Alice Teale is Missing

by H. A. Linskey

Simon Nash seemed more relaxed once he had proven the existence of his fiancée, but Beth kept coming with the questions.

  ‘You didn’t give Alice Teale a lift home on the night she disappeared. Why not?’

  ‘I just didn’t offer. Obviously, now, I wish I had. I keep thinking that, if I had just driven her home, she might be safe and well now, instead of …’

  ‘Instead of?’

  ‘Missing, obviously.’

  ‘Why didn’t you offer?’

  ‘She didn’t want a lift.’

  ‘How do you know that if you didn’t actually ask her?’

  ‘She was keen to stay a little longer.’

  ‘In the darkroom?’

  ‘No, she had finished in the darkroom. I got the impression she had something else to do or someone to talk to.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I cleared up and got my stuff together, then I went home.’

  ‘Miss Pearce saw you leave the school from the staff-room window. She saw Alice leave, too, on foot, just moments after your car pulled away, so Alice didn’t stay all that long.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She mustn’t have done.’

  His answers were calm and measured, betraying no sign of guilt or stress. There was no reason for Beth to be suspicious of the man and yet, for some reason, she was. She decided to keep at him. ‘Is it normal for a teacher to give up his Friday evening to hang out with the sixth-formers?’

  ‘It’s not compulsory, but it gets you Brownie points from the head. He doesn’t force you, but …’

  ‘You feel obliged to?’

  ‘There are teachers who don’t get involved in anything, but I’m one of the newer ones.’

  ‘Must be a pain, though, hanging out with a bunch of adolescents when you could be at home with your fiancée.’

  ‘It comes with the job, and she accepts that.’

  ‘How long did it take you to finish off after Alice left the darkroom?’

  ‘A few minutes.’

  ‘How many minutes?’

  ‘Five, I suppose, and then I got changed.’

  ‘You change your clothes to go home?’

  ‘I wear sports gear at sixth-form club,’ he said, ‘for the badminton and basketball.’

  ‘Do you shower as well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It would be a good twenty minutes or more, then, before you finally left.’

  ‘And people saw me heading down to get changed and then afterwards, as I was leaving. You can check.’

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘And yet you and Alice still left at the same time.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I don’t say so. A witness does. You were seen by the same person.’

  ‘Miss Pearce. I know, you said.’

  ‘She saw you drive off just as Alice was walking away.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t see her,’ said Nash. ‘Alice, I mean.’ Beth now realized there was perhaps a twenty-minute window in Alice’s evening that was unaccounted for, if he was telling the truth. ‘I assumed she would have left by then.’ He added: ‘Was she hanging out with friends?’

  ‘No one else saw her after she left the darkroom, only Miss Pearce, and she was the last person to see her.’

  Simon Nash gave her a helpless look, as if he couldn’t be of any further assistance with that. Was he being entirely honest with her, or was he more than just Alice’s teacher? The thought of that made Beth recall the sighting of Alice in the big black car down by the railway station as it sped away.

  ‘What car do you drive, Mr Nash?’

  ‘I own a BMW 5 Series,’ he said.

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Blue.’

  ‘Dark or light blue?’

  ‘They call it Mediterranean blue,’ he said. ‘It’s darkish.’

  But was it dark enough to be mistaken for black at night, moving at speed between the platforms? At least she now knew he could not have been sitting in the parked red car that had been spotted between the cottages and the allotments.

  ‘Nice car on a teacher’s pay.’ When Nash didn’t answer, she added, ‘I suppose Daddy bought it. Sorry, I mean Daddy-in-law.’

  If he was rankled by her knowing or guessing that, he tried not to show it. ‘It was a wedding gift,’ he mumbled. ‘He bought Karen a car, too.’

  ‘But the wedding’s not till next year?’

  ‘He was pleased when we said we were going to get married.’

  Beth couldn’t imagine what it would be like to marry into such wealth and never have to worry about money again.

  ‘One last thing. When you were driving away from the school, did you see anyone else hanging around there?’

  When he answered he sounded hesitant. ‘Not at first, no.’

  ‘But you did see someone – is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Further down the street, almost into the town. I saw him then.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Alice’s boyfriend, Chris.’

  ‘You saw Chris? Are you sure about that?’ She needed to be certain because Chris had told everyone he hadn’t left his house that night. If Nash was right about this, then the boy had lied to them. Alice was not seen again beyond the school perimeter, so it looked as if someone must have met her there. Maybe it was her boyfriend.

  ‘It was only a glimpse as I drove by, but I’m pretty certain it was him.’

  ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘I assumed he was walking up to meet Alice. Sorry, is this significant? Should I have mentioned it earlier?’

  Maybe you should have, thought Beth, or perhaps it was perfect timing on your part, to leave me with that revelation about Chris just as I was drawing our interview to a close. ‘Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Nash.’

  33

  They tracked him down at a friend’s house. Chris’s mother had told them he was studying there and strongly implied she would rather he wasn’t interrupted. It was as if she had forgotten that a young girl – his girlfriend – was missing. The other boy quickly offered to go up to his room so they could speak to Chris privately in the lounge. He sat down heavily on the sofa. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We want to know why you lied, Chris,’ Beth told the boy.

