Chapter Twenty-Five
‘WHAT DID HANNAH MEAN WHEN SHE said she’d sort out Lottie once and for all?’ Jen stared at the note. ‘I can’t imagine her planning any sort of violence! Everyone says she was a timid little thing.’
She, Matthew and Ross were back in the police station in Barnstaple. Jen wasn’t sure that this scrap of paper, written, they’d realized, on the back of an envelope with Hannah’s London address on the front, took them any further forward.
‘No,’ Venn said. ‘And of course we don’t know if Lottie was still alive when Hannah got there.’
‘What are you thinking?’ Because, Jen thought, the boss had some kind of scenario in mind.
‘We know we won’t be able to establish a very accurate time of death.
’ Venn seemed to be ordering events in his head as he was speaking.
‘Lottie might have been killed a little while before Hannah got to Tide House, or just as she arrived from the farm. She might have turned up to see Lottie being pushed into the swimming pool. There are trees along the edge of the garden. It’s possible that Hannah used the trees as cover and slipped down the path to the old mill to hide.
But the killer saw her and followed her and had to kill her to keep her quiet. ’
Jen thought about that. ‘Wouldn’t the killer have seen her coming down the drive towards Tide House? There’s no cover there.’
‘Not if our perpetrator was focused on the murder,’ Venn said.
‘And if Hannah thought she hadn’t been seen, she’d head for the trees to hide out until the killer left.
There wouldn’t be any real escape by taking that path – she could have got down to the beach, but there’d be no way out from there because of the steep cliffs on each side of the cove.
As you say, though, there’s no hiding place at all if she decided to go back along the drive towards the road and the farm. She’d be completely exposed.’
‘Which would make Lottie the intended victim all along.’ Jen thought that made sense. Lottie seemed like a manipulative lass who had a talent for making enemies and they hadn’t met anyone who disliked Hannah.
‘It’s just one possibility.’ Venn was always diffident about expressing an opinion. Maybe too diffident for an officer in charge. ‘One scenario.’
‘Who do we have as the killer then?’ Jen was becoming impatient now, with all these theories.
‘I can see that Lottie got up a lot of people’s noses.
But who hated her enough to kill her?’ A pause.
‘Could it have been a stranger after all? We’ve seen all those people turning up at the crime scene.
They all believed they knew her, loved her.
If she’d slighted one of her adoring fans, or just ignored them, they might have turned against her.
We know how cruel she could be, and she’d told the world that she was coming to spend some time with Hannah, so they’d easily be able to track her down. ’
Jen thought that would be a nightmare.
‘Maybe,’ Venn said. ‘Vicki’s still wading through all her posts.
I’ll ask her to look out for someone Lottie’s specifically targeted.
But let’s consider the locals again. The Brennans were a possibility when we first saw Lottie’s social media, but Vicki’s checked the Millscombe pages and really, there was a flood of positive comments after her negative posts.
If anything, Lottie did the family a favour.
I can’t think of any other motive. They scarcely knew her.
’ A pause. ‘I don’t see how this could have been premeditated.
Who knew that Lottie would go back to Tide House on her own that night? ’
‘Aren’t we forgetting about the Kinzalows?
’ Jen thought there was something very odd about the American couple.
‘They seem to be everywhere. First, they met up with Elaine Cauldwell in the Fisherman’s the week before the girls died.
Then they were at MillsFest, and now that the Armstrongs have moved to Torr, they’re knocking around there too. ’
‘You’re right of course,’ Venn said. ‘Perhaps we should ask our friends in the Home Office to dig around in their background. Or Mr Appleyard.’
‘If Lottie had a weirdo stalker, who’d been watching her at the festival, he would just have followed her back to Tide House.’ Jen thought Lottie, with all her socials, might well have attracted weirdos.
Before Venn could give an opinion on that, Ross jumped in. He didn’t like being ignored for long. ‘Hannah knew Lottie would be at Tide House on her own, and so did Jake.’
‘I can see Hannah lashing out at Lottie in a fit of anger,’ Venn said.
‘Pushing her away if an argument got out of hand. Not meaning to kill her. But if that was how it happened, then who tracked Hannah down to the old mill and killed her? It doesn’t make any kind of sense.
I guess Jake could have killed Lottie, though there’s no real motive.
I’ve seen the email exchange with Hannah. He loved her to bits.’
Vicki had been working at the other end of the open-plan office.
Now, she came across and perched on Jen’s desk.
‘I’ve been doing a sweep of other social media related to the investigation.
’ She was, Jen could tell, excited, and it took a lot to excite Vicki, who was one of the most stolid and unemotional women she knew.
‘In the past, the Fisherman’s Arms had nothing but rave reviews.
Five stars on the food and the service. Last weekend there was a flurry of stinkers.
Overrated and overpriced. Don’t believe all the hype. That kind of thing.’
‘Lottie paying Mag and Jim back for chucking her out of the bar on Friday night?’ Jen said.
‘That’s what I thought, but all the reviews were written by different people.’
‘Bit of a coincidence.’
‘Yeah, but they all had one thing in common. All the comments were written by followers of Lottie.’
‘She got her adoring online mates to slag off the Fisherman’s?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘We know Jim’s got a temper.’ Jen pictured him glowering at them when they’d first met.
‘He could have followed Lottie to Tide House that Sunday night. Or fumed about the reviews until he decided to have it out with her on Monday morning. Again, a slanging match could have ended with him pushing her, just as Hannah arrived back in time to see.’
‘Maybe,’ Venn said. ‘But it’s all speculation.
Best perhaps to concentrate on facts now.
We still don’t know where Daniel Miller was that night after leaving the festival with Lottie.
His alibi had conveniently disappeared, and Daniel himself has run away to Cambridge.
