The boys were having a great time: whipping each other with the rope, threatening to push each other into the river and making as much noise as possible but Dusty tried to keep focused on the task. They’d been forced to be a foursome – Angela had been made a member of their team for the past few days because she was sharing a tent with Dusty – but the other girl seemed hesitant about joining in. Dusty understood why. The three of them had been such a tight little clique for so long that it was impossible for anybody else to become part of the group. And that was the way that they liked it. She did feel a bit sorry for Angela though and had tried to get her involved in tying the barrels together, but Ned and Lucky had just made fun of her so Angela had mostly been watching their progress from an upturned barrel on the riverbank.
‘We’ll need you to row,’ Dusty said, plonking herself on the dusty ground next to where Angela was sitting and slapping her hands together to remove some of the grime. ‘There have to be four of us on the raft or we can’t win.’
Angela looked at her, strands of dark hair sticking to the sheen of sweat on her forehead.
‘So, I will be of some use then?’ Her eyes were glassy with tears and Dusty realised that the girl was far more upset about being left out than she’d seemed.
‘Look,’ Dusty said. ‘The lads are just being lads. You know what they’re like.’
Angela shook her head. ‘It’s not just them. You’ve practically ignored me since we got here. It’s not my fault that you can’t share a tent with your mates, you don’t have to be so horrible to me.’
Dusty knew that Angela was right. She had been focused on Ned and Lucky and she had ignored her tent-mate. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Angela: it was just that nobody else was as important as her two friends, but Dusty knew all that was going to change in a few months and she would have to get used to being on her own – or make some new friends.
‘You’re right,’ she admitted to Angela. ‘Look, we’ll do the boat race and then me and you could go for a walk – leave the lads to it for a bit.’
Angela just shrugged.
‘Okay, how about you sneak out with us tonight? We’re going for a night walk. It’s the last night so even if we get caught there’s not much that the teachers can do.’
‘Why?’ Angela asked. ‘What’s the point? It’s the same place only at night. What’s different?’
‘We just thought it’d be fun. Sneaking around while everybody’s asleep.’ Dusty could hear how stupid their plan sounded as she tried to explain it to Angela. Really, what was the point? But they’d agreed and they couldn’t back out, especially now Angela was in on the secret.
‘It’s daft,’ Angela said. ‘If you get caught you’ll get into real trouble with the teachers. I think I’ll just get some sleep.’
Dusty wanted to agree with her, to keep her on side, but a shout from the riverbank indicated that the race was about to start. Angela hopped off her upturned barrel and, with a grin, held out her hands to haul Dusty to her feet. Dusty accepted the gesture as an offer of truce and the two girls headed towards the river.
‘All hands on deck!’ Ned yelled as Dusty and Angela approached. The two girls clambered onto the rickety craft and tried to find places to kneel whilst maintaining the balance of the raft.
‘Ready?’ one of the camp staff yelled.
Shouts from every raft indicated that all the teams were in place. Dusty glanced across to the opposite bank where Wheezy and his team had constructed something that looked like a cross between an oversized dustbin and the Starship Enterprise. Suddenly, she had no desire to win. She didn’t care. It was just a stupid race and all the pudding in the world wouldn’t change the future; the future without her two best friends.
‘On your marks…’
The countdown continued.
‘Get set. Go!’
At first, Dusty could see nothing but water. It was everywhere, splashing up at her face and pouring down her arms as she paddled. Gradually, shapes started to form – the other rafts were jostling ahead of them.
‘Faster!’ Ned yelled. ‘Give it some welly!’
Dusty grabbed the plank oar as hard as she could and thrust it into the river. Glancing across at Angela she saw that the other girl was doing the same, paddling as hard as she could.
And then disaster struck. Angela’s oar caught on something and acted like an anchor, spinning them around and slowing their progress.
