Chapter Fourteen
JEN WAS ON HER WAY OUT when she glimpsed both women on the terrace.
She’d been in reception, chatting to staff, making it clear that the Armstrongs shouldn’t be disturbed by press or any curious members of the public with an agenda of their own.
True-crime podcasters or curious onlookers or crazy psychics saying they had information to pass on.
‘Tell them all to contact Barnstaple police station.’
She’d been hoping to talk to Lottie’s mother and now she was here.
Ross was still in Torr, but he was checking out some of the more likely places where the Kinzalows might have been staying before heading to Millscombe.
‘You’ll be better with emotional women than me,’ he’d said after the interview with Paul Armstrong. A cop-out and an excuse. ‘I’ll pick you up later and we’ll head back to Millscombe to catch up with the boss. Then I’ll check out your elderly drinkers.’
Cath had seen Jen approaching and was already on her feet to go by the time she’d reached the table.
‘I’ll leave you to it, shall I?’ Cath said after making the brief introduction. It wasn’t really a question, more a statement of intent. She didn’t wait for an answer.
Perhaps Cath was being tactful, but she was probably exhausted too.
Jen didn’t sense any close friendship between the women in the brief moment before they separated.
There’d been no real physical contact. No hug before Cath walked away back into the hotel.
Sometimes it was difficult, Jen thought, when kids became friends, but the adults had nothing in common.
She took a seat next to Elaine. A waiter was hovering, and she ordered a coffee. It had been an early start, and she needed a caffeine boost. It was hard to express condolence without appearing insincere, and she struggled to find the right words.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I have children who’re about Lottie’s age. I can’t begin to imagine the sense of loss, or what you must be going through.’
Elaine stretched out a thin white hand and took Jen’s where it lay on the table. ‘Thank you. That’s very kind.’
‘It must be harder because it was just you and Lottie.’ Of course they’d investigated the family situation. She knew that Elaine was divorced, and they’d checked that the husband was still in the US when the murder had been committed.
‘We were very close.’
‘Tell me about Lottie.’
‘Oh, she was a terrific girl.’ Elaine leaned her head back and then groped in her bag for a packet of cigarettes. She lit one and inhaled deeply. ‘Lottie hated me smoking,’ she said. ‘She was such a health freak. I never did it when she was around.’
Jen waited for more detail. She assumed that the mother would have a little more to say about her daughter. But Elaine stared into the distance.
‘How old was Lottie when her father left?’ Perhaps, Jen thought, an open question wouldn’t work so well with this woman.
‘Eleven. She was just about to move up into secondary school. It was terrible timing.’ A pause. ‘The whole thing was hateful.’
‘Was Hannah her best friend?’
‘Of course! Hannah didn’t join the school until after Lottie, but recently they’ve become inseparable.
’ A pause. ‘They would have moved on to different universities of course. Lottie had got a place in Oxford. I think Hannah was hoping for Exeter.’ There was something boastful about the comment.
Jen could imagine Elaine bragging about her brilliant daughter to friends whose children weren’t quite so academic.
Jen hated that sort of parental one-upmanship – the social media pages glorifying a perfect family always made her feel inadequate – but she tried to be charitable.
The woman had just lost her only daughter.
‘Had Lottie been down to Tide House before?’
Elaine held the cigarette away from her face and shook her head.
‘Usually, it was only the family. But this was special. The end of exams and the last chance, I suppose, for the girls to have some time on their own together. I thought they might head out to somewhere a bit livelier, a resort on the Med perhaps, but they were happy with a couple of days on their own in North Devon before the rest of the family turned up.’
‘Was Lottie going to stay for the family holiday too?’
‘Oh no, she was only there for a few days. The plan was that she’d spend the rest of the summer in LA with her father.
He’d found her some sort of internship. It would be wonderful experience and look great on her CV.
She was going to come back to town from North Devon on Tuesday for a week and then she’d fly out to join him. ’
Jen’s daughter, Ella, had tried for an internship in London in the summer before she started uni, but even the paid ones wouldn’t have come anywhere close to covering her living expenses. Jen had suggested to her ex that he might like to chip in, but he hadn’t bothered to reply.
‘Do you know Geoff and Karen Kinzalow?’
Elaine took a moment to reply, but Jen thought the question wasn’t a surprise to her. Cath must have warned her about the Kinzalows.
‘There was an Elizabeth Kinzalow in the girls’ class at school.’ Elaine looked around for an ashtray and when none seemed immediately available, she leaned down and stubbed out the cigarette on the paving stone. She left the stub there.
‘Geoff and Karen were staying in Millscombe. Elizabeth wasn’t with them.’
‘She was always a wild little thing,’ Elaine said.
‘In what way?’
‘Oh, you know, underage drinking, dabbling with drugs. And a bit rebellious at school. Perhaps her parents thought that she’d be safer at home in America.’ Elaine seemed to consider for a moment. ‘There was an older sister, I think. Perhaps Elizabeth is with her.’
‘Is there any reason why the Kinzalows might want to stay near Paul and Cath’s house? Were they friends?’
There was another silence and another shrug. ‘I didn’t have time to get involved with the whole school gate thing,’ Elaine said at last. ‘All the cliques and bitchiness left me cold. I run my own business, a theatrical agency. I have done since my husband left. It’s not been easy.’
Jen wondered now if her first impression of Elaine, as a frail and vulnerable woman, had been mistaken. Yet there was still a pleading tone to her voice. She wanted to be understood, even to be forgiven for not playing the role of traditional mother.
Elaine continued talking. ‘Lottie had to be resilient. I couldn’t be there for her as much as I’d have liked. I’m afraid I don’t have any patience for spoiled children with doting parents.’
