‘Did she say anything else about this other woman? What she was like, for example?’
‘I got the impression she was vivacious and a bit full of herself. Oh, and she had a temper. As I mentioned, Katie said she was wary of her. I really can’t remember anything else. We spent most of the time talking about happier times back in our student days.’
Rae smiled at her. ‘You’ve been really helpful, Sandra. My boss always says that it’s the little details about people and their behaviour that help when you’re trying to piece things together. It’s a bit like a jigsaw. It’s great when we get confirmation of something that someone else has told us, and that’s what you’ve done.’
Sandra’s eyes filled. ‘I still can’t believe it. She was a lovely person and my best friend for several years. I can’t help feeling I let her down big time. Why didn’t I put more effort into tracing her? The thing is, she sometimes used to talk about moving to the Welsh mountains. I kind of assumed that’s what she’d done, and that’s why we’d lost touch.’
‘What I can tell you is that we think she fell in love with Paul Prentice, so maybe they had a few happy months together before this all happened. Didn’t he talk about it when he visited you?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really. It was a very short chat we had. He was on his way up to Berwick to see her remaining family. Maybe you’ll find out more from them. I did like him, though. He seemed kind, considerate.’
‘He was, by all accounts. He looked after her when she was really down. We know that.’
‘So are the two murders linked?’
‘We can’t say for certain, not yet. That’s all I can tell you at this stage.’
*
The train journey northwards from Durham to Berwick took a little over an hour, so Rae was there by late afternoon. She checked into her hotel, and then made her way to the address she’d been given for Katie’s only surviving relatives, an aunt and uncle. She would need to tread cautiously here because she didn’t know how close they’d been. After all, as Katie’s only remaining family, why hadn’t they put more effort into tracing her after she’d disappeared? Somerset Police had no record of any approach from them after their niece’s disappearance. Nor had they made any attempt to claim the farm as their property, according to land registry records. It was all very peculiar.
Palace Green was in an old part of town close to the waterfront. It was a tiny house that had evidently seen better days, and its frontage had a tired look. She rang the doorbell and waited. She heard the slow approach of footsteps and the sound of a security chain being engaged. The door opened a crack. Rae could just make out the face of an elderly woman peering through the gap.
‘Mrs Brown? I’m Detective Constable Rae Gregson from Dorset police. I’m here to talk about your missing niece, Katie Templar. We phoned you yesterday to make the appointment?’
There was a pause. ‘Oh, yes,’ she answered, her voice unsteady. ‘I’m a bit nervous of callers since my husband died. Do you want to come in?’
‘Yes, please. I have some questions for you so it might take half an hour or so.’
The door opened. Rae stepped into a dark and somewhat dusty hallway and from there into a small front parlour. It, too, was a bit dingy. Rae thought the whole place could do with some sprucing up. It could so easily be made into a lovely old home. Despite its small size the place had a lot of potential.
Once they were seated, June Brown said, ‘I haven’t seen Katie for a long time. How is she?’
‘That’s what I’m here for, Mrs Brown. She’s been missing for twelve years.’
‘Really? Twelve? I thought it was only a couple of years. I didn’t realise that much time had passed. We never kept in contact with her, you see. We thought she’d moved away somewhere.’
Was she suffering from memory loss? Rae cleared her throat. ‘I have bad news, Mrs Brown. We found Katie’s body last weekend, buried on the farm she owned. We think someone killed her.’
It took a few moments for the news to sink in. ‘Oh, that’s terrible. It’s awful, the violence at the moment. It’s on the news a lot.’
‘This wasn’t recent, Mrs Brown. We think she was killed twelve years ago, probably by someone she knew on the farm.’
June Brown tutted. ‘My husband always said she’d come to a bad end. He refused to have very much to do with her, said she was ungodly. It goes to show, doesn’t it?’
Rae couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She’d prepared herself for a range of possible reactions from Katie’s sole remaining relatives, but not this one. She took a deep breath.
‘You said your husband died recently, Mrs Brown. He was her mother’s older brother, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes. He didn’t approve of Katie’s mother very much. She was flighty. That’s what he said.’
‘What was your husband’s job, Mrs Brown, just out of interest?’
‘He was a Baptist minister. He was in the Church all his life. He was a good man.’
‘When did he pass away?’
‘Last year. It only seems like yesterday, yet time drags so.’
‘Do you have any children?’
‘Yes. My son, Roger. He lives in York. I didn’t see him for a long time, but he’s been to see me more often since Edward died. They didn’t get on.’
Rae decided not to pursue the relationship between father and son, though June and Roger would probably prove to be Katie’s only close relatives.
‘When was the last time you saw Katie? Can you remember? Someone told us that you went to her graduation in Durham.’
There was another pause. Rae could see the concentration on June’s face. ‘Yes. All three of us went. There was a bad row afterwards and Edward insisted on us coming home rather than staying the night as we’d planned. Roger refused to come with us. That’s when he and Edward fell out.’
Rae thought hard. This wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d hoped. She’d harboured thoughts of having a quick conversation, asking a few sharp questions and getting precise replies. Instead she felt that she was treading on a very fragile surface, one that might shatter at any moment.
