by Sibel Hodge
‘What’s going on? Did they take much? Did they do a lot of damage?’ She asked.
‘It wasn’t a burglary.’ I took a big sniff and wiped my eyes with the heel of my hands. ‘Come into the kitchen.’ I gripped her hand and pulled her behind me, introducing the new addition to the dig-up-my-best-friend party. ‘This is my sister-in-law, Nadia, Tom’s daughter. This is DI Spencer and DS Khan.’
Nadia looked at me, eyes wide with worry. ‘Has something happened to Ethan? Or Dad?’
‘Maybe you’d both like to sit down?’ DI Spencer indicated the oak dining room table in front of the French doors that led to the courtyard garden.
Nadia sat. I stood.
‘You found something, didn’t you?’ I asked.
DI Spencer and DS Khan exchanged a stern look.
‘Found what?’ Nadia frowned – just from between the eyebrows, mind you. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Whatever you’re going to tell me you can say in front of Nadia.’
‘I’m afraid we discovered bones consistent with a young woman buried underneath the concrete floor of your garage, Mrs Tate, just like you suspected,’ DI Spencer said, and the room swam in front of my eyes.
Chapter Sixteen
I put my hands over my face, as if to shield myself from the reality of it. The floor seemed to wobble underneath my feet.
‘What?’ Nadia shrieked. ‘What do you mean?’
I dropped my hands limply to my sides. ‘It’s Katie,’ I told her. ‘Katie Quinn.’
‘Katie?’ She looked between Spencer, Khan and I, head going back and forth. ‘What the . . . How can she be under there? She ran away.’
‘We can’t say who the remains belong to at this stage,’ DS Khan said. ‘Although, given Mr Tate’s confession to you, it seems most likely.’
‘Confession?’ Nadia said.
‘Who else could it be?’ I kept my eyes on DS Khan as I sat down before my legs gave out completely. Tears burned in my eyes.
‘The scene of crime officers and a forensic anthropologist are recovering the remains at the moment, along with any evidence they find,’ DI Spencer said.
The front door opened and Poppy bounded down the hallway, first coming up to me and wiggling with excitement, then turning her attention to Nadia and finally DI Spencer and DS Khan, who gave a tight smile but ignored her. I called her to me absentmindedly and stroked her head as she lay on the floor, panting.
My gaze met Ethan’s as he stood in the kitchen doorway. He could tell from my expression what was going on.
He uttered one single word loudly. ‘No!’
I nodded, allowing the tears to fall now, not caring. ‘Yes. She’s really there.’
‘How did you know?’ Nadia’s jaw dropped open.
‘Tom told me.’ I squeezed her hand as Ethan shook his head, his features dissolving into blankness.
‘He told you?’ Nadia asked again, her own eyes welling up. ‘Are you saying . . . that stuff with Georgia was just where he was getting mixed up?’
‘Georgia? Who’s Georgia?’ DI Spencer asked.
DS Khan retrieved a notebook and pen from the pocket of her mac and started taking notes. Why did she even have a mac on when it was about twenty-six degrees? Surely that alone would make her unable to judge things properly. How could she be a proper policewoman if she couldn’t even dress herself according to the weather?
‘Do you want to sit down?’ I said to Ethan, who glared at me in response.
‘So, who’s Georgia?’ DS Khan repeated.
Through the sniffs and tears, I started at the beginning, telling them how Tom had become agitated lately, having bad dreams, fixating on someone called Georgia Walker who he said was missing and that he’d killed. I said how Sergeant Downing had actually traced her to the next village of Abbotsbury and she was very much alive and well, and how we’d thought that was the end of it.
‘But then I went to see Tom again and he told me he wasn’t talking about killing Georgia: he was talking about Katie.’
‘And he actually mentioned Katie Quinn?’ DS Khan asked. ‘The young woman who apparently ran away from home twenty-five years ago?’
I nodded.
Ethan ran his hands through his hair again. It would all fall out at this rate.
