“It’s full-time work at Brannigan’s.”
“Can you find anyone else? We’ve got to get eight caravans ready for Saturday morning.”
“I’m trying, but everyone is looking right now with the summer season so close,” said Jake.
When Kate came off the phone, Sarah was looking at her.
“Trouble at the campsite?” she asked.
Tristan had found the first aid kit and passed it through to the kitchen. “What’s happened at the campsite?” he asked. Kate explained.
“I went on a course last week,” said Sarah. “To have a successful business, you need a charismatic manager who can inspire their team.” She picked up her bag off the table. “I can see this is a bad time. Tris, the runner beans are from Mandy next door. They just need a couple of minutes in salty, boiling water. And remember, you’re coming for lunch on Sunday.”
There was a triumphant look on Sarah’s face as she left the house. Kate had a sudden urge to stick her foot out as she walked by, but she didn’t.
“It’s okay, Kate,” said Tristan when she was gone. “Everything is fixable.”
26
Jake didn’t find new cleaning staff before the weekend, so he, Kate, and Tristan spent Friday and Saturday getting the caravan-site shop open and the eight caravans ready for guests.
Kate slept in late on Sunday, and just after her swim, she got a call from Alan Hexham, asking her for lunch, saying he had information on David Lamb and Gabe Kemp.
Kate had never been to visit Alan Hexham at home. He lived alone in a large redbrick house in a smart, leafy suburb of Exeter. He was a tall, broad man with a thick, bushy graying beard and a jovial face. Kate often wondered if he used his personality to deflect from all the death and destruction he saw every day as a forensic pathologist.
When he opened the front door, a bouncy Labrador puppy came bundling out, and the delicious smell of something roasting in the oven wafted behind him.
“Hello, hello, do come in,” Alan said. “Down, Quincy, down!” he added to the Labrador, who had started to hump Kate’s left leg. He pulled the dog away.
Alan’s house was eclectic—filled with bookcases and antique wood furniture. He took them through to the kitchen, which to Kate seemed very posh with a bright-green AGA and a vast Welsh dresser filled with willow-patterned plates. Hanging from the ceiling above the work surfaces were all sorts of copper pans and colanders.
“I know you don’t drink, but I’ve just had an awful thought. Are you also a vegetarian?”
“No. I eat meat,” said Kate, fending off Quincy, who seemed fixated with her left leg.
“Quincy likes you,” he chuckled. “I don’t often have the pleasure of good-looking ladies for lunch!” He picked a giant beef knuckle out of a pot on the stove, checked it was cool, and threw it down. They watched Quincy as he grabbed it and retreated to the corner to chew. “I’m roasting a goose, if that sounds good?” said Alan, licking the beef juice off his fingers.
“That sounds divine,” said Kate. She’d been living off things on toast for the last couple of days.
Over lunch, Kate filled Alan in on the details of the case and how David Lamb and Gabe Kemp fit into the jigsaw.
After what Kate thought was the most delicious meal she’d had in years, they came through to the sitting room with cups of coffee.
“My contact in CID managed to find criminal records for David Lamb and Gabe Kemp,” said Alan, handing her two dog-eared cardboard files. “The most revealing stuff is contained in the witness statements, which give us a gold mine of information about the young guys’ backgrounds.” He leaned down and scratched Quincy’s belly as Kate read the witness statements.
In 1995, when he was sixteen years old, Gabe Kemp had raped a fourteen-year-old girl at a local park and spent eighteen months in a young offenders’ institution. The information about his background was from the police report and subsequent police interviews.
Gabe had come from a low-income single-parent family. He’d been born in Bangor in North Wales. His father had left the scene early on and gone to work on construction sites in Saudi Arabia. His mother had been long-term unemployed and died of a drug overdose just after his sixteenth birthday.
Gabe was released from the young offenders’ institution in the summer of 1997, and he moved to Exeter and got a job in a gay bar called Peppermintz . . .
Here we go again, thought Kate. Another clue leads us back to Noah Huntley. She made a mental note to follow up again on the Peppermintz link and carried on reading.