have come to get used to being alone and I wouldn’t want to share my house . . . not now.’ Adrian Clough glanced adoringly at an alcove beside the chair in which he sat and in which were many framed photographs of many men and women and children of varying ages. ‘That’s my rogues’