Stolen

by Lesley Pearse

  It got busier later in the day when several guests at the hotel booked various treatments, and it was after eight when Dale, Michelle and Rosie walked back to the bungalow after having dinner in the staff room next to the hotel kitchen.

  It was a mild evening and the hotel garden looked beautiful by floodlight. The staff bungalow was hidden away behind some shrubs, and they were all looking forward to warm summer evenings when they could sit outside with a drink.

  All of them had been surprised by how good their accommodation was. Most of them had worked in places where they were expected to share a room, and where the food had been awful. But here at Marchwood they each had their own room with a tiny en suite bathroom, and their meals were almost as good as those served to the guests in the hotel.

  Frankie was in the lounge reading a paper. He looked up and grinned as they came in. ‘I put a bottle of vodka in the fridge a while ago,’ he said. ‘It should be perfect by now.’

  Frankie referred to himself as ‘Gay’ Frankie, as if his sexual persuasion wasn’t immediately obvious by the turquoise streaks in his hair and his flamboyant clothes. Just a few days earlier Rosie had pointed out that whatever you said about Frankie you had to put ‘very’ in front of it. A very funny man, a very good hairdresser, and so on, for there was nothing mediocre about anything he did or said. Tonight he was wearing a ruffled white shirt which made him look as if he’d stepped out of an old swashbuckling movie.

  Rosie collected the vodka and some glasses and by the time Dale had changed her work tunic for jeans and a tee-shirt and gone back to the lounge, Frankie was lighting some candles.

  ‘The light is more flattering,’ he said by way of an explanation.

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, I fancy you even with harsh electric light,’ Scott said.

  There was some laughter about this for Frankie had spent the entire first week at Marchwood acting as though he was coming on to Scott. It had only been leg-pulling; Frankie said he couldn’t resist because Scott was so obviously heterosexual. Frankie had stopped it now, but Scott had taken over with the teasing.

  ‘Oh, look, Dale,’ said Rosie, picking up the newspaper Frankie had been reading. ‘They’ve printed a picture of the girl they found half drowned.’

  It was the local evening paper, and presumably by tomorrow the picture would hit the nationals. Dale picked it up and glanced only briefly at the picture, which wasn’t a real photograph but a police likeness, but she’d no sooner put it down than she felt compelled to pick it up again and study it a little more closely.

  ‘Who does she remind you of?’ she asked Scott, handing the paper to him.

  Scott looked. ‘Lotte? Same high cheekbones and round eyes. But this one isn’t as pretty.’

  ‘That’s because she’s been to hell and back and her hair’s been cut off,’ Dale said thoughtfully. ‘Besides, it’s not a real photo. But just imagine this girl with long, shiny hair, and a smile on her face. Scott, it really could be Lotte!’

  ‘It couldn’t be.’ Scott shook his head.

  ‘Why not?’ Dale asked. ‘We know she came from Brighton, she’s the right age, and it says the girl is a blue-eyed blonde with a slight build.’

  ‘That description would fit thousands of girls,’ Scott said, shaking his head again. He picked the paper up and studied the picture again. ‘But you’ve got a point – if you change the messy hair, she’s a dead ringer.’

  All the others wanted to know who they were talking about.

  ‘She was a hairdresser on the cruise ship and I shared a cabin with her,’ Dale explained. ‘I was horrified I’d got to share with her when we first met. She’s one of those Alice in Wonderland girls, all big eyes and flowing hair. She was dressed in baby pink, and I thought she’d never read anything but Hello!, talk endlessly about conditioners and ring her mum up to find out what was happening in Coronation Street. But she wasn’t like that, she was just the sweetest, kindest, most brilliant friend I’ve ever had.’

  Dale was surprised that she was publicly admitting how much she liked Lotte. There had been a time in her life when she mistook using someone for having a friend, but Lotte had made her see what real friendship was all about.

  ‘The three of us did everything together,’ Scott butted in. ‘Not just going ashore for booze-ups, but nights talking together and stuff. But then something terrible happened to her in South America.’

  ‘What?’ Rosie and Michelle asked in unison.

