‘By then precious hours had been lost,’ continues Brenda, her face wistful. ‘Hours when we could have been looking for them. But in the confusion nobody twigged that the girls had been in the car with Olivia. Tamzin’s parents thought she was staying with friends as it wasn’t unheard of for her to stay out all night. She was a bit of a good-time girl by all accounts.’
‘So when did the police discover that all three girls were missing?’
‘Not until later that day when we interviewed Olivia in the hospital. By this time Mr Thorne had rung Tamzin Cole’s and Katie Burke’s parents and worked out that all three of them hadn’t been seen since leaving home the night before. At first they assumed they’d all gone off somewhere together, maybe another friend’s house, until they rang Olivia’s mother and she told them about the accident.’
‘And then Olivia told you they’d been in the car when she crashed?’
Brenda nods, her face grave. ‘By the time we got to speak to Olivia it was nearly six p.m. as she’d been in theatre most of that day with doctors trying to save her leg.’
I grimace.
She sips her coffee and looks thoughtful. ‘And then, of course, everyone began to panic.’
‘God, how awful.’ I reach for my mug.
‘I still thought maybe they were all together somewhere. But it was out of character for Sally in particular to go off radar. They weren’t tearaways or problem kids. They all had jobs, lived at home, came from decent families. Sally Thorne seemed to have it all. She was beautiful, popular and clever. She was having a year out before taking up her university place at York, working as a temp with Tamzin. She would have been the first in her family to go to university. They were understandably proud.’
I feel a swell of sadness for Sally and her family in that moment.
‘And the others?’
Brenda reaches over for a pastry. ‘Well,’ she says, tearing the pain au chocolat with her fingers. She seems to have forgotten about my mobile with its intrusive tripod and microphone and is no longer eyeing it with distrust. ‘Katie was the eldest. She worked at the pharmacy in town. Apparently she was sensible, trustworthy. And then there was Tamzin …’ She sighs, and I lean forward expectantly.
‘Oh, yes?’
‘She’d been sacked from two jobs for returning to the office tipsy after her lunch hour. And then there was some …’ she pauses to swallow her pastry ‘… unfortunate business with the money.’
‘The money?’
‘Yes. Tamzin’s last job, before she disappeared, was with a firm of solicitors in town. After the girls went missing Lloyd Groves, who owned the firm, came to us to say the petty cash had gone.’
‘How much?’
‘A couple of hundred pounds.’
‘Not really enough to run away with,’ I muse.
‘I suppose it depends on how desperate they were. Or what they’d planned. The money was never found.’
‘And did Olivia Rutherford know anything about the missing money?’
‘She says not, but … I don’t know. I think that girl has been lying from the beginning.’ She pulls a face. ‘I always got the sense Olivia was hiding something.’
This is interesting. ‘You think Olivia knew more about the money and her friends’ disappearance than she let on?’
Brenda leans forward to put her empty plate on the coffee-table. ‘I definitely think she knew something – something she’s never told us.’
‘If Tamzin and the others took the money to run off somewhere, then why? And why not take Olivia with them?’
‘One theory floated at the time was that Olivia was so badly injured in the crash they had no choice but to leave without her.’
‘Wouldn’t they have aborted the plan?’
She brushes crumbs from her skirt and shakes her head. ‘It depends how desperate they were to get away. But I don’t think that’s what happened. Their bank accounts were untouched. They have never contacted their families. No.’ She takes off her glasses and uses the hem of her jumper to clean them. ‘I think something bad must have happened to them.’
And despite the warm room a chill runs down my spine. ‘I read that Ralph Middleton was a suspect?’
‘Yes. He’s a strange fellow, a loner. But I always thought he was harmless. Still, we had to bring him in because he had found the car after the accident and rung the ambulance. He did save Olivia’s life. She was in a bad way.’
‘That was the only reason he was a suspect?’
‘No. It was also the way he acted when we first interviewed him. Very twitchy. He kept changing his story. First he said he was out in the forest at that time of night walking his dog, and then because he couldn’t sleep. He lived – well, still lives – in a caravan in the forest. Not far from where your cabin is, actually. So it is plausible he was up at that time and wandering the forest with his dog. But, well, he intimated that he saw something strange at the scene …’
‘Like what?’
‘A bright light. He then started going on about alien abduction. I think he was high that night – he is said to smoke a lot of wacky baccy. A few days later he changed his statement and said he’d been mistaken about the bright light. And then a witness came forward.’
I sip my coffee, not taking my eyes off her.
‘Someone reported seeing a man believed to be Ralph with a young girl fitting Tamzin’s description around ten a.m. on the morning after the accident. We brought Ralph back in for questioning but he said it had been his friend Jade Marlow, a known petty criminal and drug addict who, at the time, was in her early twenties.’
‘And did she back up his story?’
Brenda nods sagely. ‘But she would, I expect, and knowing her, for the right fee. She looked nothing like Tamzin apart from the blonde hair. Anyway, after the accident Ralph and Olivia became closer. He would visit her all the time and when she got better she would often go to his caravan and hang out there. But, of course, people began to talk. Thought perhaps the two of them had been in it together. But you know how people like to gossip.’ I make a mental calculation of Ralph’s age. He’s got to be at least in his fifties now which would make him in his thirties back then.
‘What else do you know about Ralph? Has he ever been married?’
‘Nope. Never married and has always lived alone with his animals.’
I pause to drain the rest of my coffee, then place my cup on the table. ‘And were there any other suspects?’
She picks a crumb of pastry from her lip. ‘Yes. Wesley Tucker.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Olivia’s boyfriend.’
I can’t hide my shock. ‘Olivia’s boyfriend was a suspect? Why?’
‘Some say he had a fixation on Sally Thorne before he started going out with Olivia. According to reports from her parents, he’d made a bit of a nuisance of himself, bombarding her with messages, leaving notes outside her house and sending her flowers and presents. You know the type? Doesn’t like taking no for an answer. He’d been in the same class as Katie at school and there had been no love lost between them either, let’s put it that way. According to her friends and family, she made no bones about how much she disliked him. And two days before the accident a witness reported seeing him and Tamzin Cole arguing in the street.’