Chapter Thirty-Six
JEN RAFFERTY SAT IN THE HOOPERS’ flat at the Fisherman’s Arms. She’d tried phoning Venn as soon as she got the news about the child’s disappearance, but the call had gone to voicemail.
He’d got back to her eventually and now she was waiting for him to arrive.
She was still taking painkillers, but her arm hurt, her thoughts were blurred, and she definitely wasn’t as sharp as she should be.
She’d persuaded Paul Armstrong to stay in Torr with his youngest child, but Cath had refused to leave Millscombe and was sitting beside her.
Jim Hooper was out looking for Alex, with other volunteers – an informal search party of locals who’d been in the bar when the news of the disappearance had come in.
They’d already set off by the time Jen arrived, and anyway, she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to stop them tramping over the combe, destroying any possible evidence, even if she’d got there in time. Mag was holding the fort in the pub.
‘I only left him for a minute.’ Cath had been repeating the same mantra since Jen turned up. She couldn’t imagine what the woman was going through. To lose a child so close to where her daughter had died must be horrifying.
‘Why don’t you tell me what happened?’ she said. ‘Slowly, from the beginning.’
Jen had been trying to get a coherent story from the woman since she’d arrived, but Cath had been hysterical, incoherent and it had been impossible to pull together the full narrative.
‘We’d been at the farm.’ Cath had stopped shaking at least. ‘I wanted to see the place because Hannah had raved about it and had been so happy there. I always thought it was a city girl’s romantic notion of the countryside, but Alex and I had a great afternoon.
Jake did a barbecue and the Brennans were kind, you know.
They’d have made lovely in-laws. I could see why Hannah had liked the whole family. ’
‘I suppose it was very different from being the daughter of a politician,’ Jen said.
Now that Alex had disappeared too, Hannah being related to a minister became more important, she thought.
They had to think again about motive. Perhaps the killer was someone strange and radicalized with an obsession with Armstrong.
Jen couldn’t think of an occasion when an MP’s family had been targeted, but there had been hate attacks against politicians themselves.
People on all sides of the political spectrum had died.
Cath was still talking. ‘Alex had a great afternoon. When we went inside for coffee, Jake took him to play, so I could chat in peace to Tessa and Bob. For a moment, I think, he almost forgot about Hannah’s death.’
‘Then you started driving back home?’ This was the part of the story that Jen had found confusing.
‘Yes, but when I came to the end of the farm track, where it joins the lane, I saw a vehicle pull into the pub car park. I recognized Elaine Cauldwell as she got out. She’d been in the back seat.’
‘Are you sure it was Elaine?’ Jen kept the question gentle. The last thing she needed was for Cath to feel undermined. Not believed. Jen knew how that felt. ‘As far as we know she left North Devon on Thursday.’
‘We know she left the Victoria Hotel in Torr.’ Cath’s voice was sharp. ‘And that she didn’t want to answer any more of your questions. But she could have been anywhere.’
That at least was true. After their last conversation with her, they’d been treating Elaine as a bereaved mother. Not any sort of suspect. There’d been no surveillance. Nobody had checked that she’d arrived back in London.
‘She was going into the Fisherman’s Arms?’
‘I didn’t see her go in, because I had to find a parking space, but where else would she have gone?’ How many times do I have to tell you? The implication was clear.
This was the part Jen was struggling to understand, because by the time she’d got there, Elaine Cauldwell had disappeared.
If the woman had been there at all and her presence wasn’t a figment of poor Cath’s imagination.
When Jen had asked Jim and Mag about Lottie’s mother, they’d just looked bewildered, and why would they lie?
‘It had been so busy over lunchtime,’ Mag had said, ‘Jim cooking, and me in the restaurant, that later in the afternoon we needed to catch our breath. The bar was still rammed, but that might have been the time we took our break. We just went up to the flat for a cuppa.’
‘You have to find her,’ Cath said now. ‘She might have Alex. You do see.’ Now, the woman was almost hysterical again.
‘She was with her driver. Steve. In that swanky car with the tinted windows. She’d been at our house a few times when she was dropping off Lottie and Alex saw her at the hotel.
He might have gone with her, if she told him some story. ’
‘We’re trying to track down the driver,’ Jen said. ‘Checking CCTV.’
Cath seemed not to hear.
‘Why might she take Alex?’ Jen tried not to sound judgy, but really, she thought, Cath was losing her shit altogether now.
