by Cathy Ace
‘So back to Carol’s question – how’d she get away?’ said Annie.
‘It was early summer when she went – about the same time of year as it is now,’ said Christine. ‘When Alexander and I were there, we saw a lot of people wandering about with backpacks, in walking shoes. She might have just walked away, dressed to look like a hiker. Anyone know what the buses are like in those parts?’
Carol said, ‘Hang on a minute, I’m looking online now. There you are – yes, they’re pretty regular, though not frequent, from the main road at the bottom of the hill where the cottage is located. They go to the bus station in Swansea, or else to Mumbles. She could have done that – then just taken herself off to anywhere from Swansea either on a bus, or a train.’
‘I’m guessing the cops never looked, did they?’ asked Annie.
Carol shook her head, ‘Nothing came up about it at the trial – but then you wouldn’t expect it to because it was a murder trial. Did your mate Ollie make anything of this angle in his defense of Nathaniel, Christine? It doesn’t look as though he brought the matter up in court at all.’
‘I noticed that, too, but he said if he’d tried to raise the idea in front of the judge of Lizzie not being dead, it would have been shot down. The Crown Prosecution Service did a good job of pushing the murder agenda, and he had nothing to go on, because, as you quite rightly assumed, no enquiries were made at the time she vanished. Certainly he wasn’t able to find any CCTV footage showing anyone who looked remotely like Lizzie at any transport hub in the days following her disappearance.’
‘Well, until we find the lassie, if we do, we’ll have to leave it at a good set of assumptions then,’ said Mavis. ‘I hope to have the chance to ask her how she did it face to face, one day. What else is there we have to tackle, Carol?’
‘If we’ve worked out how she could have done it, I suppose we’re left with why she’d do it,’ she replied glumly.
‘Mad as a box of frogs,’ said Annie bluntly, ‘and had it in for her brother.’
‘Hated Nathaniel’s success, and wanted to bring him down,’ said Christine.
‘Wanted to make her brother lose everything, and suffer,’ said Carol.
‘She broke her mother’s heart,’ said Mavis, ‘she must have wanted to do that too.’
‘Well, she’s done all that, and more,’ said Annie. ‘It seems we’ve agreed she’s not short of motives. So what remains is – where the ’eck is she?’
‘If we knew that, we’d have cracked it,’ said Mavis. ‘I keep thinking back to what Christine told us Baz said about Lizzie running off before. If she really thought “West is Best” might she be hiding out in some hamlet on the west coast of Wales, somewhere? Carol – is there anything you can do about searching through that sort of thing? How, in this day and age, can a person truly disappear? Is it even possible?’
Carol gave the matter a brief moment of thought. She needed no longer. ‘It’s funny you should ask. I asked myself the same question after we spoke last night.’
‘And what did you come up with?’ asked Annie.
‘Well,’ began Carol, ‘it’s not too difficult so long as you’re prepared to either forego some of the things we take for granted in life, or you have the cash to be able to work around those challenges.’
‘We’re all listening, give us a tutorial,’ said Mavis.
Carol settled back in her chair. ‘First there’s your name: you only need your real name if you’re going to be asked for ID, and there are only certain times in life you need ID, so, frankly, you can call yourself whatever you want until you need to be able to prove it. Hence – you either avoid the need to prove it, or you buy the means by which to be able to do that. Avoidance is cheap, but inconvenient. It means you can’t have a bank account, a drivers’ license, a credit card or own a vehicle – unless you’re prepared to buy a vehicle illegally and then drive it illegally, which is a matter of choice. Cash will be king. You’ll have to rent accommodation that doesn’t need references, you’ll also have to be able to earn an income from a job that doesn’t need references. You’ll exist by using pay-as-you-go mobile phones. You’ll be known by whatever name you choose but, of course, you’ll have to avoid being tagged or whatever, by that name, on any social media by anyone you get to know, so you probably won’t mix with others much, and you won’t, in all probability, have many close friends.’
