The Girls Who Disappeared(10)

She takes a sip of her coffee and smacks her lips together. ‘Well, a nine-nine-nine call was received at around one twenty p.m.,’ she says confidently, and I’m impressed she remembers the details so well. She must have worked on hundreds of cases, yet this is obviously the one that keeps her awake at night. The riddle she’s never been able to solve. ‘The call was made by a local man called Ralph Middleton. He claims he arrived at the scene after the car had crashed and only eighteen-year-old Olivia Rutherford, the driver, was in the wreck. She had to be cut free by paramedics. At that point we had no reason to believe there had been anyone else in the car.’

‘Right,’ I say, taking an almond croissant and ripping into it. ‘When did you realize that Olivia’s friends had been in the car too?’

‘A colleague of mine received a phone call the next day from Sally Thorne’s father to say his daughter hadn’t come home.’

The croissant suddenly turns to cardboard in my mouth as I think of Finn and fast forward to his future teenager self, how frantic I would be if he didn’t come home after a night out. My wonderful, warm, funny, sensitive son. It’s painful as I swallow.

‘By then precious hours had been lost,’ continues Brenda, her face wistful. ‘Hours when we could have been looking for them. But in the confusion nobody twigged that the girls had been in the car with Olivia. Tamzin’s parents thought she was staying with friends as it wasn’t unheard of for her to stay out all night. She was a bit of a good-time girl by all accounts.’

‘So when did the police discover that all three girls were missing?’

‘Not until later that day when we interviewed Olivia in the hospital. By this time Mr Thorne had rung Tamzin Cole’s and Katie Burke’s parents and worked out that all three of them hadn’t been seen since leaving home the night before. At first they assumed they’d all gone off somewhere together, maybe another friend’s house, until they rang Olivia’s mother and she told them about the accident.’

‘And then Olivia told you they’d been in the car when she crashed?’

Brenda nods, her face grave. ‘By the time we got to speak to Olivia it was nearly six p.m. as she’d been in theatre most of that day with doctors trying to save her leg.’

I grimace.

She sips her coffee and looks thoughtful. ‘And then, of course, everyone began to panic.’

‘God, how awful.’ I reach for my mug.

‘I still thought maybe they were all together somewhere. But it was out of character for Sally in particular to go off radar. They weren’t tearaways or problem kids. They all had jobs, lived at home, came from decent families. Sally Thorne seemed to have it all. She was beautiful, popular and clever. She was having a year out before taking up her university place at York, working as a temp with Tamzin. She would have been the first in her family to go to university. They were understandably proud.’

I feel a swell of sadness for Sally and her family in that moment.

‘And the others?’

Brenda reaches over for a pastry. ‘Well,’ she says, tearing the pain au chocolat with her fingers. She seems to have forgotten about my mobile with its intrusive tripod and microphone and is no longer eyeing it with distrust. ‘Katie was the eldest. She worked at the pharmacy in town. Apparently she was sensible, trustworthy. And then there was Tamzin …’ She sighs, and I lean forward expectantly.

‘Oh, yes?’

‘She’d been sacked from two jobs for returning to the office tipsy after her lunch hour. And then there was some …’ she pauses to swallow her pastry ‘… unfortunate business with the money.’

‘The money?’

‘Yes. Tamzin’s last job, before she disappeared, was with a firm of solicitors in town. After the girls went missing Lloyd Groves, who owned the firm, came to us to say the petty cash had gone.’

‘How much?’

‘A couple of hundred pounds.’

‘Not really enough to run away with,’ I muse.

‘I suppose it depends on how desperate they were. Or what they’d planned. The money was never found.’

‘And did Olivia Rutherford know anything about the missing money?’

‘She says not, but … I don’t know. I think that girl has been lying from the beginning.’ She pulls a face. ‘I always got the sense Olivia was hiding something.’

This is interesting. ‘You think Olivia knew more about the money and her friends’ disappearance than she let on?’

Brenda leans forward to put her empty plate on the coffee-table. ‘I definitely think she knew something – something she’s never told us.’

‘If Tamzin and the others took the money to run off somewhere, then why? And why not take Olivia with them?’

‘One theory floated at the time was that Olivia was so badly injured in the crash they had no choice but to leave without her.’

‘Wouldn’t they have aborted the plan?’

She brushes crumbs from her skirt and shakes her head. ‘It depends how desperate they were to get away. But I don’t think that’s what happened. Their bank accounts were untouched. They have never contacted their families. No.’ She takes off her glasses and uses the hem of her jumper to clean them. ‘I think something bad must have happened to them.’