Caught Out in Cornwall (2 page)

‘No. Those things happened before. Maybe meeting her was just a natural progression.’ Ever since he had met her, Barry had loved Rose but she had always made it clear she had no more to offer than friendship. As far as she was aware there had never been a woman in his life about whom he was serious. Now, at the age of fifty, he had suddenly found one. Rose, expecting to
have felt a twinge of jealousy after all his years of devotion, only felt pleasure. She liked Jenny.

The monktail, baked in the oven with fennel and a squeeze of orange juice, was ready. Rose served the meal and they talked of general things as they ate. When the dishes were done they listened to the news. Rose guessed what was coming by the solemnity of the announcer’s tone.

‘Four-year-old Bethany Jones, who was with her mother on Marazion beach, was seen leaving the beach with a man at around three twenty this afternoon. Bethany is still missing. The police have mounted a full scale search and they have been assisted by volunteers,’ the announcer continued before asking for assistance from the public and giving a number to ring if anyone had any information.

Rose sighed. Jack had always told her that the longer a child was missing, the less likely he or she would be found alive. It might have been a judgemental opinion, but from what Rose had seen of Sally Jones it seemed unlikely that she had the sort of money which would attract a kidnapper wishing to demand a ransom. She appeared malnourished and her clothes were threadbare and cheap.

‘I’d better go, Rose. Thanks for a lovely meal.
My turn next time. I’m becoming a dab hand at stews and even your mother would be proud of my dumplings. And, look, try not to worry. The police will do all they can to find her.’

But Rose
was
worried. Supposing Beth had been abandoned somewhere, what chance would she have of survival, especially in this weather? ‘Ring me tomorrow,’ she said as she handed him his coat. It had become a daily ritual since her mother’s death. It was reassuring for them both.

She made tea and took it up to bed along with the novel she was reading. However hard she tried she could not get the picture of the pinched, forlorn face of Sally Jones, with her spiky fair hair, out of her mind.

She looked like a victim. Perhaps that was why she had become one.

Rose turned out the bedside lamp and pulled the duvet around her shoulders then lay listening to the storm until she finally fell asleep.

Although the heating was on and the gas fire in the unused grate was lit, Sally Jones was shivering. Not so Janice Richards, the family liaison officer who had remained with her throughout the night. She was sweating beneath her uniform blouse. Neither of them had slept. For Janice, it was part of the job.

The small lounge of the rented flat smelt stale, the air was thick with cigarette smoke. The previous evening Janice had thoughtfully closed the door of the bedroom where Beth normally slept. There was too much visible evidence of the child who was no longer there. ‘Shall we have some more tea?’

Sally nodded. They hadn’t drunk half of the cups they had made through the long hours of the night, but it had given them something to do.

On the three occasions that Janice had answered the telephone Sally’s hopes had been raised. But there had been no news. Beth had simply disappeared.

‘Are you certain her father couldn’t have taken her?’ Janice asked once more when she returned with the tea.

‘Positive. I know he thinks the world of her but he couldn’t possibly look after her. Besides, as I said, he doesn’t even know where we are.’

Michael Poole, Beth’s father, was a sales representative and was therefore on the road all day. There were also occasions when he stayed away overnight. Janice had given his address to the officer in charge. Detective Inspector Jack Pearce was following this up. No matter what Sally believed, it was often a father, a mother or a near relative who snatched a child. The previous year Michael Poole had applied for custody, claiming that Sally was an unfit mother. As he had not seen either the mother or the child for a long time his reasons were unclear. However, Social Services reports proved otherwise.

‘What time is your sister arriving?’ It was
eight o’clock and barely daylight. Janice pulled back the curtains and lowered the flame on the gas fire. Sally made no objection; she probably hadn’t noticed.

‘As soon as she’s spoken to the children. She said they wouldn’t be going to school today.’

Janice nodded. Aged six and five they were old enough to understand what was happening.

Carol, Sally’s sister, older by two years, had moved to Marazion after her marriage to John Harte. Janice was aware of this and that the family originated from Looe, on the north coast of Cornwall. John was a mining engineer and he, like so many others, had been forced to find work overseas. From tin mining he had changed to oil. He was extremely well paid but his work kept him away from home for long periods. As he was currently in Saudi, and this had been checked, he was not a suspect. Carol had not stayed overnight even though her children were with her mother. Janice was there and would have slept on the sofa if necessary but Carol could not bring herself to sleep in Beth’s room.

The police had interviewed Carol the previous evening. ‘Since Sally and Michael split up I’ve only seen him once,’ she had told them. ‘He was good enough to deliver something my mother
was keeping for me.’ Carol thought it highly unlikely that Michael had anything to do with his daughter’s disappearance.