  ‘Lied? I didn’t lie to you. Lied about what?’

  ‘You said you didn’t leave the house the night Alice disappeared,’ Beth reminded him, ‘but you did. You were seen walking up the road towards the school.’

  ‘Who saw me? Who says that they saw me?’ he demanded, and Beth noticed how quickly he had modified his answer, though it was not quite quick enough.

  ‘A credible witness,’ Beth told him. ‘And I suspect they weren’t the only one to see you. If I knocked on every door between your house and the school, do you think I wouldn’t find at least one other person who saw you go by?’

  Chris appeared to consider this and must have concluded the odds were against him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t mean to lie.’

  ‘But you did, Chris,’ said Black, ‘and we’d like to know why.’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I’m not an idiot,’ he said. ‘I watch TV, all those true-crime shows. The cops always think it’s the husband or the boyfriend who’s done it.’

  ‘That’s because it often is.’

  ‘Yeah, well, not this time. When that detective, Ferguson, first came round, he was coming at me with all the questions like that.’ He clicked his fingers three times in quick succession to denote the speed. ‘I panicked a bit and I said I hadn’t been up to the school. I knew I wasn’t responsible for Alice disappearing and I figured she’d show up eventually. I just wanted him off my back.’

  ‘You admit, then, that you did go up there?’ asked Beth.

  ‘I’ve just said, haven’t I?’

  ‘And you saw Alice?’ she persisted.

  ‘No,’ he said vehemently. ‘I couldn’t find her, an
d I didn’t want to hang around outside the school like a wallad.’

  ‘A what?’ asked Beth.

  ‘An idiot.’

  Beth wasn’t even a decade older than Chris and his friends but sometimes even she couldn’t understand them.

  ‘Are you lying to us again, Chris?’

  ‘No, no. Believe me, I’m not.’

  Black shrugged. ‘You lied before. Why should we believe you now?’

  ‘I told you why I lied.’

  ‘And I’m not convinced. You’re saying you walked up on the off-chance?’ asked Black.

  ‘It’s only a ten-minute walk,’ Chris explained. ‘I figured I’d see her coming the other way.’

  ‘What if she got the bus?’

  ‘Alice only gets one if it’s raining or really dark. She likes to walk. It’s safe if you stick to the main roads.’

  ‘But you didn’t see her,’ asked Beth. She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Her frustration fed her anger towards the boy for wasting everyone’s time. If he was lying about this, too, and they could prove it somehow, then Chris would be in big trouble. It would look more and more likely that, once again, it was the boyfriend who was responsible for the fate of a young girl. If Chris was telling the truth now, though, and he hadn’t seen Alice on his way to the school, then the window in which she disappeared had to have been a very small one. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I turned back and went home.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly, but it was around nine o’clock.’

  ‘The same time Alice was seen leaving the school,’ said Beth.

  ‘Then she was later than usual.’

  ‘Why would that be, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she got talking to someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I dunno. I don’t, really.’

  ‘Why did you go up there? To hold her hand?’ asked Black. ‘Or was there some other reason?’

  ‘Lately, she’s been distant. I was worried. I wanted to talk to her about it.’ Then he said, ‘I wanted to talk to her about us.’

  ‘You said she wasn’t cooling things off.’

  ‘I didn’t think she was.’ He corrected himself: ‘I hoped she wasn’t.’

  ‘But you were worried she might be,’ said Beth.

  ‘I don’t know.’ When she gave him a questioning look, he admitted, ‘A bit.’

  ‘Were you worried about anything else, Chris?’ she asked him.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘That she might have been seeing someone else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You said that very quickly.’

  ‘That’s because it never crossed my mind.’

  ‘You sure about that?’ asked Black. ‘She went off with your best friend.’

  ‘We’d broken up, then. She wouldn’t cheat on me.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  He didn’t give her a reason. ‘Alice would not cheat on me.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Did you see anyone else up there?’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Anyone – friends, teachers, passers-by, anybody who looked out of the ordinary.’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone except an old bloke with a dog. There’s nothing else up there except the cottages, the allotments and the school. You wouldn’t go up there unless you were visiting someone.’

  ‘No one hanging about just waiting?’ asked Beth. ‘Leaning on a fence or sitting in a parked car, maybe – someone who could have offered Alice a lift?’ It still seemed the only way to explain her sudden disappearance.

  He shook his head. ‘There were some cars parked on the way up but nobody sitting in one, as far as I know.’

  ‘What about right by the allotments?’ asked Beth. ‘Cast your mind back. Were there any cars there?’

  He must have seen some urgency in her eyes, because he seemed to focus for a while, then he finally said, ‘There was one car. I remember it was blocking the lane to the allotments, which was weird. I had to walk on the road to get by.’

  ‘Are you sure there was no one in it?’

  ‘I thought there wasn’t, but it had dark windows.’

  ‘Tinted ones?’ He nodded. ‘So you couldn’t see in?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘There might have been someone in it, then?’ asked Black.

  ‘I suppose there could have been.’

  ‘What colour was this car, Chris?’ asked Beth.

