“I don’t know anything about all that,” her voice was glacial, “I can’t help you.” She hung up on me.
I sat there for a moment stunned by her abrupt dismissal. I toyed with the notion of ringing her back to press the issue but I realised it would be a futile thing to do. The woman obviously didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Why? It happens that people shut the door in my face. It happens quite a lot actually, especially when I’m serving injunctions. But in other cases there’s generally a little more interaction before people choose not to get involved, not to answer questions, not to waste their time. The speed of her decision and the frostiness of her response got me thinking that there must be some history there, some reason for Mrs Shuttle to turn arctic at the mention of the Pickerings. It was the only untoward reaction I’d had and it intrigued me, made me want to start burrowing away to find out what lay behind it. Oh, it was probably something innocent like the two families had fallen out over a border dispute or the Shuttles’ cat had persisted in fouling the Pickerings’ garden, maybe Jennifer had been a bit lippy to the neighbours. Whatever it was I didn’t know whether it would bring me any closer to finding Jennifer and I wasn’t sure that I should pursue it. I thought it was probably a red herring albeit an interesting one. I know better, now.
I finally got through to Frances Delaney and explained why I was calling.
“Can it wait till after the weekend?” she asked. “It’s just that I’ve had one of them off with chicken pox and my husband’s parents are visiting, arriving tomorrow. I’ve not even done the shopping…”
“That’s fine,” I interrupted. I didn’t need any more persuasion. “I’ve already got things booked for Monday, some time on Tuesday perhaps?”
“Erm…About ten thirty? The baby usually has a nap then and Gemma will be at playgroup. How long will it take?”
“An hour at the most, probably less.”
“OK. I’ll give you the address.”
I wrote it down and said goodbye. So I couldn’t see either of Jennifer’s remaining friends until the following week. I’d still a couple of hours until school finished and that evening I began my surveillance for the Ibrahims. I could usefully prepare for that.
Coming back from school we looked for conkers. There are two huge horse chestnut trees on the way. Tom charged around lamming bits of stick enthusiastically into the trees while Maddie systematically combed the area looking for conkers on the ground.