‘She could have changed her appearance so much none of her old friends would recognize her,’ offered Annie. ‘Maybe that’s easier than avoiding all the phone cameras everyone’s got these days. And she’d have to do that in any case, wouldn’t she, just in case she ran into someone who knew her – you know, by accident?’
‘Quite right, Annie,’ agreed Carol. ‘It would be a lonely life, and you’d be forever wondering if the person who looked at you in the street with a glimmer of recognition knows you by name A, or name B, so it’s not just about her not looking like Lizzie anymore, she’d probably change her physical appearance often so she’d be unrecognizable if she unavoidably bumped into someone from her previous life or lives.’
‘And you’d keep moving, because I’m sure it gets very tiring to pretend to the same people all the time,’ said Mavis. ‘You might grow to like them and not want to lie to their faces every day.’
‘But you’d be free, and alive,’ said Christine.
‘You would be,’ agreed Carol. ‘And if you had a good lump of cash to start with you’d be able to maybe purchase false ID – though you’d also need contacts to make that possible, and they aren’t as easy to come by as Annie’s LA private-eye-world of gumshoes and crazy broads might lead one to think.’
‘I bet Alexander would be able to arrange it in about five minutes,’ said Annie, laughing.
‘You’re right, he probably could,’ replied Christine, her voice flat.
Mavis interjected, ‘So there’s a possibility, if she took all these precautions, that Lizzie Llewellyn could have disappeared a couple of years ago, and has been lying low all this time, watching her brother and mother squirm. That’s what you’re saying, Carol.’
‘That’s what I’m saying. Though I’ll add, I might see her doing that until her brother was convicted, but since then? That’s so cold. So harsh.’
‘But hang on,’ said Annie, ‘if that’s what she did do, you know, set up the crime scene, disappear, hide out – all to bring down her brother – what sort of trouble would she be in if she turned up again? She might have thought it was a good idea at the time, but how can she get out of it now?’
‘You make a good point, Annie. Having wasted so much police time, surely she’d be open to charges being made against her,’ said Mavis.
‘Absolutely,’ replied Carol. ‘The minute she’s found, she’s going to be in a lot of trouble, and I don’t mean just because of how her mother and brother will react toward her. What she’s done is criminal in itself.’
‘Might she be able to plead some sort of mental breakdown?’ asked Christine.
‘That would depend on her legal and medical representation,’ replied Carol. She paused. ‘It might even be true, I suppose, that she did indeed suffer some sort of breakdown, during which she hatched this elaborate plan. Her only other possible endgame would be to always live on the run, in hiding.’
‘So all we have to do is work out where she’s hiding right now?’ asked Annie.
‘Ach, I’m no’ so sure about that. I think we need to sit down with someone who’s going to listen to us, who can then hand this over to a police service that has the ability to carry out a proper hunt for the woman.’
‘They need to find a woman in her thirties, with lots of tattoos, who can’t help but create art, has a job that pays cash, that’s maybe in the St David’s area, and has allowed her to be in Swansea within the past couple of years. She’ll have been renting cheap rooms and keeping herself to herself,’ said Christine.
‘And she’s been near Picton Castle, too,’ said Carol, ‘
that was in one of the miniatures too. They had some sort of zorbing festival there – big plastic balls people roll around in. I noticed that one especially, and I finally worked out which castle was in the background.’
‘That’s out west, too, isn’t it?’ asked Christine.
‘Yes, not far from Haverfordwest, so sort of near St David’s,’ replied the Welshwoman, proudly.
‘It might all be enough for the police to get started with,’ said Mavis thoughtfully. ‘If we can get the right person to hear us out.’
‘Why don’t you phone Althea and get a name from her?’ asked Christine. ‘I have to hang up now; I’m nearly at the Leigh Delamere services, and I need a nature break. I’ll meet you all at Mountain Ash House as soon as I can get there, after I’ve done my best to pry the last will and testament of “Daisy” Davies out of the authorities. See you later. Bye.’
After Christine had left the meeting, the three remaining women agreed who would do what for the rest of the day, and went about their business.
