Authors: Elizabeth Corley
‘There’s no need to take that tone, Sergeant.’ The yellow fingers were a twisted, skeletal knot.
‘I’m just wondering what sort of work it is that you normally do.’
Sweat dripped on to the table. ‘Now look here. I came in of my own free will. You have no cause to keep me here. I’m leaving.’
‘It’s all right, George, calm down. We’re not interested in how you make your money, just tell us all you can about Deborah Fearnside.’
The man relaxed visibly but no further detail emerged. After a further twenty minutes of questioning they concluded the man genuinely knew nothing more, and let him go.
Fenwick sat alone in his oppressively hot office after the interview, contemplating the complexity of Deborah Fearnside’s abduction. The detail and planning had been extraordinary and at no stage did the victim or her friends suspect that they were being led into a trap. Whoever was behind this was extremely intelligent and cunning – look at how long it was taking the police to pull the threads together, at how little evidence had been left behind. Fenwick realised that for the first time in his career, he could be facing a criminal with a mind at least as clever as his own.
In the days remaining before Octavia Anderson’s return, whilst Cooper continued to chase dead ends and the additional quota of resources drew blanks in every direction, Fenwick went back over the school records. He tracked the four friends and Leslie Smith through each term, noting when Octavia Anderson joined the school and where Carol Truman and Octavia’s names disappeared from the register at the end of the Upper Fifth.
He noted down the names of teachers who were no longer at the school and diverted Nightingale and a section of the expanded team to tracing them. Most were in retirement and
continuing a habit of long summer vacations; several were dead; two were rambling together in Scotland. Nightingale was tempted to catch the next sleeper to Fort William, anything to escape the pointlessness of an old case in summer, but in the end they asked the local force to track them down and returned to the dwindling outstanding list. Nightingale had found the names of Carol’s parents in school records and had contacted immigration again.
She was still waiting for a response when late on Friday afternoon, as the air grew stale in the station’s unventilated incident room and she listened dully to the death rattle of bluebottles on sealed window sills, a fax chattered into life with details of the Trumans’ immigration. Its routine contents prompted Nightingale to postpone yet another pub garden meeting and make her way to the offices of the local newspaper.
Cooper watched her go with mixed feelings. At least she had a lead to go on, even if it might muck up her weekend. He was having a frustrating time with Ministry of Defence officials who were proving reluctant to release details of service leavers over the previous twelve months. His request was not helped by the weakness of his argument, nor his own scepticism, which came through whenever he tried to persuade them. All they really had as a basis for their requests were Fenwick’s hunch and a possible murder weapon with a services pedigree. Just moments after Nightingale had left, Cooper was handed three large, security-delivered envelopes, each one containing bulky computer printouts. Each service provided information in a different way but the content in all of them amounted to the same: name, rank and number. No addresses, telephone numbers or reasons for discharge. It was virtually useless.
Within the hour he also received the first list from a national car hire company, contacted about the rental of a black saloon. The firm was much more helpful. The printout for the key dates in April matched Cooper’s priority order: London, Home Counties, South East; male, cash payment. Even so, given the description of the car involved in the Fearnside abduction, there were several hundred names. And it was a leap of faith that
their ‘chauffeur’ had hired, not bought a car. Still, at least this time they had addresses and phone numbers. With a certain satisfaction, Cooper called the enlarged team together and divided the list up among them. Faced with at least a long evening and Saturday ahead of them, one bright trainee showed true detecting initiative and hunted down the key for the sealed unit double glazing.
Nightingale had no air to refresh her. The newspaper’s library and records office were in the basement. There was no air conditioning, no window. The air fell flat and heavy on the stacks of back copies, teetering around the walls. A retired metal-press printer-turned-archivist proudly told the detective constable they were microfiching records. Unfortunately they had only worked back as far as 1984. He directed her to a stack of papers, chest high, in one of the darker corners, labelled ‘January 1979 – December 1981’. Wearily and cautiously, she removed her light cotton jacket gingerly, glancing round for a clear spot on which to lay it. With resignation, she folded it inside out and brushed off a plastic canteen chair. Her hand came away black.
