Page 57 of Worse Than Murder

‘Yes. It helps clear the mind, too.’

I glare at her and wonder what she has going on in her life that requires her mind to be regularly cleansed.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Painfully slowly.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘That thing on the back that looks as if it’s about to be fired at an enemy submarine is a side-scan sonar. Apparently, it will take an image of a large area of the lake’s floor and will be able to detect debris or anything else that may be down there. It uses a sonar device that emits fan-shaped pulses down towards the lakebed across a wide angle perpendicular to the path of the sensor through the water.’

‘Is that expert knowledge you’re imparting, or have you had a quick read on Wikipedia?’

‘The guy with the ginger hair tying it on gave me a very long and detailed explanation.’

‘I bet he’s a riot at parties,’ I say. ‘How long will it take for them to find the car?’

‘Well, we don’t have an exact location of where it could be, only a rough estimate from where you said you were. They’re going to start where the felled trees are and fan out. It could take a couple of hours.’

‘Will they bring the car up, too?’

‘No. They’ll locate it and set down a marker. I’ve got the company in Birmingham you mentioned on standby.’

‘Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,’ I say, turning and starting to head back to Nature’s Diner.

‘Matilda,’ Gill calls after me. ‘We’ve found a shoe and a necklace. I’ve shown them to Lynne Pemberton and she recognised the necklace as belonging to one of her daughters.’

‘Oh God.’

‘Why dump them where they lived? What’s the point of that?’

‘I don’t know. Panic? Have you spoken to Lynne about their disappearance?’

‘Not yet. I want to wait until we find out what, if anything, there is in the car.’

I nod. ‘You need to speak to her. She has a lot to tell you that she hasn’t told anyone before.’

‘How do you know?’ Gill frowns.

‘Because she told me. But it’s not my place to say anything.’

‘She told you? How? Why? Do you know the family?’

‘No.’

‘Oh,’ Gill says, looking slightly put out. She looks as if she wants to ask more but can’t find the words.

I wait a few moments more, but the silence becomes awkward. I give Gill a cold smile before jogging off back to the restaurant.

* * *

After a shower, I join Carl and take the dogs into the woods. We don’t go our usual route, as we would have had to pass the police activity. The storm has taken the edge off the temperature and there is a pleasant soft breeze blowing, but the sun is high in the sky, and it’s hotter than it should be for the time of year. We walk in silence, pausing only to pick up a stick one of the Woodys brings for us to throw. I keep glancing over my shoulder. When we reach the optimum point, I find a felled tree to sit on and Carl joins me. From this vantage point, we can see out over the entire lake and view the police operation without being noticed.

The boat has gone out further than I remember swimming. They’re drifting slowly in an arc from the bank by the fallen trees, getting wider with each sweep. Surely, they should have found the car by now.

‘Why does someone drive a car into a lake?’ Carl asks.

‘To destroy evidence of the fact they’ve stolen it. The driver might not have worn gloves so his fingerprints and loose hair may be all over it. Thirty years beneath the water will have destroyed all that.’

‘Any other reason?’

‘Insurance fraud. Maybe the owner of the car dumped it to claim the insurance money. Or perhaps the car was used in a crime like a burglary, or a bank robbery, and the criminal didn’t want to be traced so dumped the car.’