The Kate Fletcher Series

by Heleyne Hammersley

  ‘Convenient,’ mumbled O’Connor, taking a swig of his cappuccino and wiping milk foam from his moustache with the back of his hand.

  For once, Kate was inclined to agree with him. ‘Sam, can you show us the footage?’

  Cooper turned on the projector and tapped a series of keys on her laptop. The screen was filled with a black-and-white, still image of the car park at Flamborough Head with the lighthouse and the path to the cliffs barely visible in the top right-hand corner.

  ‘Lambert pulls in at just after one pm,’ Sam said, hitting ‘play’. ‘The dark saloon car is her BMW.’ She continued to narrate as the others watched the car pass through the public parking area and pull up into one of the ‘reserved’ spaces close to the lighthouse. The clock in the corner of the image continued to count the seconds but there was no movement from the car for nearly three minutes. Finally, the driver’s side door opened and a figure stepped out.

  Even though she’d already viewed the footage, Kate was still surprised by how clearly recognisable Caroline Lambert was as she stood next to the car looking up at the lighthouse.

  At 1.09, Caroline checked her watch, held out her hand towards the car, presumably using the key to activate the central locking, and set off towards the cliff path.

  ‘That’s all we’ve got,’ Cooper said. ‘I’ve already been through the footage from earlier to check the number plates of any other cars parked in the vicinity. There were only three – East Yorks should be checking out the owners as we speak to see if they saw Caroline Lambert near the cliff edge.’

  ‘Hope they’ve not sent Morrison,’ Hollis whispered to Kate with a grin. ‘Might be a quite a wait if they did.’

  Kate smiled back at him. They’d had a long drive back from Flamborough the previous evening. Snow had hit parts of the A1 and slowed traffic to a crawl. It had given them time to mull over the meaning of the note left in the car but they had more possibilities than answers, which was why Kate wanted to share it with her team and get them brainstorming.

  ‘Thanks for that, Sam,’ Kate said, nudging Cooper out of the way and navigating to a different programme on the laptop. ‘It’s possible that this was staged.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Barratt asked, looking annoyed. He’d spent the previous afternoon involved in the fruitless search of Caroline Lambert’s house which appeared to have left him in an unusually belligerent mood. ‘Surely this winds everything up. If she’s dead then we can’t arrest her for the murders of Maddie Cox or her dad. She probably knew she’d go to jail for a long time and couldn’t face it. It’s not like there’s anybody waiting for her to get out.’

  ‘It just seems incredibly convenient. A neighbour saw her leaving with a suitcase so we knew that she hadn’t just popped to the shops. She arrived at Flamborough at high tide and it was one of the highest of the season. She’s extremely visible in the CCTV, almost as if she chose that parking space so that she could be seen in the footage.’

  O’Connor was nodding. ‘So she disappears. No charges to face because she’s supposedly dead while she sets herself up with another identity, another life. It’s possible if she had enough money. Or influential friends.’

  ‘She’s got plenty of money,’ Kate said. ‘We need to get onto her bank and try to find out if she was paying into other accounts in other names. She might have stashed away thousands somewhere.’

  ‘Fake ID, change of appearance, and she’s good to go,’ O’Connor continued. ‘Easy enough if you know the right people. Speaking of which, I found out that Maddie Cox did owe money to one of the usual scumbags. Terry Dawlish reckons she borrowed ten K from him to pay off some gambling debts. Paid it all back with interest in one lump sum last month. Looks like she did have a bit of help from Caroline Lambert.’

  Kate had forgotten that she’d asked O’Connor to dig around in Maddie’s finances. It hardly felt important considering the other links between the two women but it was useful to have further confirmation of the relationship. O’Connor had done a good job and Kate had another one for him.

  ‘Steve, you seem to have a good idea what it would take to change your identity and disappear. Get out there and see if anybody might have supplied Caroline with fake ID. If she acquired it in South Yorkshire, somebody will know somebody who knows who supplied it.’