‘Pull it out!’ Lucky yelled pointing frantically at the plank of wood. Ned leaned across and yanked, trying to free up the raft but the motion caused the whole craft to buckle and Dusty saw one of the ropes starting to slip from where it held one of the barrels in place.
‘Abandon ship!’ she yelled, shoving Angela towards the riverbank. She watched as her tent-mate jumped to safety, followed by Lucky. Ned was still struggling with Angela’s oar.
‘Come on!’ Dusty yelled. ‘It’s going to sink! It’s a pile of crap!’
Ned scowled at her and clung on defiantly while she grasped at a tree root and hauled herself onto the damp, muddy grass. She turned and watched as the raft finally pulled free and then spun slowly in the river before the two barrels pulled apart leaving Ned with nothing to balance on.
‘You prat!’ she yelled at him as he gave her a two-fingered salute and leapt into the water.
It wasn’t deep – probably only up to Ned’s thighs – but he stumbled and sank briefly beneath the surface before reappearing with a broad grin.
‘A captain always goes down with his ship,’ he said before stumbling slowly to where his friends were waiting.
‘Who made you captain?’ Lucky asked, reaching down and splashing him with river water.
‘Well, I didn’t see any of you lot trying to save us.’ He hauled himself up onto the muddy bank and looked down at his clothes.
‘Shit. I’m soaked through. I’d better get–’
‘Oy! You boy!’
All four of them turned instinctively in the direction of the voice. It was one of the camp staff – the one that Lucky had nicknamed Sergeant Major Furry because of his thick beard and moustache.
‘Get here – now!’
Ned stood up and sighed loudly. ‘Looks like I’m not getting extra pudding tonight.’
He’d only taken three paces towards the man when a figure appeared from the trees.
‘Leave him. I’ll sort him out.’ Mr Whitaker looked round at the group of children and gave them a theatrical wink. ‘No need to get the sergeant major involved, eh? Come on, lad. Let’s get you out of those wet things.’
Dusty watched as Ned allowed the teacher to lead him away towards the circle of tents. Her friend looked both scared and relieved at being rescued from what could have been a serious telling off. She noticed that Ned didn’t even flinch when Mr Whitaker put an arm around his skinny shoulders.
8
‘I can’t work out if that was a waste of time or our best lead yet,’ Hollis said with a wry smile as he opened the driver’s side door of the pool car. ‘Are we really looking for a group of kids who were fans of an obscure eighties film?’
‘Honestly? I have no idea,’ Kate admitted. ‘But the pieces seem to fit together.’
It did seem unlikely, but the link was there. The problem was that Wayne Campbell couldn’t remember the names of the three children and he thought that the school records from the eighties had been stored by the local authority in Doncaster somewhere. He didn’t remember the girl’s name and his memory of the two boys was very murky. He thought that one might have been called Lee or Liam and the other might have been a Nick or a Neil but he couldn’t be certain. It was a start though, something to work with. If they could get a name they might be able to get hold of the old registers and do some cross referencing.
Kate pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket as Hollis put the car in gear. A text from Barratt – nothing useful from his visit to the Whitakers’ last known address, he couldn’t find anybody who remembered
the couple. She hit ‘contacts’, intending to get Cooper to look into school records or Facebook or any other sources she might have access to in her cyber world, but before she could scroll to Cooper’s number, the phone rang in her hand.
‘Cooper? I was just about to ring you.’
‘Whatever it was I think you’ll want it to wait,’ Cooper said cryptically. ‘I’ve found David Whitaker. He’s in the system but he’s changed his name.’
Kate’s mind was already trying to get a fix on Cooper’s statement. ‘In the system’ was their shorthand for somebody who had a criminal record. Whitaker had been arrested and charged with something.
‘Details, Sam.’
Cooper reeled off Whitaker’s criminal record. It wasn’t much but it was serious. He’d been charged with grooming a child for sexual purposes and he was currently in HMP Wakefield serving six months – due for release in three weeks’ time.