Nadia wiped her eyes with a tissue from her pocket; her cheeks were devoid of their usual rosiness.
‘Shouldn’t we get Chris here?’ I said. ‘This is going to involve him, too.’
‘Who’s Chris?’ DI Spencer asked.
‘Our brother,’ Ethan spoke his first words since his ‘No!’ outburst and sat down, too. ‘He’s at a building site in Weymouth.’
‘We can speak to him later,’ DS Khan said. ‘For now, we need to get some more background information from all of you since you’re here.’ She locked her gaze on me. ‘Go on, please. What exactly did Mr Tate tell you?’
‘That he wasn’t talking about Georgia. And that he’d killed Katie. Um . . . he was rambling a lot, like he does these days, but he said it was an accident, that she wasn’t supposed to be there. And then he said something about how he had to do it. I tried to get more out of him but he became very distressed and suffered a minor heart attack.’
‘You mentioned on the phone when you reported this that he was alive but very frail.’
‘Yes, the Alzheimer’s is taking its toll on his heart and lungs,’ I said. ‘He signed a DNR order when he was diagnosed and still in control of his mind, so they just gave him medication and made him comfortable after the heart attack.’
‘He’s not up to being questioned by you lot,’ Ethan said brusquely.
DI Spencer studied him for a moment. ‘I know this is very difficult and upsetting for you all.’
Ethan snorted. ‘That’s an understatement.’
I reached out and squeezed his hand but he snatched it away.
‘And then what happened after the heart attack?’ DI Spencer asked.
‘I went to see him a few days later and that’s when he told me that he’d . . . Oh, God!’ I shook my head. ‘That he’d . . . that he’d buried her under the floor in the garage.’
‘It’s been two days since then. Why didn’t you call us immediately?’ DS Khan asked.
I glanced at Ethan. The agitation, disbelief and stress coming off him were almost tangible.
‘Don’t look at me. I didn’t even know until last night,’ he said.
‘I didn’t know until just now,’ Nadia said, gulping back a sob. ‘It’s . . . I just can’t . . .’ She replaced the balled-up, soggy tissue with a fresh one from a pocket-sized packet in her bag.
‘I didn’t want to believe it,’ I said. ‘And after the last time, when we’d just wasted everyone’s time with the Georgia business, I wanted to make sure.’
‘And what made you suddenly sure?’ DI Spencer asked.
‘Well, it was the medical records that made me suspect it was really true.’
‘Medical records?’ DI Spencer frowned.
‘I’d thought about her over the years, and always wondered what happened to her. You know, I thought it was weird when she didn’t get in touch again. But plenty of people run away and never contact the people they know, plus she’d left that letter to Rose and Jack, so I never thought to look at her medical records before. Not until Tom said what he did. And, it wasn’t strictly ethical for me to check them. Data protection and all that.’
‘Right. But you checked after Tom told you this, and what did you find?’ DS Khan wrote something down.
‘That no one had ever requested a copy of her medical records in the last twenty-five years since she’d disappeared. She would’ve had to have regular smear tests, plus she was on the pill, so some doctor’s surgery or clinic would’ve got in touch with the surgery.’
DS
Khan exchanged another look with DI Spencer.
‘She could’ve changed her name,’ Ethan said weakly.
‘Of course she didn’t change her name!’ It was my turn to snap as I pointed towards the garage. ‘She didn’t change her name because she was buried under the garage!’
‘We don’t know it’s her!’ He gave me a brittle stare.
‘OK, OK, let’s all try to calm down.’ DI Spencer waved his hands in what he thought was a calming gesture but only seemed to inflame Ethan even more.
‘Calm down?’ Ethan said. ‘Calm down? You’re accusing my dad of murdering someone and you want me to be calm?’
‘Ethan! They’re just doing their job.’ Nadia laid a hand on his arm.
His shoulders heaved up and down as he breathed hard.
‘We’re just trying to establish the facts, Mr Tate,’ DS Khan said gently.
