The Quiet Girls: An absolutely addictive mystery thriller

by J. M. Hewitt

  He’s had a lot of practice, she thought ruefully.

  They took the DVD from the building’s garage CCTV back to the station. Shrugging her coat off, Carrie peeled the lid from her coffee as she sat in front of the DVD player and Paul selected the date for the morning that the Hadleys had left their home in the early hours.

  ‘What time did Sandra say they left?’ he asked.

  ‘Before the sun came up, she said. Start it at five a.m., there shouldn’t be much traffic on the quay at that time.’

  Paul did as she asked and took a seat next to her. Silently they watched, sipping at their coffee. At 5.15 the odd jogger started to appear, a blur of fluorescent clothing flashing past the docks. At 5.25 a car drove up.

  ‘Here it is,’ said Paul. ‘Gabe’s car.’

  Carrie leaned close to the screen. ‘No, it’s not,’ she said. ‘That’s a Toyota. Gabe had a Ford Mondeo estate.’

  Paul blinked and made a face as he flipped through his notes. ‘You’re right,’ he replied. ‘So, who’s this then?’

  ‘Run the reg,’ said Carrie as she continued watching the tape.

  The film was high resolution, a decent security system for the expensive building, back-lit so that even when dark the figures were clear. Three of them; man, woman, child. Paul leaned in.

  ‘They’re unloading the car,’ he said. ‘Suitcases, couple of boxes.’ He looked at Carrie. ‘Are there coach pick-ups from there?’

  Carrie frowned. ‘We’ll soon see.’

  After five minutes, a boat appeared at the quayside and the three headed straight for it. A man hopped easily up onto the quayside, shook hands with the father. The woman and child hung back. At that moment a car came out of the underground garage, the camera’s motion sensor moved, away from the people on the dockside, towards the car’s journey. Frustratingly, it didn’t move back.

  ‘So, we don’t get to see Gabe’s car,’ said Paul as the DVD ended. ‘And who are the people who were there?’

  Carrie pulled her hands through her hair. ‘Play it again,’ she said. ‘Slowly, and zoom in, I want to see their faces.’

  He set it to play, moved to another monitor to enter the registration of the mystery car. Carrie leaned in, pressed pause, zoomed in on the woman.

  She didn’t look happy, thought Carrie as she set it to play again. Arms crossed as she leaned against the car while the man moved around the quay, smiling, rubbing his hands. Carrie watched the child.

  She’s torn, thought Carrie, watching as the girl hovered between her parents, her movements stilted, caught between the apparently warring couple.

  Pause. Zoom. Carrie stared at the screen before turning and picking up one of the photos in the file.

  ‘Paul?’ she called.

  He came back across the room, a page from the printer in his hands. ‘Yes?’

  She held the photo up next to the screen. ‘I think we’ve located Melanie Wilson,’ she said grimly.

  He slapped the paper down on the desk. ‘The Toyota is registered to Harry Wilson,’ he said. ‘That’s the Wilson family all right.’

  Carrie moved back to sit in a chair. ‘What are they doing? Where are they going?’ She tapped her pen thoughtfully against her lips. ‘And did the Hadley family go with them?’

  Carrie scribbled furiously and passed a piece of paper to Paul, never taking her eyes off the paused CCTV. ‘Find out who this boat is registered to,’ she said.

  Paul squinted at the sloping writing. ‘Barnard Castle,’ he said. ‘Odd name for a boat.’

  While she waited, Carrie played the short section of tape again. She should be looking at the adults, she knew, after all they were who she was seeking. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the young girl. Dragging her eyes away she concentrated on the man: Harry Wilson, according to her notes. He was in fine fettle, bouncing around the quay, excited, buoyed. A complete contrast to his wife, Alice, who seemed deflated, hesitant.

  A sheet of paper floated to land on her desk. Carrie looked up at Paul.

  ‘The Barnard Castle is registered to a Mr Ben Keller. Home address in Latchford. Born in a little town with a population of just over five thousand.’ Paul raised his eyebrows. ‘A town called Barnard Castle.’

  Carrie stood up. ‘Well I guess that answers your question of where the boat name comes from.’ She picked up her keys. ‘Feel like taking a drive to Latchford?’

