The Stone Circle: The Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 11

by Elly Griffiths

  She stops and stares out of the window. Judy thinks that she’s trying not to cry.

  ‘We’ve heard that John Mostyn talked to Margaret that day,’ she says. ‘Did you see anyone else with her? Anyone slightly unusual?’

  ‘John Mostyn showed her his stones,’ says Annie. ‘He was showing everyone. Later on I saw him sitting with his mother. I told the police that at the time. No, I didn’t see Margaret talking to anyone strange. There was no one strange there. It was just our friends and family.’

  ‘This might sound odd,’ says Judy, ‘but did you hear anyone mention seahorses?’ She doesn’t look at Clough.

  ‘Seahorses?’ says Annie. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘It’s something Kim Jennings said.’

  ‘Oh her.’ Annie turns away with a shrug. ‘She’s away with the fairies, that girl. Have you seen her shop in Wells? Full of old tat covered in glitter. No wonder no one goes in there.’

  *

  Tanya enjoys the trip to London. She likes the anonymity of travelling at midday, an enigma in her jeans and navy Barbour, too casual to be an office worker, too smart to be unemployed. She buys coffee and a bun at the Countryline café and reads Private Eye with an amused and worldly expression on her face. Sadly there are only two other people in the carriage to witness her sophistication: a teenage boy wearing headphones who occasionally twitches in response to some private rhythm and an elderly woman reading Fifty Shades of Grey with her eyebrows raised.

  King’s Cross is even more exciting because there’s a chance that she, world traveller that she is, could be heading for St Pancras and the Eurostar. But instead she takes the Thameslink to Blackfriars, where Luke Lacey works as an accountant. They are meeting in his office, an anonymous building with a stunning view over the Thames. Tanya longs to live in London, to work within sight of St Paul’s and Tower Bridge, to drink coffee in Covent Garden and shop at artisanal bread stalls in Borough Market. But Petra, her partner – shortly to be wife – would never leave Norfolk.

  Luke was once a good-looking boy but there’s little trace of that in the middle-aged man with greying blond hair who meets Tanya in reception. He was a football player too but Tanya, a fitness fanatic, looks with some disapproval at his spreading bulk, only partially concealed by an expensive suit. Luke Lacey is fifty this year and, in Tanya’s opinion, he’s just the right demographic for a heart attack.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ she says. ‘As you know we’ve reopened the case into your sister’s death.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Luke. ‘I’ll be down to see my mother at the weekend. This is pretty hard for her.’

  You haven’t been conspicuous by your presence so far, thinks Tanya. It’s Annie who has been supporting Karen.

  ‘I know it’s been a long time,’ she says, ‘but I’d really like your memories of the day that Margaret went missing.’

  Luke looks at her, twisting his wedding ring. He has a wife, Rina, and two children, Betty and Felix. Tanya has been doing her homework.

  ‘Is it true?’ Luke says suddenly.

  ‘Is what true?’

  ‘Is Mostyn dead? That’s what Annie said. She rang me this morning.’

  So Clough was right. The news is out. Tanya doesn’t see that there’s any point in denying it, especially if Maddie Henderson is going to run the story tomorrow.

  ‘Yes, he was found dead last night.’

  ‘Found dead? Killed?’

  ‘It’s an ongoing investigation. I’m not at liberty to say more.’

  Luke sighs and leans back in his chair. Tanya tries to read his expression. Relief? Anger? Fear?

  ‘So, twenty-ninth of July 1981?’ she prompts.

  Luke sighs again. ‘There was a street party. I was there for a bit, had some food, listened to the songs, but then I went off with my friends to play football. At the Loke Road rec. It was all we thought about in those days. Football. I thought I’d play for Man U one day.’

  Glory hunter, thinks Tanya. Why not Norwich City? ‘When did you last see Margaret?’ she asks.

  ‘I think it was at the party. She was sitting with her friend Kim and her family. They were eating cake. Kim offered me some and some of my mates laughed.’

  ‘Did she have a crush on you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She was a funny little thing, Kim.’

  ‘Did you see John Mostyn at the party?’