‘How do we know the facts? Who’s going to remember anything after twenty-five years?’ Ethan shook his head but at least he sat back down.
For some reason, I wanted to slap him. Pretending it wasn’t happening wasn’t going to solve anything. Yes, he was upset by this, but we all were. We had to deal with it whether we liked it or not. It wasn’t like we could brush it under the carpet − or concrete − and forget all about it. Not now.
‘It’s true that most people won’t remember what they were doing twenty-five years ago, but we still have to ask,’ DI Spencer said. ‘This is a murder enquiry now, and if you remember anything, no matter how small, it could help us piece together what happened.’ He turned to me. ‘What did you do after you checked her medical records?’
‘I went to see Chris next, because I remembered we’d talked a lot about Katie running away when it happened. I thought maybe he might remember something I’d forgotten.’
‘Chris, your brother-in-law?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can we have his contact details?’ DS Khan asked.
I gave them his full name, address, landline and mobile phone number.
‘And did he remember anything?’ DI Spencer asked.
‘Well, mostly. He was going out with Katie for about nine months, you see, and he’d broken things off with her about seven months before she . . . um . . . went.’
‘Why did they break up?’ DS Khan again.
‘Well, he was still in love with her, but she was pressuring him to settle down and move in together and get married and he wasn’t ready for it.’ I glanced down the table, trying to recall what he’d said the other night. ‘Apparently, he was the last person to see her. He said he was waiting at the bus stop just up the road here and she walked past. He said hi to her but she didn’t say anything back, and then he watched her walking towards our house. We thought at the time she was going to Abbotsbury. That was the last time he saw her.’
DI Spencer leaned an elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand with a pensive look. ‘Did Chris say anything else?’
I shrugged. ‘Not much. I also went to see Mr Cook. He was the village policeman at the time Katie went missing and he made a few enquiries after Rose and Jack found the letter Katie had left. Um . . .’ I paused.
Everyone waited, watching me.
‘Well, it’s about her dad, Jack. I always thought he was . . . I don’t know. Odd,’ I said.
‘He gave all the girls the creeps.’ Nadia grimaced.
‘Odd, how? You thought something inappropriate was going on between Katie and Jack?’ DS Khan narrowed her eyes slightly.
‘Not at the time, I didn’t, but looking back on things, I think it would explain a lot. Her behaviour, for one,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She was the village slag is what my wife means,’ Ethan said. ‘From the age of about fourteen she’d sleep with anyone.’
‘She was looking for attention and love,’ I insisted, still defending her even though the discovery of her propositioning Ethan was still raw in my mind. ‘Also, I found something else in her medical notes that could raise a red flag for possible sexual abuse.’ I told them what I’d discovered about the vaginal infections.
Nadia let out a horrified gasp.
‘Anyway, then I went to see Mr Cook, to see if he remembered what her goodbye letter said, to make sure she really wrote it. Katie put in the letter that she was leaving the village and they couldn’t stop her. She said, “You know what you both did”.’
DS Khan wrote that down. ‘Did the letter say anything else?’
‘Just that she hoped they rotted in hell.’
DS Khan wrote frantically in her notepad. ‘Did she ever mention her father was abusing her?’
‘No. Never. And, of course, there could be reasonable explanations for her symptoms.’
DI Spencer stared over my shoulder, looking deep in thought. ‘What was her relationship like with her parents?’
‘Not good. She hated them and they argued a lot.’
‘She was a thief, too,’ Ethan butted in. ‘When she was seeing Chris, she was here at the house all the time and things kept going missing. She stole stuff from Nadia.’
‘Is that right?’ DS Khan asked Nadia.
‘Yes, I’m afraid. She took things from my room. I confronted her and she denied it but it must’ve been her.’
‘I was glad when Chris finished with her,’ Ethan said. ‘She was a troublemaker. She would’ve messed his head up if he’d married her.’
