Hilary Bonner - When the Dead Cry Out

“Look, I just wondered if you had any idea where my daughter, where Clara Marshall, might be.”

The girl shook her head.

“She’s not there,” she said suddenly. “She doesn’t live there anymore. Why don’t you know that if you’re her father?”

Mac had been badly taken aback. If it were true that his daughter had moved out of the marital home and started a new life, why indeed didn’t he know that? There was no easy answer. He didn’t have a clue where Clara might be and it was all his own stupid stubborn fault.

He took his leave of the girl he was to encounter again many years later when she was a senior police detective, and decided to try another house across the road. And there he struck lucky, if that was the word.

The man who answered the door to him did so swiftly with something of a flourish, as he did everything. Charles Peabody was not a man to mince words, either. When Mac enquired whether he knew his daughter, or had any idea where she might be, Peabody introduced himself in such a way that the Scotsman felt he was supposed to know who he was, and then proceeded to pass on what scant information he had and to give his opinion in a pompously forceful manner.

“If you want to know the truth, nobody’s seen nor heard of Clara Marshall or her girls for nearly a year,” he announced. “And it’s high time somebody did something about it, I say. Richard Marshall’s already moved his bit on the side in. And her a married woman, too. It’s not right. It’s a scandal, that’s what it is.”

“As for your daughter, well, there’s all sorts of stories around in the town about what might have happened to her. She’s your girl, Mr. MacDonald, and I don’t want to alarm you. But there’s plenty round here who’d put nothing past Richard Marshall, nothing at all.”

In spite of his professed intention not to alarm Sean MacDonald, Peabody displayed little restraint or sensitivity.

Obviously not the man’s style, thought Mac obliquely, as he felt a cold chill run through his body. He didn’t need Charles Peabody to spell out the stories which were abundant in Torquay. He didn’t actually need anything spelled out. He had to admit that for some time now, ever since that Christmas check had been cleared without acknowledgement, there had been nasty lurking doubts in the back of his mind concerning the welfare of his daughter and her children.

He had dismissed them as fanciful. Richard Marshall might be a small-time villain and a man he strongly disliked, but to turn him into anything else was merely being self-indulgent, he had told himself.

Now he allowed all those thoughts, his doubts, to overtake him. He had no more time for neighbours’ tittle-tattle. He wanted the truth.

He said thank you and goodbye to Mr. Peabody in as calm a manner as he could manage, and as soon as the other man closed his front door he half-ran across the road back to Parkview where he hammered noisily on the door, his heart pumping like a piston engine.

Marshall didn’t respond quickly enough. Mac began to shout then. “Come on, you bastard. Come on. Answer this bloody door before I knock it down.”

Eventually Richard Marshall had opened the door. But only a crack. The security chain remained in place.

“What do you want?” he asked nervously.

“I want to know where my daughter is. I want to know what you’ve done with my daughter, you bastard.”

“You’re mad. I’ve told you. She’s left me, I don’t know where she is.”

“I think you do know, you bastard. You fucking bastard. I think you do know. And I’ll not rest till I get the truth, I promise you that.”

“You’re mad, and you’ve been listening to gossip. I saw you, running around to the neighbours.”

“If you’ve harmed a hair of my daughter’s head I’ll kill you, I promise you, you fucker,” screamed Mac.

“You and which army?”

Marshall, perhaps given confidence by his security chain, had returned to his normal arrogance, which had always so infuriated Mac.

The Scotsman lunged crazily forward trying to reach through the narrow gap between the door and its frame. He went for Marshall’s throat. He wanted to throttle the bastard. Although how he thought he would succeed in doing so through a crack in the door he had no idea. He was not thinking, of course.

Marshall pulled sharply back, threw his substantial weight behind the door and smashed it shut. Mac only just got his hands out in time.

He pulled himself together. Stepped back. Tears were coursing down his cheeks. He wiped them away with the back of one hand, struggled to regain control. He was trembling from head to foot. Mac was a strong man physically and mentally. But suddenly he had collapsed. His whole world had collapsed. He turned and lurched along the path. At the gate he stumbled, reached out and held on to a gatepost for support. As he did so he noticed the girl from next door. She was standing on the pavement just behind the fence. He had little doubt that she had been watching and listening.

“What the hell do ye think you’re doing?” Mac yelled. “Just get the hell out of here, now.”

The girl had obeyed at once. Her eyes wide with fear she took off at a run through the big gates into the house next door and up the driveway, her feet barely touching the ground, she was moving so fast.

Fleetingly, Mac was ashamed of himself for rounding on a mere child. He hadn’t been able to help himself, though. His tears were still falling in spite of his efforts to control them, and Mac was a proud man. A man’s man. He had never been able to stand anyone, not even his late wife, seeing him cry. And yet there he was on a public thoroughfare blubbing like a baby.

He couldn’t help that either.

Suddenly, with devastating clarity, he had been overwhelmed with a terrible knowledge. He believed beyond any doubt at all that he would indeed never see his daughter and her children again. Just as Clara had told him.

But he believed now that she was dead. That they were all dead. And that Richard Marshall had killed them.

That evening and throughout the night, spent in the Grand Hotel on the seafront, torturing himself in a place that he knew had been a great favourite of his daughter’s, Sean MacDonald struggled with the terrible revelation that had overwhelmed him.

In the morning he went to Torquay Police Station to report that his daughter Mrs. Clara Marshall and her two little girls Lorraine and Janine were missing.

At Torquay Police Station twenty-seven years later Karen sat in thought for a few moments following her phone call to Sean MacDonald. She had not been surprised by his reaction. She knew exactly what the potential of this freak discovery would mean to him.

Neither she nor anybody else could bring Clara Marshall and her children back. But perhaps they really could bring Richard Marshall to justice at last. She’d make sure she gave it her best shot, that was for certain; and so, she was sure, would all of her team. This was so much more than just another case. Karen leaned forward in her chair, ready for action again, and buzzed Phil Cooper who appeared swiftly in the open doorway of her office.

“Right, Phil, I have a list for you,” she began briskly. “One, we need to establish that the Rolex belonged to Clara. Get somebody to track down this retired jeweller, Gavin, in Inverness. Mac says he a bought a Rolex for Clara from him.” She passed Cooper the piece of paper on which she had written the details. “It’s a very long shot that he’ll still have any records, but you never know. Meanwhile get the watch to the Rolex HQ in Kent, and get it to them today. Tell them we need them to do their stuff again, just like they did on that other case. Tell them we need to know where that watch was sold. And we need to know fast. If we’re going to pick up Marshall I want to get on with it. He probably knows what we’ve found off Berry Head, it’s already been in the papers and on the news. I don’t want him doing some sort of disappearing act. He’s just the sort of bastard who’d be capable of making himself disappear permanently. If we can prove quickly that watch was sold by Gavin, and the date, then that would establish near enough one hundred percent that it was bought by Mac. We’re there then. And we’d have really strong circumstantial evidence against Marshall at last. At least we’d have a body, even if it’s only a damaged skeleton.”