‘Have you had any other visitors asking about Katie over the years?’
‘I can’t remember. I left all that to Edward. He dealt with it all. There may have been some but . . .’ June shrugged.
She looked so frail, so devoid of any spark. Had she always been like this or had her husband slowly sucked the life out of her? Rae wondered if he’d been an Old Testament purist, a fire and brimstone type. One of her neighbours had been like that when she was a teenager, full of bile against anything modern and anything that went against strict biblical teaching. He’d bumped into her once after her transition and had told her she was destined for hell and would burn in the fiery pit for all eternity. She still remembered her pleasure in replying, In that case, I’ll probably have you there for company, you evil, joyless, life-sucking vampire.
‘Did you ever get any post from Katie? Letters, documents, cards? That kind of thing?’
‘Well, there’s a box of stuff upstairs in a cupboard in the spare room. Edward used to grumble when anything from her arrived. I think it all went in there.’
‘I’d like to look at it if I may. Would that be alright?’
June just looked tired and defeated. ‘I suppose so. What harm can it do now?’
Rae slowly climbed the stairs behind June and was shown into a small single bedroom. June opened a cupboard and pointed to an old cardboard box on the bottom shelf. Rae pulled it out. She recognised the handwriting on the envelopes and postcards. All were in Katie Templar’s thin lettering. One brown envelope, thicker than the rest, caught her attention so she lifted it from the pile and opened it, extracting the closely typed pages inside. It was the trust document for the farm, the very item that might pull everything together and explain the two murders and the subsequent years of acrimony. She’d struck gold.
Chapter 30: The Back-Story Opens Up
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Friday Morning
In a café near York’s main railway station, Rae was sitting with Roger Brown, only child of June and Edward and, more importantly, cousin to Katie Templar. She’d phoned him the previous evening from her hotel in Berwick and asked if they could meet. He’d agreed at once and named a place where they could have a late breakfast, saying, rather intriguingly, ‘There’s a lot I need to get off my chest.’
He began almost at once. ‘My dad was a man trapped in his own bigotry. Even if part of him wanted to understand me, he was fenced in by petty doctrines and church directives. It was the same with Katie. He made up his mind about her and wouldn’t budge. Eventually this caused him to lose both me, his son, and Katie, his only niece.’
Rae took another mouthful of her scrambled eggs on toast. ‘You went to her graduation I believe? That’s what your mum said.’
He sipped his coffee. Rae noticed that his hair was showing a few flecks of grey. What was he? Late thirties? Early forties? He had olive skin and dark hair and looked as if he exercised.
‘That was when it all blew up — for Katie and for me. I’m gay, you see. I’d tried to keep it secret from both my parents, but I was really struggling. It’s possible he may have guessed as I was growing up because a few comments were made about my lack of interest in girls and he became more distant. I was fighting it myself back then, refusing to admit what was glaringly obvious to me.’
Rae gave a wry laugh. ‘God. Don’t I know that feeling. Years of trying to hide the big secret from the world, in case the world doesn’t like it. By world, of course, we mean parents, brothers and sisters, cousins, friends and neighbours — the very people we should be able to be honest with. We worry that it’ll cause rifts within our families, that we’re somehow letting them down, that we’re worthless. Being trans is no different, believe me. It’s like being caught in a trap with no way out. It’s an impossible choice. You either keep it hidden, holding all the stress inside so as not to upset those around you, or you tell them, and probably create anxiety, tensions and splits among those closest to you. For me it was a nightmare that went on for years.’
Roger nodded. ‘Probably worse for you. You have my absolute admiration. It must be really hard being trans, even now. Anyway, the argument started just after the ceremony when Katie told us her plans and what she wanted for her life. Dad was totally dismissive and told her that her role was to be a wife and mother, as laid down in the scriptures. Katie was such a mild person normally, but she got really angry and tore his argument to shreds. I suppose he felt humiliated, but he had it coming. He then attacked her personally and accused her of having loose morals, saying she would end up in hell. I felt I couldn’t stand by and let her take all the flak, and I chose that moment to tell them the truth about me and my sexuality. Maybe it wasn’t the best time to come out to them, but Katie was being entirely reasonable, while he was downright nasty and vindictive towards her. I felt she needed me on her side. So then he tore into me, and that was that — I got disowned. Apparently, he wrote me out of his will, though I’ve no idea who gets the dosh when my mother dies, probably the local dogs’ home. I haven’t broached the subject with Mum since I started visiting again. Anyway, I wouldn’t touch his money with a barge pole, not after what he said and did. There won’t be much anyway, not even after a lifetime of scrimping and saving, trying to make ends meet on the income of a Baptist minister. Mum’s got that house on a fixed low rent for the rest of her life but then it reverts back to the Church. My guess is that they’ll want to sell it.’
Rae sipped her coffee reflectively. When would be the best time to tell him that, as sole living relative, he was likely to have become the legal owner of Heathfield Farm in Somerset’s Quantock Hills?
‘Maybe we should talk about Katie,’ she said. ‘As I told you on the phone, last week we found her body on the farm. She’d been murdered, probably a good twelve years ago. That’s what we’re investigating, so anything you can tell us about her, and the farm, would be helpful.’
