The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone, page 8
Janet’s jaw tightens — in my view, a reasonable response given that we are raising such a traumatic subject. ‘Thanks, but I stopped needing sympathy a long time ago.’
It’s a curious answer. However, there is no correct response to grief. Too many false convictions have been based on a suspect’s odd demeanour. Sure, a strange response can give you pause and grounds for taking a closer look, but it shouldn’t be treated as evidence. Eloise herself rarely cries when grieving, whereas I tend to blub like a baby.
I decide to cut in now. We’re not exactly doing the good cop, bad cop thing, more the sympathetic cop, blunt cop routine, which probably requires no acting from either of us. ‘Two weeks ago,’ I say, ‘we received a parcel containing an anonymous note suggesting that we should investigate Tracey’s disappearance. We wondered if you had sent it?’
‘A parcel?’
Her surprise seems genuine, but she hasn’t answered the question. Could she be deflecting?
‘Yes. It was left anonymously at the bookshop.’
‘Well, not by me.’ Janet sits back in her chair. Which could just be her getting more comfortable or a subconscious attempt to distance herself from the accusations. ‘I’ve accepted what’s happened with Tracey.’
I hesitate, wanting to ask what she thinks has happened to Tracey but uncertain if this would be too indelicate even for me. In the end my copper’s curiosity wins out. ‘You think she’s dead?’
Janet swallows and twists her hands in her lap. ‘If she wasn’t, she would have contacted me.’
Eloise shoots me a I can’t fucking believe you asked that look and picks up the questioning. ‘Can you think of anyone else who would want us to look into Tracey’s disappearance?’
‘I really can’t.’ Again, her jaw tightens. ‘Even Tracey’s father gave up on discovering the truth once the cancer took hold.’
‘Yes. We’re sorry to hear of his death, and for your loss,’ says Eloise.
‘Don’t be. He was a complete bastard. It was his fault Tracey . . .’ Janet falls silent, her lips tightening as if she’s determined to keep the words she was about to say from spilling from her mouth.
Eloise nudges my foot with hers, and I take over. ‘It was his fault that Tracey what?’
‘That she lied to us that night.’ Janet crosses her arms in a gesture that could be attributed to cold were the log burner not throwing out a pleasant warmth, so I’m reading it as defensive, putting a barrier between us.
I don’t respond, and neither does Eloise. It’s an old interview trick: most people don’t like an awkward pause and will usually feel obliged to fill it. The silence draws out, uncomfortably so, then Janet cracks.
‘He didn’t let her have friends, except Prudence, who was too bloody stubborn to be scared away. It’s no wonder she kept secrets from us.’
There’s a visceral truth to Janet’s words but something niggles me. I can’t help but feel she’s somehow hiding behind the truth, behind her anger. I’d love to see her witness statements from the time. Newspaper articles are all well and good for the general feel, but they don’t contain the precise details, the witness’s or perpetrator’s own words that so often conflict and can be used to drive a wedge between the lies.
Eloise leans forward. ‘Who do you think Tracey was really meeting?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I think, does it? Not now.’
‘It matters to us,’ says Eloise.
‘Why? Because someone sent you a stupid box?’
That’s interesting. It could have been a deliberate error to mislead us, but I don’t think so. ‘It was an envelope, actually.’
‘Can I see it?’ For the first time Janet seems genuinely curious. I know we’re unlikely to fare any better than anyone else in finding out what really happened to Tracey, so why are we giving her false hope of a fresh lead? I feel like a grave ghoul digging up bodies for my own grim satisfaction.
‘Sorry. We didn’t bring it with us,’ says Eloise. ‘We’d be happy to come back another time. If that’s okay with you?’
Janet pauses, and now it’s me who finds the silence awkward. Then her face brightens. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’
Eloise: 34 days until Isabella Garrante book launch
I’m in my incident room, otherwise known as the spare room, staring at the scant information on my board. It’s all glitter string and fluff, and not much to go on. My job today is to see what I can find out about Prudence Ballion, Tracey’s best and perhaps only friend. Garth and Kitty are on shop duty, so I’ve set up my space on the bed: laptop, specs, notebook and pencil (sharpened), bag of cheesy pea snaps, Stevie. Stevie is snoring, apparently less enthralled by the prospect of a research task than I am.
