Chapter Thirty-One
VICKI HAD PUT KAREN IN A meeting room. Venn went to her desk in the big open-plan office first.
‘How did she seem?’
‘I’m not sure. Anxious. Nervous.’
Vicki was great at tech and numbers, but not so good at reading people. She’d have been nervous too, when Karen appeared without warning and the rest of the team were unavailable.
‘How long’s she been in there?’
Vicki didn’t have to check the time. ‘Forty-five minutes now.’ Venn realized Vicki had been counting, waiting for him. ‘I was going to phone Jen, but she only got home from hospital a little while ago. I didn’t want to call her straight out.’
‘Well,’ Matthew said, ‘we’ve been waiting long enough for Karen to get in touch with us. It won’t have hurt her to kick her heels for a while.’
The meeting room was long and narrow, with a table in the middle big enough to sit twelve.
Karen Kinzalow sat at one end, with her back to the window that had a view of a building site.
She got to her feet. It seemed to Venn that she’d lost weight just in the few days since they’d first met. Her face was gaunt and lined.
Then, as he had in the church, looking out at the congregation, he thought that perhaps it was his perception that had changed, not the woman herself.
He’d first seen her as a holidaymaker, relaxed and easy, with a loud cheery voice.
Now, she was a suspect in the murder of the two young women, and she’d made every effort to evade the police.
Her first words surprised him. ‘Your co-worker, how is she?’
‘She had concussion and she’s broken her arm, but she’s home from hospital.’
‘I saw what happened and I did call the ambulance. The car didn’t really touch her, you know.’
‘You didn’t stop to help.’ His words were flat. Fact rather than accusation. He walked the length of the table and sat at the long side, but close to her.
‘We panicked,’ she said. ‘That’s all we’ve been doing since the girls died. Panicking.’
‘Your husband didn’t come with you. Does he know you’re here?’
She shook her head. ‘He’ll be wondering where I am.’
‘But he knew you were looking for Cath Armstrong, because he picked you up from the street outside the hotel in your hire car.’
‘We were friends once, Cath and I.’
Which wasn’t, Venn thought, much of an answer.
‘What happened that evening when Elizabeth hurt herself?’ In the end, he thought, that was why the woman was here. She wanted to tell him about her daughter.
At first, he wasn’t sure that she would answer, but it seemed she was just getting the story straight in her head.
‘We thought it would do our girls good to spend a bit of time away from the States, to see something of the world, so when Geoff was posted to London, we were all very excited. Americans can be a little insular – many don’t travel outside their state – and we had such plans!
We chose a school which we believed would suit them.
Small. Just girls. Not too formal. My eldest daughter sailed through her education.
She loved every minute, did well academically and found a place in a good college back home. ’
She sat for a moment, as if lost in thought. The words had dried up, so Venn gave her a prompt.
‘Elizabeth didn’t fare so well?’
Karen tipped up her face to look at him.
‘In the beginning, it seemed, she fared too well. Perhaps we’d been a little protective when she was growing up in DC.
We thought England would be safer, and she was a little older.
We gave her more leeway. Too much maybe.
Geoff thought so. She could be reckless, a bit wild. She chose friends who seemed fun.’
‘Lottie Cauldwell?’
Karen nodded. ‘There were parties. Drinking. She seemed a little young for that and we wouldn’t have allowed it at home, but Europe has always been more liberal in some ways and after all, she was here to experience the culture.
I suppose we didn’t want to come across as overbearing, different from other kids’ parents.
’ She paused again, but this time Venn let the silence stretch and she continued.
‘We were pleased when Hannah Armstrong joined the group. Geoff had interviewed her father, and he said they seemed like a nice family. Responsible about their children. We hoped Lottie wouldn’t have quite so much influence then.
She and Elizabeth were quite a toxic mix, egging each other on to wilder exploits.
But Lottie was bright. Very bright. Academic work came easily to her.
Elizabeth needed to work and was getting behind on her studies.
Hannah was more like her, not so hot academically, and we thought her family had a little more influence over their daughter than we did over ours. ’
‘Were there boyfriends?’ Matthew was wondering if the girls had been on their own when the accident had occurred.
Karen nodded again. ‘And that was a worry too. Pregnancy. Coercive control. Of course, I talked to Elizabeth about all the dangers, but at that age they think they know it all.’
