“How long were you inside?” Roach asked.
“There was a line,” Godfrey recalled. “People buying their papers and such like. Probably ten minutes, all told.”
Graham was nodding. “And that was the only time you saw her?”
“Yes, we left an hour later to catch the ferry.”
“Godfrey likes to be there in plenty of time,” Petunia explained. “He gets very agitated when the clock is ticking and he’s afraid of being late. There was a time when we went to see the Duchess of Kent and—”
Her husband tapped his wife on the arm. “They don’t need to know all my little foibles, dear.” Then he said to the two officers, “I wish we could be more helpful. It’s just terrible, the whole business.”
“Any eyewitness report is potentially useful,” Graham pointed out.
Godfrey rose with surprising agility for a man of his age. “I don’t suppose you’d like a quick tour, before you leave?” he asked. “Seems a shame to head straight back so quickly after such a long journey.”
Frankly, a tour of the house was the last thing the two officers wanted, but they acquiesced, and Godfrey showed them around the remarkable, crowded little museum that he and his wife had built over their fifty years together. Perhaps their proudest possession was a dinner plate from the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in 1982, signed by the head chef.
Downstairs were numerous photos of the Queen Mother the couple had taken, including a close-up of her during one of her last public engagements. Upstairs, there was a collection of figurines depicting the royal families of generations past, as far back as Queen Victoria.
Graham was frustrated. This interview had, thus far, only confirmed what they already knew. No new information had come to light. He was feeling antsy, and this guided tour around the Updike’s home wasn’t easing his mood.
He allowed his gaze to wander, taking in details but discarding most of them automatically. As collections of royal memorabilia went, it was superb, but it was hardly germane to the Beth Ridley case.
Then, quite when he least expected it, an object jumped out at him. It was in a box, on the bottom shelf of a battered, old corner unit. It was partially hidden by a host of other dolls and figures, apparently awaiting repair.
“Do you collect dolls, Mr. Updike?” Graham asked, leading the old man to the corner of the upstairs landing.
“Oh, those are some of Petunia’s old projects. Been there for years. They’re not part of our display. Now this,” he said, lifting a ceremonial tankard from a shelf by their bedroom door, “was presented to us by the Prince of…”
“Would you mind terribly,” Graham asked, “if I took a quick look at this box?”
Roach had already spotted the doll Graham was interested in and had his phone out, camera ready.
“Of course,” Updike said. “Nothing very interesting, though.”
Graham pulled out a doll, naked with brown hair. He noticed at once the manufacturer’s mark on the back of the neck: American Girl. It was in less-than-perfect condition, but Graham could see it was the same type as the dolls he’d seen in the shop windows in Gorey, and among the huge collection on the bed in Beth’s room.
Graham turned to Updike. “I’m afraid,” he said slowly as Roach began to photograph, “that I can’t agree.” Graham turned the doll to ensure that Roach could photograph the most important detail of all.
One of its legs was missing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“MR. AND MRS. Updike, I’m going to ask a simple question, and I’d like a simple answer.”
“Of course,” Petunia said. She had made the tea while Godfrey gave the officers their tour, and Graham found himself distracted by the aroma. “We’re happy to help in any way we…”
“Is there anything more you’d like to tell me about the morning you saw Beth?”
The elderly couple looked at each other. “It happened just as I said,” Godfrey replied. “Petunia, love, did I forget something? ”
She was shaking her head. “You told him just what you told the police back then,” she said. “Almost to the word.”
Graham looked at the Updikes, sitting there with their perplexed expressions, surrounded by the countless collectibles that made up their earthly possessions. They were rather an odd couple. Eccentric. He’d known elderly couples who lived extremely private lives, indulging in whatever hobbies suited them best. But none of those couples had ever seemed remotely capable of a serious crime, let alone abduction or murder.
“I don’t think there’s any other way of putting it than this,” Graham said. “The doll upstairs matches the description we were given of a doll Beth had in her bag on the day she disappeared.”
“But…” Godfrey spluttered, “what can you mean?”
“And now, it seems, an identical doll is in your house,” Graham pointed out. “Minus a leg. Did you know a doll’s leg was found on the street from where we believe Beth went missing?”
Roach observed the couple closely. If they were faking their utter astonishment, then they were accomplished actors. He’d never seen people quite so stunned in all his life.
“They made thousands of those dolls,” Petunia objected. “Hundreds of thousands! They were the most popular brand in the world for a decade!”
“Longer,” Godfrey added. “How many of them are now missing a leg, eh? Hundreds upon hundreds. Cast aside, damaged, stolen by the family dog, torn apart in a childish fight over property.”
“Where did you acquire the doll?” Graham asked. Roach glanced over at his boss’ notebook and saw two words, in block capitals and underlined, among the dense, incomprehensible scribble: BROKEN DOLL.
Petunia blinked over and over, her hand covering her mouth, deep in thought. “Was it a flea market?” she asked herself. “A charity shop?”
“But why,” Graham said, too impatient to wait for her answer, “did you purchase a doll with a missing leg?”
