Jude replied that he’d been no more surprised than anyone who found a long-abandoned handbag behind a wooden panel would be.
‘Did he react as if he expected to find a handbag there?’
‘No, of course he didn’t.’
And that was it, really. The female officer took copious notes of their conversation. Maybe their interview was just to get the paperwork sorted. There had been many complaints within the Force about increasing amounts of paperwork.
Jude saw them politely to her front door. They thought it unlikely they’d need to ask her any further questions.
Carole’s reluctance to acknowledge her laptop’s portability meant that she had not taken it with her to Fethering Library. So, all the research she did there had been written longhand into a notebook. Data which she would later copy on to her laptop in the spare/computer room. Despite her self-appointed reputation for efficiency, something which carried through from her time at the Home Office, Carole Seddon did not always take the direct route to her destinations.
But she couldn’t wait for the transcribing process to be completed to share her findings. The moment she got back to High Tor, pausing only to print out something from her laptop, she was on the phone to Woodside Cottage. (Most people would just have knocked on their neighbour’s front door as she passed, but that was never Carole Seddon’s way. To her mind, that kind of casual ‘dropping-in’ was associated with people from the North. People who viewed – and lived the life of – Coronation Street, a programme which she had never watched.) Of course, when she got through to Jude, she received the anticipated invitation to go next door, where her neighbour had just opened a bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
With their glasses charged and the first grateful slurp slurped, Carole embarked on her revelations.
‘Anita Garner used to live in Fethering. She went missing about thirty years ago. Her disappearance got brief coverage in the national press and quite a lot more in the Fethering Observer. I’ve been going through their files.’
‘Online?’
‘No, they aren’t online.’ If they had been online, Carole would have felt rather disappointed. Research ought to involve hard work. ‘I’ve been going through the archives at Fethering Library.’
‘Good for you.’
With a flourish, Carole produced the sheet that she had just printed out. (Of course, if she’d brought the laptop with her, she could just have shown the image on the screen, but that was never her way.) It was a photograph, taken from a newspaper, of Anita Garner. Jude recognized her instantly from the image she’d seen in the passport. In this one, though, the subject wasn’t wearing her glasses and looked quite a bit more glamorous. And dated – her blonde hair was long and chunky in the haystack style of Jennifer Anniston from Friends. It suggested a posed picture, taken by a professional photographer, the kind of thing that parents might display proudly on their mantelpieces. Typical of the images that turn up in the press when someone goes missing, images that seem somehow firmly to suggest the person is already dead.
Carole was silent. Jude knew she wanted the satisfaction of actually being asked for information. She always relished playing a scene at her own pace.
Jude readily conceded. ‘So, what have you found out?’ she asked.
The answer came in a rush. Now unleashed, Carole had so much to tell. ‘Anita Garner was twenty-three when she disappeared. At the time she was actually working at Footscrow House. It was a care home back then. She had started helping in the kitchens but was training to become a qualified carer. She was an only child, brought up in Fethering, as I said. On the Downside Estate. She had left school at sixteen to attend a catering college, though there was some suggestion she didn’t finish the course there. Before she went to the care home, she worked in the hospitality industry, chambermaiding in hotels, behind the bar in pubs, also helping out in the kitchens. All of her work was local – Fethering, Fedborough, Smalting, not much further afield than that. At the time of her disappearance, she was still living at home with her parents in the house where she was born.’
Carole’s need to take a breath gave Jude the opportunity to ask, ‘Had she ever worked abroad?’
‘Not so far as I could find out, no.’
‘Had she ever travelled abroad?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Carole a little peevishly. She didn’t like any criticism of her information hoard. ‘Newspapers don’t tell everything about a person.’
‘No, of course they don’t. I just thought … the fact that there was a passport in her handbag …’
‘Anyway, the library closed at five.’ Carole still sounded defensive. ‘It took me a long time to find the right editions of the Fethering Observer to get started. I haven’t seen everything. I’m planning to go back tomorrow.’
‘It’s great how much you have managed to find out,’ said Jude, smoothing ruffled feathers, not for the first time.
‘There was a lot of speculation in the press about what might have happened to her.’
That was inevitable in a village like Fethering, where the two-day absence of a cat could qualify as front-page news.
‘Some people thought,’ Carole went on, ‘she might have been the victim of a serial killer. A character dubbed by the press “The Brighton Batterer” had been linked to a series of murders over a few years. But Anita Garner’s profile didn’t seem to fit. The Batterer’s victims had all been prostitutes and there was really no solid proof that the killings were the work of the same man. Whoever he was – or whoever they were – the police never found him – or them. But the rumours about the killer caused some years of anxiety for women in Brighton.
‘Then again, there were the usual suggestions Anita Garner might have been kidnapped by sex traffickers, Russian agents, Islamic terrorists – Fethering’s usual suspects all lined up.
‘The girl’s parents were interviewed time and again. Was she unhappy at home? No. Had her behaviour ever given her parents cause for concern? No, she was a good Catholic girl, went to Mass every Sunday. Had she just broken up a relationship? Was she in a relationship? No and no.
‘Then the more desperate question … Did Anita have any enemies? Anyone who might have borne a grudge from schooldays? All the answers still negative.’
Jude looked thoughtful. ‘Do you know if her parents are still alive?’
‘No. Her father went relatively soon after the disappearance. Big Catholic funeral at Fedborough Abbey, apparently. Her mother died about ten years ago.’
‘Mm. Mind you, there’d be a lot of other Fethering locals still here from that time. As you know, Carole, it doesn’t take much to get the gossip-mills turning in a place like this.’
‘Very true.’ The pale blue eyes sparkled, attracted by the idea of a ‘case’ to investigate. ‘So, where do you suggest we start?’
‘We start by finding out as much local gossip as we can about Anita Garner.’ Jude looked at her big round watch. ‘Do you know … I could fancy another drink … at the Crown and Anchor.’
THREE
‘She was definitely murdered,’ Barney Poulton pontificated. ‘If the police were to do a really thorough search of the South Downs, I guarantee they’d find Anita Garner’s bones. In a shallow grave. That is, if the foxes hadn’t got to it. Then the bones might be more scattered.’
Carole and Jude exchanged looks. Barney Poulton, that day dressed in a navy guernsey sweater above burgundy corduroys, was almost a fixture in the Crown and Anchor these days. Summer visitors, encountering him for the first time in the bar, took him for a genuine local, ‘the eyes and ears of the village’, the source of endless recollection and regional lore. Many drinks were bought for him on the premise of his authenticity. He was the self-appointed Sage of Fethering.