‘I still can’t believe it. We thought she’d moved to a smallholding somewhere. She mentioned something like that the last time I saw her. I think your man Paul Prentice tried looking for her.’
Rae filed away this snippet of information. It would need to be checked. Surely Prentice would have left some trail behind him during his search? Maybe he’d asked around after her.
Roger continued, ‘I went down to visit the farm once, but I didn’t like the atmosphere. It was poisonous, and Katie seemed really upset. I went back a few months later but she’d already left, and the place was in chaos — well, that’s what I was told. Your news shows it in a very different light. Someone had killed her and, what did you say, buried her body in the woods? It’s all beyond belief.’
Rae made a quick decision. ‘Roger, your memories of the place might prove vital to us. I need longer than this quick chat. Could we go somewhere more private, do you think? Your home? Or I can ask for an interview room at the local nick. Which would you prefer?’
‘Don’t really mind, but our flat would be convenient. My partner’s gone to work for the day.’ He started to get to his feet, ready to leave.
‘There’s something else you need to know. Although we can’t be totally sure of the current situation, there’s a possibility that Heathfield Farm may have returned to Katie’s sole ownership just before she was killed. I’ve got the original trust document in my possession and we’ll need to go through it with a fine-tooth comb, with legal help. But if that is the case, it now belongs to her next of kin. That could be you.’
He sat down again, hard.
*
Rae’s return journey to Dorset seemed to pass in a flash. She’d learned so much from the people she’d spoken to in Durham, Berwick and York, and she spent the hours sifting through the new information about the main protagonists in the commune and how it altered her perceptions of each one of them. It was just like a giant jigsaw puzzle, with the picture emerging in three dimensions. Each of the characters had been fleshed out and their role in the commune brought into clearer focus. But the ways they related to one another had also become more sharply defined. She’d travelled north in the hope of learning more about Katie Templar. She spent the journey south reviewing what she’d discovered about Tim Brotherton, Catherine Templeton, Trent Baker, Andy Atkins and Paul Prentice as well. And then, of course, there was the matter of the trustees, the small inner core that had, somewhat secretively, set the agenda for the commune’s development. Finally, the legal conditions that governed the farm’s ownership, as originally developed by Katie herself, with its two important clauses. Firstly, the return of the farm to her family in the event of Katie’s death. And then there was the escape clause, kept secret from the other commune members. This stated that if any class A drugs were ever found in the possession of, or distributed by, any one of the commune organisers, the ownership of the farm would revert back to the person of Katie Templar and the trust would fold. Roger Brown had been able to explain Katie’s reasons for including this strange clause. The tragic death of her parents, when she was still a youngster, had occurred in a horrific car crash caused by a cocaine-fuelled driver skidding around a bend at high speed and losing control of his vehicle.
Rae looked out of the window as the train sped south. She didn’t take in very much of the view. She was trying to imagine the effect Trent Baker’s arrival must have had on the farm, with his history of intimidation coupled with continuous drug and alcohol abuse. Had that been the point when Katie had realised that the commune’s time was really up? And was her murder the result?
*
Back in the main incident room at Wareham, the other three detectives were thinking along the same lines. They were examining copies of the all-important trust document that Rae had emailed through overnight.
‘So, we have a motive,’ Barry said. ‘Doesn’t this make it less likely that Brotherton killed her? He was there when the trust was set u
p and would have known about these clauses all along. He would have realised that killing Katie would result in the commune losing its home for good, but the other two might not have been aware of that.’
‘Good point,’ Sophie said. ‘Although he was a trustee, I reckon Atkins’s eyes would have glazed over at the legal wording in this stuff. And Trent Baker appeared on the scene later. He might not have known about it either. Whoever killed her, it looks as though they saw her as an obstacle to certain plans of their own. Those plans could well have included drugs.’
‘Maybe we need to look at it from a different angle, ma’am,’ Lydia said. ‘Let’s assume Katie didn’t want the commune to fail. Maybe its basic ideas were dear to her heart. She wouldn’t have wanted to trigger that clause — she’d have been pulling the plug on everything she’d planned for. But if someone was bringing in hard drugs, what alternative was open to her? To my eyes there’s only one. Get the cops in. I wonder if that’s what she threatened to do? Maybe she went further and was about to make actual contact with the local police. And that’s when someone felt there was no alternative but to stick a knife between her ribs.’
Sophie and Barry looked at each other.
‘Convinces me,’ Barry said. ‘It’s neat, simple and explains everything. So, who was it?’
‘Trent Baker’s still at the top of my list,’ Sophie said. ‘He had a history of using hard drugs. We know he had a violent streak. But I wonder if he was helped by someone else. When he made that attempt on Catherine Templeton’s life a couple of years later, it was done in a frenzy. In the case of Katie Templar, she vanished completely, without a trace. And someone circulated those false rumours of how she’d been seen leaving. It was neat and clever, and for twelve years it took everyone in until we found her body. Those aren’t the actions of someone who kills in a fit of rage.’
‘So who else helped?’ Barry said.
She shrugged. ‘Take your pick. Any of the three of them.’
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