  Scott looked at Dale for support. They had never discussed whether or not they ought to keep quiet about this matter, but there didn’t seem to be any harm in telling the people they shared a home with.

  ‘She was raped,’ Dale said quietly, understanding Scott’s dilemma.

  ‘Raped? Who by? Someone on the ship?’ Michelle asked.

  ‘No, it was some nutter in Ushuaia – that’s right down as far south as you can go, the last place before the Antarctic,’ Scott explained. ‘In broad daylight too! She was never quite the same again, and Dale and I felt terrible that we had left her to go ashore alone.’

  ‘Poor girl,’ Frankie said in sympathy. ‘So what happened to her when she left the ship? Are you serious that this girl in the paper could be her?’

  ‘She was going home to her parents in Brighton when we said goodbye,’ Dale explained. ‘We all promised to keep in touch, and I did phone and text her, and so did Scott, but she never replied. I guess Scott and I were unwanted reminders of that terrible ordeal.’

  ‘It’s pure coincidence that a year on we’ve ended up near Brighton too,’ Scott added. ‘I suppose if so much time hadn’t passed since the cruise we’d probably have gone and looked her up. But there didn’t seem much point as she didn’t appear to want to know.’

  ‘If you think this is her,’ Frankie said, pointing at the picture, ‘you should ring the police.’

  ‘We’d look pretty silly if it wasn’t,’ Scott retorted. ‘But maybe we ought to get in touch with her parents and just check up on her?’

  ‘Ring them now,’ Frankie suggested.

  ‘We haven’t got a number for them,’ Scott said, ‘just an address she gave Dale. We tried to get a number from directory inquiries, but they were ex-directory.’

  ‘We could go tomorrow,’ Dale said impulsively. ‘I’ve got no appointments booked till the afternoon, and it’s your day off, Scott. We could catch the nine-thirty bus.’

  ‘I’d ring the police,’ Frankie said with a disapproving sniff. ‘For one thing, her poor parents might be looking at that same picture right now and if they don’t know where their daughter is they’ll be freaking out. You don’t want to walk in on that! And besides, Dale, if Marisa finds out you’ve bunked off she’ll go ape shit.’

  ‘If her parents do think it’s Lotte too, then they’ll need the comfort of someone who cared about her,’ Dale said stubbornly. ‘And as for Marisa, you lot aren’t going to grass me up, are you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ they chorused as one. ‘She’s not due back till the afternoon, but if she does get back early what will we say?’

  ‘That I had to go to the dentist as I had a bad toothache,’ Dale suggested.

  ‘Is it a good idea to go barging in on her parents?’ Scott asked Dale much later that evening just before they went to bed. ‘I can understand you wanting to check with them before going to the police. But what if they haven’t seen Lotte for a couple of weeks, and haven’t seen the picture tonight? They are going to flip with horror and shock and we’ll be there in the middle of it. The police know how to handle that sort of thing, we don’t.’

  ‘We could just ask for Lotte,’ Dale said. ‘Make like it’s just a social call. If she’s off at work then we can just leave a message for her to ring us and leave. But if they haven’t seen her for some time, then we either show them the girl in the paper or go straight to the police, depending on how strong we think her folks are.’

  Scott shrugged. ‘On your head be it if they freak out!’

 
Chapter Two

  ‘I always imagined Lotte coming from a leafy suburban area,’ Dale remarked as the taxi turned off from the seafront into a street of terraced houses with no front gardens. She and Scott had caught the bus into Brighton but then picked up a taxi when they discovered Lotte’s road was some distance away.

  Scott looked thoughtfully out of the taxi window at the slightly seedy houses. ‘Me too! I got the idea her childhood had been very sheltered, playing with dolls on the lawn and board games at night.’

  Many of the houses in the street were downmarket guest houses. They had dull paint on their front doors and vases of artificial flowers in their windows, and Dale imagined the breakfasts would be greasy, the beds lumpy, and hot water in short supply. It was only a few streets back from the seafront, but a world apart from the smart hotels there. To Dale it was a reminder that Brighton had once had the reputation of being the place for a ‘dirty weekend’; she could imagine all those Mr and Mrs Smiths flocking here in the Forties and Fifties.

