Chapter 12

Charlotte agreed, “And in many cases the breakup is through one partner seeking solace elsewhere. With us starting as a three wives group, we found it easy to accept Lily and Flora into the family, and Marjory was even simpler, for we felt sorry for her and reckoned she needed a man like our Jimmy.

As you have seen, there is not another man like Jimmy to be found, so we concluded Jimmy was the only man for her, and approved her as the sixth wife.

It was only afterwards that we got to know what a nice woman she is; much more than appears on the outside. For example, she works as a senior receptionist in the Yeats Engineering Group, yet she is well educated, a university graduate. She does what she wants to do with her life, and that made her very picky when looking for a man in her life. She wanted a man who accepted her as she appeared; modest, quiet and reserved, living in a small apartment in a condominium, keeping herself to herself. Jimmy treated her as an important person, despite their social difference in the Group’s work hierachy, and that got through to her. The same way Jimmy taught us about treating other people, he treated her with respect right from the start.

From childhood, she had been called Madge, which she hated, and that continued at work, but Jimmy asked what that stood for, and when she said Marjory, which she preferred, he began calling her Marjory immediately. That is what he is like, Elizabeth: intensely lovable.”

“So that is why you all said I would be safe around him, even when naked.”

“That’s it. He is dependable, though he can be tough when he has to be. He wouldn’t let us away with being stupid in any way at all. He expected us to think things through logically before a major decision.”

“So he is not going to fuck me?” asked Elizabeth.

“Of course not!” replied Charlotte. She smiled wickedly as she continued, “He might make love to you instead, but only if you want him to. He would never force you into it. Do you want him to make love to you?”

“Umm ... I don’t know about that. I am still a married woman.”

“In name only, as far as I can see, Elizabeth. You never mention your husband’s name in conversation. That shows that you are already mentally divorced from him. Do you see that? You regard him as a nobody in your life”

“I hadn’t noticed, but if you say that is so, I suppose you are right. I am probably putting him out of my mind.”

“Well, you can relax in our home, Elizabeth. We are here for you, whatever help you need.”

At the same time, police were arriving outside Elizabeth and Isabella’s home, armed with a search warrant issued by a local judge. The police lawyer had submitted a sworn statement by a drug dealer in custody that among other transactions, he had sold two packages of cocaine to the named man, a resident at the specific address stated but currently under medical supervision in a mental facility. This enabled the judge to accept probable cause, and issue the warrant to search the house, entering using house keys found in the possession of the mental patient.

The police team, wearing plastic gloves on their hands, went to the front door and knocked loudly, in case someone was at home. They got no reply, so tried each key until they found the one for the front door, and effected entry.

The team began a careful search of the house, looking in all the regular hiding places where drug offenders were known to use to stash drugs: loose ceiling panels and floorboards, behind toilet cisterns, behind large wardrobes, inside equipment that had suitable internal spaces.

When the initial run-through produced no result, the search dog and his handler were brought in, for the drug dog to sniff round the premises for locations such as under floorboards.

The dog spent considerable time wandering all through the house, ending up with the dog’s nose pointing at the freezer in the kitchen. The handler pointed this out to the search team, and one hesitant ‘volunteer’ gingerly opened the freezer door and peered in; half expecting an explosive booby trap to go off.

The freezer was empty. The drugs had flown, it seemed.

Now the search team began a more thorough search, looking under carpets for floor boards that may have been moved, peering into toilet cisterns with a torch, lifting every plant pot they could find both inside and in the garden, and when that produced nothing, digging with a hand tool within the compost of each flower pot. Nothing.

Meantime, two traffic policemen detailed to accompany the team as official escort and liaison with the locals, went round the neighbouring houses on both sides of the street, asking if anyone had seen any unusual activity at the house being searched.

Most had seen nothing, but one lady remarked, “Nothing unusual. Elizabeth and whatsername were there yesterday afternoon, picking up some extra bits and pieces. They had a minibus cab to drive them. I don’t think I have ever seen either woman driving a car, so that’s probably why they were using a taxi service.”

The cop was delighted to get a lead, so he asked which cab firm it was. The woman was uncertain.

“Sorry, officer. It did not occur ro me to note what taxicab company it was, but there can’t be many such businesses that use minibuses.”

The patrolman thanked her for her help, and returned to report to the search team that two females, presumably the residents, had been there yesterday. The search cop asked the patrolman, “What were the names of the women?”

“‘Elizabeth and whatsername’ were there, she said, but she didn’t specifically say they were the residents! I thought you knew who was resident there and would already have their full names.”