  O’Connor gave her a mock salute and turned to leave.

  ‘Not yet. I need you all to see this.’

  Kate projected an image of the note that she’d removed from the car onto the whiteboard. The two words had been etched onto the inside of her eyelids as she’d settled down to sleep and they’d still been there when she’d woken a few hours later.

  Find Jeanette

  ‘What does that mean?’ Barratt asked. Kate didn’t answer, waiting for a response from another member of the team.

  ‘Jeanette was her sister,’ Cooper said. ‘She went missing in 1986. She’d been out with friends one evening in August and never came home. Parents reported her missing; there was an investigation, a newspaper appeal but no sign of her. I reviewed some of the case notes yesterday but there’s nothing there. The investigating team didn’t manage to come up with a viable line of enquiry and there was no sign of abduction or that the girl had been murdered. She was last seen at just after midnight on the seventeenth of August 1986 by a girl called Julie Atkins, a school friend. I’m trying to track her down to see if she can add anything to her original statement but, as it’s over thirty years ago, I’m not hopeful.’

  Barratt still wasn’t satisfied.

  ‘But what does she mean by “Find Jeanette”. Does she expect us to reopen the investigation? How does she expect us to find her now if the police failed in the eighties? It’s not like any new information has come to light.’

  Kate looked round the room. Each member of her team seemed lost in thought, trying to make sense of the message. They were an intuitive bunch and had good instincts but she could see that they were all struggling with this one. ‘What’s changed?’ she prompted. ‘Why now?’

  ‘Her dad’s dead?’ O’Connor suggested. ‘And her mum. They were both alive when the girl went missing.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’ Cooper asked.

  ‘It must be linked with Dennis Lambert’s death. That’s the catalyst,’ Hollis said, just as he’d argued on the way back from Flamborough the previous night. ‘That’s changed something for Caroline. Somehow it’s made her think that we might be able to find her sister.’

  Kate turned to Cooper. ‘Was there any suggestion in the original file that Lambert was a suspect in his daughter’s disappearance?’

  ‘No. Nothing. Both parents were interviewed extensively, together and separately. There was nothing to raise suspicion as far as I can tell. They put posters up around the estate for a couple of years afterwards, probably hoping that somebody, somewhere might have information.’

  ‘And Caroline?’

  ‘She was nine. A female officer spoke to her and made notes but the child was upset and didn’t really add anything to what they already knew.’

  ‘Was the house searched?’

  ‘As far as I can tell they checked the house and the garden – including the shed. There’s no suggestion that there was anything to contradict the family’s story. There were a few reported sightings of Jeanette in the months after her disappearance but none of them could be confirmed and, to be honest, we expect that. The public have seen an appeal for a missing kid and suddenly he or she’s in every shopping centre and on every train for a few weeks.’

  ‘Easy enough to hide a body, though,’ O’Connor observed. ‘Especially a kid. Loft space, under floorboards, under a flowerbed, behind a bath panel. If it’s only for a few days you could probably get away with it if you wrap it up well enough.’

  The others nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘And Lambert re-landscaped the garden soon after. New flowerbeds and a greenhouse according to Brenda Powley,’ Hollis added.

  It was pos
sible, Kate had to concede. If Jeanette had died or been killed in the house, her body could have been hidden until the main thrust of the investigation died down and then a more permanent resting place could have been found. But they had no cause to suspect Lambert or his wife and, according to Brenda Powley, Lambert should have been a candidate for beatification after he died.

  ‘We need to look at Lambert,’ Kate decided. ‘If Caroline did kill him she must have had a reason beyond putting him out of his misery. Kailisa says he was kept drugged and probably in pain for the last couple of weeks of his life. That smacks of torture to me and you don’t do that to somebody unless you want something. Either information or revenge.’

  ‘You think she might have been torturing her father to find out what he did to her sister?’ Barratt asked.