  A closed book. Her initial thoughts on Ben Keller. She glanced around his apartment that overlooked the river. She could be in her own home. Impersonal, simply a functional place to sleep and eat. She turned her attention back to Ben.

  He sat on the window seat, legs apart, hands hanging loosely in between them. Relaxed, casual.

  ‘Do you offer a boat service?’ Carrie asked. ‘Ferrying people around, up and down the water?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘I work out of Salford, canal cruises, tours of the old docklands.’ He leaned back, folded his arms. I also work on the Mersey ferry tours to Salford in the summer season. The rest of the year my Salford work is self-employed. All my taxes are up to date, so are my licences and permits.’

  Carrie suppressed a smile. ‘I’m sure you’re as scrupulous with your paperwork as you are with your boat.’ She looked down at her notepad. ‘The Barnard Castle.’

  She waited for him to ask how she knew the name of his boat, but he challenged her with his silence. She changed tack, pushed the photos of Alice, Harry and Melanie Wilson across the coffee table towards him. ‘Do you recognise these people, maybe passengers of yours at some point?’

  He lingered over the photo of Alice, swept his eyes over the other two before looking up at Carrie. ‘I see a lot of people, hundreds of passengers, thousands in peak season.’

  ‘So you don’t recognise these people?’ she pressed him.

  Ben held her gaze. ‘No.’

  ‘What about these?’ Willow and Lenon stared up from the pictures she passed him.

  Ben shook his head.

  ‘Where were you on the seventeenth of February?’ she asked.

  ‘Working, probably.’

  ‘Here, or in Salford?’ she shot back. Behind her, Paul prowled casually around the room. He seemed bored, but Carrie knew from experience he was taking in every question from her, every answer from Ben.

  Ben appeared deep in thought. A false reaction, noted Carrie, as everything else she’d asked him he had answered seemingly without thinking.

  ‘Probably Salford,’ he answered carefully.

  ‘And you don’t remember meeting these people, talking with them on Bridgewater Dock?’

  He shrugged. ‘I meet a lot of people in my job, I talk to a lot of people.’

  Somehow, Carrie doubted that. He didn’t strike her as the chatty sort. She flipped her notebook closed and stood up.

  ‘Thanks for your time, Ben,’ she said. To Paul, ‘Come on.’

  In the hallway they made their way down the stairs to the lobby of the apartment building.

  ‘Let’s stop at that underground car park again,’ she said as they walked to the car.

  ‘What for?’ asked Paul.

  She fixed him with a gaze. ‘The Wilsons left their car there that day. It’s not there now. I want to look at more CCTV from the days following that particular Sunday. Maybe the Wilsons came back, or––’

  ‘Or maybe someone collected the vehicle for them,’ finished Paul.

  Back in Costa, Carrie led Paul to a different table than the one they’d sat at previously. The helpful building supervisor was preparing them another DVD from the security camera, spanning the evening of 17 February through to the next day. A twenty-four-hour window to see what had happened to Harry and Alice’s car. After all, it hadn’t been reported abandoned on the quayside, not like Gabe’s.

  Paul sat quietly across from her, cradling his coffee. He seemed reflective, and Carrie realised he was probably trying to find a way to pick up their last conversation where they’d left off. Panic filled her. She pushed
it down.

  ‘What else do we have on Alice and Harry Wilson?’ she asked. ‘Friends, work places, social commitments.’ Before he could reply she pulled out her notepad. This hadn’t been an investigation about missing parents; it was a missing pair of twins, and an absence reported by the school about a young girl. Her thoughts drifted before she pulled herself back to the present. ‘Mobile phones, social media activity.’ She scribbled furiously before putting the pen down. ‘And seeing who went off in the Wilsons’ car.’

  Paul glanced at his watch. ‘Shall we hurry up the CCTV guy?’

  Carrie drained her coffee and stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

  It was clocking-off time when they had the newly burned DVD from the underground car park supervisor. Carrie tapped it thoughtfully as they walked back to the car. Across the water, her apartment beckoned her.