“We do, but it would be nice to have confirmation of the identity of yesterday’s visitors. Go ask the woman if the two females were residents of that house. They should be be Elizabeth and Isabella, according to our notes in the file.”

The patrolman plodded back to the woman’s house, and when she came to the door again, he asked, “Pardon me, ma’am; sorry to disturb you again, but the two women yesterday? Were they the residents of that house, and can you confirm their names for me?”

The middle-aged woman thought. “Now, the mother is Elizabeth, I know that: she is a stickler for the correct name. Not Betty or Liz or anything else. But I cannot exactly remember the teenage daughter’s name. My memory is not what it was. All teenagers look the same to me.”

“Could it have been Isabella?”

“Ah, yes, Isabel, that’s the girl.”

“Isabella?” the patrol man persisted.

“I suppose it might be; I just think of her as being Isabel, but perhaps I got it wrong, for I have a grandniece of that name. I don’t see her as much as her mother.”

The patrolman took another tack.

“But the visitors yesterday were the mother and daughter who live at that house? You are sure of that?”

“Of course I am! Not that you see very much of them, for that rude man keeps them indoors most of the time. Is it right that the courts have put him away in the nuthouse? That’s the rumour around here. Everyone is delighted, if it is true.”

“I can confirm that the gentleman has been detained for mental examination, but I can say no more, ma’am. Thank you for your help.”

He left the now happy woman and walked slowly back to the search team leader, Thomson, and informed him that the identities had been positively confirmed by the neighbor. The cop was mollified.

“Good, good. Now we need to discover which taxi firm it was.”

The patrolman tried to get his own back.

“All you need do, sir, is find which local cab companies offer a minibus, and did they supply one to this address yesterday.”

Thomson replied irritably, “Yes, I know that, officer. We do know our jobs.”

The patrolman threw in, “Pity you were not here yesterday, or you might have met them,” and he turned away towards his patrol car. The search team leader glared at his retreating back, but was glad that he had a new lead to chase up. He phoned back to his office and asked for all the local cab companies to be asked did any of them supply a minibus to this address yesterday. It would take a simple phone call to each to sort that out.

Within half an hour, he had his answer, but the solution did not please him. The minibus had collected them at a park gate, and returned them to the same place. Peeved, he demanded that the company provide the driver as soon as he was clear of fares, to answer some questions for the police.

Back at his office, he waited until the driver appeared, and the questioning began.

“How was the booking made?”

The driver said, “I don’t take the bookings, but I was told someone had phoned in and arranged it.”

“A male or female voice?”

“No idea; you’ll have to ask the office.”

“What names did the women give?”

“Mrs Smith and Miss Smith; and before you say anything, there are a hellova lot of Smiths in this here United States, so they could be genuine names.”

“Okay. When you collected them or returned them to the park gate, was there anyone else around, or standing near, or sitting in a nearby vehicle?”

“Never noticed. I was busy with offloading my fares – and they paid in cash, before you ask. I certainly didn’t see anyone nearby. Perhaps they live locally, though why choose the park entrance to meet the cab beats me. Further away from the park, there may have been cars, but whether anyone was sitting in them, I couldn’t say. I was not expecting to be interrogated like this, or I might have looked around while I was there. Being an honest man, I don’t expect the third degree after a simple fare. As far as I was concerned, it was a normal fare, and that was that. We each do a dozen or more local fares every day, and you don’t waste time scanning the neighborhood for watchers. We leave that to the busybodies who have nothing else to do with their time.”

“I accept that, and thank you for helping us out. Was either woman carrying anything other than a purse or handbag?”

“The older woman, Mrs Smith, she was carrying a blue coolbox; you will know the sort of thing; with a carry handle so that you move frozen foods about when going anywhere, like on a picnic. It was pretty obvious, being so bulky.”

“Excellent observation, sir. Was the coolbox brought back again?”

“It sure was, and it was heavy, so must have been full, and she had several of these multilayer plastic bags you can keep frozen stuff in a for a couple of hours. They haven’t the insulation that a coolbox has, but are fine for a short time while you defrost your freezer, so they couldn’t have gone very far to get to another freezer.

They seemed to me like they were making a permanent move, as they had black bags they said were full of clothes and a box of photo albums. Oh, yes: they mentioned that they wanted the clothes to go on top of the frozen stuff, to act as more insulation. That suggests a longer trip than a few streets.”

“How did you know the box held photo albums?”