  Kate shrugged. ‘I have no idea what went on in that house but I’m convinced that it’s much more complicated than a mercy killing. I also think Maddie Cox was collateral damage. I suspect that Caroline manipulated her by offering her money to pay off her debts and then something happened between the two women that led Caroline to lash out and kill Maddie. She may have been protecting herself – the nurse might have been supplying drugs illegally and could have threatened to go to the police. She might have put her career on the line in some way and wanted to come clean. I doubt we’ll ever know.’

  Silence as the team considered Kate’s words.

  ‘Right. We need to get to work,’ she continued. ‘O’Connor – fake ID. Barratt, I want you to go back to the Crosslands Estate and ask about Dennis Lambert. What was he like? Was he a violent man? Did he love his kids? Get an impression that doesn’t involve anything that Brenda Powley has to say.’

  O’Connor and Barratt scooted off on their separate jobs.

  ‘Sam. Find Julie Atkins. I want to talk to her. If anybody knew what sort of relationship Jeanette Lambert had with her family it would have been her closest friend.’

  Cooper closed the lid of the laptop, slipped it under her arm, and left the room, heading for her own desk and her own PC where she could mine for information uninterrupted.

  ‘Dan. You and me on the phones. Get onto East Yorkshire, see if they’ve had any luck with the owners of the cars that were parked up at Flamborough yesterday. If not, get the numbers and ring yourself. I’m going to do some digging into Caroline Lambert’s background, starting with her previous job in Plymouth. We have no clue what this woman was really like but there might be somebody down there who can help us.’

  Two frustrating hours later and Kate hung up the phone with a loud sigh. She’d spoken to Caroline’s boss and three of her colleagues, two at length, and nobody had a bad word to say about their former workmate. She was punctual, polite, well-motivated according to the boss, and the others described her as considerate, quiet and extremely competent. They knew very little about her background. Two knew that she was from ‘up north somewhere’ and one thought she might have been from Yorkshire. The only piece of information that was of any interest was that Caroline had told two of her colleagues that she was an orphan and an only child but another remembered her mentioning a sister.

  ‘Got anything, Dan?’ Kate said to Hollis who had just hung up his own phone in a similar manner. He shook his head.

  ‘East Yorks hadn’t got round to it so they gave me the phone numbers. Dog walkers and bird watchers. Nobody noticed Caroline park up and nobody remembers seeing her on the cliff path.’

  ‘Any luck with Julie Atkins?’ Kate asked Cooper who was still immersed in her virtual world. She looked up, eyes not quite focussed and nodded.

  ‘I’ve managed to find her on Facebook. She’s married but still uses her maiden name as part of her Facebook name. She’s Julie Wilkinson now. I’ve just done an electoral roll search and she lives in Rotherham, near the General Hospital.’ Cooper scrawled the details onto a Post-it and passed them to Kate.

  ‘Got her phone number as well. Only the home one, though. Her mobile would take a lot longer.’

  Kate smiled. It was as close as Cooper ever came to an admission of defeat. She always believed that the information she wanted was available if she had enough time to find it.

  ‘I think we’d be better heading round there,’ Kate said. ‘If I ring first it might give her time to filter her memories. I want to see her reaction when I ask her about Jeanette and her father.’ Kate checked her watch. The chances of Julie being home mid-morning were remote but it was worth a try.

  ‘Dan,’ she called. ‘Grab your coat, you’ve pulled.’

  He grinned over at her.

  ‘You wish.’

  Chapter 29

  Julie Wilkinson lived in a red-brick semi on a street of red-brick semis opposite Rotherham’s largest hospital. They looked similar to the one where Kate grew up in Thorpe except that the street wasn’t as wide and the houses were a little closer together. Kate assumed that they were built in the sixties or seventies when land around towns had been at a premium and the councils had been under pressure to make the most of all the available space. The road was shielded from a dual carriageway by a large beech hedge that ran the length of the street but, as Kate got out of the car, she could hear that it did little to dull the constant drone of vehicles and the wail of an ambulance approaching A&E at the hospital.

