They remained like that for some minutes. In the end, it was Terence who moved, releasing his grip on Rathe and gently edging his wife back to the settee. Rathe moved to the drinks cabinet and poured a brandy for Sonia and two malts for Terence and him. Sonia’s weeping subsided under the stern influence of the spirit and the fire in her throat brought her breathing under some form of control. Terence threw back the whisky and poured a second for himself. He looked at Rathe’s glass, expecting the same, and Rathe complied. The second glass would be treated with more respect and, in honesty with himself, Rathe was glad of the sharp but soothing effect of the drink.
He gave them a summary of how matters stood, delivered succinctly but with difficulty. Sonia listened with intermittent sobs, closing her eyes against the effects of the more terrible details. Terence took in the information with a grim defiance, refusing to take his gaze from Rathe’s face, forcing himself to confront every detail of the misery with courage and resilience. Rathe had spoken whilst still on his feet but, now he had finished, the strain of the past few moments hit him and he felt his knees begin to tremble. With an apology, he moved back to his chair and sat down.
“I want to say this, and I expect no dispute about it,” declared Terence after a brief silence. “On behalf of Sonia and myself, Anthony, thank you for having the decency and the respect to come here and tell us in person.”
Rathe responded with a shake of his head. Terence Villiers accepted the gesture for what it was: an acknowledgement of his own sentiment of gratitude and a declaration that nothing further on that particular topic need be said.
“You say the police are assuming a connection between Alice’s death and that of this private detective,” Terence clarified instead.
“It seems likely,” said Rathe. “And it seems to me that if that’s right, it’s impossible not to assume a similar link between the disappearances of Lindsey Crane and Kirsty.”
Sonia shook her head. “I can’t believe there might be some news about her after so long.”
“We have to take things one step at a time,” cautioned Rathe. “It’s only a theory until a fact proves it correct. You have to remember that, Sonia, however easy it is to forget it.”
Terence was nodding. “But it does seem more than possible, doesn’t it?”
“To me it does,” confessed Rathe. “But I have to prove a link before we can act on it. Do you ever remember hearing the name Lyndsey Crane before?”
“Never,” said Terence, giving voice to Sonia’s shaking of the head.
“Given the age difference between them, I’m not surprised at that,” replied Rathe. “It was a point which struck me almost immediately. Kirsty was quite a few years older than Lyndsey Crane, so it’s unlikely they’d have anything to do with each other.”
“What’s your point?” asked Terence.
Rathe shrugged. “If there is a connection between the two disappearances then it can’t be the girls themselves, because the difference in age makes it unlikely they knew each other.”
Sonia looked up at him. “You mean the link between them is… what? A coincidence?”
“Something like that. There was a link which they didn’t know they had. Same school, different years, for example. Same gym, but years apart in membership. Same dentist, same doctor, same… ”
“Yes, point taken,” snapped Terence. “A transient connection, that’s what you’re saying.”
“Exactly,” murmured Rathe.
“Which will make it harder to find, correct?” Terence stared at Rathe not with hostility or fury, but with a clear plea for honesty.
Rathe stood up, his legs feeling more secure now that the initial storm of grief had passed. There was something stabilising about these intellectual discussions which fortified his energy. “Not necessarily. We just have to look at things a little differently, that’s all.”
“Why are you getting involved in this, Anthony?” asked Sonia.
He could not look at her and tell her an untruth, so he turned away with a shrug and looked out over the garden. He could remember sitting around the wooden table with Alice and her parents, sipping white wine and gins and tonic in the fading summer sun with the remnants of tapas or pasta on the plates in front of them. He could remember fireworks in the cold, dark skies of November evenings or New Year twilights, with Alice’s head on his shoulder and her face illuminated by the multi-coloured explosions in the sky. So many memories in that expanse of green which stretched out beyond the glass of the patio doors. So many memories which he had allowed to slip through his fingers because of who he had been and the misery he had caused.
“I never knew Kirsty,” he said now, turning back to face them. “I only know what Alice told me, which wasn’t very much. She didn’t like talking about what had happened.”
“She never really came to terms with it,” said Terence. “It was the pain of not knowing. You tell yourself that you can handle anything as long as you know the truth; that not knowing is worse than knowing. I think Alice saw it in those terms.”
“Do you?” asked Rathe.
“It’s not something I’ve been able to test as yet,” replied Terence.
Sonia had moved from the settee and she had taken a photograph from the mantelpiece. She held it out to Rathe, who recognised Kirsty from his own online researches, but this photograph was professionally taken. It was black and white, elegantly lit, showing Kirsty looking to one side with her head dipped slightly, gazing up at the lens from under her long lashes. He was no expert, but Rathe suspected that her hair and make-up had been applied expertly.
“She was very beautiful,” he said, almost without thinking. “Both of them were.”
Sonia enjoyed the compliment and she smiled at him, although her eyes were still ravaged with grief. She took the photo from him and gazed at it herself. “Kirsty wanted to be an actress, Anthony. She had this taken for portfolios, auditions, publicity, what have you. From the age of ten, it was all she had wanted to be. The Wizard of Oz on television was all it took. Do you remember, Terence?”