‘Rose and Jack were alcoholics, although I don’t think anyone realised how bad they were until after Katie left,’ I added, still feeling as if I had to stick up for Katie. ‘Looking back, they must’ve neglected her from an early age. I think she had to fend for herself most of the time, although she never admitted that to me. As she got older, she didn’t spend much time at home if she could help it.’
‘Did Katie drink, too? Or was she into drugs?’ DS Khan asked.
‘She liked to drink, I suppose. We both looked older than our age so we used to sneak into pubs when we were seventeen,’ I said. ‘But it was just usual teenage experimenting. She wasn’t like Jack and Rose or anything. And she never did drugs that I knew of.’
DI Spencer looked pensive. ‘Did she ever steal anything from Tom?’
Nadia and Ethan looked at each other and shrugged.
‘Not that I know of,’ Nadia said.
‘He never said anything if she did,’ Ethan said. ‘But it wouldn’t surprise me.’
A memory flashed into my head then. The last time I’d seen her. Something else she’d said to me that had seemed insignificant at the time but now it put a new slant on things. ‘Um . . . I think she might have taken something.’
‘What do you mean?’ Nadia turned her hands palms up in a question. ‘What did she take?’
‘I don’t know. But I just remembered something weird that she said to me the day before she supposedly ran away. We were all going to the Kings’ Arms on the Saturday night to see a band. There was Nadia, Lucas, Ethan, Tom, Chris and I going. I’d been spending a lot of time with Ethan then, and Katie hadn’t wanted to go out much because she was still upset about breaking up with Chris. I went to the shop where she worked and asked if she wanted to come with us all.’ A picture of Katie in the shop swam clearly into my head, then. How she’d looked frumpy and dowdy and plain, but how her head was cocked as she spoke, her hand on her hip, her defiant body language in complete contrast to her new meek look. ‘First of all she said, “If he thinks I’m going to fuck him again, he can fuck off.” Which I thought meant at the time she was talking about Chris. And then she said, “I’ve got something he wants and I’m going to make him pay”.’
‘You just happened to remember that, word for word, all this time later?’ DS Khan looked up from her note-taking and raised her eyebrows.
‘Well, I thought about it a lot at the time because
I felt so guilty afterwards that I wasn’t there for her more. I think it was etched into my brain and must’ve just needed a nudge to resurface again.’
‘So, it’s possible she meant she’d stolen something from Tom?’ DI Spencer tapped the table lightly.
‘Yes, I suppose.’
‘Who’s Lucas?’ DS Khan asked, pen poised.
‘My husband.
‘So if Katie was here at the house a lot when she was going out with Chris, did Tom have much to do with her?’ DI Spencer looked round the table.
‘Well, we weren’t living here when Katie . . . um . . . left,’ Nadia said. ‘We lived in another house on the other side of the village. This barn came up for sale and Dad was renovating it around that time.’
‘So the garage was built at the same time he was renovating the barn?’ DS Khan asked.
‘Yes,’ Ethan said.
‘Who would have had access to the garage when it was being built?’
Ethan shrugged. ‘Dad and Chris. Other builders and contractors working for Tate Construction. But the site wasn’t secured while they were working on it. At the weekends or evenings when no one was around, anyone could’ve just walked in.’
‘But in order to hide a body under the floor of the garage, it would have to have been someone who was involved in the renovation?’ DI Spencer asked, although it was more of a statement than a question.
Ethan stared at a spot above DI Spencer’s head. ‘I suppose so, yes. I’m the company architect, but I wasn’t working there then. I was at university, getting my architecture degree.’
‘So you don’t remember which employees would’ve been here?’
‘No.’
‘I was working for Tate Construction at that time, in their offices,’ Nadia said. ‘But I just dealt with the accounts then. I didn’t have anything to do with which employee was working on which site.’
DI Spencer crossed one leg over the other and sat back. ‘Did Katie and Tom get on with each other?’
Nadia shook her head. ‘I never noticed anything strange between them, although I don’t think he approved of her. He thought Chris could do better, but he never said anything bad about her to me.’