‘Sorry it took so long,’ Cooper said. ‘It took a while to find out that he’d changed his name. He’s David Wallace now. Changed at around the time he moved from Thorpe. My guess is that the rumours got too much for him and he wanted a fresh start, but he couldn’t change what he was.’
Kate noted the bitterness in Cooper’s tone. Nobody on her team, and probably nobody on any force in the country, liked dealing with paedophiles, and this case now had that taint, that bad taste in the mouth.
Cooper was still speaking. ‘So that’s how I missed him. I couldn’t find David and Margaret Whitaker, so I went back to the electoral register looking for any combinations of Margaret and David in the local area. I just tried W surnames on a hunch. I set a programme up to do the heavy lifting and there he was. I’ve found the deed poll documents so it’s definitely him.’
‘Nice work,’ Kate said. ‘Did you get a last known address? We need to check to see if his wife still lives there.’
‘Done. She went into a nursing home two years ago. I rang them and they were a bit cagey at first, but it seems she was discharged in September. They won’t give out any more information over the phone. I’ll text the details. It’s in Rawmarsh. Wallace’s address is listed as a flat in Bentley.’
Kate thanked Cooper and hung up, trying to work out their next move. Somebody needed to go to the nursing home and she needed to get somebody out to Wakefield Prison at some point to see what Whitaker, or Wallace, might know. But he wasn’t going anywhere – he could wait for a while. The nursing home should be their priority if they were going to make a positive ID on the woman’s body and it was looking more and more likely that it was Margaret Wallace. A text pinged in and she gave Hollis directions to a street in Rawmarsh, a small town near Rotherham.
‘I’ll give them a ring and let them know we’re coming,’ she said. ‘They might be a bit more co-operative face to face.’
Hollis nodded his agreement before turning down a side street and executing a U-turn.
The Nook nursing home was at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac off the main road through Rawmarsh. It looked like it might once have been the home of a Victorian industrialist or a minor member of the aristocracy and was entirely at odds with the empty shops and graffiti-covered bus shelters of the main street. Set back behind a low wall it dominated the short road and its red-brick gate posts seemed somehow threatening rather than welcoming. Hollis navigated the car into a small car park and sat for a moment staring up at the building.
‘Do you think they handcuff the old people to their beds in there?’ he said, gazing at the huge bay windows that flanked the door. ‘It looks a bit forbidding.’
‘It’s just an old building,’ Kate said. ‘It’s probably been gutted inside. It’s rare to find one still run by the NHS these days so I’m expecting functional rather than opulent. Surprised the building hasn’t been sold off.’
Her prediction turned out to be true. As soon as she approached the main door she saw that any sense of the building’s former charm had been undermined by the modern barrier of hardwood and wire-crossed safety glass. Next to the door was a buzzer and an intercom box.
‘Security looks tight,’ Hollis mused, echoing Kate’s own thoughts as she pressed the button. If the body of the woman in the storage unit was that of Margaret Wallace, how did somebody manage to get her out of The Nook? Unless she left of her own accord.
‘Help you?’ the intercom crackled into life.
Kate explained who they were and was told to wait. Less than half a minute later the door clicked open and a young man in dark blue trousers and a matching polo shirt with the NHS logo on the breast peered out at them.
‘Police?’ he asked, his tone more interested than concerned. Kate showed him her ID and he pushed the door open so that they could pass through into a bright foyer area. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ the man said. ‘Can’t be too careful.’
‘Is that standard?’ Hollis asked. ‘People have to ring the buzzer and then wait to be let in?’
The man looked at Hollis as though he couldn’t quite believe he’d heard such a ridiculous question. His face flushed, making his blue eyes stand out against the pink flesh. ‘Of course. We can’t have people wandering in off the street.’
‘Or wandering out, I suppose?’
Kate turned and noticed that the door had locked firmly behind them. There didn’t appear to be an obvious way to open it from inside but there was some sort of sensor on the wall next to the handle.