  A flat-roofed garage was attached to the house and, in front of the chipped white metal door, a light blue VW Golf sat on the drive.

  ‘We might be in luck,’ she said to Hollis, pointing at the car. She stepped back and allowed him to approach the door of the house first. If Julie was home, this was going to be an interview which required a delicate touch and Kate trusted Hollis to get the most out of this situation.

  Through the frosted glass in the top half of the door, Kate saw a figure approaching seconds after Hollis rattled the letterbox flap. Somebody was home. The door opened and Hollis introduced them both while Kate assessed the woman on the doorstep. She knew that Julie Wilkinson must be in her late forties but, if she’d met her in a pub, she’d have assumed that she was much younger. Her dark hair was carefully styled and her make-up was understated and certainly not used to hide bags and wrinkles. Her forehead creased with confusion as Hollis explained who they were, leaving Kate slightly disappointed that there was no sign of recent Botox to explain the woman’s youthful appearance.

  ‘Is it Rob?’ she asked, her voice rising as panic gripped her. ‘Has something happened to him?’

  Hollis shook his head reassuringly.

  ‘We’re here about Jeanette Lambert,’ he said, and the lines across Julie’s forehead deepened.

  ‘Jeanette? Why? You’ve not found her after all this time?’

  ‘No. That’s not why we’re here. We want to ask you some questions about her.’

  Julie smiled, the relief obvious. Kate wasn’t sure who Rob might be but she guessed a husband or a boyfriend. She was used to this reaction whenever she turned up unannounced at somebody’s door. People always assumed the worst, and at least half the time, they were right.

  ‘Can we come in?’ Kate asked.

  Julie nodded and led the way down a bright, cream-coloured hallway to the living room. As they followed her, Kate noticed that it wasn’t just Julie Wilkinson’s face that appeared to be defying time. She wore tight skinny jeans and a hoodie that was probably a size too small, both of which showed off gravity-defying hips and boobs. Whatever her secret was, Kate thought, she’d like to buy a couple of bottles.

  The living room was also decorated in shades of cool cream and off-white. The sofa and chairs were beige and the laminate flooring imitated pale wood. A glass coffee table stood proudly in the middle of the room, its surface free from dust and finger marks – obviously not a house with children, or grandchildren. Kate wondered if that was Julie’s secret. Kate knew from experience how ageing having kids could be. Not that she resented Ben, but she could count the wrinkles and scars he’d left on her body and face as though he’d written his name across
her skin with a knife.

  Julie offered drinks but Kate refused and Hollis followed her lead. She didn’t want to give the impression that this was a cosy chat about her old friend, she wanted Julie to believe that any information she could provide would be crucial to an ongoing investigation. She wanted honesty.

  ‘So, what did you want to ask me?’ Julie settled herself in the armchair next to the window where Kate and Hollis could get a good view of her face. ‘You can’t have found another lead?’ Her face suddenly froze as she thought of another possible reason for the visit. ‘Oh. You’ve not found…’

  ‘We’ve nothing new,’ Hollis reassured her, obviously understanding that she might think that they’d found a body. ‘We just want some background. Certain recent events have rekindled our interest in Jeanette’s disappearance and we’d like the perspective of somebody who knew her well.’

  Julie leaned forward in her chair, forearms on her knees, her expression intent. ‘What recent events?’

  ‘Her sister has disappeared,’ Kate interjected before Hollis could mention Dennis Lambert’s death.

  ‘Caroline? You mean she’s been abducted or something?’

  Hollis picked up Kate’s thread. ‘We’re not really sure. Her car was found in a spot well known for suicides and there’s no sign of her. We don’t know if she’s harmed herself, been abducted or simply disappeared but we think this is somehow connected with what happened to her sister.’

  Julie smiled as if she understood, even though nothing about Caroline Lambert’s disappearance made any sense to Kate or her colleagues.

  ‘What was Jeanette like?’ Hollis asked, trying to steer the interview away from Caroline.