Craig shook his head reassuringly. “It’s unlikely that it would have made a difference then.”
It wasn’t a platitude; he was telling the truth. When you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, a tiny nick on that needle only becomes important if you find one. He’d read the search outcomes the night before and the gendarmes hadn’t found leads on any girls that had fitted Bella’s description at all.
But the daisy might help them now if the girl was still alive.
“I have another question, Mister Westbury. You must have flown to or from France with Bella at times, so how was she was described on your passport?”
“White-blonde hair and ice-blue eyes.”
The specificity might help Ash’s searches.
“But we didn’t fly after she got the scar, so we hadn’t got round to adding the daisy under distinguishing marks.”
Which didn’t mean that someone hadn’t noticed it when she was being taken across a border, or that they wouldn’t notice it now if it was made public knowledge.
But for Bella’s safety that time couldn’t be just yet.
As Craig was asking his next question Simon re-entered the room, followed by Liam holding a framed photograph in his hand.
“Your parents’ funeral, Mister Westbury...Stuart Kincaid definitely wasn’t there?”
“Goodness me, no. Stuart was only linked to my family through Nicola, so we never thought to ask him.”
“That’s fine. My final questions concern your brother Blaine. Where is he? Do you know?”
He was rewarded by a frown that said there was absolutely no love lost between the siblings.
“In America somewhere, last I heard. Somewhere on the east coast. I’ll be honest with you, Superintendent, Blaine and I never got on. We hadn’t been in touch much in the ten years before my parents died and there’s been no contact at all between us since the funeral. There was a disagreement over the Will.”
“What sort of disagreement?”
Westbury gave a disillusioned shrug. “Blaine isn’t the most responsible character and he has a bad gambling habit, so my parents only left him a small lump sum and left the guesthouse to me to run. It was worth a lot more than the cash he got, so Blaine was pretty unhappy and he was very vocal about it.”
“May I ask what you did with the guest house?”
“I put a manager in to run it for a few months, but then Nicola was so upset and... well, my heart wasn’t in it anymore so I sold it to a developer. I tried to contact Blaine to give him his share of the proceeds but he’d disappeared off the map. I don’t know his address, and I’m sorry but I don’t really care. It wasn’t just the gambling, he was a bad lot generally.”
“Bad lot how?”
This time the boy was too young.
“Cover your ears, Simon.”
Liam had a better idea. “How’d you like to play with a police siren, son?”
It always worked with his kids.
The boy was out of the room before he was and the siren started blaring seconds later.
Craig repeated his question.
“Bad lot how, Mister Westbury?”
The widower sighed. “You name it and Blaine was into it. Drugs, women, gambling, and God knows what else. He hated growing up in a village, he called it Hicksville, so as soon as he could he moved to Belfast. After that Blaine never met a vice that he didn’t like and he would do pretty much anything to fund them.”
His face darkened angrily.
“Dad was constantly placating the police about him and paying his bloody fines, so to be honest I’m glad he’s not around anymore. I’d feel obliged to see him because we’re such a small family, and I really don’t want Simon exposed to an influence like that.”
The detective nodded, trying to shut out the siren which Liam had just cranked up to maximum, and fighting the temptation to go out and shove it up his deputy’s ass.
“I understand, Mister Westbury, but we still need to speak to him, so if you have a photograph and whatever the last contact details you had for him were, that would be great.”
Five minutes and several rounds of white noise later Craig had what he needed.
“Who are your family solicitors? Perhaps your brother has kept them up to date if he’s moved.”
“I doubt it or he’d have jumped on his share of the guest house, and I know for a fact that the money’s still sitting in the bank. But I’ll happily give you the solicitor’s details. We stuck with the one my parents used, a guy called Hector McDonagh in Rownton. He runs the local newspaper as well, so if there’s any word of Blaine he’ll have heard it. You can’t miss his offices; they’re right next door to the local police station.”
It was enough for now. From initially being unsure about him Craig had warmed to Edgar Westbury, so when they entered the street to retrieve his son, now flushed with excitement from his time playing cop, he shook the man’s hand.
“Mister Kincaid’s parents have been informed of his death, so it’s safe to get in touch with them and his wife about the funeral. But please keep everything that we’ve discussed today to yourself. If we have any relevant updates we’ll contact the Kincaids directly.”
‘And we’ll do the same with you if we find that your daughter is still alive’, remained only as a thought in his head.
****
High Street Station, Belfast. 10 a.m.
Andy Angel hated this part of his job almost as much as he hated doing death notifications, and sometimes even more; questioning people when they’d lost a loved one, especially if those questions might taint their memory, was brutal. But he knew that it was necessary and sometimes revealed more than expected, so he had to do it, and if you have to do something unpleasant it’s better done in the same way you rip a plaster off a hairy arm, quickly, with force, and braced for a scream.
So it was that he had Luisa Kincaid seated opposite him in an interview room, instead of on a soft couch in a relatives’ room like the day before. The D.C.I. knew his limitations as well as he knew his abilities, and while he could muster the fast part when he made the effort he’d never been able to do the verbal force part of the job, so the cold-walled, neon-stripped ambience of the room would have to act as a proxy for that. As, hopefully, would the brusque constable seated at his side.
