Missing Page 15

  With a shiver of pity she turned around and began wandering back the way she’d come. As tormented and unpredictable as Jacqueline was, she surely had to know how much distress her actions were causing her husband and daughter. How could she not care? More to the point, how could she allow a child who’d vanished fifteen years ago to take precedence over one who was still there?

  By the time Vivienne had collected her bag from the car and returned to the press the light had almost gone, and the feeling of being alone, and yet not, was creeping in on her again. Closing and locking the door behind her, she walked around the room pulling the curtains, then put a match to the fire the housekeeper had set. For a while she stood watching the flames lick up through the tangle of twigs and logs, then after opening a bottle of wine she’d found in the fridge she went to check her BlackBerry.

  Amongst the emails asking for interviews or comments about Jacqueline she found half a dozen or so expressing interest in the auction, which she dealt with right away. Next she listened to a voice message from Kayla letting her know that a Devon-based choreographer was making contact with the firemen to start work on their auction routine, then she opened a text saying:

  I know you know where she is.

  As her insides jarred, the phone rang, making her start.

  ‘Mum,’ she said, clicking on quickly. ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘Of course. I heard the news while I was driving back from town, so I’m wondering how you are. I take it you heard it too.’

  ‘Actually I didn’t, but I know what was said. How’s Rufus?’

  ‘Being made a fuss of by his aunt and uncle. Do you—’

  Vivienne broke in sharply. ‘Are they listening to this call?’ she demanded, knowing how her sister would gloat if she was.

  ‘No, they’re in the sitting room. So what are you going to do about having your name dragged into it?’

  Feeling more annoyed than she should, she said, ‘There’s not much I can do, is there?’ Then, without thinking, ‘I received another text just now, from the person who seems to think I know where Jacqueline is.’

  Linda’s tone was clipped as she said, ‘But that’s absurd. I think you should tell the police.’

  ‘I’m considering it.’

  ‘Do you think Jacqueline herself could be sending them?’

  ‘It has crossed my mind, but why would she? What does it achieve?’

  ‘That’s asking me to think the way she does, and I’m not sure any of us can do that. Anyway, if it’s not her, who the heck else could it be, apart from that dreadful Justine James?’

  ‘Actually, I’m pretty certain that’s who it is. She’s trying to conjure up her own exclusive, meaning that if I contact the police she’ll be able to go to print with the messages, as though they’ve been leaked by an insider.’

  ‘She can’t get away with that,’ Linda declared hotly.

  ‘You’d be amazed what the press gets away with when someone’s fighting shy of publicity. Look at the things some of them are saying about Miles, slanting their coverage to cast him in the worst possible light, as if he didn’t get enough of that when Sam went missing.’

  ‘Well, maybe he should speak up for himself and tell them that if anyone’s done away with her, she’ll have done it to herself.’

  Vivienne’s eyes closed. ‘Mum, don’t say things like that.’

  ‘You might not want to hear it, but you can’t deny that a part of you wishes she’d put herself—’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Vivienne broke in angrily, ‘don’t you realise how it could sound to someone else if they heard you talking like that?’

  ‘All right, be as sympathetic as you like towards the woman, just please excuse me if I put my grandson first and worry about him instead.’

  ‘Don’t even try to suggest he doesn’t come first for me,’ Vivienne shot back, ‘because you know it’s not true.’

  ‘Of course I do, I’m just saying that it’s as though all our lives are in limbo while Jacqueline goes about the world in her tragic, wounded-heart way. Something’s got to be done to put an end to it, because Rufus has as much right to his father as little Sam did, and the only person stopping that from happening is Jacqueline.’

  ‘Is me,’ Vivienne corrected. ‘I’m the one who took the decision not to tell Miles, and now we’ve got to make sure that no one from the press gets wind of Rufus’s existence, because I don’t want him finding out that way.’ She shuddered. ‘And I sure as heck don’t want Jacqueline or Kelsey finding out like that either.’

  ‘Sir, there’s something here I think you’re going to find extremely interesting,’ DC Joy announced as she walked in through the open door of Sadler’s office.

