Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(36)

“How are we this morning?” she trilled as if they were out shopping and had just bumped into each other. She was an unfortunate-looking woman, well and truly beaten by the ugly stick: fat, with a hooked nose, a weak chin, and myopic bug eyes magnified by huge glasses. Peter wondered what she had to be so cheerful about, doling out pills to crazy people all day long. “Let’s see . . . Peter . . . Peter, here we are,” she said, looking for his cup. He tipped them back into his mouth and took the small cup of water.

“Open wide for me,” she said. He showed her the inside of his mouth. “That’s lovely. You have a lovely day, and you too, Winston!”

She trundled off, the wheel squeaking on the trolley.

Winston opened the door to his room, and they went through the ritual of uncuffing and unbuckling the hood, and then he was left alone.

He spat the pills out into his palm and dropped them into the toilet in the corner of his room and flushed.

He hoped Winston would give him those exercises, but he didn’t want to wait. He dropped to the floor and started to do push-ups; his body protested, but he carried on, determined to get fighting fit.





18

Kate woke at seven thirty to a beautiful, sunny day. The sea was still and clear, but the sandy bed had been churned up by the storm, making the visibility low when she dove into the water. There was also a glut of seaweed that she had to swim and then wade through. When she came out of the water, she pulled on a robe she’d left on the sand and took a walk along the beach, where a long line of detritus ran close to the water.

She was determined to find something that she could photograph and send to Jake. She walked past the row of houses at the top of the cliff and the small RV park and stopped at the rock pools exposed by the low tide. The black volcanic rock was like razor blades, and in places a soggy blanket of vivid green seaweed clung to the rock. She was thrilled to find a strange bloated fish with short, spiky fins lying beached next to a deep rock pool where the sun sparkled off the water, and below in the depths an eel swam in lazy circles. The bloated fish was the size of a dinner plate and had huge expressive eyes. She snapped a photo with her phone, and she sent it in a text to Jake.

He wrote back instantly:

GROSS! I MISS THE BEACH THERE. DID GRANDMA TELL YOU? I CAN JOIN FACEBOOK!!!



Kate texted back that he would have to give them his password, but she didn’t get a response.

When Kate arrived at work an hour later, she still hadn’t had a response. She put her phone away and made a mental note to follow it up later with her mother.

Tristan arrived ten minutes later and excitedly handed her a printout of a LinkedIn profile.

“Who is Vicky O’Grady?” she asked. There was no photo.

“I didn’t have the box file at home,” he said. “But I remembered Malcolm and Sheila said that in 1990 Caitlyn worked at a video shop in Altrincham called Hollywood Nights. I took a punt and had a look on LinkedIn to see if anyone worked there, and this Vicky O’Grady came up.”

“Are there any contact details?”

“I messaged her last night, and she got back to me straightaway. She works for BBC Studios in Bristol, as a makeup artist. I was up-front and said we were looking into Caitlyn’s disappearance and asked if she remembered her.”

Tristan gave her another piece of paper with the printout of the messages. It went to six pages.

Kate scanned them. “Blimey, you had a good chat with her. And she says they were close friends? Malcolm and Sheila didn’t mention her.”

Kate went to the box file and pulled out Caitlyn’s school photo and flipped it over and peered at it. “Okay. That’s Vicky O’Grady.”

Tristan came over and peered at a picture of a haughty young girl with long dark hair and high cheekbones. She fixed the camera with a confident glare.

“She lives in Bristol. She said she can meet us this afternoon or this evening.”

“This afternoon is out,” said Kate.

“What about this evening?”

“Does she have more to tell you? We could drive all the way over there when a phone call would save us time, and would be enough.”

“She’s got pictures from when her and Caitlyn went away on a weekend camping trip and other photos from the youth club. She also said that Caitlyn was hanging around with a couple of dodgy blokes—her words, not mine. She went to talk to the police at the time.”

“And what did the police say?”

“They took a statement, but nothing came of it. She never heard from them again.”

“What if we did it tomorrow? Saturday would be easier. I have something tonight.”

“Sure.”

“We also need to schedule a Skype call with Megan Hibbert, the friend from Melbourne. It would be good to do that before we meet Vicky, to see if she knew about her. Perhaps she could do nine thirty p.m. our time tonight,” said Kate.

“I thought you said you were busy tonight?”

Kate had her AA meeting at six, but it would be over by seven.

“I’ll be done by then,” she said, not wanting to elaborate. She knew she would have to tell him soon. It was surprising how much the topic of alcohol came up, especially in the academic world. There were endless drinks parties and formal dinners with speeches and toasts. She’d lost count of the times she’d had to ask to switch her drink for orange juice.