The sisters’ father was dead but their mother still lived in Looe above the souvenir shop she now owned and ran. She had been devastated when she heard what had happened to her granddaughter, but even when she had stopped crying she could think of no one who would have taken her. She had rung Sally, offering to come down immediately, but Sally had refused the offer. It was obvious to the police who had called on Mrs Jones that there was no child on the premises, either in the shop and storerooms or in the flat above. Permission had been given freely for them to search. Alice Jones was not insulted; she knew it was part of their job.

The telephone rang again. Janice picked up the receiver.

‘No go as far as Poole’s concerned,’ Jack Pearce told her. ‘We’ve kept an eye on him overnight and he didn’t leave the house. It’s also been confirmed that he kept all yesterday’s appointments. They were mostly in the Devon area. There just wasn’t time for him to have done it. He got home around seven last night, alone, and left again this morning.’

‘I see.’ Janice did see but she kept her thoughts to herself. If little Beth was not with one of the family, the most obvious place to start, the chances of finding her soon, or alive, were narrower. The puzzling thing was that if Mrs Trevelyan was telling the truth, and there was no reason to suspect otherwise, and the child had gone willingly, had even held up her arms to be carried, then it strongly suggested that she knew her abductor well. Or else Rose Trevelyan was mistaken, had seen only what she had expected to see, a father picking up his child, not a man snatching an unknown one from a beach. ‘What do you want me to do, sir?’

‘Say nothing for the moment, there’s no point in adding to her distress.’

A little over an hour later Carol Harte arrived. Sally and Janice were sitting in armchairs each side of the fireplace. Wintry sunlight did nothing to cheer the room. Unlike her sister, Carol’s hair was its natural reddish brown. Her body was more rounded, but firm. The only thing they had in common was the pallor of their skin. She hugged Sally silently. There were no words to convey what they both felt and anything that could be said had been said the night before when Carol had come over as soon as the police had
left. With Tamsin and Lucy at their grandparents’ there had been no babysitting arrangements to make. ‘Is there any news?’ she asked pointlessly because Sally’s face had already given her the answer.

‘No, nothing. Oh, God, Carol, what am I going to do?’ Without warning, tears streamed down her face. It kept happening, it was something over which she had had no control since yesterday afternoon.

‘It’ll be all right. They’ll find her.’ Carol hated herself for the platitudes but how could she say anything else – especially when all three women were beginning to doubt this was true?

This time it was Carol who made the coffee. For the moment there seemed nothing else anyone could do.

Detective Inspector Jack Pearce sat at his desk at the police station in Camborne and ran a hand through his thick, dark hair in which the odd streak of grey was beginning to appear. He could not be mistaken for anything but Cornish even before his accent gave him away. His family went back for generations. With a marriage in the distant past and two grown up sons who still came on regular visits, he was a reasonably
contented man. If Rose would agree to commit herself to him then he would be totally happy. On the other hand, he was fully aware that the relationship would be tempestuous. They had that effect on one another. Now that Arthur was living in the area he might be able to put some pressure on his daughter. Arthur, he knew, would love to see them married.

A child is missing, I should not be thinking of Rose, he told himself, except her name had come up on the computer as a witness to the incident, apparently the only witness. Trust her, he thought; trust her to bloody well be involved. This time, however, he could hardly accuse her of meddling, she just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place. Pure chance had taken her to the beach at Marazion.

He looked over the information they had so far, which didn’t amount to much; the names and addresses of Sally Jones’ family, a full description and a photograph of Beth, and Rose’s account of what she thought had happened. The photograph had been copied and distributed to all local officers and the press. It had also been transferred to the computer where it was accessible to every officer nationwide. Apart from Rose’s quite detailed description of the man; a description which Jack knew would be more
accurate than most, there was nothing else to go on. Presumably he had a car but no one in the car park would have looked twice at a man carrying a child and by then any potential witness would probably have been hurrying for shelter.

Apart from the usual rash of nutters claiming to have the child or to know where she was, no definite sightings had been reported. The man could be anywhere by now. But the nutters’ stories had to be checked, they could not afford to ignore them.

A local search was continuing. Jack’s worst fear was that Beth had been murdered, never to be found, her body hidden in some deserted spot. And there were plenty of those in West Cornwall.

Satisfied that everything possible was being done he left the building and got into his car. He wanted to talk to Rose. The sky had clouded over and it was colder now, more typical of November. Hopefully she would be at home. But Beth, what chance did she have out there in such weather? The best Jack could hope for was that wherever she was she was warm and well fed.