I open the laptop’s browser and type in ‘Prudence Ballion’. The first few hits are about the song ‘Dear Prudence’, and I am astonished to learn that it was a Beatles song, not a Siouxsie and the Banshees original. It was penned by John Lennon no less. How did I not know that? I’m quite the muso when I’m not selling books and getting roped in to cold case investigations, and am ashamed at this gap in my knowledge. I resist getting too distracted by the internet (oooh, Prudence Farrow? LSD and transcendental meditation?) and refine my search to ‘Prudence Ballion Tracey Jervis NZ’. That gets a few more hits.
There are some newspaper articles from the time Tracey went missing, all mentioning that she was supposed to be with Prudence the night she disappeared. I flick through them, but there’s nothing new. Then, a tiny nugget of gold. Interest in Tracey’s case was clearly waning when a dogged local paper published what seems to be one of the last articles on the subject about a year after the disappearance:
With no new leads it looks as though the police are set to scale down enquiries into the disappearance of Tracey Jervis. Hawke’s Bay Gazette understands that Prudence Ballion, best friend of Tracey Jervis, has recently left New Zealand for England with her family. A source at Te Mata High School who wishes to remain anonymous stated that Prudence gained her University Entrance and was awarded a scholarship grade for English Literature. She was determined to make a fresh start and intended to study English Literature or Creative Writing at tertiary level.
Apart from that there’s just a passing mention of Tracey in a fairly recent Kiwi true crime podcast called No Trace. My search is looking like a dead end.
I open the bag of pea snacks and click on the podcast link whilst I have a break. Stevie opens an eye and sniffs in my direction — he’s a fan of the cheddar pea snack. I shove one into his gob; he has a quick crunch and settles back down. I wipe my cheese-powdery hands on my trousers (they’re due a wash anyway after a mishap uncorking a bottle of merlot) and stare at my incident board, considering in which colour whiteboard marker to update it. A word seeps into my subconscious and I tune in to the podcast conversation. The voices are young, languid, low and creaky in the way that seems to be a thing these days.
Female voice: Yeah, like, this is soooo many years ago now and the police didn’t ever find out what happened to Tracey.
Male voice: What was the goss though?
Female voice: Oh yeah, like, the word on the street was that Prudence was the last to see Tracey and then she did a bunk to England and went off grid. Like, suspicious or what?
Male voice: What are you saying? That Prudence did something creepy to Tracey?
Female voice: There’s no evidence for that, it’s just me making connections, but it’s a bit sus that there’s no trace of Prudence Ballion now either. And I spoke to an old classmate of Prudence’s who wouldn’t go on the record with what he told me so I can’t say what it is but — just wow!
Male voice: Hmm. It’s all a bit circumstantial though, like the Forrest Dipper case.
Female voice: Totally . . .
I listen to the end of the podcast, which is mercifully short, and skim through the first part again. But there’s no more on Tracey or Prudence, or what the just wow moment was; the disappearance of Forrest Dipper takes up the rest of the episode. No Trace only did five episodes. I suspect they ran out of steam pretty quickly, seeing as it’s just two people — high school kids, as it turns out — speculating; they don’t even link in police reports or witness statements. The most interesting thing is that they’ve managed to get hold of a school photo of Prudence. It’s a head shot, kohl-rimmed bright-blue eyes scowling at the camera. Wherever it was taken, it doesn’t look like she wanted to be there.
Okay, on to a search of universities and tertiary institutions in England. I get momentarily excited when I see something on the University of Nottingham site, but on a proper click through it goes on about ambiguity prudence which is something to do with economics that’s beyond me. There’s nothing else that looks remotely relevant to Prudence Ballion.