While Craig had briefed his D.C.I.s on the Kincaid/Westbury family tree so that he now knew Bella Westbury was Luisa Kincaid’s niece by marriage, Andy had decided not to update Mary, preferring to see what her ignorant questioning on the subject might expose. Stuart Kincaid being Bella’s uncle didn’t automatically mean that his carrying of her photograph was innocent; if that were the case no family members would ever be involved in abuse. And there was also the thorny question of how Kincaid had been dead for months and no-one had reported him missing. Not the norm for someone with a family.
Unfortunately the woman in front of him still seemed so dazed from hearing about her husband’s death that she looked like she wouldn’t have noticed if she’d been a Christian in the Coliseum and he’d been an approaching lion, so after a moment Andy sighed and was just preparing himself to do it the hard way when Mary, who’d had quite enough of what she saw as his underestimation of the widow’s strength, masquerading as so-called gallantry, slapped a palm hard on the table and glared at the woman opposite, barking unambiguously, “Why was your husband carrying around a photo of a young kid?”
Andy almost choked at her tone, and only her omission of the word “pervy” stopped him from taking the D.C. outside and reading the riot act. He was just wondering how to rephrase the question less pejoratively when Luisa Kincaid seemed to rouse from her sleep.
“Kid? Whose kid?”
It was Andy’s cue to slide their original photo of Bella Westbury across the table, watching her face closely as he did.
It widened into a smile and she whispered, “Bella.” A concerned frown followed immediately, “Poor Bella. Why has no-one ever found the dear wee thing?�
�
Mary spoke again, less aggressively. “You know this little girl?”
Luisa Kincaid’s tone took on a ‘don’t be an idiot’ edge.
“Of course I know her! She’s my niece by marriage, Bella Westbury. She was the daughter of Edgar and Nicola, Stuart’s sister.” She shook her head sadly. “She disappeared in France in two-thousand-and-fifteen. Such a terrible thing to happen. It was the death of Nicola.”
Andy saw tears threatening so he steered her from emotion back to fact.
“Can you tell us why your husband might have been carrying his niece’s photograph?”
He felt embarrassed as he asked the question and if it hadn’t been that they’d absolutely had to rule out Stuart Kincaid as being a paedophile, he would have been disgusted at their warped minds.
Luisa Kincaid gazed at the image for a moment longer before replying.
“It’s simple. Stuart adored Nicola so he adored her kids as well. He and Nicola were twins you know and they’d been as close as peas in a pod all their lives.”
The D.C.I. smiled encouragingly, trying to keep her on point.
“So when Nicola killed herself...well, I know you can’t see Nicola well in that photo but she’s there in the background, anyway she and Bella were inseparable, so perhaps Stuart just kept it as a memento of them both?”
Mary wasn’t buying it and she said so. “There must have been lots of better images of them together.”
When she was answered by a shrug Andy jumped in again.
“You’re sure it couldn’t have been something more than that? Could your husband have been searching for Bella perhaps?”
The new widow’s eyes widened incredulously. “You think he was?”
“Is it possible?”
After a short pause she nodded hesitantly. “Yes...yes, definitely when Bella first disappeared. We both joined the search in France. But after that...well, to be honest I half expected Stuart and Edgar to disappear together for months to hunt for Bella, but the gendarmes insisted that it was their job and told them not to interfere in case they messed things up.”
Andy’s eyes widened in shock. “They actually said that? It couldn’t have been the language barrier?”
It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand the gendarmes’ reasons for the instruction; family becoming too closely involved in an investigation carried pitfalls. They could inadvertently taint evidence or slow the case down, but worse than that, if something they did impacted negatively on the search and the child wasn’t found, even if it wasn’t as a direct consequence, relatives were likely to blame themselves for the rest of their lives.
But ‘messing things up’ wouldn’t have been language that he or anyone he knew would ever have used.
Luisa Kincaid confirmed with a brisk nod that the officers they’d met had.
“That’s exactly what one of the detectives said to Stuart. My French is very good. Anyway, so we all stayed together as a family. Nicola needed everyone around her; she couldn’t even speak she was so distraught about Bella. But in the end nothing helped her...not company, not doctors or medication. To be honest I think her suicide had just been a matter of time from the day that Bella disappeared.”
She opened her handbag and took out a paper handkerchief, stemming the tears that had started to fall. After giving her a moment to compose herself, Andy prompted her to continue by mentioning her husband’s name again.
“Yes, Stuart, poor dear man... after Nicola died he became distant from all of us. He was here in body and he went to work every day as usual, but a light had gone out.” She stared directly at Andy, “You understand what I mean?”
He understood all too well because unfortunately he’d seen it many times in a parent, lover, child or sibling, even sometimes a friend who couldn’t come to terms with how someone close to them had died. Unexpected death in any form could prompt it, but the deliberate brutality of murder and the desperate sadness of suicide seemed to cause the worst effect.
Luisa Kincaid continued, reading the ‘Yes’ in his eyes.
