Free Skeleton Plot by J. M. Gregson Page B

tea and the scones?’
    ‘I thought they were excellent. And more welcome for being unexpected.’
    ‘And carefully arranged. The man was showing us what a paragon of family life he is, with his pretty wife and his attractive children. It didn’t take you long to burrow into his wilder past, Bert – congratulations on your technique. It makes me wonder exactly what it is that Jim Simmons is trying to hide from us.’

SIX
    ‘I ’m sixty-eight now.’
    Very few women announced that information. Occasionally people who considered themselves very old boasted about their age and the miracle of their survival; otherwise, women in particular preferred to conceal their years.
    CID officers are normally expert in assessing ages. It is something which becomes second nature to them as they gather experience. Lambert would have put the age of this woman as a good ten years older than sixty-eight. If her statement was correct, she’d probably lived a difficult life.
    It was Detective Sergeant Ruth David who had brought her into Lambert’s office, and she wouldn’t have done that without good reason. Ruth David said, ‘It’s in connection with the Brenton Park case, sir. Mrs Grimshaw thinks she may be able to help us towards an identification of the human remains discovered there.’
    Lambert glanced from one to the other of the two very different female faces in front of him, which were united by their earnest appreciation of something of huge import. He said, ‘I’d like you to stay for this, DS David.’ Ruth’s dark hair was cut short and was glossy black, in contrast with the unkempt wisps of grey-white hair which peeped out from beneath the hat of the woman who now sat down opposite Lambert. DS David’s smooth oval face was very different from the lined and troubled one beside her.
    Not many women wore hats nowadays, and still fewer donned them to come into a police station. This one was scarcely more than a beret, but John Lambert realized suddenly that the woman had made an attempt to present herself at her best to come here. The action was mistaken, but there was something very touching about it. He said gently, ‘How can I help you, Mrs Grimshaw?’
    ‘You can give me closure. You can confirm for me that this was my girl. That this was my daughter.’
    The accent was unexpectedly educated. That was prejudice, Lambert realized. Why should you expect that someone down at heel and life-battered would be uneducated? Police experience, he supposed. The majority of people who were questioned here, who peopled the nation’s prisons, hadn’t had much education, nor had they enjoyed an even chance in life. But the police function was to see that the laws of the land were observed, not to campaign for social reform. And this woman might be no more than a crank; that possibility was far more important than any speculation about her background or her position in the community. ‘What reason have you to think that this dead woman might have been your daughter, Mrs Grimshaw?’
    ‘I know it. I feel it in my bones.’
    He thought of those other bones, the ones he had seen being patiently assembled on the plastic sheet at the edge of the Jacksons’ garden, and he flinched at the thought of what lay ahead for this suffering woman. ‘What is your daughter’s name, Mrs Grimshaw?’ Always speak in the present tense, until you are sure of the corpse’s identity. That was the rule. Those bones on the plastic sheet might yet have no connection with this woman. Her daughter might be living and breathing, in a different county or a different country.
    ‘I’m Anne. Or Annie. I’d prefer that you call me that. And my daughter was Julie.’ She was using the past tense against his use of the present; it was the reverse of the usual situation.
    ‘All right, Annie. I realize that this must be very stressful for you. When did you last see Julie?’
    ‘Twenty-two years ago. Twenty-two years and seven weeks, come tomorrow.’ She