’ He looked at Jen. ‘Do we have an update on his presence? Or do we need to send in the local cops to find him?’
‘I’ve had a message from his mother. Apparently, he’s on his way home. He should be available for interview later this evening.’
‘Do we believe her? She’s not just playing for time?’
Jen shook her head. ‘I believe her. She was scared shitless about uniformed officers turning up at his college and suggesting that their beloved son was a suspect in a murder inquiry.’
It occurred to Jen, as she spoke, that there were too many beloved children in this investigation. Too many children who hadn’t been allowed to face the consequences of their actions.
‘Tell her to let us know as soon as he gets in.’
‘Oh,’ Jen said. ‘I already have done.’
‘And we still don’t have any information about the whereabouts of the Kinzalows?’
‘Sorry boss.’ Ross was uncharacteristically contrite, Jen thought. He didn’t even try to come up with an excuse. ‘I’ve tried everywhere I can think of. It’s as if they’ve disappeared into thin air.’ A pause. ‘Should we go public? Put out a media release asking them to come forward?’
There was a silence. They both looked at Venn. It often took him a while to come to a decision. He would never be one for rash judgements. But this was a slow response, even for him.
‘Not yet,’ he said at last. ‘I want more background. Why are they here and why did they run off from the Millscombe campsite? Let’s dig more deeply before we show our hands.’
Jen could sense Ross’s frustration. He’d been hoping for immediate action.
‘So, what do we do now?’ Ross’s question came out as a cry of desperation.
Again, Venn took a while to answer. ‘Appleyard’s asked to see me.
We’re meeting in an hour. His Whitehall sources might have more info on the Americans.
’ He paused. ‘I’m convinced that the Armstrongs know more about the Kinzalows than they’re letting on.
It’s no coincidence that the couple appeared in North Devon just at a time when they could have guessed that the family would be taking up residence in Tide House.
And then moved to be even closer to them on the farm.
Would you go back to the Victoria, Jen? See if you can get Cath without her husband.
Paul has his own agenda. He’ll always be thinking of the politics, what I think they call the optics.
See her informally again. Play family liaison.
Say you want to fill her in on developments in the investigation.
You’ll be in Torr then when Daniel Miller gets home. ’
Jen nodded. She could see the sense in Venn’s plan, but she wasn’t sure she’d get any more out of Cath Armstrong. The woman had been on the edge of politics long enough to understand about optics too.
Jen phoned Cath before driving to Torr and the Victoria Hotel.
She didn’t want to arrive in the town only to find that the family were away on some trip to cheer up the kids or to escape the boredom of the place.
Jen wouldn’t have stayed there a minute longer than she had to.
It had the vibe of a very expensive old people’s home.
Cath was waiting for her in the gloomy lounge where Jen had first met her husband over coffee.
She must have left the boys with Paul, because she was on her own.
It was afternoon teatime. Elaborate arrangements of rather dry-looking cakes and scones were piled on tiered flowery plates.
Elderly women were eating enough sugar to trigger diabetes.
It was more, Jen thought, about the show and the nostalgia than the taste.
Cath was sitting with just a pot of tea, and Jen ordered coffee.
‘You have some news?’ Cath seemed restless, a little unfocused. Her eyes darted around the room.
‘We haven’t made an arrest – nothing like that – but I wanted to update you. I’m acting as your family liaison officer and it’s my role to keep in touch.’
‘Ah, I thought when you asked to meet …’ Cath’s voice tailed away and her eyes moved again, this time towards the door. She looked back at Jen. ‘What do you have to tell me?’
‘We’ve discovered that Lottie made some very unpleasant social media posts about her weekend in Millscombe. About the festival at the farm and the pub. Did you know about that?’
Cath shook her head. ‘It doesn’t surprise me, though.’
‘She’d done this kind of thing before?’
Cath seemed embarrassed, almost anxious, as if she’d given too much away.
‘No, no! But she was given to unkind comments sometimes. It was all about raising her social media profile, feeding her followers. Nothing they liked better than making other people seem small, a bit pathetic. She hadn’t had the most stable of family lives and both parents were so driven about their careers.
Perhaps she had to find other ways to get attention. ’
‘Can you tell me a little bit more about Lottie? She and Hannah were close friends, but they seem to have been very different people.’ Which was, Jen thought, an understatement.
Cath took a moment to answer. ‘Since Covid Hannah struggled socially. We didn’t realize how hard she was finding it to get into school.
She was so anxious. I discovered that some mornings she was being physically sick.
Once, I saw evidence of self-harming. Meeting Jake helped a lot, but that was much later, and of course he wouldn’t ever have been in London when things were tough.
Lottie might not have been the friend we’d choose, but she was a friend. ’
‘Why might you not have chosen her?’
Again, there was a silence before Cath spoke. ‘Honestly, I think she was a bit damaged. She needed drama in her life. She got bored so quickly. Perhaps that was a result of Covid too.’
‘I need to ask you again about the Kinzalows. We can’t believe that their presence in Millscombe was coincidental. They seem to have been following you.’
At the sound of the Americans’ name, Cath gave a little start.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Really, I can’t help you about them.
But honestly, they seemed like a lovely couple.
’ A pause and then she went on, her voice more desperate.
‘Truly, I can’t imagine them having any reason for wanting to harm the girls. ’
‘You knew them through their daughter Elizabeth? What happened for the girl to go back to the States so suddenly?’
Cath turned away from Jen again, as if she were making up her mind to speak.
Suddenly she tensed. Her hand shook and tea dripped onto the starched white tablecloth.
She replaced the cup in its saucer and returned her gaze to Jen.
But the detective was already on her feet, because she’d seen a face at the door looking into the lounge.
A face that she recognized. Karen Kinzalow, an apparition brought to life by the calling of her name.