  ‘Red.’

  Beth and Black exchanged a look. The tip-off had been accurate and they both knew it could be a breakthrough. If Chris was telling the truth about not seeing Alice on the way up to the school, then she could have disappeared within yards of the school gate. Was the driver of the car responsible? Could Alice have even been in the car when Chris walked by it looking for her?

  ‘Make and model?’ demanded Black.

  ‘It was one of those sporty cars, you know? Maybe a Mazda. I don’t know.’

  ‘An MX-5?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe.’ But they could tell he wasn’t sure.

  ‘Do you think you’ll be able to track them down?’ asked Chris.

  ‘The owner of the car? Possibly, but it won’t be easy without a make and model,’ said Black pointedly.

  ‘I’m not making it up,’ said Chris. ‘The car was there.’

  ‘Then we’ll find them,’ said Beth. ‘Maybe they saw something. Perhaps they saw Alice.’

  And maybe they took her.

  After catching Alice’s boyfriend in a lie, it seemed a good time to confront her ex about his version of events. Tony had said he left the sixth form voluntarily. He hadn’t mentioned spraying a spiteful message about Alice on the school wall for everyone to see. The boy would be easier to find, too, since he never went out and it was only a short drive to his house.

  ‘What do you think?’ Beth asked Black, following the interview with Chris.

  ‘We’ll put the word out that we are trying to trace a red, sporty-looking car that was seen parked by the entrance to the allotments. See if anyone admits it’s theirs or reports someone else as the owner. It’s frustrating, though, because hardly anyone saw anything. We still haven’t traced Happy Harry, who is one of the few people who was definitely in the area around the time Alice left the school, but, since he is an alcoholic, he might not even remember what he saw that night. Even Chris didn’t see him.’

  ‘I meant, what do you think about Chris lying to us like that?’

  ‘He lied to a police officer, which isn’t good, but he’s not the first to do that,’ said Black, ‘and Ferguson can be a bit intimidating. Maybe he’s telling the truth – he lied because he panicked.’

  ‘And if he isn’t telling the truth?’

  ‘If he did meet Alice from school, no one saw it, so nobody can contradict his version of events – so far, that is.’

  ‘Let’s say they did meet, though. Perhaps there was a row,’ offered Beth, ‘and it got out of hand.’

  ‘He’s the jealous type, so he lashed out?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘There’s just one problem with that theory, and it’s the same one we keep coming up against.’

  ‘There’s no body?’

  ‘Chris walked up there, and the land around the school has been searched. Could he really have killed her without anyone seeing? How would he remove the body from the scene without a car? He could hardly bury her with his bare hands.’

  Beth agreed. ‘It just doesn’t add up.’

  ‘I’m not saying Chris is in the clear, but there’s not enough to make him a suspect.’

  ‘Right now, if Nash can be believed, I’m more intrigued by the missing twenty minutes between Alice leaving the darkroom and walking away from the school,’ said Beth. ‘I want to know where she went, who she saw and what she did.’

  34

  At least Tony had finally emerged from the garage. He was standing on the front lawn, untangling t
he flex of a mower, when Black pulled up and asked if he could have another word. A woman with a child in a buggy was walking by on the other side of the road, and Tony looked uncomfortable. Perhaps she was a neighbour and he didn’t want her to see him talking to the police, and it was obvious that’s what they were, even in an unmarked car. The detective expected Tony to invite them back into the gloom of the garage, where it would be more private. Instead, he abandoned the mower on the lawn and climbed into the back of the car, sitting behind Beth.

  ‘If you want to talk, drive,’ he told the detective.

  ‘Where to?’

  He let out a big sigh. ‘Anywhere but here.’

  ‘Okay.’ Black was happy enough to indulge the teenager if it would help him to open up. He did a three-point turn and steered the car out of the housing estate. As he drove, he introduced Beth, adding, ‘She’s the good cop you mentioned.’

  Tony was leaning forward in the back seat so he could hear Black. ‘Whatever.’

  Black ignored the sullen tone and concentrated on putting some distance between Tony and his street before asking him about the graffiti. Instead he said, ‘Your mother been nagging you to cut the lawn?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything? Leave my mother out of this.’ The boy’s tone was so sharp Black decided he’d had enough. The car wasn’t going very fast, but he hit the brake so hard it came to an abrupt halt, startling Beth and pitching her forward. At least she was restrained by her seatbelt. Tony wasn’t so fortunate and was thrown against the back of her seat. It wasn’t hard enough to do him any damage, but he shouted in alarm. He was even more taken aback when Black rounded on him. ‘Cut the attitude right now, Tony. We haven’t got the time.’

  ‘Okay,’ he whined. ‘There’s no need to get …’

  ‘To get what?’

  Beth could understand why Tony would be too nervous to complete his sentence. The detective had lost his patience and was making sure the boy knew it.

  ‘What do you want to ask me?’ He was suddenly compliant.

  Black simply glared at the boy, so Beth intervened, unclipping her seatbelt so she could turn and speak to Tony. ‘Let’s start with how you feel about Alice these days, Tony?’

  ‘I will always care about Alice,’ he responded. ‘I loved her.’