Echoes of the Past (18 page)

“Are
you all right, love? You barely talk about Olivia, yet, you must have mentioned her a half dozen times since we got home tonight.”

Jess
looked back at him. “I hadn’t realized, Dad, I just kept thinking about her today. I wanted to tell her about my horse that’s all.”

“That’s
ok, love. It’s good to think about her.”

After
dinner, he watched television with Jess until 10pm. Jess disappeared upstairs with Topaz and Tom went into the study. He had the box of files from Clair Wentworth to go through and the files from Sara’s box.

He
looked through Jenny Phillips diary. As Clair had said, most of it was a schedule of tutorials and weekend shifts with British rail. She had noted next to some of the tutorials, that the lecturer was boring or creepy, depending on who it was. But there at the bottom of a page dated before she disappeared was a shift time and a note to herself.

London – Glasgow 3.15pm Glasgow-London 6.45am (Take change of clothes for interview.)

Proof that she had indeed been looking at a job opportunity the day she disappeared. Tom looked through the papers Clair had put together. Some of the people she worked with had said she was hit on a lot by older and young men alike in the refreshment carriage, but no one could remember anyone in particular that seemed to give her any problems or that she spoke to regularly. Overall, there was no new information in the files that could convince anyone to reopen the case. Although it was not technically closed, there is no way any one would devote resources to it.

Tom
went back to Jill Patterson. There was something eating at him here. Eva Brook had been a patient of his wife, she was also Jill’s flat mate and the one who raised the alarm. He scribbled down her contact details. A text from Danny confirmed an appointment with the family of Chloe Davis, the most recent victim they had discovered. Tom e-mailed the DI to arrange an appointment on the same day. He set about organizing his files to allow himself to present an obvious time line and connect all the victims however tenuous the links may be.

*****

The following morning Lee arrived to take Jess to school. Tom was planning to go down to Glasgow and then on to Edinburgh to meet with the DI. He loaded his files into his Jeep and set off.

Spring
was definitely settling in. The sun was warmer and much brighter. A hundred different shades of green slid down the mountain sides, dense forest stretched out on either side as he travelled the familiar road to Glasgow.

Chloe
Davis lived in a small town outside Glasgow. The estate looked exclusive with only twenty or so large five-bedroom homes. Tom drove through the open gates onto the gravel drive. The house sat close the banks of the Clyde, offering uninterrupted views of the old Kilpatrick hills.

The
front door was opened by a woman who looked only to be in her mid-forties. She introduced herself as Catherine Davies. Chloe’s mother. The attractive well-dressed woman led him through to a library where a man in his fifties was waiting.

“I’m
Malcolm Davis, Chloe’s father.” The man extended his hand to Tom. “Is there a reason for reopening my daughter’s case?”

“Chloe’s
case has never been closed, Mr Davis. It is simply inactive until something new comes along.”

“Is
there something new?” The mans tone had a hint of desperation.

“I
will most likely retire soon, Mr Davies, your daughters case came to my attention while I was looking into another missing persons case, I’m here to see if there truly is a connection. I can’t make any promises, but if I do come up with anything new on her case, when I retire the information will be looked at by Strathclyde, it wont be simply forgotten.” Tom took out his note pad and pen. An air of resignation had come over the couple as though they felt this would be just another hopeless interview. “Firstly if I could have a little family background?”

Before
Tom could ask a specific question, Malcolm sighed. “I am a banker; my wife is a retired paediatrician. We only have one child. Chloe. She was at Glasgow University studying law. My wife was twenty when she had Chloe and we have been married for thirty years. Chloe was a delight, she had no enemies, and had many friends, and she was focused on her career, very ambitious young woman. We were very proud of her. Do you need anymore background, Detective?”

Tom
met the man’s steely glare, he could understand his anger and frustration. “Chloe worked at a bar in Glasgow, had she mentioned anyone who maybe made her uncomfortable or …”

“No!
There was no one upsetting her, all these questions were asked six years ago at the initial investigation.”

“Malcolm,
let the man do his job.” The initially quiet woman fired a look at Malcolm and he immediately regained his temper.

“Sorry,
dear, go on, Mr Hunter.”

“Chloe
left on the morning of August 16th. She was meeting friends.”

“No,
she had an interview.”

Tom
stopped writing and looked up. “What interview, that isn’t in the file.”

“Well,
we told police at the time. A man who occasionally came into the bar she worked had offered her a position with his company. She was excited about it because he said he would work it around her university, book keeping I think it was. She would be able to work at home. The best thing about the job, was he said as a qualified lawyer he could most likely use her skills when she graduated.”

“Where
was the interview?”

“I
don’t know. They found her car parked in Glasgow. There was some CCTV of her heading toward the bar she worked in, but then, nothing.”

“What
do you think happened to her, Mrs Davis?”

The
woman was gently wringing her hands as she spoke. “The man who offered her the job interview never got in touch, even after she had been on the news. That tells me that he knows what happened to her. I think he took my daughter somewhere. I don’t believe there even was a job.” Tears welled in the woman’s eyes. “If we could just find someone who remembers the man she spoke to in the bar, maybe we would be able to find Chloe.”