‘How do people get out?’ she asked.
‘They ask at the front desk. A member of staff has to come down and scan their fob.’ He indicated a small, barrel-shaped object attached to his ID lanyard where, Kate noticed, his name and a photograph were displayed. Mark Harrison. She made a mental note of his details – just in case.
‘Mr Booth’s office is just through here,’ Harrison said, leading them down a short corridor which was noticeably less well-lit than the foyer, as though the occupants of the offices didn’t want to be noticed. Or bothered. ‘I assume he’s expecting you.’
Harrison tapped on the door and then pushed it open without waiting for an invitation, showing them into a small office which looked like it might have been an understairs scullery in the house’s previous life. A fluorescent strip light buzzing faintly on the ceiling and a tiny window on the wall behind the occupant’s desk were the only sources of light and, as Hollis squeezed in behind Harrison, Kate had a sudden flutter of claustrophobia. She didn’t want to be squashed in there with the three other men, but she had little choice. To her relief, as she crossed the threshold, Harrison pushed past her back into the corridor.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said with a faint smile.
Kate turned her focus to the man behind the desk. In his fifties, bearded and ruddy complexioned, Booth frowned up at them. He hadn’t bothered to stand up – perhaps aware of the tightness of the space – and he didn’t invite her and Hollis to sit down.
‘Mr Booth?’ Kate asked, despite the nameplate on the office door.
The man nodded. ‘You’re the policewoman who rang earlier?’
Kate saw Hollis’s lips curl slightly at hearing his boss described as a policewoman, but he managed to keep a straight face as he introduced them both, emphasising the inspector in Kate’s title.
‘Is this going to take a while? Should I get another chair?’ Booth looked around as though expecting one to magically appear from somewhere.
‘We’re fine,’ Kate reassured him, edging Hollis out of the way so that she could sit down. He stepped round her and stood by the door, arms folded, like the world’s gangliest bouncer.
‘Mr Booth, as I told you on the phone, we’re here about a former resident, Mrs Margaret Wallace?’
Booth nodded enthusiastically, causing a lock of his greying hair to fall across one eye. ‘I’ve got her details here.’ He opened the folder that sat on his desk and scanned the first page. ‘What exactly did you want to know?’ Booth’s manner suggested that there was nothing unusual in the folder, nothing that was causin
g him any alarm.
‘How long was she here?’ Kate asked. Booth checked his notes.
‘Just over two years.’
‘And the reason?’
Booth glanced up at her. ‘I’m afraid I can’t divulge medical information about residents, or former residents.’
Kate nodded. She’d expected this. ‘I understand. Can you tell me when she left?’
Another glance at the notes. ‘Just under three months ago. 4th September.’
‘And where did she go? Was she hospitalised or transferred to another residential facility?’
‘Oh, no,’ Booth said with a smile. ‘Her niece collected her. She’d been living abroad and had just come home. She wanted Margaret to live with her.’
‘Her niece?’
‘I know. Some people are so selfless. She seemed very concerned about her aunt and wanted to look after her herself.’
‘You met this woman?’ Kate asked.
‘Of course.’ Booth smiled at her. ‘I did the discharge myself.’
Kate heard Hollis turn over a page in his notebook. This could be crucial. If they could get a description or any other information, it might help them to piece together the connection between the supposed niece and whoever had rented the storage unit.
‘Could you give us a description?’
Booth shrugged. ‘It’s a little while ago but I remember she had shoulder-length blonde hair, late thirties or early forties. Medium height, medium build. She was very pleasant to deal with.’
It wasn’t much. ‘What about her voice? Did she have a local accent?’
‘Northern, definitely. Possibly local with the edges worn off by all the travelling she’d done. She’d been in the Americas for a few years.’
‘How did you verify her identity?’ Kate asked.
Reunion: a gripping crime thriller (DI Kate Fletcher Book Book 4) Page 6