The Red Ribbon Girls

by Adam J. Wright

  I follow him outside to the red Volvo I’ve seen parked out here before. “Get in,” he offers, indicating the passenger side.

  When I’m seated and putting my seatbelt on, he slides into the driver’s seat. “Which car park are we going to?”

  “The one at the marina if that’s all right.”

  “Of coure.” When he starts the car, the radio comes on, blaring out high volume pop music. “Sorry,” Mike says, turning it down to a barely audible level. “That’s the music that keeps me awake while I’m commuting to and from work.”

  “What do you do?” I ask.

  “I work for a software development company in York.”

  “That’s a bit of a commute.”

  “Well, luckily the company I work for is based on this side of the city so it only takes me about an hour each way.” He steers the Volvo around Rob’s Land Rover and out of the parking area onto the road. “Anyway, it’s a nice drive over the moors. I just relax and take in the scenery.”

  “And listen to loud pop music.”

  He grins. “Yeah, that too.”

  “Have you lived at Northmoor House long?”

  “A few years. I love the location. Most people would move closer to work, I suppose, but I like to have that separation. The moors are like a barrier between me and my work life.”

  I nod.

  “The flat is great,” he continues. “The only drawback is the landlord. He’s a bit of a tool.”

  I don’t give anything away. Keeping my voice light and inquisitive, I ask, “Really? Why do you say that?”

  “He never gets anything done around the place. The house is a lovely Victorian building that needs attention and the guy in charge of its upkeep is just lazy.”

  “Ivy was just telling me that he’s been working on it constantly for the past two years.”

  Mike shakes his head. “No, I wouldn’t say that. He might have dabbed some paint here and there but that’s about it. He’s totally useless.”

  “Maybe someone should tell his parents,” I say, remembering Greg’s threat to write them a letter complaining about their son’s job performance.

  “They won’t listen,” Mike says.

  “I’m sure they’d want to know if their lovely Victorian house is falling apart due to their son’s negligence.”

  “Trust me,” he says. “They don’t care.” He turns onto the road that leads into Whitby and says, “Anyway, what about you? What do you do?”

  “I’m a book editor.”

  “Wow, that sounds interesting. So you decide which books are going to be on the shelves?”

  “Well, I decide which books my employers should publish. And then I work with the publisher and author to get the book to as high a standard as possible before publication.”

  “Sounds interesting. I’m quite an avid reader myself, actually.”

  “Oh? What genre?”

  “Nordic Noir mostly. You know, Henning Mankell and Jussi Adler-Olsen, things like that.”

  “Ah, you like crime fiction.”

  He nods. “I do. I admit it. Do you work on any of that kind of stuff?”

  “Sometimes but I mainly work on historical and gothic romances.”

  We’re almost in town now. Mike guides the Volvo along the road that leads to the marina. A few people have braved the weather and are walking along the pavement, huddled in thick jackets and coats against the cold and the fluttering flakes of snow.

  “Here we are,” Mike says, pulling into the car park. “Marina car park. And your Mini looks safe and sound, if a little snow-covered.”

  My car is parked a couple of spaces away, covered with a light dusting of white.

  “Yes, I hope this weather lets up soon,” I say.

  “Not yet,” he replies. “We’re in for some heavy weather next week.”

  “Thanks for the lift,” I say, climbing out of the car.

  “Anytime.” He leans across the passenger seat I just vacated and gives me a brief wave. “Have a good day.”

  I close the door and head over to my Mini. There’s nothing I need in town so I might as well head straight home and get on the computer. I need to get some work done but I also want to look up the details surrounding Caroline Shields’ disappearance.

  When I get back to Northmoor House, the snow is coming down more determinedly. I rush inside and shake myself off in the hallway, watched by an amused-looking Winston. I give Ivy a wave through her open door and head up to my flat.

  The first thing I do is check the ceiling over the kitchen sink. If the leak hasn’t been fixed properly, then this snow would surely be getting into the attic and leaking down into our flat. Everything looks exactly as it did this morning. I breathe out a sigh of relief. That’s one problem solved.

  I leave the kitchen and look around the living room, paying particular attention to my desk area. Nothing seems out of place or missing. My pen, which has come from the same pack as the missing one, is sitting on top of my notebook.

  As far as I can tell, no one has been in here while I was out.

  I boot up the computer and type Caroline Shields’ name into the search engine. A number of hits appear, mainly from various news outlets. They all tell me the same thing: Caroline Shields, 23, disappeared on the 17th of December, 2017. Her car was later found abandoned on the moors. She was due to attend a Christmas party in Scarborough that night but seemed to have been driving in the opposite direction, heading north of Whitby instead of south.

  That was scant information to go on. I search through a few more articles, trying to find more details. I finally find something to add to the facts, a paragraph on the Sun’s website that surprises me because it mentions Ivy:

  According to Caroline’s neighbour Ivy Rose—possibly the last person to see Caroline alive—Caroline was looking forward to attending a Christmas party and was making plans for the coming new year. There was no indication that she was depressed in any way or might have taken her own life.

