Page 26 of Worse Than Murder (DCI Matilda Darke Thriller #13)

‘C an I have a word?’ PC Alison Pemberton asks as she approaches Inspector Forsyth at the edge of the lake. She looks worried. Her eyes are red from where she’s rubbed tears away.

‘Of course,’ Gill replies. She steps to one side, so they’ll have some privacy. She had been on the phone for the past hour updating her chief constable on developments. She was also waiting on a call back from the man in charge at SRUK about their ETA.

‘I heard Cl… Sergeant Daniels talking, and she said there have been items found that belong to children. Do you think I could take them to show my mum? Do you think… could they belong to my sisters?’ Her voice is filled with emotion. She’s struggling to hold onto her professionalism.

‘Alison, right now, all we have is a car at the bottom of the lake. We don’t know what or if there is anything inside it.’

‘The car belongs to Travis. He was very close to my family.’

‘Alison…’

‘But… the shoe and…’

‘I will go and speak to your mum,’ Gill says, softening her voice. ‘Alison, I know you became a police officer so you could find out what happened to your father and sisters, but you can’t allow that to jump to the front of your mind with every investigation. This could simply be an abandoned car.’

Alison nods. She looks away while she composes herself and swallows her tears.

‘I want to help,’ she eventually says.

‘You will. Let’s wait until we know what we’re dealing with before we go any further. Get Callum to drive you back to the station. We’ve still got calls coming in from the storm. We’ll take this one step at a time. Okay?’

‘Thank you,’ Alison says, trying to smile.

Gill watches her leave towards a marked car with her head down. She blows out her cheeks. She heads for Alan who’s standing by his car, the boot open.

‘Show me the items that came floating to the surface again,’ Gill says.

Alan hands her the two evidence bags.

Gill takes them and scrutinises the shoe, in particular. ‘What age girl would you say this shoe would fit?’

‘Well, if Prince Charming was looking for his Cinderella, I’d say he’d be looking for a small girl about five, six, maybe seven.’

‘And the necklace?’

‘It’s not a very long one, is it? Roughly the same age, possibly.’

‘Do you know the story of Alison Pemberton’s sisters?’

‘We all do.’

She lowers her voice. ‘What do you think?’.

‘It would be a massive coincidence if they didn’t belong to them.’

‘My thoughts exactly. Would you like to come with me to show these items to Alison’s mother?’

‘Can I refuse?’

‘You can, but you’ll be doing the stranger danger talks to primary school kids every term until you retire.’

* * *

Lynne pulls up at the entrance to the stables almost at the same time as Inspector Gill Forsyth and her second-in-command, Sergeant Alan Stokes.

‘Lynne, I’ve just been to your house looking for you. I saw the front window boarded up. Is everything all right?’ Gill asks as she climbs out.

‘What? Oh. Yes. A tree came through the window in the storm.’

‘Is there much damage?’

‘Only to the furniture. Did you want me for anything?’ Lynne asks, leaning against her car, holding onto the open door for support.

‘I need to talk to you. And Iain, if that’s possible.’

‘Is this about what you’ve found in the lake?’

‘Is there somewhere we can go where we’re a bit more private?’ Gill asks, non-committal.

Lynne takes a breath. ‘Of course.’ She closes the car door. ‘We can go into the office.’

She leads the way, opening the gate and asking Sergeant Stokes to close it properly behind him so the horses can’t get out. She calls for Iain a few times before he shouts down to them from the far side of the roof.

‘How’s it looking?’ Lynne looks up, shielding her eyes from the sun.

‘Fine.’

‘Can you come down for a moment? The police are here. They’ve found something.’

He leans further out and sees Forsyth and Stokes.

‘Oh. Sure. I’ll be right down.’

‘We’ll be in the office, is that all right?’

‘Fine.’

Lynne takes them into the small room laughably called an office. A cheap pine desk with a laptop and a few files. The rest of the space is taken up by sacks of feed and hay. Lynne pushes them to one side while she finds a couple of chairs.

‘Can I get you both a drink or something?’

‘We’re fine, thanks.’

‘Take a seat.’

Iain comes in looking windswept, having been on the roof for most of the morning.

‘Did the storm cause much damage?’ Gill asks him.

‘Not much. A few of the battens on the roof had come loose. All sorted now.’

‘Horses okay?’

‘They’re fine. A little unsettled. Your Lauren has already been up this morning to check on Oliver.’

Gill gives a whisper of a smile. ‘I sometimes wonder who she loves more: me or him. Erm, is this a good time for us to have a word?’ she asks, looking towards Lynne who is already wiping her eyes with a tatty tissue.

‘Yes. Fine.’

‘Lynne,’ Gill begins. ‘As you know, a car has been discovered on the bed of the lake. We’re waiting for a specialised recovery team to come up from Birmingham to help us pull it out.

However, a couple of items have floated to the surface.

We believe they’re items belonging to a child.

I was wondering if you’d look at them for me and let me know if you recognise them.

’ She talks in a delicate tone, hoping her soothing manner will make the horrifying situation less shocking. It doesn’t work.

‘What kind of items?’ Lynne asks. She’s sitting rigid on a wooden chair, knees drawn together, fingers interlocked on her lap.

‘There’s a shoe and a piece of jewellery.’

‘Do you think Celia and Jennifer are in the car?’ Iain asks.

‘We don’t know if there is anyone in there at the moment. I’m keeping an open mind. However, the only local missing children we have on our records are your daughters.’

‘Oh my God!’ Lynne cries. She bows her head and seems to crumble in on herself.

