Page 94 of Then She Vanished

Ruth slumped back. ‘I really thought I was going to find out what happened to Elissa.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘Again, I’m sorry.’ Gina hated that she hadn’t found Elissa, and she shivered as she thought about the unmarked stone behind the bunker.

‘Luna said something to me, in the bunker.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said that her daddy wanted a lady called Keeley to be her new mummy, that he met her when he was working but Luna was really happy that I came instead.’ Ruth paused and let out a little cry. ‘I wanted my daughter, she wanted a mum and neither of us got what we wanted…’

Tears began to fall down her face.

SIXTY-ONE

Jacob had announced Ellie Hathaway for the tape. Since the search of Eric’s house and the bunker, Gina had a lot to speak to Mrs Hathaway about, and she was grateful that she’d come in voluntarily. They’d also found out exactly what was on Gary Pritchard’s computer.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘My daughter is in labour, I should be with her.’ She began to bite her already-bitten nails.

Gina pored over her notes. She’d barely had time to catch up with the team. They were still working the scenes, and one of them was Ellie Hathaway’s house.

‘Are you still searching the house?’

Gina nodded. ‘Mrs Hathaway, I’m sorry to inform you that your husband was found dead this evening. It looks like he died by suicide. We thank you for coming in voluntarily to speak to us about our findings.’

Mrs Hathaway scrunched her nose slightly but her reaction wasn’t what Gina expected. ‘Dead?’

‘Yes. Again, please accept our condolences.’ Gina gave Ellie a moment to take the news in. ‘Were you aware that your husband and his son, Albie Hathaway, had a bunker at APH Building Craft Experts, the company they co own?’

She swallowed. ‘Yes, the emergency bunker.’

‘Do you know someone called Luna?’

‘We have a dog called Luna. One of the managers has adopted her, but sometimes he leaves her at the unit to guard the building. There have been a few burglaries lately and Luna puts them off.’ The woman spoke in an almost robotic manner as if she was closing her emotions off.

‘I don’t know how to put this, Mrs Hathaway, but tonight we found a young girl in the bunker, who claims she has lived her whole life there. She says her name is Luna. We believe Albie Hathaway was her father, and we found two marked gravestones, and another with no name on it. Do you know a woman called Joanie Callahan or a child called Sammie?’

Tears began to drizzle down Ellie’s face. Gina pushed the box of tissues towards her. ‘Squirt, that’s Albie’s nickname, has always been strange, but I don’t know anything about a girl named Luna.’ She frowned. ‘Joanie was Albie’s mother and she lost Sammie at birth. That’s what Eric told me. Joanie was Eric’s ex. She left him with Albie. She had a drug problem and ran off with a man she used to work at a bar with. She isn’t dead… she can’t be. She deserted him, leaving him with Albie to bring up alone.’ She began to hyperventilate slightly, so Gina gave her a moment.

Gina flicked through the notes from the briefing and reread what Bernard had sent over before telling Mrs Hathaway more. ‘The bones of a woman and a baby were found behind the bunker. We believe them to be Joanie and Sammie, but there are further tests to be conducted.’ Gina flicked back to Felicity’s information. ‘Do you know anyone called Felicity Vaynor?’

‘Er, I think Albie mentioned a girlfriend by the name of Felicity once, but that was years ago. I never met her.’ Ellie bit her bottom lip. ‘Are you sure Eric is dead?’

Something wasn’t right about Ellie, but Gina nodded. ‘Yes. There was also another person at the scene, and had your husband been alive, we’d have arrested him for the man’s murder.’

‘Murder!’

‘Yes, do you know a man called Gary Pritchard?’

She burst into choking sobs and placed a hand on the desk. That’s when Gina saw the silver line of a scar on Ellie Hathaway’s hand. ‘Gary is my dad.’

SIXTY-TWO

A short break later, the recorder began rolling again. Gina started. ‘So, you’re Elissa Pritchard?’

She nodded as she blew her nose. ‘Yes. I use the name Ellie for short.’ She started blubbing. ‘Eric said if I ever spoke to anyone my children would hate me forever; that we’d both lose them and I would be sent to some sort of asylum.’ She paused. ‘Now he’s dead, I can talk. I can finally talk.’ She slammed her hand on the table. ‘He said you’d never understand. You’re all closed-minded and… I grew to love him. I don’t know how I did but I did. He had become my world and I had to work out how I could live in it, for the sake of being with my children.’ She doubled over in the plastic chair and held a hand to her heart as she cried out loudly. ‘He was going through so much when he took me. His wife had left him with Albie… but it’s not true, none of it was true.’

‘Ellie, can you start from the beginning, going back to when you met Eric?’

She placed a hand over her mouth and made a couple of hiccup sounds. ‘I worked at a café called The Singing Kettle back in the nineties. The couple were horrible. The man was a perv and kept looking up my skirt. Eric used to loiter around in hiscar, and he whistled at me one day so I told him where to go. A couple of weeks later, I saw him again, outside, and he said he was sorry and offered me a lift home. I was wearing heels at the time and I’d been on my feet for the lunch rush, so I accepted his apology and got in the car.’

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