Authors: Elizabeth Corley
Requiem Mass (32 page)
‘Over here.’
At the sound of his voice Nightingale’s face rose into view.
‘What the bloody hell do you think you’ve been playing at? We’ve been searching all over for you.’
‘Just as they would have done for Carol, sir. What did you find?’
‘Get back up here and don’t be so damned cheeky.’ He offered his hand but she scrambled up easily. Apart from a few chalk marks on her dark jeans she appeared unscathed.
‘Don’t be too hard on her, Chief Inspector. You wanted a reconstruction and you have been given a most authentic one, if I may say so.’
Miss Dicks joined their group, choosing to ignore the rich variety of expletives that had welcomed Nightingale’s return.
‘I will wait whilst you compare the findings from your
reconstructions with the original reports. As I said earlier, I have some observations of my own which I think may be relevant but I’ll speak later.’
She walked back and found a reasonably comfortable rock. Taking a small cushion from her capacious bag, she placed it neatly on the stone, sat down comfortably and proceeded to open a large Thermos. ‘Coffee, anyone?’
Fenwick reflected, grudgingly, that her calm, authoritative, eminently sensible style would have made her an excellent teacher. The reconstruction must have been traumatic for her but so far she was the least upset of them all by the afternoon’s events. They reviewed the main conclusions of their little play and confirmed that the gorse-bordered chalk circle at the base of the two paths was completely screened from view anywhere along the route; no one could have seen Carol’s fall from the circle to the rocks below. The reconstruction was in danger of becoming an expensive waste of time and manpower.
‘I think you might be interested in something I have to say.’ Faces turned expectantly to Miss Dicks. ‘Something about your re-enactment has disturbed me this afternoon and I have been trying to determine what it was.’
‘Go on.’ Fenwick settled himself on a rock next to the elderly teacher and sipped excellent fresh roast coffee from one of her picnic mugs.
‘It was the arrival of the first three officers in a rush. It simply didn’t happen like that. I can remember. I was furious with the girls, they had been late back from lunch and they were doing it again. I had a PTA meeting for which I needed to return and I do so loathe being late. And these wretched girls were letting me down.’
‘Why is this relevant to our inquiries, Miss Dicks?’ Cooper was still smarting from her earlier put-down.
‘I’m coming to that, Sergeant. It was
your
reminder about my original statement that prompted me to identify a discrepancy. You see, I was watching the clock, as they say, from before three – hoping to be able to leave early. All the other girls were on the coach in good time and I was checking my
watch minute by minute. I can assure you we waited
much
longer than five minutes past three.’
‘Perhaps they all started to return later than they stated. It would be natural to underestimate.’ Fenwick, though more polite than Cooper, was struggling to find the relevance in her statement.
‘Perhaps you should let me finish! It wasn’t just that they took longer returning, it was also that the delay between the first of them returning and the last was considerably longer than that in your re-enactment, which I think could be significant.’ She paused. ‘Shall I go on? Katherine
did
arrive shortly after three and I can remember being relieved; where she was, the others were usually close behind. I can recall looking up at the path behind her and seeing Deborah, some way off, she never could run as fast as Kate.
But there was no Leslie
. In your reconstruction, the three of you arrived in a staggered group. Even allowing for the fact that you ran at a different pace from those poor girls, you were inaccurate.’
‘We followed each of the statements carefully. Leslie Smith clearly stated she was in a group with Katherine and Deborah.’
‘Well, Chief Inspector, she was not. Either she was confused or she was lying. I am quite sure. I was more worried about her, you see, than the other two. I thought that Carol and Octavia would be together but it was just like that gang to forget Leslie and leave her behind. And she wasn’t nearly as bright as the others. To be honest, I can’t place precisely when Leslie arrived but it was not within five minutes of Katherine and Deborah. I can assure you, I was watching that path like a hawk. I stood by the coach until a quarter past three. Katherine and Deborah were seated inside with the other girls. Leslie, Octavia and Carol were still missing.
‘At 3.15, I set off up the track, slowly because I was looking around the whole time, expecting to see them at any minute. I reached the top of that slope and looked down into this hollow. Of course, I could see nothing. I returned to the coach and shortly afterwards I noticed that Leslie was sitting on the bus.’