Iain crouches down beside her and wraps his arms around her shoulders. ‘It’s all right, Lynne, it’s all right,’ he whispers to her. He holds her close and kisses her on the top of her head.

She nods and slowly sits back up. He hands her a fresh tissue from his pocket.

‘Have they been there, in the lake, within spitting distance of my house, all this time?’

‘We don’t know anything at the moment, Lynne. Until we can get the car up, everything is guesswork.’

Lynne wipes her eyes with the sodden tissue. ‘I understand.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Can I see what you’ve found?’

Gill looks to Alan who brings the plastic evidence bags from behind his back.

He hands them to Gill. She passes the one containing the shoe to Lynne first. Years of it being submerged in water has dulled the trainer.

It’s difficult to guess what its original colour had been.

It’s dirty and scuffed and the laces are missing, but it’s clear what the item is.

Lynne holds it in shaking fingers. She turns it over, looks at the worn tread. Her facial expression doesn’t change.

‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘They had shoes like this, but… I’m not sure.’

‘What shoes were they wearing on the day they went missing? They were playing in fields, weren’t they?’ Gill asks.

Lynne nods. ‘I can’t remember what shoes they were wearing. I know Celia was wearing pink shorts and a white T-shirt. Jennifer had on a purple short-sleeve shirt and a white skirt. I can’t… I can’t see their shoes. I’m so sorry.’

‘Iain?’ Gill asks him.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see them that morning so I couldn’t say what they were wearing.’

Lynne closes her eyes tightly shut as she takes herself back to that day, thirty years ago.

She feels sick. She opens her eyes and streams of tears roll down her cheeks.

She hands the shoe back to Gill who swaps it for the second bag from Alan.

When Lynne takes it, it looks empty. There doesn’t seem to be anything in there.

Right at the bottom is a small, tarnished silver chain.

There are three tiny daisies linked together in the middle.

Lynne runs her fingers gently over the flowers through the plastic.

‘They both had one,’ she eventually says.

‘Their grandmother bought them one each for Christmas the year before they… They had an argument and one of the necklaces ended up losing two of its flowers. Of course, they blamed each other. I don’t know who this one belongs to,’ she says, squeezing the evidence bag tightly between her fingers and crying.

Iain leans down to her, kisses her on the top of her head again and makes soothing noises as he tells her everything is going to be all right. They’re just words, though. They’re meaningless. Nothing is going to be all right ever again.

‘But the necklace definitely belongs to one of your daughters?’ Gill asks.

It’s a while before she receives confirmation. Lynne looks up. She seems to have aged a decade since Gill walked into the small office. She nods.

Gill allows the silence to grow. When nobody says anything more, she continues.

‘Lynne, looking back at the original investigation, it was thought your daughters were kidnapped and taken away from the area. If that’s not the case, if your girls never left the area, it’s possible you might have known the kidnapper.

Is there anyone from that time who might have done something like this to your family? ’

Lynne is holding on tightly to her husband. She’s leaning into him for support. She can’t do this on her own and is close to cracking completely. She squeezes his hand even tighter.

‘We were just a normal family,’ she says, barely audible between the tears.

Gill looks to Iain. He shakes his head.

‘The car belonged to Travis Montgomery. You were close to him, yes?’

Lynne puts her head down. She wraps her arms tightly around her own body, hugging herself, protecting herself.

‘It’s Travis’s car in the lake?’ Iain asks. ‘It’s been there all this time?’

‘It would appear so.’

‘And the girls are in it?’

‘We don’t know that at present.’

‘Travis worked with us on the farm,’ Iain says. He leans back against the desk. His face is pale with shock. ‘The land was in a mess. It needed digging over and levelling. He worked as hard as me and Jack.’

‘I didn’t know Travis all that well,’ Gill says. ‘What can you tell me about him?’

Iain shakes his head as he thinks. ‘I… I don’t know. He was a hard worker. He’d turn his hand to anything. He was quiet. He played guitar. Not very well,’ he says with a faint laugh. ‘He was just an ordinary, normal bloke.’

‘Did he get on with Celia and Jennifer?’ she asks, looking at Lynne.

Lynne slowly raises her head and makes eye contact with the inspector.

‘He was in our house all the time,’ she says.

Her voice is soft, her words sound as if they’re causing her pain.

‘Granville employed him as casual, and he took the spare room here. Whenever Granville came over for a meal, he brought Travis with him. He helped cook. He…’ Her words are lost to emotion.

The small office falls silent, yet the atmosphere is charged and heavy.

‘We’ll leave you to it for now. I promise I’ll keep you informed every step of the way.

However, please try to think back thirty years.

Even if you remember something you don’t think is important, it might be.

Tell me anything and everything.’ She proffers a sympathetic smile then ushers Alan out of the office.

‘He helped with the search,’ Lynne says.

Gill stops in the doorway and looks back. ‘Sorry?’

‘When the girls went missing. The whole village turned out to search for them.’

‘I remember,’ Gill says.

‘Travis organised for a group of men to search the woods and walk up the peaks. Why… why would he…?’

There’s nothing Gill can say. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, but the words won’t come.

‘Leave it with us, Lynne. I’ll be in touch.’

She leaves the office quickly, as if eager to be away from grief and difficult questions.

Lynne and Iain are left alone in silence.

‘I need to talk to Alison,’ she says, suddenly jumping up.

‘Not like this, Lynne,’ he says, coaxing her back down into the chair. ‘Have a few minutes on your own. Take some deep breaths and compose yourself. You don’t want Alison seeing you like this.’

‘It’s all going to come out, isn’t it?’

Iain doesn’t say anything.

‘What am I going to do, Iain? Alison will never forgive me when she finds out.’