Her Sister's Secret

by E. V. Seymour

  A more detailed account revealed that Drea and friends had rented a cottage. This tallied with a photograph of a stone terraced dwelling in Vineyard Street, a popular place for rentals and steeped in history with ancient links to the vineyards belonging to the monks of Winchcombe Abbey. The only other picture: The White Hart, an old coaching inn. Recently tarted up, it bore little resemblance to the place it was a decade or more before. Beside it, Rocco had simply inscribed three question marks. Next to the photograph of the cottage, Rocco had written: where Drea was last seen. He’d also dated it and scribbled New Year’s Eve, Drea’s body had been found in June. She’d gone off the radar for months, which, to my mind, didn’t necessarily mean that she’d been dead all that time. Rocco didn’t seem to think so either. He wrote: Where did she go? Who with?

  I turned to a later article in the Bath Chronicle, which reported that Drea’s last resting place was the largest stone mine in the country. It consisted of a sixty- mile network of tunnels, parts of which were so unstable that it was illegal to enter. Despite this, there were numerous entrances, which could be accessed from Box Hill. And people did; from curious cavers to naïve youngsters wanting to party. Ownership belonged primarily to a building materials company and the MOD. In short, only idiots would enter. Initial reports made no mention of cause of death. I recognised that this was standard procedure, at least until a post-mortem was carried out. Dad had also told me that sometimes, with murder cases, for example, police kept their cards close and withheld information in the initial stages because that one vital clue could be a game-changer when nailing a culprit.

  With the place shut to all personnel, including the employees of the owners of the site, only government environmental advisers were allowed in to monitor the progress of two species of protected bats. It was on one such visit that Drea’s body was found, by chance. What were the odds of making such a discovery?

  More perplexing, a later article in a national newspaper reported that cause of death had been drowning. Nowhere was there mention of water in the mine. I was chewing this over when my eyes snagged first on Rocco’s writing: Cranial injuries cause of death? Secondly, the name of the Senior Investigating Officer: Detective Chief Inspector Clive Mallis, my dad’s old colleague.

  A flicker of fear lit me up inside.

  Feverishly, I returned to the earlier newspaper cuttings, read more slowly, looked more carefully. Phones apparently didn’t work at such depths, which made descent into the mine even more precarious. Abundantly clear, the company who owned most of the site had done everything in their power to warn people off and block up a number of entrances while ensuring that rescue teams could enter so that people had a fighting chance of making their way out.

  Unable to draw conclusions that didn’t scare the life out of me, I got up, went in search of more booze, fished out the half bottle of vodka that had loitered underneath the sink for a year or more. Needing to dull the shock, without clouding my judgement, I poured a healthy measure and topped it up with fresh orange juice. One big brainstorming gulp later, I forced myself to return to the screen. With creeping dread, my finger hovered over the second attachment. Click click, I was in.

  The names read like a cast list in a popular television series. I read, as if in a trance, until my eyes shot to Scarlet’s name. Below it was newspaper pieces, some of them printed from the internet, that I recognised only too well. Why would Rocco Noble be this interested in Scarlet’s life and, more importantly, her death?

  In a sort of inverted family tree, there were photographs of me. No snaps of Zach or Dad, but below my brother’s name, Rocco had written: former drug addict, lives in a commune. 38 years old. Son of Roderick Napier, police officer and disinterested bastard. I practically swayed off my seat. Either Rocco had asked me questions about my family, already knowing the answers and seeking to corroborate them, his interest entirely fake, or he had actively pumped me for information. Noted beside Zach’s name, his mobile phone number with three questions: Did he know Drea? Was he the mystery man? Was he the last to see her alive?

  Now I understood why Rocco had snatched up my phone, why he’d gone through my stuff, why he’d spoken to Zach. He was digging for dirt.

