Chapter Six
At Torquay Police Station twenty-seven years later Karen sat in thought for a few moments following her phone call to Sean MacDonald. She had not been surprised by his reaction. She knew exactly what the potential of this freak discovery would mean to him.
Neither she nor anybody else could bring Clara Marshall and her children back. But perhaps they really could bring Richard Marshall to justice at last. She’d make sure she gave it her best shot, that was for certain; and so, she was sure, would all of her team. This was so much more than just another case. Karen leaned forward in her chair, ready for action again, and buzzed Phil Cooper who appeared swiftly in the open doorway of her office.
“Right, Phil, I have a list for you,” she began briskly. “One, we need to establish that the Rolex belonged to Clara. Get somebody to track down this retired jeweller, Gavin, in Inverness. Mac says he a bought a Rolex for Clara from him.” She passed Cooper the piece of paper on which she had written the details. “It’s a very long shot that he’ll still have any records, but you never know. Meanwhile get the watch to the Rolex HQ in Kent, and get it to them today. Tell them we need them to do their stuff again, just like they did on that other case. Tell them we need to know where that watch was sold. And we need to know fast. If we’re going to pick up Marshall I want to get on with it. He probably knows what we’ve found off Berry Head, it’s already been in the papers and on the news. I don’t want him doing some sort of disappearing act. He’s just the sort of bastard who’d be capable of making himself disappear permanently. If we can prove quickly that watch was sold by Gavin, and the date, then that would establish near enough one hundred percent that it was bought by Mac. We’re there then. And we’d have really strong circumstantial evidence against Marshall at last. At least we’d have a body, even if it’s only a damaged skeleton.”
“Two. Find out where Marshall is, or Ricky Maxwell, as I believe he calls himself nowadays. I want to be sure that when the moment comes we can get to him right away.”
“Three. Make sure Torquay Hospital have arranged for the skeleton to be dispatched to that lab in London where they establish the isotopes of bones. I’m not going to wait for the results before picking up Marshall and hopefully charging him, but it would be good to know for certain more or less how long those remains have been in the water well before we go to court.”
“And four. This investigation is top priority again. Get the team sifting through this lot.” Karen gestured at a dozen or so cardboard boxes piled against the far wall of her office, records of the initial investigation that had been brought out of storage the previous day. The case had never been formally closed, as indeed no unsolved murder case in Great Britain ever is, and virtually each year had added at least some new information, though none of it, so far, ever of much use.
“Tell the guys they’re looking for anything, anything at all that may have been overlooked before and could give us a new lead,” Karen continued. “There might be something that is relevant now, because we’ve found that skeleton, that wasn’t before. And when they’ve finished with this lot there’s plenty more paperwork we haven’t dug out yet, and then there’s bits and bobs on computer, too, that have been added more recently.”
“Consider it done, boss.”
Karen could see that the sergeant was really buzzing. They all were. This was the big one for them. They all wanted to get Marshall so much.
She followed Cooper as he hurried out of her office — he on the way to the incident room, she on the way to the coffee machine.
Back in her office clutching her paper cup of something that certainly had the colour of coffee even if maybe not the flavour, Karen allowed herself to reflect on her own involvement all those years ago. She had been little more than a child when it had all happened. What could she have known really? There were things, though, things that had bugged her for nearly thirty years.
She cast her mind back, trying to sort out her jumbled thoughts.
It was about a month before Clara Marshall disappeared that Karen was sent home from school early because of a power cut. At about 2.30 in the afternoon she had arrived at Laurel House to find the front door locked, which was unusual in mid-afternoon. Puzzled, Karen had rung the doorbell. And she’d had to do so twice more before her mother had finally opened it.
Margaret Meadows had been wearing one of the flimsy floral dressing gowns she specialized in, and nothing else, her daughter had thought. Not even underwear. She looked on edge, and glanced quickly over her shoulder at least twice as she let Karen in.
“You’re ever so early, dear, I wasn’t expecting you yet,” she muttered nervously.
Karen explained what had happened at school, all the while studying her mother curiously. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t work out what. Her mother picked up on it, and presumably felt she needed to explain her attire.
“I–I was about to have a bath, dear,” she said, with a hesitant, slightly apologetic smile.
Karen followed her into the hall, without further comment. She was, however, watchful, just as always. She had never known her mother to take a bath in the middle of the afternoon. Margaret Meadows had a routine, whether she was drinking or not. Once she finally got out of bed, which was usually around mid-morning and sometimes not until midday, she always bathed before putting on her make-up. Karen had never yet known her to face the day ahead without going through that routine.
She was still studying her mother with interest when Richard Marshall came bounding down the stairs, white shirt undone, his jacket, a dark-coloured blazer of some sort, with shiny gold buttons, slung casually over one shoulder, his shock of dark curly hair tousled.
“I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble with that tap, Margaret,” he said obliquely.
“Oh. Uh. Thank you, Richard.”
Karen turned to face her mother. Margaret Meadows had blushed crimson. She bowed her head slightly as if trying to hide her face behind the blonde veil of her hair. Then she looked up and put on a bright smile which was not reflected in her eyes.
“Richard’s been fixing that dripping tap in the bathroom, dear,” she told her daughter, obviously feeling another explanation was called for. “Wasn’t that nice of him?”
Karen may have had to grow up beyond her years, but she still had the directness and simplicity of thought which goes with youth.
“We didn’t have a dripping tap in the bathroom,” she said flatly.
“Of course we did, darling.” This time Margaret Meadows’ smile was indulgent. “You just haven’t noticed. Other things on your mind, I expect.”
Margaret had then turned towards Richard again. “Oh, these young girls,” she said.
It had been Karen’s turn to blush then. She could cheerfully have slapped her mother. Did the woman think she was stupid or something? Didn’t she realize Karen was pretty damned sure she knew exactly what was going on? Why was she trying to make Karen look like a fool?
Richard Marshall pulled on his jacket. He was smirking too, or so it seemed to Karen. Although he had at least had the decency to attempt to fabricate some sort of reason for having been upstairs with her mother, his attitude was that of a man who simply didn’t give a damn.
He hadn’t even bothered to comb his hair, after all, or to finish dressing properly. He looked thoroughly pleased with himself, and he actually reached forward and ruffled Karen’s hair.
“Well, if you can’t enjoy yourself at her age, when can you?” he asked of no one in particular, while beaming at her in a horribly patronizing fashion.
Karen had felt her blush deepening which seriously annoyed her. She remembered how even then his demeanour was that of a man who thought he was invincible, a man who thought he was untouchable. Which was perhaps why he had dared just a short while later to do the dreadful deed she was so sure he was guilty of.