Page 44

FORTY-THREE

After giving Jacob a nudge back at the station, the time had finally come to attend the public meeting at Cleevesford Village Hall while the team prepped their visit to the farm that Gary worked at. But first, it was time to speak to Mrs Sellers about Elissa Pritchard.

‘I can’t believe we still haven’t found the paperwork relating to Elissa Pritchard’s disappearance,’ Jacob said as he pulled over. Their gaze fixed on the bleak-looking flat-roofed building.

‘I know. We might not have to be here if we had the original Sellers’ interviews. I keep thinking about Luna, that scared-looking girl in the photo. How can a girl just disappear and there be no word about her at all? I feel sick at what Keeley said. We know the photo that John Doe showed Molly Sailsbury wasn’t the real Luna, but there is a girl, we saw the photos that John Doe had. Without him, she is as good as dead, unless we find her, and I don’t know where we go with this next. We know his dangerous accomplice, or accomplices, are still out there.’

‘Okay, so what’s the plan for today?’ Jacob laid his arm against the window and fidgeted in the driver’s seat.

‘After here, it’s straight to the farm where Gary works. We need to check it out. O’Connor and Wyre are researching Edmundson’s Farm, and organising a small team to attend. As far as we could see, it’s a reputable dairy farm with lots of staff. Then there’s Marie Blaine – again, another name that isn’t coming up in our searches, and I believe she’s key to understanding and identifying our perp. Then, there’s Eric, the man who Ruth was in a relationship with, who has a secret family. Any news on the rental place?’

Jacob unbuckled his seat belt. ‘O’Connor followed up on that while you and Wyre were interviewing Mr Moore. There’s someone else renting it now. Nothing of his was left there, but a couple of PCs were going to follow up on it.’

‘Great, we need to be the ones to go to Eric Hathaway’s house.’

Noon was fast approaching. That’s when the community meeting was going ahead, where Patricia Sellers would be.

‘We have Eric Hathaway’s address. We’ll go straight to his after the farm. I’m so scared for the girl – I just hope we’re not too late.’ She shook her head. ‘I refuse to believe we’re too late to help her. She is out there and she needs us. Maybe we’ll get something back from Gary Pritchard’s computers. I know Garth has them now.’

‘Fingers crossed.’ Jacob glanced back. ‘Someone’s coming.’

A man wearing a flat cap and grey trousers began opening up the community centre. A few other people soon followed. Three women and a man with a collie dog huddled near the door and entered. Gina opened the car door.

‘Excuse me, I’m DI Harte and this is DS Driscoll.’ Jacob tried to brush the crease out of his jacket with his hands. ‘We’re looking for Mrs Sellers.’

A woman in an anorak came from behind and stepped towards the door using a walking frame. ‘That’s me. Last as usual.’

Gina smiled. ‘May we go in and speak somewhere privately? We didn’t have an address on the system for you.’

‘System? I live with my daughter. Just moved in. We haven’t dealt with the paperwork yet.’ She shuffled into the damp-smelling building and led them towards the kitchen. ‘Olga,’ she called back, ‘you all get started with the meeting, I’ll get the urn heated up so we can get some cuppas on the go.’

Once in the large kitchen, the woman pulled up a high stool and allowed herself to flop back into it. ‘So, what does a DI and a DS want with me? I put in a formal complaint about a certain dog and owner over a month ago, but officers of your rank don’t deal with dog fouling, do you?’

Gina leaned against the worktop, the smell of old burnt toast creeping up her nostrils. ‘Sorry, we’re here to talk about an old case – Elissa Pritchard’s disappearance?’

‘That was a long time ago, but I could never forget Elissa. I told the police everything I knew at the time. Our whole lives were turned upside down. It wasn’t us; we had nothing to do with it. You searched our house high and low and I don’t need this back in my life. Do you know how much your investigation caused the community to turn against us? We had horrible words painted on our café window, and we didn’t hurt a hair on that girl’s head. We had stuff-all to do with her vanishing.’

‘Can you tell me anything about the time she went missing?’

Patricia Sellers scrunched her hooded eyes and her thin grey hair fell over her face as she hunched over. ‘I remember telling the girl that she was bringing unwanted attention on herself but, of course, no one these days wants to take responsibility. She tried to tell me my husband had tried it on with her. He didn’t. She was a liar, too. Some men did because she kept bending down in front of everyone in those short skirts. I had a go at her and told her to wear something sensible, and I stand by what I said. Of course, I had a go at my dopey husband, too, as he did ogle her. Because of her, the café was getting to be like a pick-up joint. The boys would all come to chat to her. It wouldn’t be so bad, but they’d only buy one can of pop and sit there all day.’ Mrs Sellers shook her head.