“Because the kid said so! The teenage girl, Miss Smith, said to be careful of them as they were family photos. As I said, looks like they were not coming back if you ask me.”

“Thank you for answering my questions. You did very well, despite saying you didn’t observe fully. Thanks again.”

The driver went back to his office, so Thomson the search team leader asked his secretary that a formal letter be sent to the company, thanking them for providing a very helpful driver to assist the police with an important investigation. That would grease the wheels for a future request.

He then sat back to cogitate, without the pursing of the lips that the fictional detective Nero Wolfe was described as doing when thinking deeply. Thomson’s thinking was of the same nature, though. The basic conclusions from today’s search were that any drugs that had been in the house were almost certainly gone, moved elsewhere; possibly taken by the wife and daughter. The two women must have associates who were helping, as you don’t stand by park gates with a pile of belongings for very long, or you will face them being stolen. Again, the frozen stuff indicated a short range move, a distance you could travel by auto in less than an hour or two at the most. Probably an associate with a small truck would have been along shortly after they arrived, to load up everything and take them to where they were hiding out.

When he put it all together, it smacked of organizational skills by someone other than the two women. They had lived with that nutcase for so long that they would be incapable of devising such a clever plan to vanish so completely. Therefore, they were living with another person or family where they would not be readily noticed as strangers. That meant not likely to be in an apartment block, or in a similarly crowded part of the city.

Assume also, he deduced, that their benefactor was not poor, if they had a coolbox among their possessions and could quickly finance a minibus for the return cab trip, so assume one of the more upmarket areas. The searchers could concentrate their manpower resources more effectively that way.

It may be a bit on the vague side, but they were getting somewhere at last. The mental case might have disposed of the drugs earlier, or the women had taken them. It was unlikely that the man had told his family about the drugs – he refused to admit having them when interrogated: instead accused the cops as being corrupt - so if the women had removed the drugs, it was probably by accident when emptying the freezer, as such drug parcels seldom have identifiers on them, except perhaps for a simple symbol of the original supplier. He could only hope that the women, on eventually finding the drugs among their frozen food, would hand them in to the police; but more likely they would destroy them by burning the packages in a furnace or stove. In that case, there would be a cocaine aroma in the smoke, so he should warn the patrolmen in such locations to be conscious of that aroma. Not all would recognise the smell, so a simple five-minute demonstration would be worthwhile at the stationhouses around the city. He imagined the patrolmen as sniffer dogs and smiled to himself; he should be so lucky!

The question of the park gate was moot. The chances of a local noting any activity at the gate, short of a brawl, was minimal, for people would be going out and into the park at all times of day. Expecting anyone to remember people being dropped off or collected was daft, for that would be a regular occurrence at a park gate, particularly parents dropping off or collecting kids. Nobody takes any notice of such movements.

To Thomson, this was another sign of clever advance planning by someone other than the women; a devious mind at work. If the planner was a drug dealer, the packages were well and truly gone by now, but the whole episode was too deft to be a drug dealer’s devising.

He could only hope the packages turned up in an innocent fashion. He was pretty sure the women were innocents trying to get away from an abuser. They were making a good job of it, supplemented by the medics committing the man to a mental facility for observation. From what Thomson had been told, the guy was a real nutcase, and should be kept out of the way for a long time to come. People like that don’t come back to normal in short order; more likely needing months and years of treatment.

He remembered how that episode had started, with phone complaints about the man’s abuse. Funny that the women didn’t make complaints themselves. Then again, if you are being abused, you are probably too terrified to stand up to the abuser in any way. Thank God for these anonymous calls.

He then had a strange thought: all the calls were anonymous; all of them, every single one; completely anonymous. Could that mean an orchestrated program to get the police involved without the women having to do anything? Come to think of it, that would fit in with all the rest of the organised program to let the women escape.

Do we have a planned escape campaign to assist these women? They clearly were not kidnapped; they were permitted, indeed helped, to come back for more of the household goods they wanted. Kidnappers would never take the risk of allowing them to take a taxi ride on their own; the cab driver was patently an honest man and he would have noticed if they seemed frightened. From his tale, they seemed very normal. Therefore it was friends who were helping them, but no-one was able to name any friends that they had, not a single one.

In fact, their only regular contact was their hairdresser, that Priscilla woman, but she was too busy to have been directly involved. All he had was a suspicion that she could get in touch with them, possibly through a third person.

Another dead end, he despaired.

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Once everyone was home and settled, I drove back to work, and walked in past Marjory, giving her a kiss as I did so.