Godfrey smiled slightly. “Petunia enjoys her projects,” he said. “You know, fixing things up, finding replacement parts. Her specialty, for many years, was finding just the right replacement for a teddy bear’s missing eye. Besides there’s a market for these refurbished dolls. They’re not cheap!”
Petunia was still deep in thought. “A collectors’ fair, maybe? The one in Abbotsbury?”
Graham kept his frustrations to himself, but having made such an apparently vital discovery, the old couple’s vacillating was a huge annoyance. After ten long years without progress, the case was finally bearing some fruit, and yet Mrs. Updike could only sit there, dithering and second-guessing herself as though she’d lost all her marbles at once. “Constable Roach and I are pressed for time,” he explained. “We need some answers.”
But nothing would come, however hard Petunia appeared to be trying. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “It was so many years ago, and I…”
“How many years ago?” Graham said, his frustration beginning to well up dangerously.
Roach glanced up at his boss with a flicker of worry. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Updike,” he said, far more gently than his boss, “but it’s important.” He tried to catch Graham’s eye, in a bid to calm the DI’s mood, but Graham was fixed resolutely on the flustered elderly woman while he waited, his temper steadily rising.
“I… I really couldn’t say,” Petunia stammered. Then she looked at Graham pleadingly. “You can’t possibly think that we had anything to do with… you know… that poor girl. Godfrey just saw her in the street that morning. That’s all there is to it.” Her face showed something close to panic at the thought of having become a suspect.
“Mr. and Mrs. Updike, we will need to remove the doll for forensic examination. Taking your age into consideration,” Graham said, “we won’t be requesting that you accompany us to the station. But we advise you to stay in Weymouth. Please don’t travel outside the area so that we can contact you, should we need to.”
“What?” Godfrey said, aghast. “Thi
s is all just so unnecessary…”
“As the investigating officers,” Graham said sternly, “we will decide what’s necessary. You should know that this is the first concrete lead we’ve had in the last ten years.”
“Lead? A lead?” Petunia was even more disturbed than her husband at this unexpected turn of events. “Godfrey, what must they think of us?” She looked at her husband imploringly and began to weep. Her husband put his arms around her.
Graham took a deep breath and softened his demeanor a little as they got ready to leave. “Look, the forensics tests will take a few days. I’m sure you understand, in a case of this nature, that we have to take any evidence very seriously.”
Petunia was by now in a flood of tears that she was unable to stop. “It’s just a doll!” she wailed. “A one-legged broken doll that no one wanted.”
Ignoring her pleas, Graham left his contact details and reminded Godfrey not to arrange any travel until the tests were concluded. “We’ll be in touch,” Graham said as they were leaving.
Roach heard this as an ominous warning as no doubt did the elderly couple who were left badly shaken.
Graham said little on the cab ride back to the port, where they arrived just in time for the late afternoon ferry. “Don’t forget your seasickness pills this time, Constable,” Graham advised.
“Already took three,” Roach told him.
“How many are you supposed to take?”
Roach glanced at the package. “Erm. One.” Roach paused for a moment. “Sir?”
“Yes, Roach,” Graham was staring out to sea, deep in thought.
“Were they telling the truth, sir?”
“Perhaps. We’ll know more when we have forensics look at the doll.” He glanced at Roach.
“It’s just that, sir…”
“You think I was a little harsh on them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hmm,” Graham looked out to sea again. “Maybe I was, Constable.”
Twenty minutes after boarding, Graham closed his notebook after much ferocious note taking. He turned to Roach to ask his opinion on the Updikes and their doll. It was an objective that went unmet.
The sea was much calmer on this return journey, but Roach had learned his lesson. There was no likelihood of an opinion from him on the Updikes or on anything. Graham’s young colleague was completely, deeply asleep.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DI GRAHAM AND Sergeant Harding were sitting together in his office when the call came through.
Graham listened for a moment and then asked a few questions. He made notes, checked his email for the file he was expecting, and then clicked through to it quickly. “Right, sir. Thank you.”
Harding read the screen alongside him. “Wow,” was the first thing she said. “I knew they could do this kind of thing, but I never thought we’d be able to…” She continued reading. “Oh, wow.”
The document was a list of every website visited by Andrew Lyon in the previous eighteen months, and to a criminal investigator, it made very interesting reading. “The first thing to note,” Harding said, making instant use of her new skills, “is that he’s a frequent user. You see all these sites highlighted in red?”
“Yeah,” Graham noted.
“Those are the ones the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police have decided are basically… well… illegal websites, sir.”
Some were just strings of letters and numbers, but others had names that left Graham in no doubt as to the kind of content one might find there. “Then there are the blue ones,” she said. “They’re not actually illegal as such, but they’re close enough that they’re banned in some countries.”
Graham scanned the list. “He’s on one of these, sometimes a whole string of them, pretty much every night.”
“They’re web forums, sir,” Harding told him. “I can show you one that is relatively innocuous if you like.”
“Is it going to appear in my browser history, Sergeant?” he asked.
“I’ll show you on the laptop, sir.” She opened her own machine and typed in the address. “See?”
