“Look. I’m no good at negotiating and playing games,” she said. “I need to know if you’ll take on this case and help me find out what happened to Jo. There’s so much in those case files—witness statements, a timeline the police put together in the hours before she vanished.”
Bev pulled out the chair behind the desk and slumped down into it. She looked exhausted. Tristan looked at Kate. As far as he was concerned, he’d wanted to take on the case the moment Kate had called him at the bank. She nodded.
“Okay. We’re on board,” said Kate. “I have contacts in the police and in forensics. And having the case files here gives us a huge advantage.”
“Oh, I’m so happy,” said Bev. “Thank you.” Tristan could see how raw the emotions were about the loss of her daughter.
“Let’s start with six months,” said Bill. “Then we’ll review where you are.” He held out his hand first to Kate and then Tristan, and they shook on it. Bev got up and came over to them and gave them both a hug. Tristan could smell stale booze on her breath.
“Thank you, thank you so much,” said Bev.
“We’ll do everything we can to find Jo,” said Kate.
Bev nodded and burst into tears, moving to Bill, who put his arm around her protectively.
“Can we take the case files with us?” asked Tristan.
“I’ll give you a hand to take them down to your car,” said Bill.
“I can’t bear having all this in the house. It gives me the creeps,” said Bev. “Please. Take it all away.”
5
The next morning, Kate and Tristan started to go through the Joanna Duncan case files. They were also planning to scan all the documents. It would be time consuming, but it would also help if they both had electronic access to the files, and Kate figured it would be worth having a backup. They had permission to use the files, but police bureaucracy could be fickle. The police had granted access but could withdraw it at any time.
When they started on the first box, Tristan found a cassette tape tucked inside the file containing the official statement from Joanna’s husband, Fred Duncan.
“It’s dated September twelfth, 2002,” he said, reading the handwritten label on the side of the plastic box. “That’s five days after Joanna went missing.”
“Have any of the other statements from early in the investigation got cassettes in them?” asked Kate. Tristan flicked through the other files from the first box.
“These look like written statements from Joanna’s family, friends, and work colleagues, but no cassettes,” said Tristan.
“So, at the beginning of the investigation, they only brought in Joanna’s husband for official questioning. Next of kin are usually the first suspects.”
“How long is an audio cassette? I’ve never really come across them,” said Tristan, turning the plastic box over in his hands.
“Bloody hell. You make me feel old,” said Kate with a grin. She took the cassette box and checked it over. “This one is thirty minutes on each side, and it says it’s one of one, so it wasn’t a long interview.”
Kate got up and went to the filing cabinet where they kept an old radio cassette machine inherited from Myra. She took the cassette from its box and put it in the machine. She started the audio recorder on her phone, switched on the cassette player, and put the phone next to it.
There were two voices on the tape. A DCI Featherstone—an older, gruff-voiced male—and Fred Duncan, who had a pronounced Cornish accent.
“You said you were painting the house all day on the seventh of September, at the home you shared with Joanna in the village of Upton Pyne. Your neighbor Arthur Malone told us that a young woman arrived just after two p.m. and went inside your house, but he didn’t see her leave,” said DCI Featherstone on the tape. “Who was she?”
“A neighbor. Famke,” said Fred.
“Famke—sounds foreign? What’s her second name?”
“Van Noort . . .” There was a bit of back-and-forth as Fred spelled it out for DCI Featherstone. “The name is Dutch. She’s an au pair working for a family a few doors down.”
“Do people in your area have au pairs?” asked Featherstone, a mocking tone in his voice.
“Yeah. It’s a doctor and his wife. Paulson is their name. Dr. Trevor Paulson. I don’t know his wife’s name. They own the big manor house at the end of the village. Famke looks after their kids,” said Fred.