  ‘Yes, he was hanging around showing people his stone collection. That’s what he always did. We used to laugh at him.’ Luke and his mates had done a lot of laughing that day, thinks Tanya. She wonders when the laughter stopped. She remembers something in Judy’s report from the first interview with Karen Benson and Annie Simmonds. Annie had said that Luke still had nightmares about Margaret’s abduction.

  She asks Luke when he first heard that Margaret was missing.

  ‘Mum came down to the rec to see if she was there. It was late, about seven thirty, but it was still light. Mum was really worried, I could see that. So I said I’d help search. I went to the park with some of my friends and up as far as the allotments. I went home when it was dark and the police were there. Mum had fetched Dad from the pub by then.’

  ‘Was your dad . . . ?’ Tanya tries to find a tactful way to put it.

  ‘He wasn’t drunk, if that’s what you mean,’ says Luke. ‘Everyone tried to make out that he was but he wasn’t. He was just in the pub with his mates. That’s what everyone did back then.’

  Except for the women, thinks Tanya, who were presumably left clearing up after the street party.

  ‘What happened next?’ she asks.

  ‘Dad and his mates went out looking for Margaret,’ he says. ‘I went with them. It was dark but we had lanterns and torches. The police were out too, loads of them. They were searching the river. Frogmen and everything.’

  ‘What about Annie? What was she doing?’

  ‘She stayed behind with Mum. Mum was hysterical by then.’

  ‘Do you remember who else was there? In the house or taking part in the search?’

  ‘It felt like everyone was there. The house was full of people. Lots of the neighbours were there, some of my friends and their parents. The police too. I remember a policewoman trying to comfort Mum. The men all went out looking for Margaret and Dad wouldn’t come home. He stayed out all night, walking through the streets. He was crying, swearing, shouting out Margaret’s name. I’d never seen him cry before.’

  ‘Did you stay with your dad all night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  No wonder Luke still has nightmares, thinks Tanya.

  ‘Is there anything else you remember about that day?’ she asks, following Judy’s lead. ‘Anything that might not have seemed significant at the time but has stayed with you?’

  ‘Not really,’ says Luke. He looks at her but Tanya gets the impression that he’s not seeing the faceless corporate meeting room but the dark streets, the torchlight, his father sobbing. ‘It was horrible,’ he says. ‘You can’t imagine it unless you’ve been through it. One day we were a family of five and then one of us just . . . disappeared. If she’d been ill or in an accident it would have been terrible but there would have been an explanation. A reason. But Margaret just vanished. Suddenly it was just Annie and me again.’

  ‘Were you close, you and Annie? There was only a year between you.’

  ‘I suppose so. When we were young. Mind you, she was always trying to boss me about. She used to make me do things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘If she’d fallen out with someone at school, she’d want me to beat them up.’ He laughs suddenly. ‘I didn’t, of course. If I’d beaten up everyone Annie fell out with, I’d have been expelled.’

  ‘Does she have a bit of a temper then, Annie?’

  Another laugh, this time without humour. ‘You could say that. Mind you, she had a lot to make her angry. Margaret going missing, Mum and Dad getting divorced, Mum remarrying. It wasn’t easy for us, growing up.’

 
; ‘I’m sure it wasn’t.’

  ‘But we’ve both turned out all right. Annie’s a nurse, full of good works in the community. I’m . . .’ He gestures towards the window as if the Shard and the London Eye are tangible signs of his success. Which perhaps they are.

  ‘Annie’s got children now, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, three. And now she’s a grandmother. Her daughter Stella, or Star as she calls herself, has just had a baby.’

  ‘And what about Margaret?’ asks Tanya. ‘Were you close to her?’

  Luke smiles and, for the first time, Tanya sees a trace of the teenage heart-throb. ‘Oh yes. We all loved Margaret.’

  *

  Judy drops Clough at the station and drives to the address given to her by Kim Jennings. Kim’s parents, Steve and Alison, live on the outskirts of King’s Lynn, in a house that was probably once surrounded by fields. Now there’s just a small paddock, containing a skewbald cob. Judy stands for a moment by the gate watching the horse chew the grass, shaggy and mud-splattered in its winter coat. She had a pony when she was growing up though she, like Kim Jennings, could hardly be described as posh. She thinks of Ranger now; his whiskery nose, his untidy mane, his divine horsey smell. Maybe she should get Michael riding lessons as well as piano lessons? She holds out some grass for the skewbald but the horse, correctly identifying her offering as worthless, carries on grazing.