‘She might blame us for Lottie’s death.’ Cath was almost screaming. ‘She might be paying us back.’
‘You lost your daughter too,’ Jen said. ‘How could she possibly think that you were to blame?’
But Cath was weeping into a tattered paper handkerchief, and snot and tears were running down her face.
‘Tell me what happened after you saw Elaine.’ Jen made sure her voice was calm, not a hint of impatience. ‘You got out to speak to her, leaving Alex in the back of your car?’
‘Yes, he was strapped in the child seat.’ Answering questions of fact seemed to calm Cath. ‘He was almost asleep – all that fresh air had tired him out and I didn’t want to disturb him.’
‘Did you lock the car door?’
‘No. I thought I’d speak to Elaine very briefly, standing on the edge of the garden, close to the combe and the path down to the beach.
There, Alex would have been in my sight all the time.
I just wanted to understand why she was there.
It seemed so odd. Did she know anything?
Did she think that Jim and Mag were involved in some way? ’
‘But she didn’t wait for you to speak to her?’
‘No. I’m not even sure that she saw me. By the time I’d found a parking space, she’d disappeared.
I looked back at Alex. He’d woken up a bit and was reading a comic that I’d bought for him in Torr.
I gave him a little wave and went into the Fisherman’s.
It was full. A bunch of rowers, I think, on their way back from some regatta in Cornwall.
A couple of bar staff I didn’t recognize.
No sign of Mag or Jim. It was early evening then.
Five-ish. A quiet time for the restaurant if not for the bar.
I couldn’t understand where Elaine might be.
I tried the ladies’ loo, but she wasn’t there.
’ The words were gushing from Cath’s mouth now, so fast that Jen had to concentrate to make out what was being said.
She raised her hand to stop the flow for a moment. ‘When did you realize that Alex was missing?’
‘I went outside in case Elaine had gone back to her car. I thought the driver might know where she was, even if she wasn’t there.
I looked across towards my car to wave at Alex again, but a big SUV had parked between it and the pub, so I couldn’t see it.
I should have checked of course. I’d told Alex that I’d only be a couple of minutes.
But I was focused on Elaine then, and where she might be.
It took me a little while to realize that her car had disappeared.
It just seemed very odd. If Steve had dropped her off, where was she?
’ A pause. ‘I decided I’d just get back to our hotel in Torr.
In the end, what did it matter what Elaine was playing at?
If anything had happened with the investigation, Paul would know. ’
‘And when you got back to your car,’ Jen said, ‘Alex had gone.’
‘Yes! I didn’t panic at first. I thought he’d got bored, climbed out of the car and followed me into the pub.
And I hadn’t seen him because of the crowd of drinkers.
Then I thought perhaps he’d wanted a wee.
I asked one of the guys to check the gents’.
But he wasn’t anywhere!’ She was crying again.
‘He wasn’t anywhere.’ She turned to Jen.
‘There were so many people drinking outside. Surely someone saw what happened?’
‘Of course,’ Jen said, ‘we’re asking.’ But by the time she’d arrived from Barnstaple, the drinkers Cath described had moved on.
The rowers were no longer in the bar. A different set of families was sitting in the garden with their chilled white wine and their European lager.
Their Cokes and their packets of crisps.
Besides, according to Cath, Elaine’s driver had parked by the side of the pub, and it was quieter there.
Now, the shadows were lengthening. Soon it would be dark.
‘The SUV that parked in the way,’ Jen said. ‘Can you describe it?’
‘Not really. Big and black. Why? Do you think Alex was taken in that?’
‘I’m just looking at all the possibilities.’ Jen tried to keep her voice calm and slow. ‘I don’t suppose you noticed a sticker for a rental company in the back window?’
Cath shook her head, bewildered, it seemed, by the questions.
‘Alex could have gone down to Tide House,’ she said. Her voice was loud and sharp and cut through Jen’s thoughts. ‘He wanted to go there when we drove past on our way to the farm. It’s a second home for him. Familiar. He’d left stuff in his room. He could have tried to get in.’
‘We’ve already looked there,’ Jen said. ‘There’s been an officer on site since the girls died.
He didn’t see anyone go into the house, but he checked all the same.
Alex isn’t there. We’ll spread out our search.
’ But even though this was a minister’s son, and they’d been promised extra resources, and the Home Office was piling on the pressure, they couldn’t conjure manpower out of thin air.