It was one of the sites Lyon frequented the most.
“Has he broken the law?” Graham asked. He wanted to “see” as little as possible.
“It all depends on what evidence we’re able to gather,” Harding explained. “We’ve got records of him downloading files from the illegal sites,” she said, opening a spreadsheet with hundreds of entries. The filenames alone were emphatically incriminating. “This data though, without other evidence, probably won’t be enough for a jury. That said, at least he can’t blame anyone else.”
“How do you mean?” Graham asked.
“Lyon lives by himself, so he can’t claim that someone else uses his Internet connection.”
Graham frowned. “It’s undoubtedly progress,” he said, “but it’s hardly ‘game, set and match,’ is it? All this tells us, really, is that he has some unusual proclivities.” He glanced back at the screen and then averted his eyes. “Can we close all this down for a moment?” he asked. “It’s not helping me think this through.”
Harding did as requested but sent the list of websites to the printer. “If nothing else, sir, we’ll be able to scare the hell out of him. If this got out, it wouldn’t do his reputation much good with the local community.”
Graham looked at Janice sternly for a moment but said nothing. He brought out his notepad. “So, we’ve got a powerful method of putting pressure on Lyon.”
“I’d say,” Harding agreed.
“But you know as well as I do that we can’t arrest someone simply for downloading a file.”
Harding frowned. “I think that it’s ridiculous, but yes.”
“Possession counts, Sergeant. Anything else is just circumstantial evidence. A jury isn’t going to convict him based on his browsing history. He would have to own copies of the images, and in this day and age, that means they have to be on his hard drive.”
Harding didn’t like this one bit. “But we know for a fact that he downloaded them. He wouldn’t download the files and then not open them would he?”
“Probably not, but we have to prove it.”
Janice sighed.
“He downloaded the files, but that’s not enough for him to see the images,” Graham continued. “I’ve worked on cases like this before, and the loopholes are enormous. We’d have to prove that he unpacked the files and stored them on his hard drive or on a removable disc. That’s the only evidence a jury would find compelling enough to convict on.”
“That’s crazy,” Harding concluded.
Graham rubbed his eyes. “I don’t disagree, Sergeant, but we’re constrained by the laws as they currently stand. Juries tend to see records like these,” he gestured at the screen, “as second-hand evidence, a report of an event, rather than direct evidence of the event itself.”
Janice puffed out her cheeks. “I mean,” she sighed, “do they want us to catch these creeps, or not?”
“The person I want to catch,” he reminded her, “is the person who caused Beth Ridley to go missing. I don’t know if Lyon’s adventures on the Internet relate to that in any way, but it does point to an unfortunate interest in young women and girls, and that’s the line I think we should take with him. Let’s lose this battle,” he gestured at the screen again, “in order to win the war, eh?”
“Might it be a good idea to have another chat with him? Ask for an explanation? Even just to shake him up a bit?”
A small kitchen timer trilled on Graham’s desk, and he stood to walk the few paces to the corner cabinet where a teapot stood ready. He poured a cup and savored the aroma before turning to Harding. “With all that you’ve shown me, we could probably get a warrant to seize and search his hard drive,” Graham said. “But he’s not our only suspect.”
Harding thought for a second. “Don’t tell me that you’ve got something on that old couple in Weymouth?” Harding asked.
“They had a doll, as near as I co
uld tell identical to the one Beth was taking for repair on the day she vanished. It was also missing a leg.”
“Wow,” Harding breathed.
The station’s front door opened and Roach appeared. “Morning,” he called.
“Morning, Constable,” Graham turned to Janice. “Roach has been tracking down a homeless man who was sleeping in the bushes near Beth’s home around the time she disappeared. We need to chase that lead down, too, before we take any action on Lyon. And we still haven’t spoken to the friend who walked to school with Beth every day. This has a long way to go, yet.”
Roach came to Graham’s office door. “So, I’ve found him,” he announced with a certain pride. “His name’s Joe Melton, and he lives on Guernsey. With your permission sir, I’d like to head over there this afternoon and see what he has to say for himself.”
“Granted,” the DI said, “as long as the water’s calm. Don’t want you out for the count again.”
“Got anything more on Lyon?” Roach asked.
“Not half,” Janice answered.
“Don’t tell me, let me guess. He’s a complete pervert.”
This time, Graham made no move to disagree. “Creepy,” he confirmed. “Uncommon interests.”
“Hmph,” was all Roach said.
“But,” Graham said, a finger aloft to caution against speculation, “he’s not the only suspect, and we still have other leads to chase down. Right, Constable?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Guess I’m off to Guernsey, then.”
“You are indeed,” Graham replied, “and while you’re doing that, Sergeant Harding and I will speak with Susan Miller.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THEY CLIMBED THE stairs together, making their way to the third and highest floor. The stairwell was painted forest green with orange baseboards and steps so that it looked more like the back stairs of a chain restaurant than an apartment building.
“Do you ever find this to be a bit of a chore?” Harding asked.
The Case of the Broken Doll (An Inspector David Graham Cozy Mystery Book 4) Page 7