  I sat back, tried and failed to tame the sick sensation in the pit of my stomach. Ten years ago, I was travelling, and Scarlet was working at a hospital in Edinburgh. That year, Dad pretty much had a nervous breakdown and Zach went into rehab after one narcotic trip too many. A case of clean up or check out. Forever. He’d appealed to Mum – Dad was too unwell – to give him one last chance. She had and, at their insistence, he’d embarked on a brutal regime of supervised withdrawal. Blood pulsed through my brain at the implication. Had Zach and Drea shared a common passion: drugs? Is this how their paths had crossed? But what was Rocco’s game? Why the tableau, the drama, the deception?

  Snatches of conversation rippled through my mind. Too smart to question me openly, Rocco had sneaked into my bed and into my life. Tricked me. Duped me. Used me. Seduction and honey trap sounded soft and lovely and sexy. It was nothing like that. Rocco had betrayed me. A shameless opportunist, he’d exploited Scarlet’s death and taken advantage of my vulnerability. Shame flamed my cheeks at my own stupidity for falling for it.

  The third attachment contained location shots that included the interior of the mine. Dark, brooding, with sheer walls, some reaching up for what looked like hundreds of feet. I scoured each photograph for underground lakes and pools and saw none. As if to confirm this, Rocco had written: No water visible. Body moved?

  I thought about that. It implied that Drea had been murdered. As a place to conceal a body, it was a clever choice and that meant the killer was smart too. But I was running ahead of myself.

  I logged out, reached for mental footholds that were as slippery and ungraspable as the sides of the mine.

  A glance at my watch confirmed it was late. Scarlet’s funeral was in three days. No way could I keep this to myself until it was over, and a respectable period of mourning had passed. Without hesitation, I reached for my phone.

  “Dad,” I said as soon as he answered.

  “Molly, sweetheart, how are you?”

  “I need your help.” My words came out all thick and shaky as if someone had filled my mouth with glue and sand. “Can I come over?”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “No, well not much, yes, a bit.”

  “Stay where you are.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll come to you. See you in a minute. And Molly—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Make yourself some coffee. Make it strong.”

  Chapter 49

  “Who the hell is this man?” My dad’s voice was deadweight.

  We sat side-by-side on my sofa, the coffee table with two mugs and my laptop in front of us. I was purple with embarrassment. My father had every right to disapprove of me starting a sexual relationship in the wake of Scarlet’s death.

  I’d never seen him look so furious and we hadn’t started on the heavy stuff I’d downloaded to my computer.

  I gave him a verbal account of how I’d met Rocco and when; his fixation on some random woman’s death and forced connections to our family, including Scarlet. The warning signs were plain to see. Dad’s skin drained to the colour of sour milk. Thin blue veins in his neck pulsed, but it was his eyes that did me in. They were narrow and sharp and accusing. I felt condemned.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  I was insistent that he hadn’t.

  “Where does he live?”

  “In Worcester but his grandmother left him a house here in Malvern, up on the Wyche.”

  Something unknowable passed behind his eyes and his jaw tensed. I guess he felt threatened. His patch. His daughter. His family. My eyes widened as a creepy thought took shape in my head. Dad caught the vibe. “We’ve found the culprit responsible for breaking into your house.”

  I pressed a hand to my mouth. Oh my God.

 
“Write down both addresses – and where this creep works.” It wasn’t an ask, but an order. I wrote on a notepad, ripped out the page, handed it to him. Without a glance, he shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans. “The stuff you found in his flat,” he said quietly, slipping out his spectacles. “Let’s see it.”

  I took a breath, leaned across, opened one attachment, and got up, walked off a little, gave him space. He sat, fused to the screen, without a flicker of visible emotion in his expression.

  “Next,” he said. Deadpan.

  I closed one attachment, opened the second, and when he’d read that, the third. I studied his face, waiting and primed for a strong reaction at seeing his old colleague’s name there in black and white. Not a flicker. When he finished, he took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes and leaned back, staring ahead. Silence, as suffocating as a bonfire on a hot summer’s day, enveloped us.