THIRTY-SIX
The return of David and Albert from their walk came about ten minutes after Carol’s meeting wound up, so she was able to spend some time with her husband and son hearing all about how active the ducks had been, and how Albert had seemed to be fascinated by them. With nap time on the horizon, Carol knew she had to grasp the chance to get all her files in order so they’d be ready to present to the authorities, if only Althea could come up with the name of someone who’d give the women the chance to do so.
She was surprised when Annie arrived at her front door, bearing gifts of lemon tarts and dragging Gertie behind her. Bunty and Gertie had met on two previous occasions, neither of which had seemed to impress Bunty at all. Upon the arrival of the rambunctious puppy, knowing she wanted her son to sleep, Carol suggested to Annie the two of them took a turn around the village green, and munched the lemon tarts as they went.
Of the four women, Annie and Carol had known each other the longest, so Carol was able to draw Annie out on the topic of Tudor Evans more fully than when they were in the company of the others. She hoped he and Annie would take some sort of step beyond dining and walking their dogs together, but Carol sensed Annie was still wondering if Tudor was a man she could rely upon.
‘Never needed a man, me,’ said Annie, licking her lips after her third tart. ‘I’m getting a bit long in the tooth for romance, and Tude? He’s a nice bloke, steady and all that, but not going to sweep me off me feet, is he?’
‘He seems to be really interested in you, Annie,’ said Carol. ‘And I can tell you like him a lot,’ she added with a smile. ‘I know the difference between you having a hot flush and getting all excited because you’re due to spend time with him, even if you don’t seem to.’
Annie nudged her friend with her bony elbow, managed to trip over Gertie’s lead, and ended up flat on her backside on the grass verge opposite the Lamb and Flag pub. Carol had just managed to untangle her chum when Tudor joined them, pink in the face and looking panicked.
‘Are you alright? I saw you go flying and I was in the middle of serving a round of beers from the tap – I couldn’t leave the bar. Sorry, I’d have been here sooner if I could have been.’
Annie brushed herself down while Carol hung onto Gertie’s lead. ‘I’m fine, Tude, no worries. It’ll take more than a little slip onto this—’ she patted her rear end – ‘to cause me any problems. Couldn’t be better padded, could it?’
Tudor seemed pleased Annie was alright and said, ‘Perfect amount of padding, I’d have said,’ then blushed, and rushed back to his pub.
‘I rest my case,’ said Carol, handing the lead back to Annie. ‘Daft as a brush about you, he is. You’re neither of you getting any younger – go for it, girl.’
‘Hmm,’ was Annie’s only reply. ‘So come on then, let’s talk shop for a minute. Do you think the cops will listen to us? Got a bit of a colorful track record with them, haven’t we?’
‘True enough,’ replied Carol, looking at her phone, ‘which is why having access to Althea’s contacts could be useful. It’s a tricky situation, that’s for sure. I wonder where Lizzie is. The more I think about it, the more certain I am she planned this whole thing and is living a secret life somewhere.’
‘We haven’t been able to connect her to those books that Daisy Dickens once owned at all, have we?’ said Annie. ‘I meant to bring it up at the meeting, but I forgot, and then I got a bit sidetracked. I should make more notes.’
‘Aw, come on, Annie – you’re not half as disorganized as you’d like us all to think. I know you don’t care for meetings much, but you made some really good points in that last one. And you’ve made another now. You’re right, we’ve worked out who Daisy Dickens became, and that she owned the books in which Lizzie drew those miniatures – but how did the lives of those two women intersect?’
Annie paused. ‘I’ve had a thought. Do you think the Cruickshanks are the sort of people who’d pay staff cash in hand? That would be a great place for Lizzie to hide out, don’t you think? She could be earning money and living there, and no one would be any the wiser.’
Carol’s mouth fell open. ‘Brilliant idea, Annie! Good job. You know, you could be right. I didn’t get the impression Lizzie was the sort of person who’d be happy to cook, or clean and look after the elderly, but it’s a good idea. We should look into that. I tell you what, there’s a program I can use that would show me what Lizzie would look like with different hair and make-up, that sort of thing. I’ve used it to work out what different haircuts might look like on me before going to the hairdressers.’ She grinned. ‘I don’t know why I bother, because I always get the same thing done. I could play around with that a bit, then make some print-outs for us all to have on hand when we go to Mountain Ash House this afternoon.’