‘Was Karen Kinzalow a doting mother?’
‘She didn’t work,’ Elaine said. ‘Not when they were living in London at least. I think she was a teacher in the US. So, she became one of those professional parents. You know the sort. They fill their days with volunteering in school, preparing packed lunch boxes with healthy snacks, ferrying their kids to music lessons, acting on committees. Looking down on those of us who have to earn a living.’
For the first time, Jen felt a moment of understanding, of sympathy. She’d felt humiliated by those parents too – the ones who never sent their kids to school in unwashed uniforms or missing a vital piece of games kit. Who sat with them while they did their homework.
‘Did you have any contact with Lottie over the weekend?’
‘A couple of texts. She sent photos of the house and pool when they arrived. It looked delightful. I must admit I was imagining something rather more basic.’ She looked at Jen, a kind of confession. ‘I was rather jealous. It was so hot in London. Airless. I wished that I’d been invited too.’
‘You were never asked to stay in Tide House?’
‘No. Cath and I don’t really have that sort of relationship.’
‘What sort of relationship do you have?’
‘I’ve explained. Our kids were friends. There was no more to it than that. We didn’t move in the same sort of circles.’
But you hoped for an invitation to their holiday home?
Jen waited, hoping for a more detailed explanation of the circle that Elaine did move in, but none was forthcoming. ‘Did Lottie take any photos later that weekend?’
‘Of the music festival, you mean?’ Elaine’s voice was light.
‘Dozens! She put some of them on social media and made little videos too. It was a tiny bit cruel, but some of her comments were very amusing. I suppose she was used to more sophisticated entertainment than a party for middle-aged hipsters in a farmer’s field, and she never was terribly tactful. ’
‘Could you send everything you have to me?’ Jen slid her work business card across the table. Lottie poking fun at her host’s neighbours seemed more than tactless. It was unkind. Surely it was hardly a motive for murder, but the images of the festival might highlight something that was.
‘Of course. I’ll go straight back to my room and do it now.’
It seemed that Elaine thought the interview was over. Jen couldn’t think of anything more to ask and expected the woman to get up and leave. Instead, she sat where she was and started talking again.
‘You must think me very cold. Heartless. I suspect that was why Keith left me. He loved drama – thrived on it – and couldn’t understand why I hated it.
Something about my childhood, I expect. My parents weren’t the most reliable.
I’ve tried therapy, but I can distance myself from that too.
It’s my means of survival, keeping a distance.
One way or another. I’ve taken antidepressants this morning and had a couple of drinks.
A way of keeping the scary stuff at bay.
’ She looked up, frowning. ‘I know it’ll hit me in the end.
The reality that my darling Lottie is dead.
But I can’t feel it now. Perhaps it’ll be real when I see her. ’
‘I can’t tell you when that might be possible, I’m afraid.
’ Jen wished she’d been able to record this interview.
She’d have liked Matthew Venn to hear it, the tone as well as the words.
He understood these things better than she did.
But Elaine wasn’t a suspect. She wasn’t even a witness. She was a bereaved parent.
‘I’m not sure what I’m expected to do here.
’ Elaine’s words seemed to spill out without thought.
She spoke quietly, but Jen could hear the desperation in her voice.
‘I can’t be holed up in my room with nothing to do.
I can’t make polite conversation with the Armstrongs.
They must be the reason that my daughter is dead after all.
She knew nobody down here. Who would want to kill her?
But there must be plenty of people with a grudge against a minister.
Hannah must have been the target. My daughter just got in the way.
’ She paused and twisted her chair, so she was looking down at the harbour.
‘Can I leave? Go back to London? Work will be a distraction at least. You can call me when I can see Lottie.’
‘Of course.’ Because there was no reason to ask Elaine to stay, and Jen saw that she was on the verge of a complete meltdown. She didn’t want to be the person to have provoked that, or the person who would have to cope with it. ‘I can arrange for a lift to the station in Barnstaple or Tiverton.’
Elaine dismissed the idea of the train with a shake of her head. ‘I use Steve, a regular driver. He’ll come and fetch me.’
She got to her feet then and swayed across the terrace towards the hotel entrance. It seemed to Jen that she must have had more than a few drinks.
Jen wandered out of the hotel. She needed something to eat and didn’t want to bump into either of the Armstrongs or Elaine. She walked down towards the harbour and found a little cafe, an old-fashioned greasy spoon that didn’t seem to attract tourists. It smelled of bacon and chip fat.
On the way she checked her phone. There were a couple of messages from Venn.
One said that the Kinzalows had left Millscombe Farm: We’re trying to track them down.
A later one said that he’d arranged to chat to the staff at the Fisherman’s Arms. See you at the briefing.
So, if Ross could pick her up as agreed, she could drop him at Millscombe to talk to the old guys from the pub and be home to see Ben, her youngest, still living at home, before she had to go out again.
It felt as if she hadn’t seen her son for days.
There were a couple of tables outside the cafe, and she placed her order and sat there. There was no shelter from the sun, but there was a little breeze. She phoned Ross. No answer, so she texted him. Pick me up from Torr harbour in twenty mins? No reply.
An elderly woman brought her a sausage sandwich and instant coffee. Jen felt a wave of nostalgia. Where else in Torr would you be served instant coffee? Her phone beeped and she checked the text from Ross. It’ll be closer to thirty. Traffic a nightmare.
She looked up and saw a middle-aged couple walking away from her.
They both wore light cargo pants and sandals.
She had on a striped Breton shirt, and he was wearing a baggy T-shirt which probably had a logo on the front.
Some band from the eighties. At a corner the woman turned, and Jen recognized her at once. Karen Kinzalow.