  “Dad?”

  He leant forward, steepling his fingers over his nose and mouth, and briefly closed his eyes. Confusion rampaged through me. My insides curdled, blood thickened. Eventually, he let his hands fall.

  “Right.” He spoke as if he’d come to a massive decision, like he was about to tell me something that would explain absolutely everything, including the reason for Scarlet’s death. I realised I was holding my breath.

  “This is all my fault,” he said.

  No, no, no. A fresh current of fear jolted through me. I couldn’t comprehend and, in that moment,, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  “Drea Temple, the missing woman. She was my case. My last case, as it turned out, the one that broke me.”

  Okay, I thought shakily. That’s not so bad. “But how does Rocco Noble fit?”

  “Noble is her half-brother.”

  I was glad to be sitting down. So that explained his obsession – sort of. “And is this how your path crossed with your old colleague, Clive Mallis?”

  He nodded. “I picked up the first half of the investigation, Clive, sadly, the second.”

  “Is Clive still with the police?”

  Dad shook his head. “Got out, like me. Works in the antiques trade in Gloucestershire. I never imagined that, ten years later, he’d be offering me his condolences.” His eyes were no less hard but this time there were tears in them.

  “So, Rocco bore a grudge?”

  Dad took his time answering. “Nothing excuses his behaviour.”

  “But?”

  He let out a long sigh. “I didn’t take Drea’s missing status as seriously as I should have.”

  Hence Rocco’s phrase: disinterested bastard. “Doesn’t sound like you.” My dad was assiduous in all that he did. Ask him to give a hundred per cent and he would, body and soul.

  He smiled sadly. “I’d been under a lot of pressure, heading up a number of serious investigations. Ironically, that Christmas—”

  “The one before Drea disappeared?”

  “Uh-huh, I was given leave, first time in I don’t know how long.”

  I sipped my coffee. “And New Year?”

  He flicked a wry smile. “Your mum likened my behaviour at the time to diver’s decompression.”

  I thought back. I had still been travelling through Eastern Europe.

  “Anyway,” he said, serious again, “I went back to work on 3 January and no sooner than I’m at my desk when I get wind of a missing status report. I didn’t exactly jump on it.”

  “Surely, it wouldn’t be unusual to suppose Drea was still enjoying the festivities? I mean if she’d gone to Scotland, New Year there is taken a lot more seriously.”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  “But?”

  “Even as the days passed and turned into weeks, I’m ashamed to say that I regarded her as a woman who could have gone anywhere with anyone at any time.”

  “Presumably, based on evidence.”

  “Based on what I’d established – yes.”

  “So you made a judgement.” Was that such a crime? Isn’t that what you were paid to do? As a police officer’s daughter, I understood better than most the pressures and fine distinctions that came with running major investigations.

  “I did. And I was wrong.”

  “And if you’d taken it seriously, would she be alive today?”

  “Maybe not,” he conceded. “I don’t know. I’ll never know. Put it this way, the family blamed me and so did others.”

  So that’s what had led to his breakdown and retirement. It all dropped snugly into place and I was aghast. This was the first time I’d heard the precise reason why my dad had left the job he loved. I was so wrapped up in my own little world it had passed me by.

  “Drea was found on 23 June. I handed in my resignation the week after.”

  He stared ahead, numb and unreachable and detached. As uncomfortable as I found it, I had more questions.

  “Why would Rocco suggest that Zach knew Drea?”

  Dad hitched a shoulder. “Drea was a drug-user.”

  “Could their paths have crossed?”

  “Theoretically, but it’s tenuous. Zach wasn’t the only young man off his face on drugs in Gloucestershire.”

  It sounded to me as if Rocco was cobbling together evidence to fit his own narrative. I put this to Dad.