  ‘And what would that be, Detective Constable?’ he responded, continuing to read the computer screen in front of him. ‘Shit, how many unsolved crimes can we be expected to declare when the investigations are ongoing—’

  Cutting across the rant, she said, ‘I’ve been doing a bit more digging around on the Avery case, sir, and, wait for this, it turns out that Vivienne Kane has a little boy of fifteen months who lives in Berkshire with her mother. No idea who the father is yet, but given the timescale I reckon it has to be Miles Avery.’

  Sadler’s head came slowly round to look at her.

  ‘Since neither he nor Vivienne Kane mentioned the child when we interviewed them,’ she went on, ‘they’re obviously deliberately keeping his existence a secret. Which would make sense when you consider how devastating it might be for Mrs Avery to find out her husband has another son.’

  Sadler put out a hand for the file she’d brought with her, and started to read.

  Joy waited quietly.

  ‘I take it you realise what this gives us, if Avery is the father?’ Sadler said darkly when he’d finished.

  She nodded. ‘A very good motive for murder, sir.’

  His small eyes bored into hers. ‘Pull the child’s birth certificate,’ he said. ‘It should give us the confirmation of parentage we need.’

  Taking the file back, she said, ‘There’s also the chance, sir, that Mrs Avery found out about the boy, and if that is the case, he could be at risk.’

  Sadler inhaled deeply as he contemplated her words. ‘How much contact have Avery and Kane had in the last two years?’ he asked.

  ‘None, according to them, until Mrs Avery disappeared, when he called to give Vivienne the news. Or, so he claims, to find out if his wife had been in touch.’

  Sadler was still looking pensive. ‘If we’re to take him at his word, then he waited three weeks before alerting Vivienne Kane to the fact his wife was missing. That doesn’t sound to me like someone who’s worried about the safety of his son.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Which could mean he knows his wife doesn’t pose a threat.’

  ‘Or that he doesn’t know he has a son.’

  Sadler’s eyes rose to Joy’s. ‘Get the birth certificate,’ he said. ‘If the boy does turn out to be Miles Avery’s, we’ll have sufficient grounds to order an official search for our missing person.’

  After she’d gone Sadler closed the door behind her, wanting some peace for the next few minutes while he reviewed what they had so far. All they knew for certain was that a woman had disappeared, apparently without trace, either because someone had committed a serious crime, or she’d lost her memory, or she’d been abducted, or because she’d chosen to go. The memory option was, for the moment, a non-starter, since there was no history of her blanking out as far as he knew, and even if she had, someone would have found her by now. The possibility of abduction wasn’t swinging it for him either, simply because it bore none of the hallmarks. So why would she choose to go? The fact that she and her missing son shared a birthday soon wasn’t floating his boat in any big way. What was she going to do? Light fifty-six candles and blow them out all by herself? Of course she could be planning to celebrate with another suicide attempt, but if she was, why disappear so long beforehand,
and why withdraw all that money?

  No, much more likely, as far as he was concerned, was that Miles Avery, either with or without Vivienne Kane, had removed the obstacle that was preventing him from being a father to his fifteen-month-old son. Which, in its way, brought him back to the money. Someone should have found out by now who’d actually made that withdrawal, because banks didn’t hand over that amount of cash without asking for ID, especially not these days.

  ‘All we’ve got so far, sir,’ Joy told him when he went through to CID to enquire, ‘is that the money was transferred from Jersey to a branch in Knightsbridge, and that it was a woman who picked it up. She signed herself Jacqueline Avery.’

  ‘Was Jacqueline Avery actually in London that day?’

  ‘I’ll check, sir, but even if she was, we still won’t know for certain if it was her, because it’s not her regular branch, so chances are no one there would have recognised her.’

  Sadler’s eyes were piercing.

  ‘She’d have had to produce some form of identity, of course,’ Joy went on, ‘but I think our best bet is to talk to whoever handed the money over and ask for a description.’

  Sadler nodded agreement. ‘Get hold of Vivienne Kane,’ he said. ‘I think we need to have another chat with her.’