“Of course,” he replied, as the memory formed a film over his eyes.
“Did you encourage her?” asked Rathe, gently.
Sonia inclined her head, evasively. “To an extent, we did, yes. It wasn’t something we felt was secure enough for her to have as a sole profession.”
“Which is why her degree at university was going to be English as well as Drama,” offered Terence.
Rathe looked across at the older man. “Going to be?”
“She only managed two years of the course,” explained Sonia. Her tone of voice showed that their mutual disappointment had not quite faded over the years.
“Do you mind me asking why?” ventured Rathe.
Terence got to his feet. “Because she couldn’t see beyond the present, Anthony. It was one of her failures. It’s not easy to talk about your daughter’s shortcomings, especially not in these circumstances, but I’m afraid it’s true.”
“She was just so ambitious,” Sonia said, in defence. “She had a dream and she wanted to follow it.”
Rathe became aware that the ground upon which he was walking now was infirm and unstable, as though each word might bring the conversation to an end. Rathe knew that he could not allow that to happen, because he had that tremor of instinctive anticipation across his spine which told him that something important was about to come out. When he spoke, his voice was gentle, almost soothing, his lips curled in a soft, disarming smile.
“Something had changed though, surely?” he said. “If she had done two years of the course, something in her circumstances must have altered for her to abandon those two years of hard work like that.”
Terence turned his back on the conversation, as though the memories it was dragging back to life were too much for him to recall. For a moment, Sonia looked at her husband and debated whether silence was the right option. When she turned her gaze back to Rathe, however, she saw something so comforting an
d yet so determined in his dark eyes that she felt certain she could give him the trust which she seemed to beg from her and that silence would be nothing less than a betrayal of that trust.
“It was a letter,” she said. “Kirsty received a letter and, once she had read it, everything changed.”
“Who from?”
Sonia Villiers looked over again at her husband but, in truth, her mind was made up even without Terence’s nod of the head. She put her hand on Rathe’s arm and inclined her head towards the door. “Come with me, Anthony.”
He followed her out into the hallway and up the stairs, passing the framed oil paintings of the various landscapes of Britain. Even to Rathe’s untrained eye, they were obviously the work of a trained amateur and the small, neat “TV” in the right hand corner of each showed that Terence kept his mind active with art as well as lateral thinking. Rathe had a sudden image of a man trying anything to fill the void left by the loss of a child and, with a twist of his stomach, Rathe wondered what hobby Terence would take up now that the void had doubled in size.
Sonia opened a door on the landing and turned on the light. She led him into a large sized bedroom, tastefully decorated, with a single bed set beneath a large window in the far wall. A collection of small teddy bears and a heart shaped pillow were neatly gathered at the foot of the pillows, an oddly immature bundle of items but one which Rathe found it hard to dislike in the circumstances. Posters of productions of Shakespeare and Ibsen, amongst others, were framed on the wall to Rathe’s right as he entered the room. Fitted wardrobes spread the length of the adjourning wall, with a mirror and dressing table set in the centre of them. Facing them, a desk and computer were set out, with a small bookcase fixed to the wall above it. Copies of plays and literary criticism books, as well as various biographies of notable actors and some modern movie stars. Next to the shelves there was a cork noticeboard, filled with various slips of paper and assorted photographs. Rathe saw Kirsty and Alice messing around on a beach; Kirsty wearing a hideous Christmas jumper with barely concealed embarrassment; Alice in her teenage years drinking wine from a bottle; Kirsty with a group of friends, as glamorous as any celebrities, drinking champagne and blowing kisses to the camera. Rathe wondered which of those friends, if any, was the one who chose not to go to the cash machine with Kirsty on that night six years previously.
Sonia walked to the noticeboard and flicked through the papers which were pinned to it. At last, she pulled one free from its place and read over its contents. She handed it to Rathe.
“Read it for yourself, Anthony.”
It was an invitation to an audition and interview, following Kirsty’s own approach which the letter had acknowledged. It was dated June 2012, six months before she disappeared. The header of the letter was written in Gothic script, Trebuchet Talent Agency Ltd, with an address somewhere in Soho. Kirsty’s portfolio and publicity photographs had been impressive, it said, and a representative of the company would very much like to meet her in person. A date, a time, and a venue were given, with an offer of thanks and kind regards above an indecipherable signature. Rathe read the letter several times, but he could see nothing of importance in it. He handed it back to Sonia.
“And that was the letter which caused Kirsty to give up university?” he asked.
Sonia was replacing the letter on the cork board as she replied. “She’d sent dozens of letters to similar agencies all over London, but the reply had always been to tell her she needed a qualification before she could be considered. Kirsty was an impatient girl, Anthony. One of my traits, I’m afraid.”
“Did she attend the interview?”
“Yes. And a second the following month.”
“Did you go with her?”
Sonia nodded. “Terence and I drove her there and picked her up afterwards. She was the happiest we’d seen her in ages.”