‘And you’re sure Leslie hadn’t been there before?’
‘Completely, Sergeant. Mr Jackson had counted heads before I set off. All three were still missing at that time.’
‘You didn’t see any trace of her on the path?’
‘No.’
‘Constable, work back the way we came. Find out how feasible it would be for someone to make their way back to the coach unseen from the path.’ Fenwick turned to Miss Dicks.
‘Why didn’t you come forward with this information at the time?’
‘Oh, but I believe I did, Chief Inspector. If you check my statement, I doubt you will find any significant inconsistencies.’
Fenwick turned to Cooper and Nightingale, who had been rereading the statements as Miss Dicks had confronted them with her story.
‘It’s broadly in line, sir,’ admitted Cooper. ‘The inconsistency was here in the statements but they’d been taken by different officers. No one spotted it. At the time there seemed no doubt that it had been an accident.’
‘What did Leslie Smith’s statement say?’
‘She claims to have been at the tail end of Katherine Johnstone’s group, sir. She says they were in sight ahead of her all the way.’
‘What did Octavia Anderson say?’
Nightingale read out the words from the original interview: ‘“Carol and I started back last. We had been deep in conversation – about our future careers as it happens. God, isn’t that ironic? The others were way ahead of us. At first we walked. Then we realised that we were very late and I said, ‘Let’s run.’ I started off. I thought Carol was right behind me. I was singing as I ran – down the dip and up the other side. Halfway up I stopped, took a breath and looked back. There was no sign of Carol but I wasn’t worried, you couldn’t see the hollow from where I stood. I shouted: ‘Come on, Carol,’ but I didn’t wait, I was too keen to get back. If only I had. If only I’d gone back for her. But I didn’t, I carried on.
‘“I ran the rest of the way to the car park. I told Miss Dicks and Jacko – that’s Mr Jackson – that Carol was just behind me.
They were furious. We all waited but Carol didn’t come. In the end, Miss Dicks went off after her. I waited a few minutes with the others but I was getting worried – I couldn’t just sit there, so I went off too. Jacko shouted after me but I ignored him, pretended I couldn’t hear.
‘“About halfway back I saw Miss Dicks ahead of me on a slope, walking fast. I ran after her but then I saw Carol’s jumper. She’d taken it off because it was so hot. It was lying on the grass, near the cliff top. I don’t know how Miss Dicks had missed it. I went over to it and called Carol’s name. Miss Dicks looked round—”’
‘That is true.’
‘“I went down the slope carefully, hanging on. It was a bit steep. I didn’t really think I’d find Carol, I was just trying to work out how her jumper had got there. There was a ledge, hidden from the path and I saw something on it. It was a hairband. The ledge wasn’t very deep but when I looked out over it I couldn’t see anything – it sort of jutted out. I lay down and peered over the edge.”’ Nightingale broke her narrative to remark: ‘There’s quite a delay before the statement is concluded; Anderson probably became very upset at this point.’
‘“I lay down and looked out over the ledge. I had to lean out a long way. I could see something fluttering or flapping on the rocks but I couldn’t make out what it was. I tried to lean out even further but it was no good and Miss Dicks started calling out behind me. I told her that I thought something was down there. Well, you know what happened next.”’
‘What did happen next, Miss Dicks?’
‘First, I made sure Octavia returned to the path. I then looked out over the ledge but could see nothing. Nevertheless, I was very worried and Octavia was sure that she had seen something. We returned to the coach. Mr Jackson went for some help whilst I tried to keep the girls calm.
‘The police arrived before the ambulance and they had already alerted the coastguard. There was a lot of consternation at this point and the police agreed that the girls could all return home after they had taken details of their names, addresses and
phone numbers. They took a very brief statement from Octavia, I think, but that was all.
‘I was rather shaken so Mr Jackson drove the minibus back whilst I stayed with the rescue services. You know the rest from your records. The coastguard found the body shortly afterwards.’
‘Thank you, Miss Dicks. Cooper, when is Leslie Smith back?’
‘Monday. Flight’s due in the evening.’
‘Have a car waiting at the airport. I want her picked up and brought in immediately.’
