‘Well done, Thomas. Very well done. So that needs to be got over to Llangunnor as soon as possible. Get the SIM in the kiosk to extract the data. Hopefully, it may be related to this case but if not, it could be something else fishy. The sooner we get to see the contents, the better. Thanks again, Thomas. I hope you’ve ensured the phone has not been mishandled in any way. By the way, what sort of phone is it and what colour?’
‘It’s a gold iPhone. I’ve been very careful, indeed I have, ma’am. Only thing is it’s been under snow for a time, so I don’t know…’ She is too tired to listen to Thomas ramble.
‘Good man, bye for now.’
From the car, she calls Sara. ‘Sorry to trouble you again so soon, Sara, but I wondered whether you could tell me what Bette’s phone looked like?’
‘Yes, I can. It was an iPhone.’
‘And would you recall the colour?’
‘Gold,’ says Sara.
Take her by surprise, thinks Jane. ‘And there’s just one more question I meant to ask before. Why stay in Cliff Edge once they’d gone? Why not return to your own home earlier?’
‘I wanted to take Bette’s dog with me back to my flat, but I’d already gone through hoops with pleading to be allowed one well-behaved dog and the landlord would never allow me to have two – that’s rented property in Cambridge for you. Also, I could never get away with two dogs at my job. I had decided to wait a little while longer in hope that one or both would get in touch. But, as I told you, I have heard nothing. I don’t know what to do about Brynn. He’s such a lovely dog and I’d like to keep him. The two dogs have become inseparable. And this place is so perfect for them. But of course, I have to get back to Cambridge soon. It’s a real quandary. But now’ – there is a choke in her voice – ‘with poor Bette being dead, I shall have to keep him. I’ll just have to find somewhere outside Cambridge that will allow two dogs.’
Jane thanks her for her help, asks her to stay a few days longer and assures her the police guard will remain at Cliff Edge.
On the way back to Llangunnor to go to their various homes, Jane is quiet in the car. She thinks through the interview. She knows better than to trust every word a witness says. While there’s no simple way to discern the difference between a stressed-out, innocent person from a criminal trying to trick you, Jane is inclined to believe Sara is telling the truth. But she never bases a case solely on what a witness says. They could, after all, be a suspect. She encouraged Sara to tell her story in narrative form so that later when asked to repeat it, if it was not the truth, she might make a mess of the details.
Jane imagines that Bette’s killer is either desperate, jealous or angry. For all she knows, this Sara may have bumped off the couple and have been planning to take over their house in Wales with no one knowing. But once the police showed up, she may have had to alter her plans. Jane must treat her as though she is a clever, cunning murderer. But then again, if she was a murderer, why would she alert the police? If it was her that rang them? But who else was it? Perhaps some passer-by? They had dusted the phone box, found some fingerprints with no match. That would have been the last thing she would have done.
Jealousy stood out as the obvious motive but since the woman was seriously upset or the equivalent of an Oscar-winning actress, Jane decides for the moment to believe Sara… for now.
Her thoughts turn to the mobile phone. Who would leave a phone up at the Witch’s Cauldron unless it was to deliberately lose the thing? Maybe someone meant to throw it in the sea but the wind blew it back and prevented it from going down? So much to think about. She is looking forward to reading Bette’s diary. Maybe there’ll be a clue or two in there. This is far from a clear-cut case.
The trouble is she’s fussing about Meg. This keeps interrupting her usually clear patterns of thought. What a time for such a thing to happen. When she’s investigating a case of murder. She tells herself the cold light of day will help and so will seeing Meg.
She has again had a flashback while interviewing the de Vries woman. It won’t do. She can’t let it start happening again, but how can it be stopped? She will call the counsellor when she has a free moment.
