‘You’ll understand why you need to make plans for your end when you’re old and puffed out like me,’ Grandpa said.
Zac knew that he never would.
To his mind, there was only one person his grandfather would trust to do the job.
Chapter 36
The press conference was filmed at a hotel in Kendal. Journalists packed the room and Mr and Mrs Lawson were due to arrive in less than two minutes.
The appeal was closely watched by a body-language expert as well as a criminal psychologist, both from the comfort of their own home. Live streaming and connectivity were at least one way in which the force had moved forward, and SIOs like Kelly no longer needed to assemble their teams in one room to watch the events unfold; they could all comment and update in real time, no matter where they were, as long as they had access to the closed channel. Kelly watched on her sister’s TV in the lounge.
The house was quiet, as the girls were at school and Matt had gone to work to plead his case for more time off. If he lost his job, it would only add to the family’s hardship. Johnny had been upstairs with Nikki for twenty minutes.
Kelly watched as Hannah’s mother and father were led into the conference room by a DCI from HQ. As with most investigations of this calibre, the SIO made contact with the families but rarely to communicate major developments. The family liaison officers usually did that.
Hannah’s mother grasped a tissue and her eyes were red and puffy; she never looked up at the cameras. It was always about the mothers, and the pain etched into their faces: that was what brought in the phone calls and galvanised the public to scour their memories. The fathers – if available – were there merely to show that grief wasn’t just a female preserve, and men could cry too. It helped.
Kelly bit her nails and fiddled with her hair. Her mind wandered. The photographs of Freya Hamilton and Abi Clarence had been released, but today was all about Hannah Lawson. Sophie Daker’s parents had declined to take part.
The DCI said some words but Kelly didn’t hear them, then it was the turn of Mrs Lawson and the cameras went into a frenzy. Her husband held her hand tightly and kept his eyes down.
‘Please, someone knows where my daughter is … She’s such a kind girl … She means nothing to you and everything to us …’ Mrs Lawson choked and stopped speaking. The cameras flashed mercilessly.
Kelly had had enough. She paced up and down, her stomach knotted with adrenalin. She wanted desperately to be in several places at once, and least of all here, but she’d promised Johnny. She picked up a photo of their family, the four of them: Mum, Dad, Nikki and herself. Dad was sitting in his armchair and his two girls took a knee each. Wendy leant over behind and peered into the camera. Kelly tried to remember who’d taken it. It didn’t matter. Melancholy washed over her and she studied her sister’s face. They were more different than alike. Her sister had the distinct Porter nose and hairline. Kelly realised that her own was different. Everybody always said that she was more like her mother. Maybe that was why they’d never got along, her and Nikki; it was destined from birth. She snorted and replaced the photo, wondering why Nikki would have it on display in the first place.
Johnny came into the room, and Kelly spun round. Nikki was standing behind him. The sisters looked at one another.
‘We’re going for a walk,’ he said.
‘Right, I’ll get my coat,’ Kelly said.
‘I don’t want you to come.’ Nikki’s voice was harsh.
Kelly looked at Johnny, who turned to Nikki.
‘This isn’t the time, let’s go,’ he said. But Nikki held her ground.
‘No, this is all her fault. If that lunatic hadn’t been after you, he’d have never come for me.’ Her neck turned red and Kelly knew well enough that this was a sign of acute anger; she’d seen it before. Her face screwed up like their father’s used to when he was tired and prickly.
‘Nikki, Kelly is trying her best …’
‘You!’ Nikki took a step towards Kelly, who moved backwards against the TV screen. She couldn’t think of words, stunned into silence by the sight of her sister’s face, red and full of hate. ‘Who do you think you are?’ Nikki screamed.
Johnny sighed and caught her arms.
‘I’m sorry, Kelly.’ He turned to Nikki and urged her backwards.
‘Get off me! She’s never been like us!’
