Echoes of the Past

by Mailer, Deborah

  “It’s bugging the hell out of me where I heard that name before,” Tom said.

  Danny decided not to enlighten Tom. He felt it would be better to let him wake up a bit.

  “So, what did you find?” Tom said through a yawn.

  Danny handed Tom the file. “I’ve got her last known address, she was in Edinburgh, I assume she’s still there. She hasn’t gone to any lengths to hide her where-a-bouts.” Tom lifted the file with one hand and began to read through it, while pouring the coffee with the other. He placed a cup down for Danny and leaned against the worktop with his own as he perused the file.

  Eva Brook was a fifty-one-year-old woman. She had never married and had no children. She had however, been very successful in her line of work. Claims that she was the boardroom queen were whispered in the advertising industry.

  A history of mental illness was noted, this seemed to stem back to the disappearance of her flat mate Jill Patterson. It obviously had not affected her ability to work, in what Tom imagined would be a very competitive business. She had been under the care of several psychiatrists, but had only ever been hospitalized once, this was after her doctor, with whom she had developed a close relationship with, had been killed in a sudden accident.

  Tom stopped reading and looked at Danny.

  “Who was her doctor?” Before Danny could answer Tom dropped the file on the table and raced back to the study, he knew why her name had been so familiar. He lifted the two boxes off the top pile containing books and pictures. The bottom box had all Sara’s notes and files. He lifted them out and put them on his desk. Flicking through them he finally came to the familiar name. Eva Brook. Tom lifted the file and took it back to the kitchen.

  “She was one of Sara’s patients. This has all the stories she wrote as part of her therapy.”

  “I know, mate. I wasn’t sure what to say to you. But it came up last night that her doctor had been Sara Hunter.”

  “We keep getting connections, Danny, but they are so tenuous that they don’t seem to make sense yet.”

  “Oh, I got the email this morning. PC South’s post-mortem. There wasn’t anything unusual in it. He died of severe head trauma; he was alive when he went over the edge. They could not trace any tyre tracks because it was a public highway and he had been lying at the bottom for a week before he was found so any evidence was well gone. Nevertheless, the car had not been tampered with and it was closed as an accidental death. No other vehicles involved.”

  “No evidence that he was run off the road?”

  “Is that what you think happened?”

  Tom dropped the file on the kitchen table and rubbed his eyes.

  “God, I don’t know what I think. I will read Sara’s notes on Eva and then I will try and call her, see if I can maybe get down there and speak to her.”

  “Morning.” Jess and Lee appeared at the kitchen door.

  “You lot ever considered keeping the door closed when other people are trying to sleep.”

  “Sorry, Lee, didn’t mean to disturb you. I see you got your legs back, Jess,” Danny said.

  Jess was now walking normally with Topaz, who had now become like a fashion accessory clutched under her arm.

  “Yeah, back to school tomorrow.” Jess replied with a smile.

  “Amazing what the promise of a riding lesson will do for one’s recovery,” said Lee. Jess pulled a face.

  “Uncle Matt said Gemma and I could go up there tomorrow after school. And FYI I don’t need lessons, I am a good rider.”

  Danny swallowed back his coffee. “Well, mate, I’ll leave you to it. I have to go and keep the streets safe.” He patted Tom on the shoulder as he left.

  “What was Danny doing here so early?” Lee said as she lifted the bacon from the fridge.

  “Oh, just some files I was looking for. I’ll be in the study if you need me.” Tom disappeared down the hall and closed the door at his back. He now knew that he was missing something, he just was not sure what it was. He flicked through Sara’s box of files and found her working diary. He wanted to see just how often she had met with Eva. He took out her patient list and drew his finger down it to see if there had been anyone else connected to this case on her file. There were no other familiar names. She had been seeing Eva for a little under a year; she would see her for two hours once a week.

  Tom flicked to the last week on her diary. She had made an extra appointment with Eva. She was her last patient that she saw the day she died. Tom drew his finger down her appointments that day. She had met with Eva at 11.30am. At 12.45pm, Sara was dead.

  Why had she booked her for an extra session and why had she cut it short, Tom wondered.

  He put the diary down and picked up Eva’s notes. Sara had kept meticulous notes on all her patients.

  She had noted that Eva was a new patient referred to her due to a trauma that had occurred twenty-something years ago. After a few sessions, Sarah had noted that although the disappearance of her friend had brought the symptoms of depression to the surface, she felt there were other problems below the surface that had to be addressed.

  Her level of guilt surpasses that of survivor’s guilt. She is holding back a secret of which even she may not be aware.

  As Tom read on he realized that Sara was not only seeing Eva at the clinic as a patient, but was also seeing her at one of her creative writing classes. Sara had made a note that Eva had a real talent for writing. She felt she should pursue a career in this area.

  In October 2008, Sara had made an unscheduled appointment with Eva to discuss a piece of writing she had handed in. Sara had scribbled in short hand across a spare piece of paper in the file.

  This can’t be real, too many questions. Call, Tom!

  A few hours later, she was dead. Tom lifted out the story that seemed to unsettle Sara and began to read it.