  Steve and Alison Jennings are a comfortable-looking couple, probably in their sixties, wearing matching Aran jumpers. Judy remembers Kim saying, ‘My mum looked like a mum’ and now Alison looks like a grandmother and a very competent one at that. The couple seem to be caring for two grandchildren, an elderly dog and an angry-looking cockatoo. Judy is tempted to ask them if they want some hamsters as well.

  She asks about the horse instead. ‘That’s Patches,’ says Alison. ‘We got him from a riding school that was closing down. He’s getting on a bit but the grandkids love to ride him.’

  ‘Kim mentioned that she used to have a pony.’

  Steve smiled. ‘That was Cuddles. Kim named him. He was a little sod really. He’d been abandoned by some gypsies. We used to have quite a few rescue horses at one time.’

  Judy, an enthusiastic patron of Redwings, a wonderful Norfolk horse sanctuary, warms to the couple. Alison brings in tea and home-made cake and Judy asks about Margaret.

  ‘I remember her so well,’ says Alison, expertly moving a crawling baby from the sleeping Labrador. The other child, aged about three, is watching Peppa Pig with the sound turned off. ‘She was such a pretty young girl. I know everyone says that and, of course, looks aren’t important, but that’s how I remember her. So blonde and lovely, like an angel.’

  ‘She was a nice girl too,’ says Steve. ‘Always very polite. Please and thank you and all that.’

  Margaret hadn’t always been polite to Kim, Judy thinks, teasing her about being posh and probably about having a crush on her brother. But maybe she was the sort who knew how to be nice to parents.

  ‘Your brother-in-law married Margaret’s mother, didn’t he?’ she says to Steve.

  ‘Yes,’ says Steve. ‘We always thought Pete was a confirmed bachelor but when Karen and Bob got divorced he started courting Karen immediately. They make a good couple, I think.’

  Judy doesn’t think she’s ever heard anyone using the word ‘courting’ in ordinary conversation or say ‘confirmed bachelor’ without meaning ‘gay’. She thinks of the colourless man holding Karen’s hand and saying ‘It’s tough on the mother.’ Perhaps Pete was what Karen needed after the more volatile-sounding Bob.

  She asks the couple what they remember about the day Margaret disappeared. Neither of them asks about John Mostyn and she hopes this means that the murder hasn’t hit the press yet. Maddie has agreed to wait until tomorrow before breaking the news in the Chronicle but these days it’s usually on Twitter or Facebook where a story first emerges.

  ‘We were all at the street party,’ says Alison. ‘It was such a lovely day. Everyone was so happy about Charles and Diana getting married. So sad when you think how that turned out. And Diana was only nineteen. That seems quite shocking now. Tammy, Kim’s older sister, got married at twenty-one and I thought that was too young. Her kids are grown-up now.’ She gestures at the baby, now on Steve’s lap, and the TV-watching child. ‘These are our great-grandchildren.’

  Kim is married, Judy knows, but she doesn’t have children. There’s a third Jennings daughter, Christina, but she has emigrated to Australia.

  ‘Did you see Margaret at the street party?’ she prompts.

  ‘Yes, she sat with us for a bit. She always liked coming to our house. I think it was a bit more ordered than home, a bit quieter.’ Kim had liked Karen Lacey, Judy remembers, because she was pretty and didn’t mind mud on the carpets. She can imagine that the Jennings family, staid and conventional, had a similar appeal for Margaret.

  ‘Margaret and Kim went off to look at the swans,’ says Alison. ‘We didn’t think anything of it. We let our children wander then.’

  ‘There were no mobile phones, you see,’ says Steve, as if Judy can’t possibly remember a time before such technology. ‘You couldn’t keep in touch.’

  ‘Kim came back after about an hour,’ says Alison. ‘I think I asked about Margaret but I can’t be sure. I felt terrible about that at the time. But you can’t know what’s going to happen, can you? We went home at about six. Chrissie was quite little and she was tired out. Kim had one of her headaches. Karen rang us at seven-ish asking if Margaret was with us. I said she wasn’t. I rang back about an hour later and Karen was in a terrible state. So Steve got in the car and went to help look for Margaret.’