Kelly stood rooted to the spot, Michelle Hammond’s words echoing in her head again, unwelcome and damaging. Like us … Anger flushed her body and she see-sawed between blaming Johnny and then her sister. In the end, she glared at both of them and stormed out, slamming the door behind her.
She had no idea where she was going, but she drove away, heading for the fells. Accusations and pictures flooded her brain and she wondered if indeed she had made the biggest mistake of her life coming back here. No matter what she tried to do, who she turned to, she couldn’t fit in. She even looked different to them. It was pathetic, she knew, but she couldn’t help the thoughts flowing now they’d begun. Her hair and eyes were her mother’s, but it was as if everything else about her was alien and didn’t belong. Even now, Nikki had Kelly’s boyfriend’s sympathy, and it made her blood boil. She held the steering wheel tightly and watched her speed.
She drove round for a while, changed her mind, drove back the way she’d come and finally ended up at the end of her mother’s street. No one was around, so she turned off the engine and caught her breath. She put her head to the wheel and closed her eyes tight shut.
Who do you think you are?
She’s never been like us…
A car drove past and she lifted her head. It was a gold Jaguar and she’d seen it before. It parked outside her mother’s house, and Kelly watched in disbelief as the driver got out and straightened his tie. He held a bunch of flowers, a large bunch of flowers, and looked down at his feet before knocking on the door.
Kelly slouched in her seat and held her breath.
The door opened, and he smiled and was let straight in.
The car belonged to Ted Wallis. Ted and her mother had both lied to her.
Chapter 37
‘Guv, there’s been a sighting reported of a Land Rover up at the Boredale Hause route near Place Fell last weekend.’
The TV appeal had produced several lines of enquiry that all had to be chased, and the team knew that the majority of them would turn out to be just that: lines of enquiry. However, now and again a public appeal threw up a nugget and so was worth it.
Kelly only knew one way to escape personal stress and that was to spend more time at work. She was ignoring Johnny’s calls and had yet to decide how to confront her mother.
The appeal had been slick and accompanied at appropriate moments by photographs of Hannah’s clothing, the hip flask, her bag, Loadpot Hill, the Howtown campsite and a generic Land Rover. The tyre track hadn’t given them a break, but Land Rover had said that the model that used those tyres must pre-date the year 2000.
‘Can we dispatch someone to take a statement?’
‘Done.’
‘How many Land Rovers do we have registered in Cumbria?’
‘One hundred and thirty-five, guv.’
‘And how many models before 2000?’
‘We’re still working on that.’
‘Was there a decent description of the driver?’
‘Male, Caucasian.’
‘Great, that narrows it down.’
She went into her office and sat down heavily.
It had been almost a week since the two girls had been reported missing, and just over a week since the earl’s death. It felt like four. She needed a run to clear her head but she had too much to do. Another dive had been approved by HQ but had turned up nothing, and she was spending too much money. She yearned for the sunshine of last week, but the grey cloud had refused to lift, and it made everything bleaker, including her mood. She doubted she’d be any further along in the earl’s case if it had been ruled homicide straight away
; they were playing catch-up, but all leads on persons with access to Wasdale Hall had been checked.
She picked up the phone and dialled the number for the headmaster of Dominic Cairns’ school in Surrey. She could easily hide in here all day, catching up with phone calls and updating the files on her computer, essentially moving paper from one imaginary pile to another, though nowadays it was a case of shifting data from keyboard to keyboard, and possibly scribbling something on the whiteboard in the incident room. But none of that would give her any answers. At some point, she’d have to face Johnny and her mother.
The number rang out.
She could call Ted directly and ask him why he was bringing her mother flowers – a stranger according to his own admission. It could have been a courtesy call to the widow of John Porter, but she’d never seen Ted in such a fine suit, and so worried about his collar. Something didn’t sit right with her.
Will knocked on the door and peered around it, checking to see if she was busy. It was too late to pretend, and he caught her staring out of the window, looking at the rain.