  He was startled at the first few lines.

  The small village where my cousin lived was in the middle of nowhere. A small hump back bridge over a brook was the only road in or out …

  We often played at the old 13th century church. We were once given a row for jumping on what we thought were large stones but turned out to be the graves of 14 century knights …

  This was the only summer I ever spent in the small village with my cousin. My mother never took me back there, and for that, I thank God …

  Tom stared at the print in disbelief. She was talking about Coppersfield. The story carried on.

  It was the summer of 1968, it was warm and lazy I was only six years old. My older cousin and I had become inseparable.

  Tom looked for hints as to who her cousin was and where they were staying. But there was no mention. She spoke about horses and barns, but that narrowed it down to every farm or ranch in Coppersfield.

  We knew the barn was off limits, we were not allowed in there on account that horses can be easily spooked and ‘you don’t want to get hurt by a horse’ was the usual warning …

  Tom’s eyes fleeted over the paper rushing the information as fast as he could process it. The day Sara died she had been on her way to see Tom. He had never understood why. She had tried to get him by phone, but he had been in meetings all day and she could not get him. Whatever was in this story was important enough to make Sara cancel all her appointments and rush down to the station. Finally, he was getting some answers. A pang of guilt cut through him. If he had taken her call, she never would have made her way down to his work.

  I had fallen into the brook that flowed down behind the old church. We decided to go back to the barn and get dried off with one of the horse blankets. It was late. However, things were different back then. Kids had more freedom, there was not the same amount of worry, or so we thought. Sometimes the devil is in your own back yard and you just don’t know it …

  “Tom?” Lee’s voice followed a knock at the door. “There is a Clair Wentworth on the phone.”

  Tom could not draw his eyes from the pages he was reading. “Eh, take a message please
, Lee.”

  Lee popped her head around the study door. “She say’s it’s important; she is Jenny Phillips sister.”

  Tom reluctantly looked up. Danny had been trying to trace family members of the other girls but after thirty-four years, it had proven difficult. He stood up and took the phone from Lee and closed the study door behind her.

  “Hello, this is DS Hunter speaking.”

  “Hello, Mr Hunter. My name is Clair Wentworth. Jenny Phillips was my older sister. I received a message from one of your colleagues saying you were looking into Jenny’s disappearance again.”

  “That’s right. I take it no one has heard from your sister in the last thirty-four years?”

  “That is correct.”

  “I was just wondering if there was any more information that had come to light that may not be in her file,” Tom said.

  “I do have her diary; the police didn’t think it was relevant at the time because they assumed she had met a stranger at first. I looked into her disappearance myself, many years ago. I spoke with some of her work mates etcetera. But I did not get any further than the police did. I still have the papers here if you would like them. I live in Bearsden in Glasgow, do you want to meet?”

  Tom took down the address and agreed to meet with the woman in hope that maybe there was something in the papers she had collected over the years that could help.

  Tom poked his head into the living room where Lee and Jess where sitting. “Lee, I’ve got to go down to Glasgow today, would you mind keeping an …”

  Lee did not look up from the morning paper. “Sure, all under control.”

  Ten minutes later, he was planting a kiss on Jess’s head and climbing into the Jeep.

  The drive to Glasgow was a couple of hours through some of the most breath-taking surroundings. Mountains that disappeared into the clouds and lochs as deep as the ocean that seemed to go on forever.

  By the time he reached Glasgow it was after 3pm. The weather was still favouring spring today and the sun seemed to be on overtime. He put the postcode in to the GPS and followed the directions around the small town of Bearsden. A more affluent area of Glasgow, but still quite old. Row after row of detached bungalows followed him around each bend. Large oak trees lined many of the roads. Eventually he came to his destination.

  He walked up the gravel drive and pressed the doorbell. Clair Wentworth, An attractive woman in her early fifties answered the door.

  “Call me Clair,” she said as she led him across a large square hall into an impressive living room. “The police have always kept Jenny’s case open, but it was inactive. Why have they decided to take another look?” Clair sat down and offered the chair opposite to Tom.

  “To tell you the truth Clair. This is something I’m doing off my own back. I’m maybe due to retire soon and this caught my eye. If I find any new evidence or anything that had been previously over looked then I’m sure Strathclyde will continue with it.”

  Clair looked disappointed. “Well, I think it’s unlikely that you will find any new information. Nobody has even looked for my sister in over thirty years detective.”

  “Call me, Tom. You may be surprised at what can initiate a new investigation. You said you had carried out some investigations of your own.”

  “Yes. But it was completely fruitless.” Claire slid a box from the side of her chair over to Tom. “Her diary is in there too. I got it after my mother died.” Tom lifted the lid of the box and scanned the papers and the large diary.

  “Your sister was twenty-two when she disappeared. I wouldn’t have thought many woman of that age would still keep a diary, guess that’s lucky.”

  “It’s not that kind of diary. She was taking a night class in economics and business management. Between that and her shifts with British rail, she had to keep a track of her shifts and assignments. I kept it because she had made little notes next to some of the people she had met. You’ll see it when you read through it.”