Creepy little Prudence, huh? She seems to have maintained a remarkably low profile given this age of oversharing. I wonder what the police made of her all but disappearing, too. If only we could get hold of the case files and have a good rummage. Still, I update the incident board with my meagre findings. I can’t class a high school podcast as an interview, so I’ll code it X for Exhibit: in black pen I write Prudence Ballion went to England.
Stevie stands up and stretches, licking his chops as he, too, stares at the board.
‘Not much to go on yet, eh Stevie boy?’
He blinks, his crocodile mouth widening, letting out the satisfyingly squeaky groan particular to a dog yawn.
‘Bored huh? Want to go for a walk?’
He hops off the spare bed and trots at speed into our bedroom, slinking underneath the bed. Unless he knows he’s going in the car first, he is highly suspicious of the word ‘walk’: it means the great wide outdoors, where danger lurks. He will need to be tricked into coming outside, quite like his dogfather.
As if he senses a disturbance in the force, my phone pings with a text from his nibs.
Garth: I am making progress with the IFG event planning. Garth.
Oh no. What’s he done?
Me: What have you done?
Garth: Just had some magnificent thoughts. I shall run them by you. Garth.
A familiar tingle in my lips tells me my breathing has become shallow. By daylight I’ve mostly managed to tell myself that a book launch shouldn’t really be able to trigger Armageddon, but when I find myself awake at 2am there are far too many bizarrely believable speculative fiction plots. I take a couple of deep breaths to stem the panic and decide to pander to Stevie’s and my lower inclinations. He can stay under the bed and I will head to the kitchen and open a bottle of wine, this time without emptying half of it on my trousers.
Garth: 33 days until Isabella Garrante book launch
‘I’m just popping to the galley,’ says Eloise. We learnt at one of the Booksellers Conferences that in America the advanced reading copies are called galleys and some bookshops even have ‘galley rooms’. We keep all our readers in the shop’s broom cupboard of a toilet, so going to the galley is our way of saying we need to sit on the porcelain throne.
From behind the counter I cast my eyes over the ‘events’ space, which currently houses our ever-expanding selection of graphic novels. It’s a growth area we’ve worked hard to develop. Two years ago, if someone had come in and asked if I had any One-Punch Man I would have looked at them blankly. Now, I can confidently point to a stand and say, ‘Absolutely, they’re next to the Attack on Titan and Tokyo Ghoul.’
Pinter, he was a ghoul, not in the Western sense of a monster that hangs about graveyards and feasts on human flesh but more in the classic Middle Eastern tradition: a ghūl, a diabolical class of jinn, a demon. He lured his victims with promises of publication and — no, leave it there. Even the more graphic of the graphic novels wouldn’t portray that.
My hands tremble. Push the images away. Focus, breathe. He’s banged up and you’re in a lovely bookshop. Eloise and Stevie are here, all is well.
Getting my breathing under control, I glance up at the clock. It’s near closing time and the day has gone by in a blur. Despite Eloise thinking I’m crazy, I’ve been up on the shop’s flat roof to look at the possibility of rigging up a large screen to broadcast proceedings to the anticipated crowds. In late September there’s no guarantee of the weather being kind, so I reckon a projector and white sheet as a screen are going to be our best bet. We don’t have and can’t afford a projector, so I’ll have to try and blag one from a local business. With the kudos that launching IFG will bring to the Village, that shouldn’t be a problem.
I’ve also completed what Eloise refers to as more ‘realistic’ tasks, enquiring with the council about how we would arrange the closure of the road outside the shop and ordering two cases of unusually upmarket bubbles from our local wine merchants. The publishers have yet to come back with any agreement to help finance the launch.
I look behind the counter where we keep our wine glasses. Over the years we’ve acquired about fifty to sixty, of various shapes and sizes, purchased sporadically from Crockery King when their sales have coincided with us having some spare cash. I’m not sure that they’ll suffice for the IFG launch and doubt even Gordon at The Uncommon Room will have enough to lend us.