‘Guv, we’ve found CCTV of Abi Clarence at Waverley station.’
‘It went back that far?’
‘No, it was filed under the original search.’
Of course it was; what a dumb question, she thought.
‘You all right?’ Will asked.
She shook herself and turned to him. She’d created this dynamic team that had proved itself to HQ several times, and she was stupidly proud of them all, so why did she feel different? Why did she feel like a fraud? Burnout. It was lethal. She admitted that she was tired, and counted backwards. She’d worked eight days straight, well into the evening, and she hadn’t slept well.
‘Can I get you a coffee?’ he asked.
‘Yes please.’ She smiled. ‘Is the CCTV uploaded?’
Will nodded. ‘Oh, Emma has the model of the earl’s safe, too: it was a Chubb DuoGuard Grade 1, if that means anything.’
Kelly flicked on her computer and found an email from Will with the CCTV footage and a series of stills. They captured a young girl waiting on a platform. She had a large bag next to her and was looking at her phone. Kelly couldn’t see the girl’s face, but the image had been positively ID’d by Abi’s sister. She wore a bright red hoody, clearly emblazoned with the Gap logo. Kelly wondered if her bone fragments would ever yield anything other than the fact that she had lain in a glade for two years. She also wondered if anyone but the sister cared.
Will came back and placed a mug beside her.
‘I’m trying to get through to the headmaster. Is Cheryl Gregory here?’
‘She’s waiting downstairs.’
‘Right, I’ll try this number again and then we’ll go down.’
Will left her and this time her call was answered. The man sounded stiff and proper, what one might expect from a headmaster of a reputable establishment. He was officious and direct.
‘So Dominic Cairns was expelled when he was seventeen?’ she asked.
‘Indeed. It was, I’m afraid, an accumulation of matters we simply could no longer accept here at Hodds Hall.’
Kelly appreciated the man’s sense of propriety. ‘Could you explain?’ she asked.
‘We finally accepted co-education status in 2010, against my express wishes, but the governors have the ultimate say, you understand. Cairns was an impertinent child. He never fitted in.’
The words stung Kelly, and she felt a chink of sympathy for the boy who was being denigrated in her ear.
‘His housemaster warned the earl personally that if standards weren’t upheld, the boy faced expulsion.’
‘And why weren’t these concerns raised with his mother?’
‘We never had correspondence with the mother, only the earl.’
‘Was he his legal guardian?’ Kelly asked.
‘Of course.’
Kelly wrote this down and underlined it. ‘Sorry, carry on.’
‘The boy was a nuisance; he took great pleasure in bullying his way through the school, and then things went too far.’
Kelly waited.
The headmaster coughed. ‘He was accused of indecent assault. I must stress that no charges were ever brought, but if it had been my daughter …’
‘I understand. Do you have the details of the girl involved?’
‘I’m afraid that’s confidential.’
‘But, sir, the Children’s Act specifically states that when a child is at risk, the duty to share information is absolute, with agencies such as ourselves in particular.’
‘The parents withdrew the matter.’
‘Your duty to the child comes first; it overrides the parents’ consent. Surely you know this.’
‘Indeed I do, but when there’s no record of it, and neither the child nor the parent acknowledges the event, there’s nothing to investigate, is there?’
‘So why are you telling me?’
‘Because the girl committed suicide.’
Kelly was dumbfounded.
‘Over what happened?’
‘That’s my belief, and it always has been, but when the parents got their hands on upwards of two hundred thousand pounds after her death, it had the effect of sealing their lips.’
‘And you’re going to tell me that the money came from the late earl?’
‘I couldn’t possibly say.’
* * *
When Will came back into Kelly’s office, her coffee had gone cold, untouched.
‘Guv? Cheryl Gregory is still here. Are you ready?’
Kelly sprang out of her chair and grabbed her Toughpad, following him to the lift.