Rathe took out his mobile. A quick Google search found the agency without any difficulty, with the correct address, and a phone number which matched the number on the letter head. He dialled it, was connected, claimed he had dialled a wrong number, and disconnected the call.
Sonia was looking at him. “Everything all right, Anthony?”
“Just an idea,” he replied, putting his phone away with a shy smile. “And not much of one.”
Sonia smiled back at him, as though sympathetic to the idea that an idea formed could be destroyed within seconds. She walked back towards the door and Rathe moved out onto the landing to make room for her. They walked back down the stairs, finding Terence in the hallway. He had his hands in his pockets, his head slumped on his breast, but as they approached he looked up at them with livid, raw eyes which showed that he had spent some private and painful time with his grief in their absence.
“I was just coming up,” he said.
“We’re done now,” said Sonia, placing her hands in his.
Rathe moved past them and put his hand on the handle of the front door. “I think I should be going now. Leave you in peace.”
Terence reached out to him, instinctively, then pointed to the lounge. “Stay for one more malt. Keep an old man company.”
Rathe smiled. “Thank you, but no. I think I ought to go.”
Terence contemplated him for a moment, as though his gaze alone would be sufficient to change Rathe’s mind, before bowing his head in defeat. Sonia moved towards Rathe and kissed him lightly on his cheek.
“Thank you, Anthony.”
Rathe lowered his eyes. “I’m going to find who did this, Sonia. I’ll find you the truth.”
She took his face in her hands, forcing him to look in her eyes. “I asked you this before, Anthony, and now I am asking it again. Why are you getting involved in this?”
“Because I let that kid die, Sonia. I put him in prison and he died, but he shouldn’t ever have been there.”
Terence was shaking his head. “It wasn’t your fault. We told you that then and I’m saying it now. God, it was this that drove Alice away from you.”
Rathe stared back at him. “Which is why I’ve got to do something about it now. Make amends. Find some way of putting it right.”
“You can’t do that by interfering with the police,” Sonia insisted.
“I can’t get Kevin Marsden out of my head,” confessed Rathe, suddenly surprised at how the words sounded when he said them out loud. “I dream about him, I relive his trial, I go to his graveside. I see his mum, ask for her forgiveness.”
“You don’t need it,” said Sonia.
“That’s just what she tells me.”
“And she’s right,” said Terence. “You don’t need absolution about what happened from anybody but yourself, Anthony.”
Rathe shook his head. “I can’t forgive myself. Not yet… ”
Terence Villiers put his hand on Rathe’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’ll have to. Otherwise, you’ll never move on.”
“Doing this helps,” Rathe muttered, but his explanation for his actions sounded weak even to his own ears. “Trying to help the police seems to help me.”
Sonia shook her head. “No, Anthony. All it does is shift the sadness and the guilt somewhere else.”
She kissed his cheek once more. “Come back to see us. Please.”
“I will, I promise.”
Terence released Rathe’s shoulder and opened the door, shaking Rathe’s hand as he stepped out into the gentle afternoon breeze. “Take care of yourself, son.”
Rathe did not reply. Instead, he smiled back at the two of them and slowly walked away. Once he had reached their garden gate, he looked back, but they had closed the door. Rathe began to walk again, Sonia’s words echoing in his mind. He could not seem to stop them from reverberating in his memory and, with each step he took, they seemed to get louder so that by the time he reached the main road, they were screaming in his head. He tried to block them with thoughts of other things but they were too resilient against his efforts. So loud were they that he did not hear the mental click of the conn
ection of several facts which his brain had made and which, once he could see it, would be the clue to the mystery.
* * *
Cook had not been idle. He did not need Anthony Rathe to tell him that the probability was that a link existed somewhere between Kirsty Villiers and Lyndsey Crane. The murders of Alice Villiers and Roger Gilchrist made that idea too vivid to be a coincidence. Similarly, Cook had formed the notion without Rathe’s help that the age difference between the two girls made it unlikely that any such connection was between them personally. Cook had formed his own conclusions on that point and, like Rathe, he had determined that what linked the girls’ disappearances would be transitory as opposed to direct.
As a result, Cook had undertaken a search of the databases of the files of all missing-person cases for the last six years involving girls of similar respective ages to Kirsty Villiers and Lyndsey Crane. After an hour, his stomach had rebelled and his eyes had begun to gloss over the words on the screen in front of him. Cook found reading from computers increasingly difficult, the glare from the backlight now causing more pain to his eyes than ever before. Andrea had told him more than once to get his eyes tested, but he had brushed off the command.
“I don’t need specs,” he had growled. “I can see fine.”
“You’re squinting at the TV,” Andrea had argued.
“No, I’m scowling,” he retorted, “because I can’t believe what I’m bloody seeing.”
But none of that bravado altered the fact that his eyes were becoming irritated by reading these computer files. He threw himself out of his chair with a curse and pulled open his office door. He called in a young detective constable, newly promoted and eager to please, and given her the basic facts of the Villiers and Crane disappearances. Pointing to the screen, he had told the young detective what he wanted.
When Anthony Rathe Investigates Page 20