‘Great idea, Car – glad to be of service,’ mugged Annie.
‘You always are, and don’t you forget it. I know how deeply you were hurt when those creeps in the City made you redundant after all those years of loyal service – don’t ever, ever, think you’re not appreciated nowadays. You are. If only you’d open that hard shell a little bit, and let everyone know you as I do, they’d see you for the pussycat you really are.’
‘Safer if everyone thinks I’m a tiger,’ said Annie as she headed back to her cottage. ‘Give us a ring if you’re the one picking me up later?’
‘Will do,’ replied Carol, heading back to her home and the computer she was hoping could come up with another tool she and her colleagues could use to help solve their case.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Mavis convened an emergency telephone meeting at three that afternoon; Christine was in her car in a car park in Cardiff, Carol at her home-desk, Annie at a table outside the Lamb and Flag pub – having enjoyed a late lunch with Tudor – and Mavis herself perched sideways on the seat of her Mini in Brecon.
‘Thank you all for this – I needed to speak to you all as a matter of some urgency,’ began Mavis.
‘Shoot,’ said Annie, safe in the knowledge Mavis couldn’t stare her down.
‘Aye – I will that, and I know who I might be taking aim at,’ snarled Mavis. ‘But enough of this. I have just concluded a most worrying appointment with Miss Eunice Phillips, a partner at Phillips, Bennett, Wilson and Jones here in Brecon. I raised my concerns with her about their young William Williams’s meeting with Althea at Mountain Ash House yesterday, and she was worried enough – and diligent enough – to carry out some immediate checks. Because of the nature of their business, and the confidentiality they owe their clients, she hasnae been able to share any specifics with me, but her demeanor and general comments have led me to believe the young Williams chappie has been acting beyond the law, representing himself as a qualified professional, and giving advice he has no business giving. She confirmed that “quite a few” residents of Mountain Ash House have used her firm to prepare wills in which they leave everything to the Mountain Ash House Trust, about which Carol was
able to discover nothing – which in itself is cause for concern.’
‘Has she said any more than that?’ asked Carol. ‘Anything about Williams possibly working with Fred Cruickshank?’
‘I wouldnae expect her to do so, and she didn’t. As I have called this meeting with you, she is in the process of doing the same with her partners. I’ve left her in quite a state. I also warned her I felt it was time for us to go to the police with our findings and suspicions about the probable scam being run at Mountain Ash House.’
‘How’d she react to that?’ asked Annie.
‘She turned pale, and said she understood why we’d do it.’
‘I’ve got Daisy Davies’ will in my hand,’ said Christine.
‘Really? They gave you a copy right there and then, just because you turned up?’ Carol was amazed.
Christine coughed politely before saying, ‘Old school tie, again, I’m pleased to say. Daddy’s on this occasion. He knew someone, who knew someone, and here I am with Daisy’s will.’
‘Thank your father for his help,’ said Mavis.
‘Sure now, me Daddy doesn’t need any thanks – he’s just happy to have the chance to help out his little girl,’ mugged Christine. ‘Even happier to use “the ties that bind the world” as he always likes to call them.’
‘He’s got a point,’ said Annie. ‘So did she leave the lot to them at the old folks’ home, fair and square?’
‘Given what Mavis has just told us about William Williams, I can’t be sure about “fair and square,” but she certainly made out her will clearly enough: a few specific bequests, but the residue to the MAH Trust, to be used as the trustees see fit.’
‘Fred Cruickshank lining his own pockets, then,’ said Mavis. ‘That’ll be helpful, thank you, Christine, though if there’s a police investigation, or even a legal, ethical one, into the way Mr William Williams has conducted himself, and therefore if he brought undue pressure to bear upon those writing said wills, it might be a very long time indeed before we’re able to prove whether Sarah Cruickshank had legal ownership of those books when she “donated” them to the Crooks & Cooks bookshop.’