Evans hums and plays his fingers on the steering wheel, both of which irritate but she manages to avoid saying anything. She knows he only does it to relax himself. She blanks him out as she needs to go deep into the act of remembering just about everything Sara said. Of course, she will be able to listen back to the recording the following day but for now, she wants to think over the interview. It’s not just what a person says; it’s how they say it. She’s good at both verbal and physical recall which helps a great deal if you’re in the police. Did Sara say or do anything to incriminate herself? No, she didn’t. Had her body language given anything away? No, it hadn’t.
The main thing that has disturbed Jane was the fact that the woman had not reported the couple’s disappearance. Any decent citizen would surely have got the info to the police earlier.
By the time Jane gets home it is 8.10pm. She rushes from her car to the bungalow front door, almost slipping on the ice as she does. Slow down, she tells herself. Another couple of seconds won’t make any difference at all. She collects herself and as she approaches the bungalow starts fretting as there are no lights on.
She runs in to see a note left on the kitchen table.
Doc said I’d better go to hospital as she thinks wrist broken. She ordered an ambulance to take me to Glangwili. Didn’t call as I know you’re up to your eyes. Will do when I can. Lucky it’s left wrist so can still write and call you. DON’T WORRY SIS! I’m a big girl now and will be fine. Got my chair and Carys is with me, of course.
Jane’s heart gallops. She rereads the note. In a police situation when facing a criminal, she is always calm but when it comes to Meg, she finds it so difficult. Her instinct is to dash to the hospital but she makes herself grab a couple of bags of crisps, a chocolate bar and a bottle of water as she’s starving and thirsty. She always has some snacks in reserve for when work gets hectic. She brings them with her as she forces herself to take her time, returning to the car and driving within the speed limit into Carmarthen. She feels as though she has become her sister’s mother.
She parks legally and walks to the A&E department as calmly as she can. She roams the hospital until she finally finds Meg with Carys. They’re in a queue to collect some painkillers from the pharmacy.
Once she has seen her sister, Jane’s panic subsides and relief takes over. She reprimands herself for being so silly. Meg is a grown-up with a good brain and, apart from her disablement, can look after herself.
‘Wouldn’t have mattered if it had been a leg.’
‘So true. Are you starving, Meg?’
‘No, no. Carys got us both some sandwiches and disgusting coffee from the canteen.’
‘Good on you, Carys.’
‘Try my best, always try my best,’ coos Carys.
When they began to cope with the horror of the train crash disaster, the sisters developed their own method of sending stress packing by making light of everything. Jane had being strong thrust upon her and has managed extraordinarily well. But the pain of what happened and how much of her sister’s young life, as well as part of her own, has been stolen from them, remains in her sore heart. She misses both her parents but in particular her mother, as she is certain Meg does.
It is at moments like these that she longs for that practical, down-to-earth woman to walk in and take over. Their parents are a subject the sisters cannot jest about so instead of talking about them, they leave it alone. When they find themselves talking about their childhood, there is always the loss of their kind, reliable mum in the background to sour those memories.
Jane drives Meg, her chair in the boot and Carys sitting in the back. They arrive back at the bungalow at 9.15pm.
All of them are exhausted, but when they get home, Jane opens and heats a tin of soup for them and then helps Meg to bed. She finally falls into her own by 10.30pm.
To get to Fishguard for 8am tomorrow she must allow a good hour, so she sets her alarm for 6.10am.
Meg has happily persuaded her to wake her, just help her to the loo, then leave her in her chair in her dressing gown and slippers. The washing and dressing can wait until Carys appears later.
Jane is physically, mentally and emotionally worn out. It’s been a very long day.
22
8 January 2018. Fishguard
It turns out that PC Thomas has overlooked a vital factor. The man who deals with technological matters back in Carmarthen has announced there is no SIM card in the mobile phone found at the Cauldron. Jane is annoyed with Thomas. It’s fundamental to check for a SIM card before taking a device back for inspection. She calls and ticks him off firmly.
‘So very sorry, ma’am.’ He draws out the r in very and the o in sorry. ‘My bad, my bad.’