Gina pictured what Mrs Sellers was actually describing: a popular, young girl enjoying fashion, being sexually harassed by her middle-aged boss.

‘I’m not surprised she ended up a victim. Girls like her just do, or they get into trouble, if you know what I mean. So many children pushing babies around. Not like it was in my day. You kept your legs shut until you married.’

Jacob glanced over at Gina. She knew he could see the redness creeping from her chest to her chin as she got angry at the level of judgement and victim-blaming coming from the woman’s mouth. Gina also knew when to shut up, and her best bet was to let Mrs Sellers ramble on, regardless of how angry it was making her.

‘And the boys – some would ask her out, and she always said no, despite being a flirty little bird. She preferred men, though. I remember one particular day: her poor old dad came to pick her up and caught a man staring at her; a grown man. The dad barged in and frogmarched that girl out with a telling off. He was full of rage, he was. Angry as hell itself. I swear he said what I was thinking when he told her off for wearing that skirt before pushing her into the car. Anyway, she came back to work the next day and didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered. She had an even shorter skirt on.’

Gina tried to picture Gary shouting at Elissa, embarrassing and shaming her in front of everyone. It must have been humiliating.

‘That mother of hers thought the sun shone out of her daughter’s arse. She’d come in and have a cuppa some days when Elissa was working, and Elissa would be all sweetness and light in front of her. Lack of motherly control, that was the problem. Dad tried, but Mother never backed him up.’

‘Can we fast-forward to the day she went missing?’

‘You’re like the other detectives at the time. What I’m telling you says it all: she ran off with a man. Daddy was strict and she didn’t want to abide by her curfew and the house rules, so she ran away with a man.’

‘What makes you think that?’ Gina tried to unclench her fists in her pocket, but the tension was giving her a headache.

‘The man. He kept waiting outside for her in his car, and I watched them. He’d stare, and one day she went outside to tell him to – now this isn’t ladylike, but she was playing hard to get – she told him to “ eff off”, and I had to have words with her over it. I didn’t think it was good, her outside the café swearing at a potential customer. The little angry outbursts were a regular thing. One minute she was all smiles and flirting, until they got handsy, then she was full of bad language. Hot and cold. I tried to tell her about the skirts again, but’ – she shrugged – ‘they don’t listen at that age. You know, she smoked, too.’

‘Smoked?’

‘Always trying to blag a ciggie off someone. If that isn’t a sign of a girl gone wrong, I don’t know what is. I know she had a bit of a drink sometimes, too, because she came to work with hangovers. That girl was out of control. She ran away with a man her parents wouldn’t have approved of. That was all there was to it. There was no foul play at all. The man who she swore at, I saw her getting into his car after work. It was around the time she vanished. She got in willingly. Add risky behaviour to the list of her problems.’

‘Did you manage to get a look at him?’

‘Not really. Only from the shop. He was in a Ford Escort, so I couldn’t see well, but it was a man. Nice square jaw and hair that fell like curtains. All the boys and young men had that cut back then, but it did cover his face. I told the police about him.’

‘Did he ever come into the café?’

She shook her head. ‘Have you even read the file?’

Gina didn’t want to discuss the fact that they were having trouble locating the original interviews. ‘As we are looking into the case again, we felt it would be better to speak to the original witnesses ourselves.’

‘You should stop fussing over that case. Girls like her go wrong and there’s nothing you can do for them. I said my bit and all she did was chew gum and roll her eyes. She knew what she was doing when she went off with the man in the silly red cap.’

‘Red cap?’ Gina knew for definite that the other person involved must be older than John Doe as John Doe would have been a child back then. But they both had a red cap, maybe the same red cap.

‘Yes, the man with the silly curtain haircut also put on a red baseball cap with some writing on the front.’ She let out a huff of a laugh. ‘My stupid husband was putting the rubbish out and he came back in saying that he wished we’d gone to Florida.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I asked him what was going through his head. He said nothing, just that the man’s cap had the word Florida written on the front. We told the police this at the time. Ford Escort, curtain haircut and red Florida cap.’