The Girls Who Disappeared(42)

I remember Brenda telling me.

‘There are rumours of a pagan group living in Stafferbury. Not a cult exactly but … I’m not saying they sacrificed the girls or anything but … they’re a weird lot.’

‘Who do you think might be in this “group”?’

‘Well, I’ve only heard rumours, of course, but maybe Madame Tovey. And a few others. They’re mostly elderly now. Apparently they like to do some kind of ceremony at the stones in the summer.’ He waves his hand dismissively. ‘I don’t get involved. I’m not into that kind of thing although I have to admit there is a strange energy around those stones.’

I remember how I’d felt in the field earlier, that I was being watched, that a shadowy force was lurking, but I don’t answer. Instead I sip my coffee and ask him if he knows the families of the missing girls.

He hesitates. ‘Not really. They all keep themselves to themselves. Especially the Rutherfords.’

‘What about Ralph? You said he did a bit of work for you, looking after the forest and keeping it clean and litter-free. What do you think happened to him? Did he have any enemies you knew about?’

He pushes his chair back to fiddle with the blinds behind his desk. ‘Do you mind if I pull this up? It’s dark in here.’ He adjusts the vertical blinds without waiting for an answer. He spends a bit of time at the window, faffing with the cord, and I wonder if it’s some kind of delay tactic. The light in the room was perfectly fine. It seems unnecessary, but then I dismiss it. I’m becoming paranoid about everyone in this town.

‘Ralph?’ I remind him, when he’s returned to his seat.

‘Oh, he was a simple soul. I can’t believe anyone would want to hurt him. He was harmless.’

‘But someone obviously did.’

A shadow passes across his face but he doesn’t say anything and I mentally kick myself for being insensitive.

‘Anyway,’ I say, wrapping up, ‘thank you for talking to me.’

He flashes a relieved smile as I stop recording and fold up my stand.

As soon as I get back to my car my phone rings and Dale’s name flashes up on screen.

‘Jenna,’ he says, as soon as I’ve answered, ‘we’ve found something in Ralph’s caravan that I think you need to see.’





26





I’ve agreed to meet Dale in Bea’s Tearoom for a late lunch. I’ve been so busy today I haven’t had the chance to eat since this morning. Thankfully, it’s quiet now it’s nearing 3 p.m. and we find a table in the corner furthest away from the counter. After he’s ordered coronation-chicken baps for us both, Dale reaches inside his briefcase and takes out a manila folder.

‘This was found in Ralph’s things,’ he says, opening it and taking out a clear plastic wallet. He slides it across the table. It looks like it contains a series of Polaroid images, slightly grainy and out of focus, taken of a teenage girl in various outside locations. One looks like a petrol station, the other a park, the next the high street.

I peer closer at the photos. The girl is young. Maybe eighteen with a round face and a 1990s layered haircut, with caramel-coloured streaks. ‘It’s Olivia.’

Dale nods. ‘Before the accident. Look.’ He points to the photo of Olivia wrapped in a fake-fur coat at the petrol station filling up a white car. ‘Her Peugeot 205. It was written off after the accident.’

‘Do you think it was Ralph who was following her?’

‘Why else would he have them?’ Dale runs a hand through his already messy hair. He looks exhausted, and I feel a tug of guilt, remembering how late he’d stayed up with me in A and E.

‘Did he ever drive a white van?’

‘Ralph couldn’t drive.’

I hold the photos up towards the light to get a better look. They’ve been run through a colour photocopier so that they all fit on one page of A4. ‘So, Ralph was obsessed with Olivia and was following her before the accident? Is that what these photos mean?’

Chlo? appears with our baps and drinks, and I turn over the page of photos so that she can’t see them. Only when she’s gone do I turn them back. Something doesn’t add up about this. ‘Wouldn’t she have recognized Ralph? If he’d been following her?’

‘Hmm. You can see she’s quite far away in them, though.’ Dale takes a bite of his bap. Creamy coronation chicken oozes out of the side and drops onto his plate. He swallows. ‘I’m wondering now if Ralph was the figure Olivia saw in the road. Did he hang around waiting for her to regain consciousness, then pretend he’d just happened upon her crashed car?’

‘I know I only met Ralph once – well, twice if you include our encounter on the Devil’s Corridor when I first arrived – but he didn’t strike me as a criminal mastermind. Could he have pulled off something like that? Causing a crash, yes, but the missing girls? Where would he have taken them and why? Hardly his two-berth caravan – and if he had killed them, then what? He buried three girls all by himself?’ I pick up my bap and take a bite, waiting for Dale to answer. His expressive eyebrows rise so that they are nearly hidden in his mop of hair.

‘I don’t know what it all means,’ he says eventually. ‘Ralph might have known what happened and that’s why he was killed. Ralph was obviously following her. He’d kept these photos for twenty years. He befriended her, saved her from the crash. Maybe he played the hero.’