  ‘Paul,’ she said. ‘We’re only a few minutes from my flat, I’ve got my laptop at home, do you want to come up and view it?’ Her mouth was dry, she never invited anyone back to her home. Worry tugged at her, that he might have misconstrued her invitation. ‘I’m only thinking if we go back to the station, watch this and then I’ve got to come all the way back here again to go home.’

  His answer was friendly, casual. ‘Sure, sounds like a plan.’

  The elevator swished silently up to the fifth floor. As they exited and Carrie opened the door to her apartment, Paul stepped inside.

  He whistled. ‘Nice,’ he said.

  Carrie threw her keys into the ceramic bowl next to the door. A clay pot, mottled pink and red and blue, made by Hattie when she was tiny, glazed and fired by Carrie at an activity day just months before Hattie vanished. It was one of the only personal items Carrie kept in her home. It was one of the only personal items that had survived the aftermath.

  ‘You’re over by the park, right?’ she asked as she flicked the kettle on and drew back the drapes to the balcony doors.

  ‘Yeah, Jubilee Street,’ he answered with a backwards jerk of his head.

  Carrie nodded. They were nice houses, terraced, modern, homely she imagined. She busied herself with her laptop, skirting around him, wondering what he saw when he looked at her sterile, impersonal home.

  The kettle boiled and clicked off.

  ‘Shall I make myself useful?’ he asked, heading towards the kitchen.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, grateful for their ease with each other. ‘Mugs are in the cupboard over the cooker, coffee’s by the kettle.’

  By the time he returned with two steaming mugs, she had the DVD playing. She watched it intently, one eye on the time stamp, the minutes clicking by.

  ‘Headlights,’ Paul said, sitting forward suddenly.

  Carrie looked at the time. ‘Seven a.m.’ She hit the pause button, turned to Paul. ‘Not headlights, a boat light, see?’

  She sat back, satisfied as the side of a boat came into view. The security lights from the camera didn’t pick it up, and she squinted uselessly against the darkness on the screen.

  They waited in silence again, the time ticking on, the boat in the background swaying softly in the water. In a blinding flash the security light clicked suddenly on and a man stepped into view, walking with purpose towards the Wilsons’ car.

  With a cursory glance around he unlocked it, started the ignition, and drove the Toyota away and out of view.

  Carrie looked at Paul.

  ‘Did you recognise him?’

  Paul nodded grimly. ‘I think tomorrow we need to pay Ben Keller another visit.’

  25

  The next morning, Paul caught up with Carrie in the station kitchen.

  ‘We’ll have to wait a bit before we go and see Mr Keller.’ He jerked his head to the interview suite. ‘You might want to sit in on this one.’

  Taking a single sip of coffee, she put the mug in the sink and followed him down the hallway. ‘Fill me in,’ she demanded as they walked.

  ‘Your friend has been missing for almost two months, but you’re just reporting this now?’ Carrie knew she sounded agitated, a thought confirmed by the look Paul shot her.

  The woman opposite Carrie glared. ‘She wasn’t a friend. I mean, she was, once, but we parted on… let’s just say not the best of terms.’

  ‘You had a fight?’ Paul interjected. He looked down at his notepad. ‘Ms…’

  ‘Maxine Cooper.’ Maxine looked down, took a deep breath before starting again. ‘We were work colleagues, friends, too, but Alice was letting things slide. She had a lot going on in her personal life––’

  ‘Like what?’ interrupted Carrie.

  ‘Her husband was depressed, he’d had it before, major depression. It was weighing Alice down and, in our jobs, we can’t allow personal stuff to get in the way.’

  ‘Alice was a lawyer?’ Carrie flicked through her file, that much she’d already found out. She looked at Maxine curiously. ‘What did Alice’s husband do?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Maxine shook her head, checked herself. ‘Not nothing, he was a house husband, he raised their daughter.’

  ‘A stay-at-home dad?’ Carrie raised her eyebrows, exchanged a glance with Paul. ‘And they could afford to live on one wage?’

  Maxine waved her hand. ‘They didn’t need money. They had it, both Alice and Harry were orphaned really young, they had a fortune in trusts, asset, property. I don’t even know why Alice worked, she didn’t need to.’