  Lotte’s house, number 12, had nets at the windows and the front door was painted bright yellow. Parked outside was a small white van with ‘E. G. Wainwright, plumber. Corgi approved’ painted on the side in black.

  ‘Thank God her dad’s in,’ Scott said as he paid the taxi fare. ‘If her mum freaks he’ll be there to sort it.’

  Dale stopped Scott before he rang the doorbell. ‘Just remember we aren’t going to shove the picture under their noses! If things look bad we’ll just shoot off and leave it to the police.’

  Mr Wainwright opened the door to them. He was a tall, slender man of around fifty-five, with the same blue eyes as Lotte but thinning hair. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt which were clearly his working clothes as they were worn and stained.

  ‘We worked on the cruise ship with Lotte,’ Dale said, then introduced herself and Scott. ‘But we haven’t heard from her since, so as we are working near here now we thought we’d look her up.’

  The man frowned. ‘You’d better come in. The wife’s out the back doing a spot of weeding, I’ll get her.’

  He led them down the narrow hall past a closed door which probably led to the lounge, then into a large sunny kitchen-cum-dining room. It was a bit old-fashioned, with green cupboards and patterned Formica worktops, but very neat and tidy.

  Through the patio door they could see a small but very pretty and well-cared-for garden. Mrs Wainwright was bending down weeding a bed of tulips.

  Mr Wainwright went out to her. As she straightened up to listen to what her husband was saying, she looked back at the kitchen.

  ‘She’s a lot older than my mum,’ Dale said in surprise. ‘She looks well over sixty. And they obviously haven’t seen the picture in the paper, or at least don’t believe it’s her, or her dad would have said something.’

  Scott didn’t have a chance to reply because the couple were coming indoors. Mrs Wainwright was plump and around five feet four, her face heavily lined and her short hair snow-white. She wore the kind of acrylic slacks and sweater normally associated with much older women, but she had a sprightly step, covering the twenty yards or so very quickly.

  ‘We’re sorry to interrupt your gardening,’ Dale began. ‘But Scott and I wanted to get in touch with Lotte.’

  ‘You’ll have a hard job, she’s off on the high seas,’ Mrs Wainwright said.

  ‘She signed up for another cruise then?’ Dale said in some surprise. Lotte had said she’d never do it again. ‘The one we met on ended last year in March. How much longer after that before she went back?’

  ‘Back?’ The woman frowned. ‘She left Brighton over two years ago and hasn’t been back since.’

  Dale looked at Scott. She didn’t know where to go from there.

  ‘When we left the cruise ship,’ Scott took over, speaking slowly as if he was thinking carefully before letting the wrong thing slip, ‘she said she was coming back here to you.’

  ‘I don’t know why she’d tell you that,’ Mrs Wainwright said, turning to the sink to wash her hands. ‘She hasn’t lived here for years. We’ve hardly seen or heard from her since she moved out. The only reason she told us she was going to work on a cruise ship was because she wanted us to store some of her things.’

  Scott and Dale looked at each other in concern. They had talked over various possible outcomes of this visit, but they hadn’t for one moment expected such coldness from Lotte’s mother. It was as if she had no interest in her daughter.

  ‘Do you know where she is right now?’ Scott asked.

  ‘Haven’t a clue,’ her father said. ‘We had a couple of postcards way back.’ He went over to a noticeboard and removed a card. ‘This one was from San Francisco, she’d just joined the ship then, and the other was from Trinidad. Nothing since.’

  ‘But she told me she rang you,’ Dale said, remembering Christmas and other occasions when Lotte had said she’d rung home. She also said she spoke to her parents after the rape. ‘Why would she tell me that if it wasn’t true?’

  ‘She was always a compulsive liar,’ Mrs Wainwright said sharply. ‘I expect she told you her favourite Cinderella story too, that we were mean to her, that no one cares about her. That’s her usual bleat.’

  Dale was not only shocked that Mrs Wainwright could tell a complete stranger private family business, she also felt angry that the woman was maligning someone she cared for.