She lifted the top stack of papers aside until she found the start of 1980. Fenwick had said that was the year both Truman and Anderson had left school. Johnstone’s diary for the year was missing as well and the fax from Australian immigration had confirmed this as the year the Truman family,
excluding
Carol
, had arrived.
It was a local newspaper that made up for quality with quantity to provide value for money. Even in 1980, there had been two sections for each edition. She was tempted to concentrate on the main news pages, convinced that what she was looking for would be front-page news. But her training and her own meticulous attention to detail kept forcing her to review every page.
By eight o’clock she had worked through to the end of May 1980. Her hands were black from old newsprint, which had mysteriously found its way on to her face and hair, adding
premature grey streaks to the short dark bob. The long plait had been cut off as impractical a month before. Her clothes were thick with paper dust and her eyes and throat felt as if they were lined with fine sandpaper. She had found nothing apart from a reference in February to a school choir performance in which both Octavia Anderson and Carol Truman had been singled out for glowing praise. Part of her felt she had done more than enough for one evening but the thought of returning to the room the next day was more unattractive than carrying on. She decided to keep going to the end of June – halfway – and then stop for the night.
A giant haystack occupied centre page of the first June edition, a typical example of the level of local news, and Nightingale swore in disgust. Discarding the offending paper, she bent to pick up the following week’s edition from the dwindling stack. Two clear light-coloured eyes caught hers, poised in a petite oval face framed by straight blonde hair. Above the picture the sub-editor had excelled by setting a block headline in inch-high characters: ‘TRAGIC DEATH OF LOCAL SCHOOL GIRL’ and beneath it the subheading: ‘Gifted pupil’s death plunge while on school trip’.
Detective Constable Nightingale had found Carol Truman.
An end-of-term celebration ended in tragedy this week as gifted 15-year-old school girl Carol Truman plunged to her death from 200-foot-high cliffs.
A party of thirteen girls and two teachers from Downside Community School visited Durdle Door, a well-known beauty spot in Dorset, as part of an end-of-term treat that went tragically wrong last Friday. Commenting at the scene, Coastguard William Price said: ‘We received a call at 15.40 and were on the scene by 15.55. A helicopter was launched at once and, sadly, we found the body of a young girl within fifteen minutes.’
It was necessary to use a winchman to reach the body as access from the cliff top was too dangerous.
The accident has raised doubts again about the safety
of teacher-supervised school trips, doubts robustly denied by Downside’s headmaster Dr Boyle. ‘There is no question of this trip being undersupervised. Two very experienced teachers were in charge of the party of 13 girls. All the girls are of an age and maturity to make this a more-than-adequate number for safety reasons.’
Nevertheless, a full enquiry is to be established and it is expected that both teachers will have to appear to answer questions about the ill-fated trip. In charge of the party was geography master Kenneth Jackson. Gym mistress Barbara Dicks was also in attendance.
Turn to page 2 and 3 for full story.
Inside, the full story described the accident in detail: the party of thirteen girls and two teachers had arrived at the coast just before eleven o’clock on a clear, sunny day. The party had split into three groups, one of which included both teachers – the girls being deemed old enough to look after themselves. The other two groups went their separate ways along the cliff.
The morning had passed without incident, with everyone meeting up for lunch, and the groups had split up again for the afternoon when the accident happened. The report continued: ‘Schoolfriend Leslie Bannister was with Carol Truman in the group. “It all happened so suddenly,” said the tearful 15-year-old. “One minute we were all together fooling about and singing, then we had a race back to the bus. I was a bit ahead of the others but suddenly somebody heard Debbie or Octavia, I think, cry out. Carol had just gone, disappeared. It was only later that we realised what had happened.”’