  Carrie noted the bitterness in Maxine’s tone. ‘When did you last see Alice?’

  ‘The day she got fired.’

  ‘And why was she sacked?’ asked Carrie.

  ‘Actually, she was about two seconds away from being fired and she jumped before she was pushed. She messed up one too many times. Like I said, she’d let things slip. Despite how we left things, I thought she’d contact me, but I heard nothing. I went round to her house when she didn’t return my calls and there are new people living there.’ Maxine slumped back into her chair. ‘She doesn’t have many people in her life, neither of them do, and with what happened to Melanie––’

  ‘What happened to Melanie?’ Carrie leaned forward, alert now.

  ‘She got caught up in some paedo’s house, a girl she was with was attacked; from what I gather Melanie managed to get the girl free and they escaped. Alice didn’t tell me, I heard on the grapevine. Now I understand why Alice was so…’ Maxine took a deep breath. ‘She was shaken, something else that was on her mind that led to even more errors at work.’

  Carrie felt Paul bristle beside her. She scribbled an illegible note to remind her to call Victoria Prout and ask why she’d never mentioned there was a third girl. A wave of horror crept though her: what if this unknown man had Melanie? She shook her head sharply, no, the parents were missing too, not just the girl.

  Not just the girl; two whole families. This was not Hattie, this was nothing like Hattie’s case.

  She blinked. An awkward silence had fallen on the room. Both Maxine and Paul were looking at her. Paul cleared his throat and took over with ease.

  ‘You have no idea where the family have gone? Alice never mentioned anything, a house move, an extended holiday?’

  Maxine shook her head. ‘It’s possible Alice didn’t know if Harry had planned a move.’ She shrugged unhappily. ‘Harry was like that, always going ahead with plans and stuff and not consulting Alice.’

  ‘Like what?’ demanded Carrie.

  Maxine took a long sip of water. ‘He arranged their wedding without her knowledge, just pulled up at the registry office one day, witnesses were waiting, wedding was booked. He bought their home without her knowing.’ Maxine fixed her gaze on Carrie. ‘She always made it sound romantic, but I thought it was a bit creepy. Controlling.’

  ‘All right.’ Carrie stood up, gestured for Paul. ‘Thanks, Maxine, you’ve been a great help.’

  Maxine pushed her chair back and hurried around the table, blocking Carrie’s route to the door. ‘Will you let me know if everything’s okay, when you track them down?’<
br />
  Carrie softened at the genuine concern in the other woman’s eyes. ‘Of course, and thank you for coming in.’

  ‘Get that Prout woman on the phone, I want to know why she never mentioned Melanie was in that house.’ Carrie said once she was alone with Paul again. ‘And then we’re going to pay another visit to Ben Keller. He took the Wilsons’ car, he clearly lied to us when he said he didn’t recognise Harry or Alice.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ve got something you might want to see first.’

  ‘What?’

  In response he beckoned her over to the laptop set up on a corner desk. ‘It’s the CCTV from the rail station, at the time you received the last contact from our mysterious caller. I haven’t seen it yet, it just came in.’

  She slipped into the chair, waited while he set it to play. She caught her breath at the sight of the four public call boxes clearly in view of the camera.

  ‘This is less than one minute before the call came through,’ said Paul, hanging over her shoulder.

  Carrie shifted discreetly. A few seconds later a young woman came into view, just the back of her as she made her way to the phone box. Carrie flicked her eyes up and down her form. A nice pea coat, light-coloured, a leather shoulder bag and shoulder-length brown hair. Her age was impossible to tell from this angle.

  She looked furtively around before picking up the receiver and dialling. The call lasted less than a minute, and from the high-resolution CCTV Carrie watched as the young woman in the pea coat became more agitated, her left hand clutching the phone in a tight grip, her right arm gesticulating wildly. Finally, she seemed to slump as she replaced the receiver back in the holder. Carrie closed her eyes, remembered the soft click, the dead line, her own feeling of helplessness. Snapping her eyes open she looked at the figure on the screen, her shoulders hunched now, her head lowered. Looking as hopeless as Carrie had felt on the other end of the line.

  ‘Turn around,’ she urged in a whisper. ‘Let me see your face.’