Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(23)

“Do you know his address?”

“Oh, he’s long dead. He was knocking seventy back in 1990,” said Sheila.

“Did Caitlyn play a sport at school, or was she in any after-school clubs?” asked Kate. Sheila shook her head and dabbed at the end of her nose with a tissue. “What about this school friend from Melbourne?”

“Megan Hibbert,” said Malcolm. “It was strange. We go back up to Altrincham every year to put flowers on Sheila’s mother’s grave. Sheila couldn’t go this year, so I went on me own, and when I was at the cemetery, this woman came up to me and asked if I was Caitlyn’s dad. It proper shook me up to hear a stranger say her name. It turned out it was Megan, and she had come back to the UK after all those years to visit family, and she was there to pay respects to her granddad. We went and had a coffee. She hadn’t heard about Caitlyn until a few years later, what with being so cut off back then on the other side of the world. She mentioned that Caitlyn had talked about being in a relationship with a policeman . . . It knocked me for six, because, well, we thought we knew everything about her.”

“Did Megan ever see Caitlyn with this policeman?”

“She said that one evening, when they were at the youth club, they were playing table tennis, and Caitlyn left, saying she was going to the loo. She didn’t come back for a while, so Megan went looking for her and found Caitlyn outside. She was standing by a car parked up at the front and talking to a man through the window . . .” Kate and Tristan saw how Sheila was reacting to this—her face was crumpled up, and she was wiping at her eyes with a soggy clump of tissue. “Come on, love, it’s okay,” said Malcolm, getting her a fresh tissue.

“What did the man look like?” asked Kate.

“Megan said she didn’t really see him, as it was dark. He looked very handsome, in his twenties. He had dark hair slicked back, straight white teeth. The car was new—a dark-blue Rover, H registration. She said Caitlyn was laughing and flirting with him. He put a hand out of the window and around her waist, then she got in the car and they drove away. Caitlyn didn’t tell Megan what his name was, but she did say he was a copper. This wasn’t the day Caitlyn went missing. Megan said that Caitlyn came to school the next day, and she was fine. Happy.”

“Did Megan ever see them together again?”

“No.”

“Did Caitlyn say anything else?”

“No. They were friends but not best friends.”

“When was this?”

“Megan said it was in the summer, toward the end of July. It was just getting dark at around nine p.m. It would have been either a Tuesday or Thursday.”

“What about the police investigation into Caitlyn’s disappearance? Do you have the names of the police officers who worked on it?” asked Kate.

“We only ever met two. A woman and a man. The woman was young. PC Frances Cohen, and her boss, a Detective Chief Inspector Kevin Pearson. We don’t know where they are now,” said Malcolm.

“They were very nice with us, but there was nothing for them to go on . . . ,” said Sheila. “By the time Caitlyn went missing, Megan had moved with her family. They emigrated at the end of August. She never said anything to anyone, and it seems that Caitlyn never told Wendy about this policeman.”

“Peter Conway was a police officer in Greater Manchester Police from early 1989 to March 1991, after which he moved to London. Do you know if he worked on the case?” asked Kate.

“We did a freedom of information request a few weeks ago to ask if he was working on the case, but nothing has come back yet,” said Malcolm. “We heard that he was working in narcotics, and Greater Manchester Police is a big organization. He did live just a few miles away from our house in Altrincham. He rented a room in a house in Avondale Road in Stretford. It’s written in one of those books about him. We saw the pictures of him, too, when he was younger. He does look like Megan’s description of him: handsome with dark hair slicked back, and he had very straight white teeth. Of course, we know what he did with those teeth.” Sheila broke down completely and buried her head in Malcolm’s shoulder. “Love, mind the tubes, careful,” he said, untangling one of the blood-filled tubes from his wrist. He got up and went to a sideboard next to the fireplace. He took out a large box file and handed it to Kate. “This is everything I’ve kept over the years . . .” Kate opened the file and saw stacks of photos and paperwork. “There are press cuttings, photos of Caitlyn. There are details of where she went on the day she went missing . . . We don’t think she’s still alive, but as I said, we just want to find her so we can put her to rest.”

“I know this is a difficult question, but do you have any reason to think that Caitlyn ran away? Was she unhappy about anything, or did you have an argument about something?”

“What? No!” cried Sheila. “No, no, no, she was happy. Of course, she was a teenager, but no! No? Malcolm?”

“I didn’t know of anything. We’d had a lovely Saturday night the day before she went missing. We got fish and chips and watched The Generation Game and then a James Bond film. All together in here, happy as larks.”

“I’m sorry, but I had to ask,” said Kate. Malcolm nodded.

Sheila regained her composure. “I feel like you’re our only hope, Kate. You were the only officer who saw through Peter Conway’s facade. You caught him, and you put him away.” She reached out to Kate, and Kate got up and went to her, taking her outstretched hand. It felt like dry paper, and her yellow skin was so shiny. “Please, say you’ll help us.”