  ‘We searched for hours,’ says Steve, ‘and, well, you know the rest.’

  ‘Was Pete at the street party?’ asks Judy. ‘Did he help with the search?’

  ‘No,’ says Steve. ‘He lived out Swaffham way then.’

  ‘What about Bob Lacey? Did he help search?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Steve. ‘I think he was in the pub most of the afternoon but Karen went and got him. Bob was a good man.’ Steve fixes Judy with rather a stern look. ‘People said all sorts of things about Bob but he was a good man, devoted to his family. He was frantic that night, literally tearing his hair out. Well, that’s understandable. I would have been the same if it was one of mine. I think he stayed out all night, him and his lad, Luke. But we all helped. All the local men.’

  It was the men with the search parties and the women at home with the children, thinks Judy, as she drives away with one last wistful look at the horse. She was only three years old in 1981. She doesn’t think that she missed much.

  Chapter 19

  Judy’s next stop is to see Carol Dunne, the woman who was once Margaret’s English teacher but is now head of a primary school in Gaywood. St Paul’s is a happy-seeming place, with a fence outside that looks like coloured pencils, a brightly coloured mural in reception and children’s artwork on the walls. On the field a group of children are playing an energetic game of what looks like football but involves a beachball and several hoops. It reminds Judy of the school attended by Michael and Kate and shortly to be honoured with Miranda’s presence. She senses that it’s not league tables that dominate here but a genuine concern for pupils’ well-being. This impression is reinforced when she meets Carol Dunne. She knows that Carol taught Margaret in 1981 so now must be at least in her mid-fifties but the woman looks like a teenager, with blonde hair tied back in a ponytail and the kind of energy that Judy can only achieve after three double espressos.

  ‘I remember Margaret so well,’ says Carol, moving a pile of poetry books so that Judy can sit down. ‘She was very bright. She loved reading and used to come to my after-school drama classes. I was devastated when she went missing. It was my first teaching post and I suppose I got too attached to my pupils. I left at the end of the year and decided to transfer to primary. That was easier to do in those days.’

  ‘And now you’
re a headteacher,’ says Judy.

  ‘That’s not such an achievement,’ says Carol with a smile. ‘Stick around long enough these days and they make you a headteacher. It’s a job no one wants with all the paperwork and the hassle from the government.’

  Judy is not deceived. People say it’s easy to progress in the police force but the top jobs are still dominated by men. For Carol to have become a headteacher at a relatively young age is still pretty impressive. She has been at St Paul’s for eight years and the school is rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. Judy has checked.

  ‘You may have heard that we’re opening a murder inquiry into Margaret’s death,’ says Judy. ‘I’m try to build up a picture of Margaret and her family. I know it’s difficult after so long but it really does help. Did you teach Annie and Luke too?’

  ‘I taught Annie,’ says Carol. ‘She was in the fourth year, as we called it then, coming up to O Levels. She was bright too, very determined, not as sunny a character as Margaret. Funnily enough I taught Annie’s children here. Matthew, Sienna and Stella. They were nice kids. Matt and Sienna both went on to university. Stella was always an original. I don’t think she went on to university but I’m sure she’s doing something interesting with her life. She calls herself Star now.’

  ‘You said that Margaret had a sunny character?’

  Carol smiles. ‘She was one of those children who seem blessed. She was the baby of her family and everyone seemed to dote on her. She was clever, pretty, good at sport. Everyone wanted to be her friend.’

  ‘What about Kim Jennings? She was Margaret’s best friend, wasn’t she?’

  Carol pauses before replying and the late afternoon sun shines through the coloured glass in the window. Carol shields her eyes and her hand shines orange and purple and green. She gets up to pull down the blind.

  ‘Kim was a nice girl,’ she says, with her back to Judy. ‘She was in Margaret’s shadow, of course, but never seemed resentful about it. Poor Kim. It was awful for her when Margaret disappeared. Everyone looking at her, asking her questions. Her parents moved her to another school eventually.’ She sits back down at her desk.