Darkness Falls (Kate Marshall, #3)(15)

Tristan took the folder that was poking out of Kate’s bag and found one of the photos from the case file. It was taken from a CCTV camera a little way down from the crossing where they waited. It was the last known photo taken of Joanna. She wore a long black coat and a pair of brown leather cowboy boots. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was wavy and parted in the middle. The pavement was empty, and a couple were a little way behind her on the street, with their backs to the camera, huddled down, sharing an umbrella.

“She looked stressed out,” said Tristan, holding up the photo. Joanna’s brow was furrowed, and both hands were clutching the handle of her bag hooked over her shoulder. It looked like she was deep in concentration.

“She would have crossed right here,” said Kate, keeping one eye on the road as the last couple of pedestrians hurried across. “What was the multistory car park like? Was there an entrance on foot, here on the road?”

“Yeah, there was a car entrance in the middle, just further up,” said Tristan, indicating what was now the center of the apartment block. “And to the right of that was a poky little door for pedestrians.”

The lights turned green, and Kate drove past the Anchor apartment block. Tristan went on, “The car park was nasty, concrete, constantly damp. I used to get very scared the few times my mum parked there. Druggies hung around in the stairwell, and it was creepy if you had to go back to your car after dark. There were no windows, just holes in the concrete sides at intervals. It was six stories high, and over the years quite a few people jumped off and committed suicide on the road here. By the time they demolished it, most people were using the NCP multistory car park on the other side of the one-way system—we’ll go past it in a sec. Or they used the Guildhall Shopping Centre down the other end of the high street.”

“If Joanna got as far as crossing the road back there in that photo, then logically, she could have been grabbed or attacked by someone using the cover of the multistory car park. The traffic is so loud on the high street, it could have drowned out any sounds of screaming when she was inside,” said Kate, glancing back down at the CCTV photo in Tristan’s lap. It made her shiver to think that Joanna could have been moments away from her fate in this picture.

They reached the top of the high street, where there was a small park. The cathedral appeared to rise out of the ground as the one-way system curved around to the right onto Market Street, past the NCP car park and the Corn Exchange theatre.

“It just seems like such a risky place to make her vanish,” said Kate. “Joanna lived in Upton Pyne, which is so tiny and out in the sticks. She had to drive across all that countryside to get to work. If I was going to make someone vanish, I wouldn’t do it in the middle of Exeter with its busy one-way system and part-pedestrianized high street. I’d grab her in the countryside. Force her car off the road. We hardly saw any other cars when we drove into Exeter from Upton Pyne, and that road was probably even quieter back in 2002.”

“There were no CCTV cameras facing the exit or entrance ramp of the multistory car park, were there?” asked Tristan.

“No. Just the camera that caught this last picture of Joanna. The next CCTV camera is up by the Corn Exchange around the corner.”

“There are plenty of other side roads you could turn off before you get to the Corn Exchange.”

They were now leaving the town center and heading back toward Ashdean. There was so much paperwork in the case file, and Kate wanted to have another look at it all. It was taking time to absorb all the details.

“I want to track down her colleagues at the West Country News,” said Kate. “And her editor. I don’t think DCI Featherstone pushed him enough to talk about what Joanna was investigating when she went missing. As far as I can see from the case file interviews, they never talked to him again . . . What was his name?”

“Ashley Harris,” said Tristan.

“Yes, and we need to talk to Jo’s friend Marnie. And Famke. She could give us more insight into the state of Fred and Joanna’s marriage, and Fred’s alibi is a bit of a patchwork.”

Tristan looked at Kate. “You really think Fred could have done it?”

“At this stage I want to keep an open mind.” Kate indicated the photo, still in Tristan’s lap. “The case files say that Joanna logged out of her work computer at five thirty p.m. The time stamp on that photo is five forty-one. What if Fred came to pick her up in his car? She got in willingly . . . He managed to drop her phone without her noticing . . . Okay, that part’s still unclear. But if she got into a car willingly with him, there’s six miles of lonely countryside where he could have dumped her body, come back home. It’s not a long journey from Upton Pyne to Exeter.”

“The neighbor said Fred’s car didn’t move until seven thirty that night, when he left and went searching for Joanna,” said Tristan.

“Shit. Yes. That’s right. Let’s get something to eat and go back to the case files again.”





8


Tristan arrived home at seven that evening. He’d worked through the afternoon with Kate, putting together a timeline of Joanna’s last day. They couldn’t find contact details for Famke, but they’d managed to track down the doctor who Famke had worked for as an au pair. He now had a surgery in Surrey, and they’d emailed him.