  I had no idea that Ivy was the last person to see Caroline alive. Maybe something Caroline said to her could be an important clue. Of course, Ivy probably wouldn’t remember much about it now and the police would have already questioned her about those kinds of details at the time.

  Wouldn’t they?

  They didn’t come back and interview Rob North so they might have missed other things as well.

  I find some pictures of Caroline. She’s pretty, with long blonde hair, blue eyes, and a face that looks younger than her 23 years.

  And now she’s missing, maybe buried somewhere on the moors. She might never be discovered and her parents and friends will go to their own graves having no idea what happened to her.

  There’s such a dearth of information regarding Caroline on the Net that I seem to have reached the limit of my online search. The only option I have is to see if Ivy remembers anything else about her. I suppose I could ask Mike but I barely know him and he might wonder why I’m asking.

  Unsure as to my next move regarding Caroline, I open the Secrets of Falcon House manuscript and get to work. I might as well do something productive and I have a deadline to meet.

  As I read, the book’s heroine discovers that her employer, the dashing Mr Cornwall, has murdered his wife and buried her body beneath the folly. Before Cornwall has a chance to kill the heroine and cover up his crime, she flees straight into the arms of Douglas Trevelyan, the local chief of police.

  Trevelyan arrests Cornwall, the wife’s body is taken as evidence, and Cornwall admits his crime, ensuring that he’ll face the hangman’s noose.

  I sigh wistfully. At least someone is able to solve the mysteries that surround her and see justice done.

  Chapter 16

  Dani arrives at headquarters to find the post-mortem report on Amy Donovan sitting on her desk. She reads it thoroughly but it doesn’t tell her anything she hadn’t already guessed. There were no signs of a struggle because, like the other women, Amy had been injected with a solu
tion of diazepam suspended in saline. The injection was administered into her trapezius muscle. Death was due to drowning in the body of water in which she’d been found.

  The report tells Dani nothing new, nothing helpful.

  The forensic report is just as unhelpful. Rickman’s team has taken particles from the water and the grass in the area where Amy was found but apart from dog hairs and a couple of fibres that don’t match any of the fibres from the other crime scenes, there’s nothing earth-shattering, no clue that breaks the case open.

  She looks up to see Matt Flowers approaching her desk with two mugs of coffee. He puts one in front of her.

  “Thanks, Matt. Please tell me you have some good news regarding this case.”

  “Afraid not, Guv.”

  Dani slides the post-mortem report across the desk towards him. “Pull up a chair and read this.”

  He does so, grabbing a spare chair from the next desk and poring over the report with an intense focus. When he’s done, he closes the folder and says, “Same as all the others. He drugs them and then drowns them.”

  “Do you think he adds the red ribbon before he drowns them or after they’re dead?”

  Matt shrugs. “Does is make a difference?”

  She lets out a sigh. “Probably not. I just want to know every detail, no matter how small. What goes through his mind when he drowns them? Who do they remind him of after he’s added the ribbon?”

  “Do you think he visits them later?” Matt asks. “Maybe he goes back again and again.”

  “Maybe. That would be consistent with a lot of killers’ behaviour. And we always find them just as a thaw begins. Before that, they’re probably lying under a layer of ice for a few days.”

  “Like a butterfly under glass,” Matt says.

  Dani nods. “Yeah, he must visit them, admire his own handiwork. For him, it’s all about the visual he creates. So I’d say he goes back again and again to look at his creation.”

  She swallows some of the coffee and says, “Andrew Thomas, the dog walker who found her. Did he see anyone hanging around in that area on any of the days previous to discovering the body?”

  “No, Guv. He doesn’t always walk the dog at the same location. Said he hasn’t been to that particular spot in quite a while.”

  “Has anybody else been up there recently? Hikers? Locals?”

  “We’ve put up posters in the area and we’re inquiring at the local villages, B&Bs, and hotels. A walking group from Leeds was up there the day after Amy went missing and a couple of the members recall seeing a green Land Rover Defender parked by the side of the road but no one remembers the registration or any distinguishing marks on the vehicle.”

  “What about any photos they took while they were out walking? Have you checked those? They might have inadvertently snapped a picture of the vehicle.”

  “I’ll get on that. Is that all, Guv?”

  “Yes. Let me know if any of those photos give us a look a that Land Rover.” It’s a long shot, she knows, but every lead has to be chased down and sometimes the most innocuous detail can turn out to be the one piece of the puzzle that reveals the whole picture.

  “Oh, just one more thing,” she says to Matt as he’s wheeling the chair back to the desk from which he got it.

  “Guv?”

  “The Caroline Shields case. Who questioned the other residents at the building where she lived?”

  His brow creases for a second as he tries to recall the details. “A couple of uniforms, I think, Guv. It wasn’t our case. DI Henson was in charge of that one.”

  “Do you know if they questioned the landlord?”

  Matt shrugs. “Not without checking the case file.”

  “Thanks, I’ll have a look at it myself later.”

  “Do you think they missed something?”

  “I don’t know,” she admits, remembering what the woman in the toilets at the Captain’s Table told her. “It might be nothing.”

  He walks away, leaving Dani to ponder the possibility that a mistake has been made.