  “It’s not uncommon for a victim’s relatives to fixate on a particular line of enquiry or, indeed, on someone they regard as a potential perpetrator.” I pinched inside. Wasn’t this exactly what I was doing since Scarlet’s death? Strain tugged my father’s face into a mask.

  “What about Rocco’s suggestion that Zach was the last person to see her alive?”

  “Where’s his evidence? Zach was at home with us.”

  Thank God. “I’m so sorry, Dad, that I wasn’t more supportive with Zach.”

  “You had your own life.”

  “It must have been hard.”

  “If I’d been in any other job, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but as a copper —” He shook his head in dismay. “There were all sorts of rumours flying around.”

  “Like what?”

  “That I’d turned a blind eye. The best one,” he said with a short laugh, “I’d helped myself to confiscated drug supplies and handed them to Zach.”

  Was this what Heather had alluded to when she talked about digging up the dirt? “God, Dad, how didn’t I know this? You never breathed a word.”

  “About rumours that were lies? What was the point? Anyway, I had your mum to lean on. She was my rock.” I’d heard that expression so many times it seemed a phrase devoid of meaning. Out of my dad’s mouth, it assumed its original status. I realised what my mother had been forced to put up with. In a flash, I saw her with fresh eyes. Again, I lurched inside for getting things so wrong.

  “Should we talk to Zach?”

  “About what?”

  “About this,” I said, gesturing at my laptop.

  “No. Zach is still fragile. Always will be.”

  I hadn’t forgotten the way Zach had got antsy with me when I’d pushed him about the reason Scarlet took her own life.

  “You don’t look happy, Molly.”

  I wasn’t. I wanted to have a grown-up conversation with my brother, but Dad was probably right.

  He rested his hand on my knee. “There’s nothing more for you to worry about. I’ll handle Rocco Noble.”

  “How?” I said anxiously.

  “I’ll speak to Stanton again.”

  “Right,” I said, unsettled.

  “Promise you won’t have anything else to do with Noble?”

  “You have my word.” The thought of running into him made me queasy.

  “And delete those files.”

  I wasn’t at all happy about this. It felt too much like getting rid of the evidence. How else could I confront Rocco if I didn’t have the files? I nodded emptily.

  “Now.” Again, his tone demanded total obedience.

  Reluctantly, I did as he said. Neither of us spoke. A thought still tugged at the back of my min
d. “Why would Rocco be interested in Scarlet?”

  “He wasn’t. His interest was simply a means to get to me.”

  I tiptoed up to my next question as if walking a high wire strung across a canyon. “About Drea.”

  “Yes?” His eyes were steady.

  “Were there any sightings of her between the time she went missing and when she was found?”

  “Two. One in Birmingham and another in London.”

  “Not exactly helpful.”

  “We followed up but there was no trace of her.”

  “The newspaper report stated that she’d drowned.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Wouldn’t her lungs have decomposed?”

  “Obviously, but the pathologist found the presence of diatoms, or micro-algae in her bone marrow. The only way these could enter would be via the respiratory system.”

  “Is there water in the mine?”

  “No.”

  “So she’d drowned some place and her body moved?”

  “That’s the working theory.”

  “She was murdered then?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “What about the cranial injuries?”

  “Abrasions on the skeleton were identified. Obviously, variables in such cases are immense, but the pathologist concluded that cause of death was drowning.”

  “Someone drowned her?”

  “No evidence to suggest it.”

  I let out a frustrated sigh. Was he driven solely by what he could prove? I guess, as a former policeman, he was.

  “What’s inescapable,” Dad conceded, “is that someone moved her body, a crime in itself.”

  “Why would they do that if not for the obvious reason that they’d also killed her?”

  Dad broke into a smile at my tenacity. “There was a full investigation, Molly, if that’s what’s troubling you. We never really got very far and, with the coroner declaring it an open verdict, a decision was made to call it a day.” The stress of that dark time was, without doubt still etched upon his face. I knew what he was thinking. My dad, a perfectionist in all things, believed he’d failed Drea’s family.