“Stuart got so depressed that when he disappeared last March I just assumed he’d gone off somewhere to mourn alone. He left a note saying that he needed some space and not to worry, and at first he got in touch every week,” her eyes dropped to the table, “but then gradually the frequency of his contacts dropped-”
Mary cut in. “When was the last time you heard from him?”
The widow nodded. “I can remember exactly. His calls dropped to once a fortnight for a while, always on a Monday, but then in July they became irregular, probably because the boys always got so upset that he wouldn’t come home. He just kept saying that he needed more time...”
She opened her bag again and withdrew a thick diary, flicking back through the pages until she stopped at the twenty-ninth of October the year before. Ignoring Mary’s immediate eager reach she gazed at Andy with pleading in her eyes.
“You must understand. We’d had months of Stuart’s calls being erratic and we’d got to the point where if he didn’t call we just got on with our lives. I had to for the boys’ sake. From July onwards, he’d only called once, to speak to me not the boys, so when I didn’t hear from him after this call on the twenty-ninth, well...”
“What about at Christmas? Didn’t you get worried when he missed calling then?”
She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “I just assumed he didn’t want to upset the boys by getting their hopes up again. I don’t know why but it never even occurred to me that he’d come to any harm. I was sure he would just come home when he was ready. Stuart knew how to take care of himself. He wasn’t a big man but he was very fit; he’d been a marathon runner for years and boxed...”
Andy nodded sympathetically, picturing the routine that she’d had to grow into after her husband had left. Forced to cope without him and deal alone with her sons’ pain at missing him, a pain increased by sporadic calls that had raised their hopes that Dad would be home soon, only to have them cruelly dashed again. It must have been hell, or limbo at any rate, and when Stuart Kincaid’s calls had become less frequent it might actually have been a relief in some ways; a respite from the emotional rollercoaster that she’d watched her children suffer. So when he didn’t call for three months, well...
But it raised a practical question, and Andy decided to ask it gently before Mary took a more brutally logical approach.
“Can I ask...who ran the business in your husband’s absence? Or did you close it?”
Luisa Kincaid shook her head. “No, we couldn’t afford to close it. I’ve only ever worked part-time because of the boys so it’s always been our main income. Stuart had a very good operational director so he’s kept things going.”
The D.C.I. nodded and rested back in his chair, satisfied that there was nothing sinister in the fact that Stuart Kincaid hadn’t been reported missing.
“So you think your husband could have been searching for Bella while he was away?”
“Well, it didn’t occur to me then that he might have gone looking for her; it seemed too long after her disappearance. But now...”
Her expression said that it might make sense, but after a moment’s thought Luisa Kincaid confounded both detectives by shaking her head.
“No, because Stuart would have gone to France then, wouldn’t he? Why would he have been in Rownton? Bella wouldn’t have been there, would she? But-”
After a moment of her asking herself questions that were leading nowhere Andy knew that he needed to ask a difficult one of his own, certain that it was only a matter of time before Mary’s absent “pervy” did hit the air.
He swallowed hard and when he opened his mouth he was surprised to hear his voice emerge as a croak.
“Mrs Kincaid... I... I hate...” He stopped abruptly, hoping that she would take the hint and save him from more agony, but her face was a complete blank so he croaked again. “Mrs Kincaid... is there any...was there ever any suspicion that...�
�
When the widow started to gawp at him, his heart leapt. She’d taken the hint! He was saved. All that he would have to cope with now was her anger and indignation, or so he thought, which is why Luisa Kincaid’s sudden laugh threw him completely.
“You’re asking me if my husband was a paedophile? Stuart? Oh my God, just when I thought I would never laugh again.”
She rolled her eyes at both cops.
“I suppose you have to ask, but honestly, don’t be so ridiculous! Stuart loved kids, but not in the way you mean. He loved Bella because he adored Nicola and Bella was her child. He felt Nicola’s pain when Bella disappeared like it was his own, so if he was carrying her photograph around then it was part of that. Maybe he was still searching for her for Nicola’s sake, but a paedophile? Stuart? Never.”
As Andy’s mouth opened again she raised a hand to stop him.
“And before you say, couldn’t I be in denial? Couldn’t I just be some deluded little wife who never really knew her husband, the answer is definitely no. Stuart had his faults: workaholic, too fond of a drink at times and he always drove too fast. But not that. Never ever that. You can check his computers, office, whatever you like.”
They would.
Suddenly her forehead creased and she looked confused. “But what the heck was he doing in Rownton? And in a quarry of all places?” She looked at them both pleadingly. “You will find out, won’t you?”
It was Andy’s cue to take control again and as he rose to his feet he reached out a hand to clasp hers.
“Our team has the highest detection rate in Northern Ireland.” He was tempted to add the rest of the UK and Ireland as well, but he needed to check the latest stats. “And D.C.S. Craig won’t rest until we’ve found answers for you.”
The pain on her face said that it would provide limited comfort, and as the D.C.I. ushered his junior from the room to give Luisa Kincaid some privacy, he thought once again that the living victims of murder were the hardest part of their job.
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