“Joanna met with Noah Huntley two weeks before she went missing, at a petrol station close to where she lived. The meeting was caught on CCTV,” said Kate.
Faye was nodding along as she swallowed the remains of her second doughnut, downed the last of her coffee, and got up, slapping her legs.
“Right. Thank you for everything you’ve done on advancing this case, and thank you for the refreshments.”
Mona popped the last bite of her doughnut in her mouth and wiped off the sugar. She stood up.
“Is that it?” asked Kate. She’d expected Faye to ask some more questions about their findings.
“Did you expect more? You’ve been a huge, huge help. You’ve saved us time and resources, and I’ll make sure that your little agency is mentioned in one of our press releases. Do you have a website?” asked Faye.
“Yes.”
“Text it to me,” said Faye. “Tony, would you give us a hand with the boxes?”
“It’s Tristan.”
“Of course, sorry. Tristan,” said Faye. She picked up three of the boxes.
“Will you be contacting Bev Ellis, Joanna’s mother?” asked Kate.
“At some point we will. Both of the investigations will probably merge very soon.”
“Can I just ask, When will Hayden Oakley be buried? Have you released the body yet?” asked Tristan.
“Next week. Hayden didn’t have any dependents. No family has asked for the body. Looks like it will be a council funeral,” said Faye.
“The pub where he was last seen is organizing a memorial,” said Mona.
“Which pub?” asked Kate.
“The Brewer’s Arms in Torquay.”
When Faye and Mona had taken all the boxes, Kate and Tristan came back up to the office. Kate made two more cups of coffee, and Tristan took a pile of linen for the campsite off the printer and scanner.
“I was worried when I said paper copies to her that she’d want to know if we’d scanned any of the case files digitally,” said Tristan. “Do you think DCI Stubbs is a bit thick?”
“I’m hoping she’s just overworked. She asked us to hand over the printed case files, and that’s what we did. If she’d have asked us to delete the digital scans, then we’d be in trouble,” said Kate.
“So this is a gray area?”
Kate nodded. “We’ve cooperated and shared everything we know. We have one advantage over the police. This is our only case, and I’m not giving up on finding out what happened to Joanna Duncan, or who killed those young men.”
33
Kate and Tristan spent the rest of the weekend in the office, planning their next steps with the investigation. They were due to meet Bev and Bill on Wednesday, which marked three weeks since they’d started working on the case. They spent some time composing an email to Noah Huntley and then sent it from Tristan’s account, requesting a general interview, hoping that the prospect of a meeting with a handsome young man might entice him to take the bait.
On Monday morning, they drove over to the Brewer’s Arms in Torquay, where Hayden had been seen for the last time. Torquay was less than an hour’s drive from Ashdean. It was another hot day, and they took Kate’s car and had the air-conditioning on full blast.
When they reached the outskirts of the town, they had to drive round the ring road a couple of times before they found the turnoff toward the canal and the sloping road down to the Brewer’s Arms.
They parked on a piece of scrubby, litter-strewn grass and walked up to the pub’s entrance, which was under the first arch in a line of brick arches running along the water’s edge. The canal shimmered in the heat, and there was a strong smell coming off the stagnant water, which was a soup of discarded rubbish and a half-submerged shopping trolley.
“Why do shopping trolleys always end up in canals?” asked Tristan.
“It’s mostly homeless people who use them for all their belongings, and they’re thrown in, or fall in along with their owners,” said Kate, remembering from her time in the police.
A tall, stringy young man with terrible acne emerged from the front entrance with a bucket. He wore old ripped jeans, and he was shirtless. He emptied the bucket in the grass.
“Hello, do you work here?” asked Kate.
“Do I look like I’m doing this for my health?” he snapped.
“We’re private detectives looking at the death of Hayden Oakley.”
“Des!” shouted the young man over his shoulder. “Someone here to see you!”