‘We’re going to have to hire more glasses for the launch,’ I say as Eloise returns from the galley. ‘Should we use ours and hire the extra or just hire enough to cover everything?’
‘It’s IFG, it would be nice to have them all the same for once. What will it cost?’
I google local glass hire. ‘About a dollar a glass.’
Eloise does the math. ‘Perhaps just order the extra.’
‘Are you sure? We’re going to sell a lot of books.’
‘She asked for us.’ Eloise shrugs. ‘She can take us as she finds us.’
That’s always been Eloise’s attitude. There’s no pretention. What you see is what you get, and if you don’t like it that’s your problem, not hers. Me, I’m more of a worrier. I always fret that no one will turn up to a launch, though that’s happened only once. It was in our second year when we were still building our reputation, and a self-published author, who I would describe as full of hubris and Eloise would describe as a cock, approached us. We tried to dissuade him, because to be honest the book was dire, but he was convinced of his genius and just wouldn’t take no for an answer. We gave him our standard talk that generally the only people who turn up are friends and family and that he should try and get it in the papers and on his social media, but our advice fell on deaf ears — the same deaf ears that had clearly not listened to any editing advice. On the evening of the event he arrived with four cartons of books, three boxes of wine and completely unrealistic expectations. Launch time rolled around and no one had turned up, so we waited in case guests arrived late. After fifteen painful minutes of small talk interspersed with dings to the author’s phone, which we could only assume were people making excuses for not coming, we all packed up and went home, me feeling terrible for the author, Eloise feeling vindicated in her opinion of him.
I glance up at the clock: 5.25. It’s too late in the day to be phoning anyone about glasses or catering. There is, however, time for a quick email. I log onto the website for the No Trace crime podcast and bring up the contact form. I’m likely only to get one chance at this, so I need to name drop and job drop. Pinter can be bloody useful for once.
Hi, I’m an ex-copper from the UK that worked on the Arthur Pinter investigation and I love your podcast. The Tracey Jervis case is a particular interest of mine and I am hoping that you might be willing to share your research and put me in contact with Prudence’s classmate that you mentioned on your show. I look forward to hearing from you. Kind regards, Garth Sherlock.
I click send, then check the clock again: 5.27. ‘Stuff it, shall we close early?’
‘Let’s. Magnum ice creams and wine for tea?’ suggests Eloise.
‘You’re on.’
I’m just moving to the door when a customer walks in. For goodness’ sake. Who walks into a shop three minutes before closing? Someone who’s never worked in retail, that’s who.
She is smartly decked out in a little black dress, and wears high-heeled shoes that look expensive, not that I’d know — Eloise mostly wears dockers. I guess she’s probably in her late forties.
‘Welcome,’ I say, keeping inside the fact that I don’t feel very welcoming. ‘Can I help at all?’
The woman dismisses me with a cursory glance. ‘No. I’m just browsing.’
Yeah, you’re just browsing at closing time, I don’t say. Instead, I head out and noisily bring in the magazine billboards and doormat, the shopkeeper’s passive-aggressive trick of signalling that they want to close. The woman ignores me.
‘Well, that’s another day done,’ I say loudly, as I shake the welcome mat outside and then drop it out of the way so that I can pull the door half closed. Still the woman pays me no heed. I head up to the till and start to surreptitiously tot up the contents.
By 5.40 the woman is still floating around by the fiction. I’ve had enough and glance at Eloise, whispering, ‘Shall I?’
She gives me the nod.
I plaster on a friendly smile and approach the browser. ‘I’m terribly sorry, we’re closing now.’
Barely acknowledging my presence, she looks at her gold wristwatch. ‘But I’m not meeting my friends at Ki-ko for dinner until six.’
I force down my ire. Eloise and I are now ticking towards a ten-hour day. I really don’t feel obliged to stay open for another twenty minutes so this lady, who clearly has no intention of purchasing anything, isn’t bored.
‘I’m sorry, but we have to cash up before our Eftpos machine cuts over to the next day.’ This is at least partially true, although the cutover is at 6pm.