Malcolm
reached his hand over and covered his wife’s. “She was supposed to meet him after her shift the night before, but she had plans with her boyfriend so it was arranged for the following morning.” This time Malcolm’s voice was softer.

“No
one has ever mentioned this man, or said they saw him speak with your daughter?”

“No.
She never even told us his name. She did say he travelled up and down to London. He parked his car in Glasgow and used the train. He would come in to the bar on his return from London.”

Tom
was scribbling everything down on his pad. “Did she know where he was from?”

“She
never said.”

“Did
she ever give any hints to his appearance or his age?”

The
couple looked at each other and shook their heads. “She only ever referred to him as a business man. You have to remember, Detective Hunter, he had only been in the bar a few times before, and it was nothing more than light conversation, I do not think she paid much attention to him until he offered her the job. He did that the day before she disappeared.”

Feeling
sure he had gotten all the information they had to offer him at this point Tom thanked them both for their time and stood to leave.

Malcolm
stood and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Detective Hunter, please bring our daughter home, one way or the other.”

Tom
could feel the man’s desperation, the pain was etched in deep lines over his face.

“I
will do my best, Mr Davies.”

*****

As Tom left the house in his rear view mirror, he felt deep sadness for the couple with everything yet nothing. He knew that man would give everything he had to have his daughter back. He remembered the smell of desperation that hung over the house when Olivia disappeared. No closure, no answers. Just questions. A wave of fatigue washed over him at the memory of that time. But he knew he had something now; his case was looking stronger and stronger for the DI. On their own, the cases did not have much to merit another look, but combined, they certainly raised a lot of questions.

Tom
drove through the streets of Edinburgh and turned into the police car park. He lifted the box files out of his car and walked back to his old place of work.

Scott
Kerr was an unusually tall man with a long face and grey hair. He was easily the width of Tom. He extended a large hand and offered Tom a seat in the small unimpressive office.

“How
you liking the sticks then, Tom?”

“The
easy life, Scott, you should try it.”

“You
should be sitting where I am, you’re wasted up there. Any way, what have you got?” he asked indicating the box files Tom had placed on the chair next to him.

“I’ve
got five missing women going back to 1968; I think they may be connected.”

“1968,
that’s forty-five years ago, Tom, isn’t that more for the cold case department?”

“The
latest one was 2007, no one has connected the five cases so hear me out, Scott.” Scott raised his hand to stop Tom and walked over to the office door.

“Gail,
do me a favour would you, get one of the PCs to go down to the canteen and grab a couple of sandwiches and a pot of coffee for us please.” He closed the door and walked back to the desk. “Looks like this could take a while.” He said gesturing to the pile of papers Tom was lifting from the box.

Tom
began to lay out his case. “In 1968 Susanna Wheeling. A twenty-two-year-old barmaid disappeared from Arrochar. She finished her shift at the local hotel and has never been seen since. She had been offered a job as a secretary from a man who frequented the bar. No one remembers him and the job offer was supposed to be a secret. Her abduction was clean and swift with no witnesses. At first, it was believed she had gone off for a weekend with a secret boyfriend, but after a while, the police began to suspect she had been abducted. Her case is open but inactive.

In
1978, Angela Harrison from Coppersfield moved to Aberdeen to begin training to be a nurse. She disappeared on the Friday night and did not make her first class on the Monday morning. Her boyfriend was brought in but it led to nothing. Aberdeen police closed the case and said she had taken off after a fight with her boyfriend, they ignored the fact that her car was still on the campus.”

“You
are joking. You know what that was all about, clearing cases off the books. Go on.”

“In
1979, twenty-three-year-old Jenny Phillips from London was working the refreshment carriage on the London – Glasgow train. She was supposed to sleep over in Glasgow and get the same train back the next morning. She never made it to her hotel. She was working part time and studying economics at night school. She had been offered a job by a passenger on the train the night she disappeared. Again, no one remembers him.

In
1984, twenty-two-year-old Jill Patterson disappeared after a night out at the Lands End pub ...”

“I
remember that one; I wasn’t long on the force. There was never a trace of her, but her family were a bit suspect.”

“Her
case is still an open abduction. In 2007, twenty-four-year-old law student from Glasgow, Chloe Davis, went to see about a job interview that someone had made her in the bar she worked at weekends. She hasn’t been seen since.”

A
young officer knocked the door and came in with a try of coffee and sandwiches.

“All
I could get, sir, was ham and ...”

“That’s
fine, son, just put it there. Thank you,” said the DI indicating a space on the desk. Tom got up and served the light lunch while Scott looked through the files Tom had placed in chronological order in front of him.

“To
sum it up, all five disappeared in the first 3 weeks of August. They all look very similar, all the abductions were executed perfectly and not one witness at any of the scenes, and with the CCTV, we have today that is not easy. There has never been a single sighting of the girls since the day they disappeared, not one. They all worked part time in the service industry, with the exception of Angela Harrison. And three of them, that we know of, were all offered jobs within twenty-four-hours of their disappearance.”

“Your
gut tells you they all met the same man?”

Tom
nodded. The older man drew his bushy grey eyebrows down as he looked over the last file.

“You
do know, when I take this upstairs, you will loose the case. It will go to the cold case unit. And anyway, you’re supposed to be taking it easy up there, Tom. It wasn’t easy getting you that post you know.”