Read Wexford 18 - Harm Done for Free Online Page B

since.”
       “Time was,” said Wexford, “when universities used to stop undergraduates leaving the place to go home or any where else at weekends. Pity the custom’s changed. I suppose the mother knows she hasn’t just gone back to her college - had they had a family row, for instance?”
       “She says not. And the girl hasn’t gone back. Barry’s checked with her hall of residence and her supervisor.”
       “What’s she called and where’s her home?”
       “She’s called Rachel Holmes, Oval Road, Stowerton. The mother’s Mrs. Rosemary Holmes, divorced, lives alone when the girl’s not there. She’s a medical secretary in Dr. Akande’s practice.”
       Turning away from his reflection, a ghostly face dimly mirrored behind Chagall’s flying lovers, Burden began to explain. Rachel had gone out at eight or thereabouts on Saturday night with the intention of meeting a group of friends in a pub. Her mother didn’t know which pub nor yet where Rachel was going afterward, but it would have been some club or a friend’s house. It was unlikely that she would be home before two or three the next morning.
       “When she was younger,” Mrs. Holmes had said to Detective Sergeant Barry Vine, “I made her carry a mobile with her and she’d ring me to tell me where she was. But you can’t do that when the over eighteen, can you? She’s at university after all. I don’t know what she’s doing when she’s there, do I? I don’t know what time she comes in at night when she’s there. So what’s the point of worrying if she’s late when she’s at home? I do worry, though, of course I do. I didn’t sleep a wink on Saturday night.”
       “So she phoned us today, did she?” Wexford asked.
       “Phoned and came in to report a missing person.”
       “Why did she wait so long?”
       “Don’t know. Vine got the impression the girl’s one of these bolshie teenagers, the kind who might give her mother a hard time if she reported her missing when she’s just off somewhere up to her own devices.”
       Wexford sat silent for a moment. He was anxious not to become obsessive, not to let a single not very important case take over and dominate his mind. But he was also aware that it is hard to alter one’s nature, especially at his age. This was the way he was, and to attempt a change would be a violation of his character and not necessarily otherwise advantageous.
       “You surely aren’t thinking of going to see Mrs. Holmes?” said Burden almost derisively. “Barry’s got it in hand.”
       “I’m thinking of going back to see the Crownes and Lizzie Cromwell.” Wexford got up. “If they know the Holmeses or the two girls know each other, it would be very interesting indeed.”

Chapter 3

    “No, we don’t know her,” Debbie Crowne said, spitting out the words. “She’s not our class, is she? The likes of her wouldn’t want to know the likes of us.”
       Since Rachel Holmes and her mother lived in a back-street terrace, in a poor little house rather smaller than the one he was now in, Wexford wondered at the fine distinction Mrs. Crowne made. But at the same time he knew he was being disingenuous. There was a difference. Rosemary Holmes owned her house, she had a white-collar job - if that description could be applied to a woman - and Rachel was at university. Somehow, if she had begun in the working class, Mrs. Holmes had elevated herself a grade or two, while the Crownes had remained where they started. In some ways he didn’t like these gradations, but he knew they were a fact of life, not a culture specific or, as some said, confined to this country.
       “Were she and Rachel at the same school?”
       As soon as he said it, he knew he had made things worse. Lizzie herself gave him one of her lowering looks, head drooping but nervous rabbit’s eyes peering upward. It was an expression more usually seen in children half her age.
       Her mother said,