  It isn’t likely that Henson would miss something so obvious as questioning someone who lived in the same building as Caroline but Dani needs to check that an oversight hasn’t occurred for her own peace of mind. If Henson was still here, she’d ask him but he transferred to the Met last year and since his departure, along with a lack of evidence, clues, or leads, the Caroline Shields case has languished.

  Could the case finally be solved by something a woman in a seafood restaurant toilet mentioned to her? It seems unlikely but still worth checking into.

  She reaches into her handbag and retrieves the Captain’s Table napkin she hastily scribbled on after her encounter with the woman in the toilets. She remembers exactly what the woman said to her and doesn’t need the aide memoire but refers to it anyway just to make sure.

  There are six words written on the napkin.

  Kate Lumley

  Northmoor House

  Rob North

  Dani does a quick Internet search for “Kate Lumley” and groans when she sees the long list of results.

  Journalist Falsely Accuses Man of Murdering Own Child

  Manchester Recorder Journalist Sacked After False Accusations

  She vaguely remembers the story. Didn’t some woman believe her son had been killed by her husband and a journalist published a story shaming him even though all the evidence said the child had drowned in a stream?

  “Don’t tell me she’s the bloody journalist,” Dani whispers to herself as she clicks on some of the links. The story is exactly as she remembers it and most of the articles carry a picture of Kate Lumley, the same woman who’d approached her in the Captain’s Table toilets last night and asked if the police had questioned the landlord at Northmoor House.

  Dani sighs. “She’s the bloody journalist.”

  This doesn’t mean Kate’s inquiry about Rob North should be discounted, of course, but now Dani is disappointed. What might have been a promising lead in the Caroline Shields case is probably nothing more than a deluded journalist’s fantasy. Maybe she’s trying to atone for past sins by finding an actual murderer to balance out the fact that she falsely accused someone in the past.

  But how accurate is she this time?

  She looks up and sees Matt hovering by her desk. When she acknowledges him, he holds up a thick binder and places it on her desk. “Caroline Shields’ case file, Guv, including all the information on the inquiries carried out at Northmoor House.”

  “Thanks, Matt,” Dani says, reaching for the file. “You read my mind.”

  Chapter 17

  When Saturday arrives, I’m still none the wiser regarding Caroline Shields. Over the past couple of days, I’ve been finding out as much as I can about Caroline by searching online and casually dropping questions in conversations with Ivy.

  Neither method has got me anywhere. There’s hardly anything on the Net and Ivy can’t seem to remember anything important. She can tell you what Winston had for dinner three weeks ago but can’t remember much about a young woman who vanished from the flat two floors above.

  I know Ivy isn’t to blame for that but it’s frustrating when I’m trying to piece together information for my investigation.

  If I had something to go on, some lead that tells me where to look next, I might be able to try and find out what happened to Caroline Shields. As it is, I’ve come to a dead end.

  I’m sitting by the window, watching the sun glimmer off the last vestige of snow as it melts away, when Nia’s white Nissan pulls up beside the house. “They’re here,” I tell Greg, getting up from my seat and going to the door.

  Greg pops his head out of the kitchen. He’s been baking potato smiley faces which he says will be, “Better for them than that store-bought rubbish,” and the entire flat smells like a chip shop.

  Leaving him to it, I go downstairs and greet the Mitchell family at the front door.

  “Hey,” Nia says, coming up to me and giving me a hug
while Will unloads two suitcases from the back of the Nissan.

  Jordan and Kishawn stand just behind their mother. Kishawn looks more grown up than I remember her. Even though she’s only nine, there are hints of the woman she will become in her face, which seems to have acquired a sense of maturity and a confident look in her brown eyes. She’s dressed in jeans and a faded grey hoodie that has the word Glamour in gold lettering across the front.

  Jordan is also wearing jeans and a dark blue woollen jumper. When he smiles at me, I see that he has a front tooth missing.

  “What happened to your tooth, Jordan?” I ask him.

  “I fell.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “He fell off the climbing frame at school,” Nia tells me as they follow me into the house.

  “A lift!” Jordan says delightedly, running to the end of the hallway. He turns to his mother and puts on a pleading face. “Please can we go in the lift?”

  “If that’s all right with Kate,” Nia says.

  “Sure, knock yourself out. But there’s only room for two people.”

  “I’ll take him up,” Will says. “Since I have the suitcases.”

  Jordan and his dad get into the lift while Nia, Kishawn, and I climb up the stairs. When we reach the first floor, Mike is approaching the stairs, carrying a black bin bag. When he sees us, he smiles and steps back to let us pass. “After you, ladies.”

  “Thanks, Mike,” I say as we pass him and ascend the next flight of stairs.

  “Who’s he?” Nias asks when we get to the second floor. “He’s cute.”

  “The downstairs neighbour. Mike has the first floor, and Ivy is on the ground floor. Rob, the landlord, lives in the basement flat.”

  “It’s a big place,” Nia observes, looking around at the wide hallway. “I don’t think much to the lift, though.” We can hear it trundling up from below but it hasn’t reached our floor yet.

  “I never use it,” I tell her. “Too slow.”

  When the lift finally arrives, Will pushes the gate open and emerges with Jordan and suitcases.