Rose’s car was not in the drive. Jack cursed, scribbled a note and shoved it under the back door.

The sky was a brilliant palette. Streaks of pink and orange were spread over the whole of the bay heralding the sunrise. Rose watched the colours glow then begin to fade as daylight arrived.

After coffee and toast and one of her rationed cigarettes she showered and dressed and dried her hair. It was auburn and wavy, not yet fading, and shoulder length in the style she had worn since her schooldays. As it suited her there was no point in changing it. She was petite with none of the stretch marks of childbearing, although she would have accepted them readily if she had ever become pregnant. At least she had been able to devote herself to David in the years that they had had together.

Up in the loft, which was reached by a flight of wooden stairs hidden behind a pine door, was Rose’s office; a tiny darkroom and her sometimes workplace. The light was good, the Velux windows faced north.

There were a couple of invoices to send out for photographic work she had completed, although she took on fewer commissions these days, as she preferred to paint. Now that she had finally got to grips with the computer she had bought earlier in the year, this took very little time. That done, she studied a couple of paintings that were ready
for framing before they went on show in Geoff Carter’s gallery. They had been an experiment, they were worked in gouache; a way of painting in opaque colours which were ground in water and thickened with gum and honey. Conversely, the paint could be thinned down. She was pleased with the results but still preferred the medium of oils.

After her marriage Rose had continued to paint, mainly with watercolours, and she had taken up photography for which she also had a natural flair. But since David’s death her career had really taken off. Somehow she had found the courage to paint boldly, to not be afraid of the oils and her dramatic work sold successfully.

How proud she was to have had two shared exhibitions followed by one solo show.

She swore when the telephone rang. If it were Doreen Clarke she would never get off the line and she was eager to start work. It was the time of day she usually rang; after breakfast and before she went off to one or other of her cleaning jobs.

The phone was on a small table behind the sitting-room door, placed there so that she could see the panorama of Mount’s Bay as she spoke. As tempting as it was to let the answering machine take over, Rose hurried down the two flights
of stairs. Curiosity usually overcame prudence. Outside, the wind might be blowing strongly, but the sky was the startling shade of blue only seen in Cornwall.

‘Is that Mrs Trevelyan?’ an unknown female voice asked.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘You don’t know me and I’m sorry to bother you but my name’s Carol Harte, I’m Sally Jones’ sister.’

‘Is there any news?’ For a second Rose thought she was ringing to say Beth had been found but her subdued tone suggested otherwise.

‘Unfortunately there isn’t. I know it’s an imposition but Sally wondered if you’d come over and see her. I don’t know what she thinks you can do, but I’ll go along with anything she wants at the moment.’

How had the woman survived the night? What on earth must she be feeling? ‘Of course I’ll come. Give me the address and I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ She wrote down the directions and hung up.

Despite the sun, it was bitterly cold as the wind was blowing from the east. Rose got into the car and, once the engine was warm, drove down the hill into Newlyn where the fish market
was already closing. Several men were hosing down the concrete floor of the slightly raised building. There were no fish boxes to be seen. They had already been loaded on lorries and were on their way to their various destinations. A lone blackback gull demolished a fallen fish in one gulp. She turned on to the Promenade where the fierce wind buffeted her small car. The tide was out now, but later, if the wind remained as strong, waves would sweep over the Promenade railings bringing with them stones and seaweed and the possibility of the road being closed.

Carol’s directions were easy to follow. Rose soon arrived in Marazion whose name, with a variation of spellings, meant Thursday Market. It was one of the oldest towns in England, having been granted its first charter of incorporation in 1257 by Henry III. Despite its narrow streets she found somewhere to park, an impossible feat in the summer.

Having walked the short distance to the large, detached house with a small garden she rang the bell above the name Jones. The building had been converted into two self-contained flats. A disembodied voice told her to push the door and go up to the first floor.

At the top of the flight of deep stairs a young
woman was waiting for her. It had to be Carol as it certainly was not Sally.

‘Thank you so much for coming. She’s had no sleep and she’s in a terrible state. But who wouldn’t be? Come on in.’

Rose followed her into a small hallway and through a door, which led in to the front room where the warmth enveloped her immediately. The furniture was shabby but not unreasonably so. There was an empty photoframe on the sideboard. Rose guessed the police had taken away Beth’s picture. The view from the window showed nothing more than the roofs of the houses below.

In an armchair sat a gaunt, hollow-eyed Sally. Beside her were an overflowing ashtray and a vodka bottle with only an inch or so of spirit remaining. Carol took control and introduced Rose to Janice. ‘You’ve met Sally, of course.’ She bit her lip. She’d nearly added,
when Beth disappeared.