‘I just had the strangest conversation with Dominic Cairns’ ex-headmaster.’ She told Will the details as they descended to ground level. The element of police investigation that elicited snippets of human behaviour surrounding their persons of interest in an inquiry was the most fascinating aspect of the job, but also the most frustrating. If one could prosecute using the examples of deviancy, poor character and a bent moral compass, then the streets would be safer for sure, but the negative press surrounding anyone’s past was inadmissible for good reason: people were complex creatures, with many faults, but only a minority committed serious crimes. If they’d lived through a witch hunt in Salem, then Dominic Cairns might have been the first on the bonfire, but a taste for bullying vulnerable girls, even into taking their knickers off, didn’t make him their guy.
That said, he had just become more interesting. She tasked Emma with finding a paper trail for the money; the next time she spoke to Linda Cairns, the earl’s kindly generosity wouldn’t cut it for why he had paid thousands for the boy’s education.
Cheryl Gregory was a slip of a girl. She was a nervous wreck and probably weighed a hundred pounds wet through. Visiting a police station was no ordinary outing, but she had volunteered. Kelly and Will went into the interview room and acted pleasantly to calm her nerves. Cheryl’s hands were thin and red, her nails short and bitten.
‘What can you tell us about Jack Sentry, Cheryl?’ Kelly kicked off the interview.
‘He was my boss at the Peak’s Bay.’
‘How long did you work together?’
‘About five years.’
‘And what was he like to work for?’ Kelly eased in with some housekeeping. It was quite obvious that Cheryl Gregory was someone who wanted to stay on the right side of the law, but she was extremely anxious. They ran through her employment history and her various positions in the hotel, gradually working towards the nature of her relationship with her boss. Cheryl had opened up to Emma saying that she was afraid of her boss and Kelly wanted to know why.
‘Did you ever go with Mr Sentry to the location on Place Fell?’
Cheryl looked at her hands and eventually nodded.
‘What did you do there?’
Cheryl reddened and Kelly felt regret that she had to make the girl so uncomfortable, but it was vital.
‘Did you go there for sex?’
Cheryl nodded again and closed her eyes. Her cheeks were the colour of deep summer raspberries.
‘And Freya and Abi went up there too? Can you identify them for the record?’ Kelly placed the photos of the girls on the table. ‘Did you ever go together?’
Cheryl confirmed the identities.
‘Sometimes.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘We played music and…’
‘Illegal substance use?’ Kelly waited. ‘I can’t arrest you retrospectively, you’re not on trial; I’m building a picture of what happened to Freya and Abi. Cheryl nodded again. Curiously, Kelly had never seen the place in question; it must be well tucked away. Even on the helicopter ride with Johnny, they hadn’t spotted a ruin near the fell. So far, things weren’t looking good for Mr Sentry, who at best was a liar.
‘Mr Sentry has played down his relationship with the two girls. Would you be willing to contest that under oath?’
Cheryl swallowed and Kelly knew that she made a risky witness, simply because of her fear, but that could also go in their favour.
‘Abi is dead and Freya is still missing. What would you want them to do for you if the roles were reversed?’
‘Tell the truth.’ Tears spilled over in Cheryl’s eyes.
‘Do you think you could point the place out on a map?’
‘Yes.’
Chapter 38
Days of heavy rain had whipped up the mud, and diving had been suspended for three days. The dive schools around Ullswater had made so many cancellations due to the police search, and now the weather, that they were keen to resume: time was money, and tourists paid well for dive lessons.
Ullswater was no Red Sea, but it attracted its fair share of leisure divers. The PADI centre was run by a jovial Aussie called Jayden. At twenty-two, covered in tattoos, ripped and undeniably masculine, Jayden was a hit with the ladies. He spent his summers in the Lake District and wintered in France as a ski instructor. Both venues offered a string of college girls, wanting to hike and swim in the summer and ski in the winter.
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