For the moment that lead has fizzled. If they could find the SIM, it could be an important help. Jane’s heart is not happy that she must send more men up there to that freezing, dangerous place and ask them once again to comb the site looking for a tiny piece of plastic in the extremely unlikely event that it might be there. It is probably far away but just in case, literally every blade of grass on the top of the Cauldron must be examined with scrupulous care – and then she has an idea. Metal detectors. A strong enough detector should find it with relative ease. So she sets the operation in motion.
Now, she sits with Evans in her office chair and they brainstorm about the case. Evans bites the nail off a second finger and while Jane avoids watching him to stem any exasperation, he says, ‘If Bette Davies jumped to her end, the last thing on her mind would have been her phone, surely? So this must point to a deliberate act by someone other than the drowned woman.’ He pauses. ‘Or does it? If it contained incriminating evidence against either herself or someone she wanted to protect, it is possible she thought of getting rid of it before jumping.’
‘Good point, Evans.’ Jane was immediately reminded that in spite of his annoying habits, Evans could think logically and well. She felt bad for allowing herself to be exasperated by him. He was a good man, at the end of the day. ‘Except, thinking about it, Mike Hanson was apparently there so it’s more probable that he grabbed it from her and deliberately removed the SIM then threw it away, dropping the empty phone before they departed. There were likely to be incriminating messages on it that Mike had sent her, so if it was him who dropped it, he wouldn’t have meant to leave the SIM there.’
‘Or, was Bette holding the phone and about to ring someone when her murderer wrenched it from her before pushing her off? Did they then remove the SIM and throw it somewhere other than the phone case?’ Evans’ latter explanation makes good sense. Especially as it had snowed around that time.
‘There’s a third possibility.’ Evans’ cogs were whirring now. ‘That whoever killed her wanted us to find the phone.’
They agree that both seem the most likely theories they have come up with so far.
The DNA from the hair and toothbrushes has been analysed and the brown hair is a match for the remains of blood spatters on the dead woman’s coat. The saltwater has done its best to remove them but the sharp-eyed Max has found a tiny spot remaining. This links Mike’s blood to his partner’s coat.
Jane talks this over with Evans and her chief superintendent but they cannot come up with a probable scenario. The best they can surmise is that Bette put up a fight before she was pushed to her death and managed somehow to scratch or cut her killer. With what they cannot tell and there was no sign of a knife or weapon with which she might have done this. Perhaps she just had sharp nails. If so, they have disintegrated in the water so there is no point asking Max if there’s any skin or blood under them.
A call comes in from headquarters. A SIM card has been found up on the path by the Cauldron, close to where the phone was discovered. It is in the kiosk now and Jane will soon know whether it is Bette’s.
When the technicians establish it to be so, Jane catches her breath. That it is still working is a miracle. Apparently, it was found under a crisp packet wrapper that had been frozen to the ground. For once a litterbug had been helpful. This could be the lucky breakthrough they need.
Jane is delighted to hear the news and shares her theory with Evans.
‘I think whoever killed her intended to throw the SIM into the sea, but I believe the wind caught it and blew it back onto the land.’
She asks one of the technicians to bring the phone and SIM to Fishguard straight away.
While Jane is waiting for the tech guy to arrive, she has a chance to look through Bette’s thick diary. The young woman comes across as a kind, intelligent person who loved Mike deeply and was distraught by the loss of her baby. It seems the couple’s devotion was ruined by the tragedy and that things between them went downhill thereafter. Jane is particularly interested in a passage written on October 6th in 2017 where Bette’s loneliness comes across clearly due to Mike having turned against her. She describes his hatred of her and conjectures whether he may plan to ‘do away with’ – but doesn’t finish the sentence as it is too painful to write. She describes meeting Sara for the first time as a tonic to a friendless soul.
Jane learnt early in her career that you must just make a decision. You won’t get them all right, but you have to make a decision or you won’t move the investigation on. There are so many routes she could take but she decides to go with this one. The finger is pointing firmly at Mike. So, where has the man got to?