  A few minutes later Joy came to find Sadler in his office. ‘Apparently, Vivienne Kane’s here in Devon,’ she informed him. ‘I’ve got a number for her.’

  Sadler glanced up in surprise.

  ‘Her receptionist said she’s involved in something with the Kenleigh WI.’

  Sadler’s eyebrows rose further up his forehead. ‘Well, I guess that saves us a trip to London,’ he muttered. ‘But before we go any further I want confirmation on whether or not the boy is Avery’s.’

  Justine was sitting beside Miles in his BMW, quietly watching the countryside go by as they drove past Stonehenge, where a hardy clutch of tourists was gawping at the monument from the periphery fence. Since he’d had a little too much Scotch the night before, he’d sent her home, saying he didn’t want to drive while over the limit, so he was delaying his departure for Devon until lunchtime the next day.

  However, instead of returning to her apartment, she’d passed an uncomfortable night in her car, determined not to let him take off without her, though he’d made no attempt to do so. And when he’d come out of the house, just after midday, to her relief he hadn’t raised an objection to her joining him.

  Now, as one of her three mobiles bleeped with a message, he said, ‘I doubt there’s much food in and it’s the housekeeper’s day off, so we can either stop at a supermarket, or go to a pub.’

  ‘The pub option sounds good to me,’ she responded, looking down at the text that had just come in. Her eyes were widening in amazement, and no small satisfaction, for it would appear that her little cat-and-mouse game with Vivienne Kane was paying off.

  I know it’s you sending the texts, Justine, so let’s meet. VK

  Well, that was unexpected, she was thinking as she began composing a message back. She’d felt certain Vivienne would show the texts to the police at some point, which would then allow her, Justine, to report them, verbatim, in a sensational exclusive. After all, new angles were often hard to find in an ongoing investigation, so sometimes it was necessary to help them along. However, in this instance it seemed she might have hit on more than she’d bargained for, because if Vivienne was finally willing to meet it was quite possible, even probable, that she had something to tell.

  Chapter Eight

  VIVIENNE WAS SITTING with her legs dangling over the edge of the stage of Kenleigh parish hall. In front of her, in haphazard rows spread out over a well-trodden pineboard floor, was a sea of foaming white hair, with the occasional bronze dash or shiny black cap bobbing up like seaweed amongst it. The turnout was impressive, considering it was a working day. There were at least thirty women present, some, she’d learned, from the neighbouring villages of Kenn and Kenton, but most were from Kenleigh.

  For the moment she was listening to Stella – the branch chairperson – who was seated at her formal table reading out a list of upcoming events: various coffee mornings, a Christmas floral art class, a shopping trip to Bath, skittles, a quiz night on Friday. In fact, everything she might have expected from a meeting of the WI, whose gathered members were making notes in their diaries and asking the odd jovial question.

  ‘All right, that’s our normal business about done with,’ Stella finally declared, closing up her file, ‘so I’ll hand over to Vivienne now. You’ve all got a copy of her plans for the auction, have you? They were on the table where you came in.’

  Several hands rose in the air, waving their copies, and as no one claimed not to have one Vivienne opened up the laptop on the stage next to her, ready to begin. ‘OK,’ she said, tucking her hands in under her knees, ‘I guess I should start by telling you that Sharon and I had a long chat this morning,’ she threw a smile in Sharon’s direction, ‘and the sum we’re now aiming to raise is much larger than you were probably expecting.’

  A few eyebrows went up, and some of the older women exchanged eloquent glances. ‘So how much are we talking about?’ Eileen wanted to know.

  ‘We’re going to set a target of thirty thousand pounds.’

  There was a moment’s stunned silence before they all began muttering in amazement, and no little excitement.

  ‘How on earth are we ever going to raise that much?’ someone near the back called out. ‘It’s more than my old man earns in a year.’

