The Betrayal of Trust Read Free Page B

been flooded out were mostly still closed as proprietors triedto clean up.
    For a couple of days after the storm Jocelyn had been too busy helping Penny, whose ground-floor flat had suffered water damage. Penny had a big case about to start at Bevham Crown Court and little time to organise anything, which meant that Jocelyn had had no space in which to worry about herself. She had made the doctor’s appointment and now felt foolish. She shouldn’t be takingup surgery time. Her panic about being incapacitated had only come on because she was alone, it was two in the morning and the storm had seemed to be heralding the end of the world.
    She would have cancelled the GP appointment if she had not let slip to Penny that she had one. That had been that of course. Penny was insistent, Penny the competent one, Penny the barrister, Penny who took chargeand was irritated that she had had to leave her mother to sort out the flat.
    ‘I don’t think I’ll bother, Pen. Someone else needs the appointment more than I do.’
    ‘How do you know that?’
    ‘It’s obvious. I’m perfectly fit.’
    ‘You must have made it for a reason, Mother.’
    ‘Yes, well.’
    ‘What are you frightened of?’
    That goaded her, as Penny had known it would.
    ‘I am not frightened of anything.’She met her daughter’s eye. ‘Fine, fine, I’ll go, waste Dr Deerbon’s time.’
    ‘It’s what she’s paid for.’
    Now Jocelyn sat in the waiting room looking at a magazine for young women under thirty and feeling pleased that she had no need to starve herself or binge drink or worry about unfaithful men or wear skirts no wider than a hairband. By the time she was called she felt extremely cheerful andeven more of a fraud.

Four
    ‘ MAKES A CHANGE ,’ Gordon Lyman said. The pathologist stood at the head of the dissecting table looking down at a sheet of heavy-duty plastic on which the set of bones was assembled into an almost complete skeleton. Serrailler had a momentary shock at not seeing a dead body, whole and entire.
    ‘Let me show you why I’ve got you in.’
    Like most of the pathologists Simon had known, this one managedto combine efficiency and enthusiasm with a laid-back air.
    ‘It’s been surprisingly straightforward actually. Pity. I don’t often get a build-your-own-skeleton kit to play with.’
    ‘They seem to have sifted everything out of half a hillside pretty quickly.’
    ‘Thing was, it had pretty much stayed together – clods of damp earth formed a protective mould around it.’
    ‘How long has it been there?’
    ‘Well, sixteen years, give or take. These are the remains of Harriet Lowther.’
    ‘Right. No doubts?’
    Gordon shook his head. ‘Firstly, we know Harriet wore a brace on her front teeth, even without accessing her dental records, and these braces always fit pretty snugly. It’s still there … see?’
    Simon leaned over and looked at the jaw. The brace, discoloured but undamaged, was still firmly fixedto the upper front teeth.
    ‘But we have her dental records as well. Perfect match. One other thing is the clincher … Harriet only had four toes on her left foot. Congenital thing.’ He pointed again. ‘Everything else fits – height and so on.’
    ‘One hundred per cent sure?’
    Gordon shook his head. ‘With a skeleton there always has to be a sliver of doubt, but what are the chances of the body of agirl of fifteen with a tooth brace, and only four toes who disappeared near the burial spot sixteen years ago –’
    ‘I get it. Right, thanks for the heads-up. The press are already panting at the door but we can let them pant a bit longer. There’s enough here for me to alert the Chief and reopen the case.’
    He looked round the cold-tiled room under its blue-white light. Harriet Lowther had beenfound but it would be some time before she could be laid to rest in a place of her family’s choice, not of someone else’s.
    It was still well before nine o’clock when he slipped the Audi into his