About two hours later, the tech man reaches the town hall; together he and Jane check through all the recent calls, messages and contacts. They prove Sara’s story of the friendship between the two women. And they prove the problems between Mike and Bette, who seem to avoid speaking to one another when they can send curt texts instead. They also find some downright nasty texts swapped between Bette and Mike. They search for pictures but can see they’ve recently been deleted and are untraceable. Maybe among them had been photos of the baby that Bette couldn’t bear to keep.
There is no proof but given the evidence they have plus the fact that there is no trace of Michael Hanson, the police now alter his status from a ‘person of interest’ to ‘wanted for murder’. They put out an all-ports warning and posters are printed of his picture and circulated to all forces in the UK.
10 January 2018, Fishguard
And then, a couple of days later when all searches for Mike and his car have led nowhere, the Cardigan Police receive a call from a local farmer who reports what appears to be an abandoned blue BMW on a remote corner of his land at Foel Hendre near St Dogmaels. It has been left close to a headland on top of 500-foot cliffs. The only way it could have got there was down a private farm track and then across some rocky land. Apparently, the car has been noticed there for a couple of days but since the farmer had not had cause to go down recently, it might have been there since Christmas.
Jane hears about this and her heart jumps. She and Evans race to the spot. The number plate is quickly checked and found to belong to Michael Hanson. The car is empty but for a tartan scarf. Men and women wearing face masks and latex gloves check through it for traces of anything that might give them a clue but there is no blood, no sign of struggle, nothing to indicate any violence has taken place.
They go over the bodywork and take photographs of everything but there is nothing in there. Fingerprint experts are called to the car. It is carefully dusted and the scarf is bagged up. The glove compartment and the side pockets are emptied and the contents bagged up as well and the lot is taken back to Llangunnor.
The ground around the car is thoroughly searched. The track is studied for tyre prints but the snow has been their enemy. The land is high and there are still some frozen patches of snow and no footprints. Careful scrutiny finds some scattered brown polyester as well as some blue fibres on the ground between the car and the cliff edge. Later analysis reveals the brown to be from a coat or puffer jacket; and the bl
ue from jeans.
By the edge they find a pair of man’s size-ten, brown walking boots, lying haphazardly on their sides as though hurriedly unlaced and kicked off.
For a moment Jane wishes remote areas like this had CCTV. She decides the best course is to arrange for a couple of police drones to be sent over the edge of the cliff and down to the inaccessible strip of pebble beach below.
It is half a day before this happens but when the cameras carefully scan every inch of the spot, they find no sign of any disturbance or a body.
If someone jumped or was pushed, their body would have been carried out to sea on the tide.
Jane sits at a table with Evans and three other detectives on the case. Unfortunately, they have no timeline. The farmer said he had not been down to that area since Christmas so the car could have been there for over two weeks. Three sets of DNA have been found in the car. Some match those from the toothbrushes and the hairs taken from the bedroom in Cliff Edge as well as Sara’s who stated she had got into Mike’s car when she tried to reason with him not to drive in a snow blizzard.
Deciding to presume that Mike Hanson drove the car to the cliff edge, the group discuss the fibres found on the ground. For what possible reason would the man have crawled to the edge leaving behind fibres from his clothing? Might instead he have been dragged or pulled? On second thoughts, did he drag himself? This could only have been because he had been too weak to stand or he had collapsed for some reason.
‘Or’ – Evans puts up his hand like a schoolboy in class – ‘did he drug himself out of his head in order to be certain to die?’
The team comes up with a predictive list of possible scenarios.
Option One: Mike Hanson committed suicide by jumping off the cliff.
Option Two: He abandoned his car there to make it seem that way. He deliberately left a pair of walking boots then walked a long way (presumably wearing a different pair of boots or shoes) to the nearest place he could get food and transport and make a getaway.
Cliff Edge: a gripping psychological mystery Page 18