  ‘Lotte never “bleated” about anything,’ she retorted. ‘But now we’ve met you I’d guess she was ashamed that she had such uncaring parents and never had any intention of coming home to you. If I’d known the situation with you, I would’ve taken her home to my mother.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with you?’ Mrs Wainwright asked, sticking out her lip. ‘I don’t like your attitude, my girl!’

  ‘I think I ought to explain we feel especially protective towards Lotte because she was raped in South America,’ Scott said, looking from the wife to the husband. He paused for a couple of seconds, expecting they would gasp with shock. But they didn’t, only stared at him blankly. ‘It was a terrible thing, it shocked everyone on the ship,’ he went on. ‘It happened in broad daylight, the man was a total stranger to her. I take it she didn’t tell you?’

  Dale looked at Mrs Wainwright, fully expecting her to burst into tears. But she didn’t, she just stood there in the middle of her kitchen, seemingly as unconcerned as if they’d just told her Lotte had dyed her hair red.

  ‘She’ll have made that up,’ she said after a second or two’s thought. ‘She always tried to get my attention any way she could.’

  ‘What?’ Dale exclaimed, unable to believe the woman could say such a thing. ‘Mrs Wainwright, the man was caught in the act! A couple who were guests on the ship heard her screams and ran to her. She was examined by the ship’s doctor who confirmed it. The man hit her, terrified her even before he attacked her. And you think she would make that up?’

  To give Mr Wainwright his due, he did look shaken and he took a couple of steps closer to his wife, almost as if seeking her protection. But she just stood there looking at Dale with a cynical expression.

  ‘Good God, woman! Is your heart made of stone?’ Dale said contemptuously.

  ‘At least we know now why she didn’t tell you.’ Scott shook his head in disbelief. ‘She knew you’d be like this, didn’t she?’

  He looked at them expectantly, hoping for a denial, but none came. ‘Why don’t you care?’ he asked and pointed to the wall in the dining alcove which had at least twenty photographs of Lotte as a little girl. ‘How can you keep all those pictures up there, look at them every day, but not care where she is or what has happened to her?’

  ‘That isn’t Lotte,’ Mr Wainwright exclaimed indignantly. ‘That’s our Fleur. She was taken from us when she was ten. I can’t imagine why you’d think it was Lotte, Fleur was pretty and so talented.’

  Dale’s mouth fell open as it dawned on her what this strange, cold couple were all about.

  ‘Was
Fleur older or younger?’ she asked.

  ‘Older by four years,’ Mr Wainwright said. ‘It broke our hearts when she died. She was so special, she could dance and sing, she won so many competitions. As pretty as a picture too, smart as new paint, and everyone loved her.’

  ‘And you were angry that you were left with just Lotte?’ Dale said with sarcastic incredulity.

  ‘Don’t you take that tone with me, my girl!’ Mrs Wainwright snapped. ‘She could never measure up to her older sister, not in talent, looks or brains.’

  ‘Excuse me, but Lotte is one of the prettiest, kindest, most hardworking girls I’ve ever met,’ Dale retorted, her voice rising in indignation. ‘She’s a star in her own right. How could you be so cruel as to shut her out?’

  ‘So she did tell you some tall tales about us then?’ Mrs Wainwright stepped nearer to Dale, her mouth pursed with malice.

  ‘Oh yes, Mrs Wainwright! She told me some tall tales all right. She portrayed you as loving parents and her childhood idyllic,’ Dale said, sticking her face right up into the older woman’s. ‘My God, I understand now why she couldn’t bear to come home. I wouldn’t either with parents like you.’

  Scott pulled the newspaper from his pocket, smoothed it out and shoved it at Mr Wainwright. ‘Is that Lotte?’ he asked.

  The man took the paper in both hands and frowned as he looked at it. ‘I don’t know. It’s like her, but then I haven’t seen her for over two years.’

  Scott explained curtly what was known about the girl found on the beach. ‘We think it is Lotte, though we hoped you’d be able to say otherwise. So now we must go to the police and tell them.’

  Dale hesitated before making for the door. She had had many blazing rows with her own mother, and there had been things said on both sides which weren’t very nice. Dale wanted to believe this was the case with Mrs Wainwright, and that once the enormity of what had happened to Lotte filtered through to her, normal maternal instincts would kick in.