  “What do you think happened to your sister, Clair?”

  She brushed her short blonde hair behind her ear and without a pause she looked him in the eye.

  “I think some one abducted her from the station that night and murdered her. There is no question in my mind.”

  “You don’t believe she just left,” said Tom.

  “That wasn’t my sister. She was a happy person, looking forward to the future, planning a career that did not involve serving drinks to drunken men on a train. It used to gall her the way they would constantly hit on her. You must have seen her picture; she was a gorgeous young girl. The police only put that forward as a possibility, but no one on the case really believed that she had walked off. We just didn’t have any proof of anything else.”

  “I take it both your parents are dead?”

  “Yes, it killed them when Jenny disappeared. It just took a while to do it.”

  “Did your sister know anyone or have any connection to a place called Coppersfield?”

  Clair thought for a moment and shook her head. She knew the place, but she was not aware of any connection to it for anyone in the family.

  “Is there anything else you can think of about your sister?”

  “How long you got. She was vivacious, beautiful, and intelligent. She was so much fun. She had one of those minds that were always thinking about the next joke to make or prank to pull. We got into so much trouble when we were kids because of it. I could talk all night about Jenny. But I’m afraid, other than what’s in that box, I don’t have anything that could help the case much.”

  Tom smiled and thanked her. He liked this woman. She was honest, smart and despite the sombre conversation they were having, he suspected she had a good sense of humour.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t even offer you something to drink!”

  “You’re ok. I have a long drive back home.”

  “Well, how about a bite to eat first, can’t have you driving on an empty stomach.”

  “No, thanks, don’t go to any trouble.”

  Clair stood up and walked into the hall for her coat. “Oh, believe me I won’t. I know a great little pub just round from here that does terrific bar lunches on a Sunday. Come on, it’s the least I can do for the man who intends to breath new life into my sisters case.”

  Against his better judgment Tom decided that he really liked being in this woman’s company.

  They drove the short distance down Canniesburn Road to a small red-brick building on the Forth and Clyde Canal.

  A large patio area looked on to the lock were occasional boats would pass. Tom and Clair settled into a booth in the bar and ordered lunch. Clair talked about her childhood. Being raised in Bearsden meant she had a very different experience from Tom, who had been raised in the tiny village. Tom had a lot of freedom and long lazy summers. Clair on the other hand was not permitted to go any where without her older sister, much to Jenny’s disapproval. As the girls got older they became very close and Jenny, very protective of her younger sister as she had been trained to be from a young age. The picture Clair was painting was of a very close family, responsible with a sense of duty toward each other. He knew this was not a girl that walked off to start over. The studious and responsible Jenny, did not sound like the type that would willingly go of with a stranger either.

  “Listening to you, it sounds as though your sister was a cautious woman.”

  “Oh yeah, she was very responsible. There is no doubt in my mind that if she was not forcibly abducted then she was with someone she trusted the night she disappeared.”

  The waiter arrived and served a large portion of chips and chicken to Clair and a steak and ale pie with all the trimmings to Tom. Tom swapped the wine for coke, but Clair opted for the wine. Tom enjoyed the light conversation over lunch; it had been a long time since he had sat with a woman and ate a meal. Not counting Lee of course, who in Tom’s mind was not a woman, but his sister-in-law.

  As it was starting to get dark outside, the conversation dr
ew back round to Jenny.

  “I don’t know what your beliefs are, but for me, I have gone to mediums etcetera to try and find out what happened.”

  “I don’t really believe in that sort of thing, I like to work with hard facts, evidence. Things that can’t be questioned,” Tom said.

  Clair laughed. “Yeah, most men are the same. If they cannot explain it, then they forget it. Most men walk about oblivious to the things around them. Anyway I won’t hold it against you. As I said over the years I have tried to speak with Jenny, a couple of times she has come through and I got the usual crap about her being happy and at peace, but I didn’t get anything concrete until I saw a medium in Glasgow. He was only a young man but he was red hot. He told me that she was dead, that I knew. However, he said that she had made a new friend that night and that it was a fatal error on her part. Anyway to cut to the chase, he said she had been speaking to a young man that had been on the train before and that he had walked her to her hotel.”

  Tom listened to what she was saying, for some reason he was not as keen to dismiss Clair as easily as he was Lee. He felt a slight confusion as to why such an intelligent woman would buy into all that sort of thing. He noticed she was staring silently at him. “What else did he say?”

  “That was it. Jenny wanted me to stop looking and live my life; everything will turn out as it is meant to be.”

  “So if this psychic is to be believed, she befriended someone on the train and he killed her. So where do you think her body is?”

  Clair thought for a moment. “Well, if you didn’t want a body to be found what would you do with it.”

  Immediately an answer popped into Tom’s head followed by another option. The lochs were deep enough to hide a body, they were definitely large enough for one to go unnoticed provided it never surfaced. The other option was the farms in Coppersfield. They afforded the owner a certain amount of privacy and if you were to bury someone on your land, the chances of anyone ever stumbling across it would be slim to none.

  “I can see your brain working, what are you thinking?” Clair said.