  ‘The answer’s in the notes I’ve given you,’ Vivienne told her, ‘but for those of you who haven’t had a chance to read them yet, we’re going to make the auction a national event. It’s the obvious way to go, and thanks to Theo Kenwood-South and the Devonshire firemen, plus Sharon’s own profile as Keith Goss’s wife, we shouldn’t have any trouble getting the necessary publicity. In fact, I’ve already received quite a lot of interest, but what we’re really after is one of the networks to televise it.’

  ‘Telly? What do you reckon about that then?’ someone near the front clucked delightedly. ‘We’m all going to end up being famous.’

  Vivienne laughed. ‘I should also make it clear,’ she went on, ‘that the money’s not all for Sharon. She isn’t comfortable with being the sole focus, so if we do reach our target, fifty per cent of it will go to someone with a similar need.’

  ‘That’s a bloody good idea,’ Mary stated approvingly. ‘Yeah, I likes the sound of that.’

  ‘Me too,’ the woman next to her agreed.

  ‘So how’s the auction going to work then?’ Eileen demanded.

  ‘Much the same way as the slave auctions you’re familiar with,’ Vivienne answered. ‘So far we have ten firemen offering their amateur skills, such as gardening, weight-lifting, DIY – it’s all listed in your notes. However, instead of just standing next to the podium, or sitting in the audience, they’re going to perform a dance routine, which a choreographer’s devising for them.’

  ‘Blimey, what a scream,’ Mary chuckled gleefully. ‘I can see ’em now in their helmets and boots.’

  ‘I hope they’m going to be strip routines,’ Eileen cackled. ‘That’ll get the bids up all right.’

  ‘What about Theo Kenwood-South?’ Gail demanded. ‘What’s he going to be doing?’

  ‘Basically the same as the firemen,’ Vivienne replied. ‘He’ll be the star turn, obviously.’

  ‘When’s he coming down here?’

  ‘I’m hoping to hear later today.’

  ‘It says here that one of the firemen’s a bit handy at plumbing,’ Mary read out.

  ‘That’ll suit you,’ Eileen crowed, ‘being a bit of an old boiler.’

  Everyone burst out laughing, including Mary.

  ‘The weight-lifter’s offering some personal training,’ Gail informed them.

  ‘Oh blimey, somersaults in the bedroom, I’m coming over all hot now,’ someone nearby claimed, fanning herself down with the
proposal.

  ‘You’m never going to be able to afford any of ’em,’ Stella told her. ‘Not if we’m going to be bidding against women all over the country.’

  ‘Still can’t see how we’m going to raise as much as thirty grand for a bit of plumbing and personal training,’ Eileen said doubtfully.

  ‘Don’t forget the swimming,’ Lizzie shouted. ‘Imagine that, being close to Theo K-S in his dear little trunks and goggles. I can feel meself drowning already.’

  As they all laughed Vivienne said, ‘Provided we can get the right TV interest, and link up with a registered charity, it’ll be easier to raise the money than you think.’

  ‘You haven’t told ’em yet what we’re all going to be doing,’ Stella reminded her.

  As all eyes came to her, Vivienne wanted to hug the lot of them for how eager they seemed to help. ‘If we can pull it off nationally,’ she said, ‘and I really think we can, then most of the bids are probably going to come in by phone, so we’ll be needing you to man the lines. I have to talk to BT about that yet, but I’m hoping they’ll donate their services and equipment for free. As it’s in a good cause, and there’s the chance of a lot of publicity, there’s a strong chance they will.’

  ‘Oh Sharon,’ Mary said excitedly. ‘You’re going to end up with everything you need, my old love. Wouldn’t even be surprised if we ended up with a donor.’

  Sharon’s face was pale as she rose to her feet. ‘Sorry, but I have to go,’ she said shakily. ‘I’ve got to pick the kids up from school.’

  Realising something had upset her, Vivienne quickly slid down from the stage and walked out to the lobby with her.

  ‘Sorry, I know I’m being really daft,’ Sharon said, dabbing her eyes, ‘but it’s bringing it all home a bit.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Vivienne said, hugging her.

  ‘And all that money. I know we talked about it this morning, but I’ve been thinking about it since … I don’t know if I can go on telly asking for all that much.’