Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

“I haven’t remembered anything else,” she said when she found him on her doorstep.

“It’s not about Wednesday night,” he said, after he had been led through to the sitting room, watched by the careful eye of Collette’s mother. “It’s about what sort of girl Annaleese was. Is.” He was glad that Collette thought before answering.

“You know when girls disappear or get murdered, someone describes her as fun-loving?”

“Yes. Was that the sort of girl Annaleese was?”

“No, it’s the sort of girl she wasn’t. No way. I don’t mean she went around moping all the time, but there was always something there — some thought, something she didn’t want to talk about.”

“Why was she living with her grandmother?”

“’Cos her family collapsed. Evaporated. First her father went, then her mother said she couldn’t cope with her, and went off to live with a Huddersfield man.”

“Was she bitter about that?”

“What do you think? She wouldn’t be over the moon, would she? She said her mother ‘didn’t give a toss’ about her, called her father a ‘bastard’, and said she’d never had a childhood like other children had. Yes, I’d say she was bitter.”

“Did she ever go into details?”

“No. Absolutely not. Never a hint. We guessed there’d been some kind of abuse, but we didn’t ask. Didn’t dare to, to tell the truth. She was good at shutting down entirely.”

“But she had two grandmothers.”

“That’s a laugh. The one she lived with hated having to provide a home for her, and was always encouraging her to get out, maybe find a man. The other one she visited to screw money out of.”

“How did she do that?”

“That’s her father’s mother. We wondered if there was a bit of blackmail involved: ‘sub me regular or I’ll go to the police about what my dad did to me.’”

“I see... Did Annaleese have any special boyfriend?”

“One she was sleeping with? Not regular, not at all. She did sleep with men or boys now and then, when she wanted something from them — money, going anywhere in their car, going on a shoplifting spree to one of the big supermarkets... But the boys always said she wasn’t interested.”

“In sex, or with them?”

“I don’t suppose they knew, or thought about it like that.”

“I must say I don’t like the sound of all this,” said Paulson. “She seems so vulnerable. Who else did she try and blackmail other than her grandmother? Blackmail, even small-scale blackmail, is a crime for professionals.”

“We never thought of her like that,” said Collette. “We just thought she’d come through things pretty strong.”

Inspector Paulson began to feel increasingly uneasy about Annaleese. He gave a small-scale press conference where he highlighted the man on the thirty-eight bus, asking him to come forward, asking if anyone reading the publicity knew of his likely identity. He got two or three really good likenesses of Annaleese, and asked anyone who had seen her in the last week to come forward.

Then he went to see her paternal grandmother.

Mrs. Knox was a hard-faced woman who let him in reluctantly and talked when possible in monosyllables, usually negative ones: No, she hadn’t seen her granddaughter on Wednesday night, no she hadn’t seen or heard from her subsequently. She knew of no trouble she was in. She was obviously a bitter, not a loving, grandparent.

“She came to see you fairly often, didn’t she?” Paulson asked.

“Aye. When she wanted anything,” was the tight-lipped reply.

“Her friends say you were generous to her with money.”

“Oh, they say that, do they? Well, I’m only a pensioner, and I’ve nothing tucked away. I gave her small sums now and then. Bus fares and that.”

“Did Annaleese have ways of getting money out of you?”

“I don’t know what you mean. She asked for it, that’s what she did.”

“But did she mention her father, and some knowledge she might have—”

That really did catch the woman on a weak side.

“Look,” she said, firing up, “I know my son and I love him. I know better than to take seriously the mucky imaginings of a teenage kid. I took no heed to it whatsoever. I blame the television. Anybody with a grubby tale to tell gets on TV to tell it, and the soaps aren’t much better. Some of the plots are nothing but disgusting.”

“Tell me,” said Paulson, getting up, “are you worried about your granddaughter?”

“Oh, she’ll turn up. Like a bad penny, I nearly said. She’s no sense of responsibility, and she’ll disappear or turn up just as she pleases.”

Paulson hoped she was right.