‘She’ll have the kids with her, sir, and they’ll be dog tired after their journey.’
‘Even better. She’s been lying to us and I want to find out why. If she’s tired and worried about her children, it won’t do any harm. Come on, we might as well head back.’
‘Excuse me, sir, don’t you want my report?’ Detective Constable Nightingale struggled to her feet.
‘What report?’
‘I went climbing for a purpose sir, not just exercise!’
Cooper winced and squinted up at Fenwick to see if she’d got away with it; the rest of the team suddenly rediscovered the view. But Fenwick had only partly heard her and nodded disinterestedly as he helped Miss Dicks repack her bag and come gently to her feet once again.
‘The reason I went down on the ledge was because I was trying to work out just how Carol could have fallen to her death here.’ She walked over to the edge and looked down. ‘It looks fairly steep, but really it isn’t. And even if she did slip from here, the ledge below is big enough to break her fall.’ The rest of the group moved to stand beside her.
‘She’s right, we know from the survey records that the cliff hasn’t changed dramatically in twenty years. It would be very difficult to fall from here, and you’d have to be unlucky to avoid the ledge.’ Cooper scrambled down as he spoke, surprisingly agile despite his large frame. ‘So, she either scrambled down here, which seems unlikely as they were already late, or she jumped deliberately …’
‘Or she was pushed.’ Fenwick scrutinised the bushes around them again. ‘Whatever happened to her, these bushes provide a complete screen. There could have been no witnesses.’
‘That was the second thing I wanted to mention, sir.’ Nightingale stooped to give Cooper a hand back up the slope. ‘When I was down there, I could see you all as you came back to search for me. The ledge juts out so that it could be seen from the path. If someone had been up there, looking back, they could have seen
everything
that happened on the ledge.’
An energised Fenwick set his team to confirming in detail the erosion patterns of the cliffs and to tracing and interviewing the original accident investigation and rescue team. Meanwhile he and Cooper awaited the arrival of the Smiths in the nightmare that was Gatwick Airport on a late-summer night. The flight was delayed, and when it did land, it was an hour before they realised that they and the airport police had missed the Smith family in the crush of exhausted brown faces.
They called in and arranged for a car to pick her up from home. She was taken into the interview room, claustrophobic at the best of times but almost unbearable in that hot, thick soup of an evening. The time was 10.05 p.m. Her husband had had no option but to stay with the children and try frantically to contact the family solicitor. It was as close to harassment as Fenwick had ever gone, symptomatic of the anger and frustration he felt with the woman.
Fenwick had ever gone, symptomatic of the anger and frustration he felt with the woman. Fenwick decided to let her stew for a short time while Cooper finished the phone call from her increasingly irate husband. His office was almost as hot as the interview room, windows open ineffectively although psychologically comforting. The air was completely still, humidity reminiscent of a Florida swamp rather than West Sussex downland. Reluctantly he replaced his crumpled jacket and then banished all trace of sympathy from his mind.
They entered the interview room at 10.10 p.m. It had been a long five minutes for Leslie Smith. She raised a grubby,
perspiring face to the policemen, her tan yellow in the fluorescent light. Fenwick looked at her properly for the first time. Every feature of her face was almost pretty, a fraction off attractive. Her eyes were a pale blue but slightly too close together for comfort; her nose short, almost snubbed, without a point of distinction. Her mouth was fully shaped; in a face with better bone structure it would have been voluptuous, even beautiful. On her it created a fleeting resemblance to a wide-mouthed frog, a similarity encouraged by her weak jaw.
She had narrow, sloping shoulders, long bony arms and hands, nails grubby now from over twelve hours of travelling. She looked desperately miserable – and frightened. She stared at Fenwick as if he were a deadly snake, waiting to strike.
The WPC on duty left to collect the coldest drinks she could find for them and Fenwick and Cooper sat down. A tape recorder was turned on. Fenwick dispensed with the formalities quickly and moved on.
‘Mrs Smith, we have asked you in here because we have urgent questions to ask you regarding your relationship with Deborah Fearnside and Katherine Johnstone.’ He intended to hold their knowledge of Carol Truman’s death in reserve.
