The missed call was from a landline number with an area code she didn’t recognize. She was about to phone back when a voice mail message popped up. Kate listened; it was from an older woman with a Cornish accent who spoke in a halting, nervous staccato.
“Hello . . . I got yer number online . . . I’ve seen that you’ve just started your own private detective agency . . . My name’s Bev Ellis, and I’m calling about my daughter, Joanna Duncan. She was a journalist, and she went missing, almost thirteen years ago . . . She just vanished. The police never found out what happened to her, but she did vanish. She didn’t run away or nothing like that . . . She had everything going for her. I want to hire a private detective who can find out what happened to her. What happened to her body . . .” At this point her voice broke, and she took a deep breath and swallowed loudly. “Please, call me back.”
Kate listened to the message again. From the sound of the woman’s voice, it had obviously taken a lot of courage to make the call. Kate opened her laptop to google the case and hesitated. She should call this woman back right away. There were two other long-established detective agencies nearby in Exeter, with slick websites and offices, and she could be phoning them too.
Bev’s voice was still shaky when she answered the phone. Kate apologized for missing her call and gave her condolences for the loss of her daughter.
“Thank you,” said Bev.
“Do you live locally?” asked Kate as she googled “Joanna Duncan missing.”
“We’re in Salcombe. About an hour away.”
“Salcombe’s very nice,” said Kate, scanning the search results that had appeared on her screen. Two articles from September 2002 in the West Country News said:
DEVASTATED MOTHER OF LOCAL JOURNALIST JOANNA DUNCAN APPEALS FOR WITNESSES TO HER DAUGHTER’S DISAPPEARANCE NEAR EXETER TOWN CENTRE.
WHERE DID JO GO?
PHONE FOUND ABANDONED WITH CAR
IN DEANSGATE CAR PARK
Another from the Sun newspaper said:
WEST COUNTRY LOCAL JOURNALIST VANISHES
“I live with my partner, Bill,” said Bev. “We’ve been together for years, but I recently moved in with him. I used to live on the Moor Side council estate on the outskirts of Exeter . . . Quite different.”
Another headline, dated December 1, 2002, which acknowledged that Joanna had been missing for almost three months, caught Kate’s eye.
Nearly all the articles used the same photo of Joanna Duncan, on a beach against blue sky and perfect white sand. She had bright-blue eyes, high cheekbones, a strong nose, and slightly bucked front teeth. She was smiling in the photo. There was a large red carnation tucked behind her left ear, and she held a halved coconut containing a cocktail umbrella.
“You said that Joanna was a journalist?” asked Kate.
“Yes. For the West Country News. She was going places. She wanted to move to London and work on one of the tabloids. She loved her job. She’d just got married. Jo and her husband, Fred, wanted kids . . . She went missing on Saturday, the seventh of September. She’d been at work in Exeter and then left around five thirty. One of her colleagues saw her go. It was less than a quarter of a mile walk from the newspaper offices to the multistory car park, but somewhere along the way, something happened. She just vanished into thin air . . . We found her car in the multistory; her phone was underneath. The police had nothing. They had no suspects. They spent nearly thirteen years doing God knows what, and then I got a phone call from them last week, telling me that after twelve years, the case is now inactive. They’ve given up on finding Jo. I have to find out what happened to her. I know she’s probably dead; I want to find her and put her properly to rest. I saw an article about you in the National Geographic, how you found the body of that young woman who’d been missing for twenty years . . . Then I googled you and saw you’ve just started your own detective agency. Is that right?”
“Yes,” said Kate.
“I like that you’re a woman. I’ve spent so many years dealing with policemen who’ve patronized me,” said Bev, her voice rising in defiance. “Could we meet? I can come over to your offices.”
Kate glanced up at what was passing for their “offices.” The space they were using had been Myra’s living room. It still had the old 1970s patterned carpet, and their desk was an opened-out leafed dining table. Along one wall were bottles of urinal disinfectant and packs of paper towels for the caravan site. A large corkboard on the wall had a note that said ACTIVE CASES pinned at the top, but it was empty. Since the conclusion of their most recent job, a background check on a young man for his prospective employer, the agency had had no work. When Myra left her estate to Kate, it was on the condition that she quit her job and pursue her ambition to start a detective agency. They’d been up and running for nine months, but building the agency into something that could make a profit was proving to be tough.