‘But the three girls were on their own when the accident happened? No outsiders were involved?’
‘I don’t think of it as an accident, Inspector. Even if Elizabeth did slip.’
‘What do you suspect happened?’
‘They used to play drinking games. I caught them once. Lottie would film them. I’m not sure what happened to the videos.
They were never on her public access social media.
Perhaps it was just for the girls’ WhatsApp group.
’ A pause. ‘Perhaps on more sinister sites. I don’t know. She was very tech-savvy.’
‘What sort of games?’
Karen shrugged. ‘They stopped that time when I caught them in Elizabeth’s bedroom.
Kind of truth or dare perhaps. Elizabeth swore there was no harm in it and begged me not to make a fuss.
Not to tell her father, who was stricter than I was.
They were drinking that night that Elizabeth fell.
I think they often went to the spot. It was their secret place, on the edge of the Heath.
Once there’d been a building there. Some kind of hut, for railway maintenance workers, and nothing more than a ruin now, only three walls and a roof left, but I guess it provided some shelter.
’ She looked straight at Venn. ‘A sort of den. They were still kids in lots of ways. There was a steep drop down to the abandoned railway track below, not particularly high, but sheer. There was a tall fence to keep people away, but they pushed their way through. They knew it would be private. It was winter, dark, although it wasn’t very late. ’
‘You think that Elizabeth was dared to jump?’
‘Maybe. She might have been wild, and she might have needed drama in her life, but she wasn’t stupid.
She wouldn’t have jumped if she’d been sober.
Or if she hadn’t been taunted, called out as a coward.
’ Karen was crying now. ‘I just needed to know what happened that night. Elizabeth wouldn’t tell me.
Or perhaps she couldn’t. Her speech was affected by the head injury and it’s hard to know how much she understands.
Whatever happened, everyone was covering it up.
It suited all the people involved to call it an unfortunate accident.
To say that if anyone was responsible, it was Elizabeth.
The school didn’t want their precious reputation tarnished, Elaine Cauldwell was worried about losing clients just as she was building her agency, and Paul Armstrong was being touted as the next prime minister.
Geoff and I were the only people with an interest in getting to the truth. ’
Venn found a small packet of tissues in his pocket and passed it across the table towards Karen.
‘You came down to North Devon in the hope of getting an answer to your questions?’
‘Yes! It was easy enough to track the girls’ movements.
Lottie’s life was available for everyone to see on her social media.
We booked into a place in Torr before they arrived but did a recce of the area and saw the glamping site at Millscombe Farm.
And the posters for the music festival. There was one pod left when he phoned the Brennans.
A late cancellation. We thought the girls would be there and it might be a chance to talk to them informally.
It would be less confrontational than going to the house. ’
‘Why now? Why wait two years before confronting the girls?’
‘We had other things to think about, Inspector! Our daughter is severely disabled. We took her back to the US and had to find people to care for her properly. When we were in London for Geoff’s work, Lottie and Hannah were protected by everyone.
Their parents, the school, Paul Armstrong’s minders.
’ She paused. ‘I might have let it go, but Geoff couldn’t.
He brooded about the injustice and the way they’d kept us out. ’
Venn could see how that would play out. He’d found a conspiracy of silence around the incident, and he was conducting a murder inquiry. How much harder would it be for the Kinzalows to get at the truth?
‘Did Elaine Cauldwell come to meet you during the week before MillsFest? You had dinner with someone meeting her description in the Fisherman’s Arms on the Tuesday evening.’
‘Yes!’ Karen seemed impressed by Venn’s knowledge of their movements.
‘We contacted Elaine to tell her we were down here. We wanted to give her the chance to explain what had happened, so we didn’t have to distress the girls with our questions.
We didn’t expect her to turn up out of the blue.
That seemed positive. But in the end, it was a nightmare.
She said she’d tell the police we were harassing her daughter.
That we were behaving like a pair of stalkers. ’
Venn thought that their behaviour since the girls’ deaths was very close to stalking.
‘So, you were left with Hannah and Lottie to get your answers?’
Karen nodded.
‘Did Geoff try to talk to Lottie at MillsFest? There’s a video of her with an older man.’