Carol was described as ‘an exceptionally talented pupil’ by headmaster Dennis Boyle. He was quoted extensively. ‘The whole school is deeply shocked; a number of girls have been sent home. Carol had a unique talent and this terrible accident has taken from us not only a loved and respected pupil and friend but also a musician of immense potential. An investigation has been opened into the incident and obviously we will co-operate fully.’
Detective Constable Nightingale read the remainder of the article and then re-read the whole piece. A few key facts lodged in her mind: the accident had happened
after
the date of emigration for Carol’s family – where had she been living? Leslie Bannister as was, Smith now, had been ‘a close friend’ and virtually a witness to the accident. Why had she lied? The article went on to make clear that the accident had involved a fall from the cliffs and police were not treating it as suspicious. Could it have triggered the murders, some twenty years later, of two of Carol’s friends? Or if it had not triggered the killings, what other connection was there?
Nightingale’s call at eight that evening was enough for Fenwick to summon both her and Cooper to his house. As an afterthought he softened the inconvenience by serving a chilled Australian Chardonnay as they sat in the garden, away from the children’s late bedtime noise.
Nightingale had found the name of an aunt and uncle of Carol Truman in later articles, Alice and George Rowland, and was immediately charged with hunting them down. As she searched further she discovered they’d had a son and added his name to her list. Cooper, to his surprise and disappointment, was tasked with arranging the cross-checking of the stack of military print-out for
any
of the names mentioned in the article or the school records of the time. As the computer output was in ID number order and he had no faith in the military connection whatsoever, his motivation hit rock bottom. The wine too was sour for his palette.
‘What’re you going to do then, sir?’ His belligerent tone bordered on the insubordinate and never had Fenwick seen leather-patched elbows more aggressive.
‘I’m going to Montpellier and then, probably, to Scotland, Sergeant. I will then return in time to meet Smith’s flight from Turkey – I assume you haven’t traced her? – no, quite. And, Cooper, keep the extras busy, will you? I don’t want them disappearing while I’m gone.’
Fenwick stepped from air-conditioned, dry chill into the enveloping warmth of Mediterranean summer and enjoyed the few seconds of pure sensuous pleasure that greets all northern travellers as they realise, again: Yes, this is what I was born for. Simple, heady heat on every part of his exposed skin, the sun, hot on the top of his head, a new elusive tang in the air. Then it was over. Except, inside him, the warmth did not disappear. Had he been less practical and preoccupied, he would have had the sense to recognise and guard against this growing sense of expectation. But he was not.
By the time he had collected his luggage, waited thirty minutes in line to hire a car and become immediately and hopelessly lost on leaving the airport, he was regretting the tie, the trip and his poor second language. He could feel the sweat accumulating along his collar, dripping from armpit to waistband as he struggled, sun blind in the maze that was Montpellier. Fenwick had arranged to meet Anderson at her hotel, one definitely outside his limited expense allowance. Given the delays, he had no choice but to go straight (an inappropriate description, surely) there from the airport.
He removed his tie, combed his hair, lifted a still smart sports jacket from the back seat of the parked car and entered the marbled lobby. With the aid of the freshen-up tissue from the plane, he even smelt fresh, if tangy. The uncompromising air conditioning forced him to put on his jacket at once. He put the goose-pimples on his arms and thighs, as Octavia Anderson
walked towards him, down to the abrupt change in temperature.
She was with him in moments, tall, relaxed as she swayed across the floor, turning heads. Her thick black hair was loose, framing an ivory complexion untouched by sun and startling in its contrast to the bodies around her. She wore a jade silk trouser suit, casually tied around an almost too-thin waist. Fenwick tried not to notice that she was not wearing a bra and the effect on her of the frigid air conditioning. He found he was sweating despite the cold.
They made their way to a quiet palm-lined corner. ‘A drink of some sort?’ She assumed the role of hostess automatically, signalling a waiter on the balls of his feet, desperate to come over.
‘A large soda water and lime. Thank you, Miss Anderson.’