Chapter 56
FIFTY-SIX
Matt had a meeting, but promised to get home early.
Meanwhile, Kate googled the name ‘Martina Boban’.
To begin with, she sat at her usual spot to do it, at the captain’s desk.
But the oriel window looked over the pond, screened off now with large barriers, and the constant activity as scenes of crime officers went back and forth was too distracting.
She took her laptop to the kitchen instead.
An idea occurred to her. She brought up the website of the local paper, the Hampshire Chronicle, to see if it had a searchable archive. She was in luck – it did. She typed in ‘Martina Boban’.
Several young women from the former Soviet country are believed to have come to Hampshire by applying for nanny and au-pair visas at the UK border. One, Martina Boban, from Vukovar, recently contacted the Chronicle for help with finding employment.
The next, from September 1993, was headed POLICE INVESTIGATE MISSING AU PAIR:
Croatian au pair Martina Boban, 21, has not been seen for two weeks after a night in her local pub with friends. Anyone with information should contact Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary.
The third article was from November 1993 and was headed MISSING AU PAIR ‘FEARED RETURN TO CROATIA’, POLICE SAY.
Martina Boban, 21, who has not been seen since 7 September, was nearing the end of her two-year au-pair visa, police say.
She had told a friend she was worried about being refused refugee status in the UK, which would have meant returning to her country of origin, Croatia.
Over the last year, the UK has become less receptive to refugees from the region, with local MPs and others saying there are insufficient resources to cope with the current influx of asylum seekers, many of whom find work illegally if their claims are refused.
Kate sat back, thinking. Reading between the lines, there’d been less of an outcry, and therefore perhaps less of an investigation into Martina’s disappearance, because she was from war-torn Eastern Europe, her family quite possibly displaced by conflict themselves.
Kate remembered those wars only very dimly.
Decades on, of course, Croatia had become a smart holiday destination and a fully fledged member of the EU, but back then, like the other former Soviet Union countries, it had seemed very far away and unknown.
She did recall, though, that those were the conflicts which introduced the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ to the world, and that there had been war crimes alleged on all sides – Serbian, Bosnian, Kosovan, Croatian.
And – again, reading between the lines – perhaps, when the police drew a blank, it had been easy to conclude that Martina had simply decided to vanish, rather than return home to an uncertain future.
There was a knock at Trade Cottage’s front door. On the doorstep was Sergeant Dickinson, accompanied by two white-suited SOCOs. They were both wearing masks and hairnets, and carrying what looked like large battery-powered torches.
‘This is Martha and Kim,’ Sergeant Dickinson said. ‘Would it be all right if they looked round? I’ve told them you’ve recently redecorated, but they’d like to do a quick sweep for residues all the same.’
‘Of course,’ Kate said. She registered the startling implication that, if there had been foul play, the person in the pond might have been killed in Trade Cottage.
It was obvious, when you thought about it, but somehow she hadn’t connected the gruesome discovery outside with the possibility of violent murder in these very rooms. ‘But if it was so long ago . . . ?’
‘Even so, it might be useful,’ either Martha or Kim said through her mask. ‘Is it all right if we draw the curtains?’
The reason for that request became clear when they closed the wooden shutters in the entrance hall.
Their torches produced powerful beams of ultraviolet light, which they passed slowly over the oak panelling.
Any patches that lit up were examined more closely and, in a couple of cases, scraped with a scalpel for further testing.
Kate waited in the kitchen with Sergeant Dickinson while they did the rest of the house – the police officer resisting most of Kate’s attempts to find out more about the investigation, although she did let slip that a forensic archaeologist was now on site, and that they hoped to remove the remains later that day.
After about forty minutes, Martha and Kim returned. ‘You really have redecorated,’ one of them said to Kate with a sigh.
‘Top to bottom,’ she agreed. Then she thought of something. ‘Did you do the cellar?’
The SOCOs exchanged glances. ‘What cellar?’ one asked.
‘We call it the secret cellar,’ Kate explained, ‘because it’s so hard to find. The entrance is under the stairs, but you’d never know unless you were looking for it. It’s the only place I haven’t painted – I just cleared out some of the junk.’
‘Could you show us?’ one of the SOCOs asked.
She took them to the understairs cupboard and showed them how the floor lifted up to reveal steps down into the darkness, and how the light switch in the cupboard turned on bulbs to illuminate the descent.
‘I can stay here and turn them off once you’re down there, if you like,’ she suggested.
The SOCOs made their way down, then shouted back to her when they were ready. She turned off the light. After a moment, the cellar glowed with ultraviolet as their torch beams roved back and forth.
There was a shout: ‘Could you turn the light on again?’
She did as she was asked. She heard some muttered conversation, a grunt as something was moved. Then another shout: ‘And off?’
This time, the ultraviolet was only on for about thirty seconds before she was asked to turn the lights back on. The SOCOs emerged tight-lipped, but Kate could tell something was up when they asked her not to go into the cellar before they got back.
They returned a few minutes later with two more white-suited figures, men this time, and between them heaved something up the cellar steps. It was, she saw, the battered old sofa.
Kate recalled what Rosemary had said, when they’d asked her about the cellar’s contents: Jamie used to have parties down there, before he and his friends were old enough for the pub. If they’d found residues on the sofa, she realised, there was a very good chance they were connected to him.