Page 72 of Worse Than Murder
‘Of course we did,’ he says, his voice taking on a severe tone. ‘He was supposed to come home for Christmas 1992,’ he begins before pausing to give a deep and raspy cough. ‘He was working at a farm in High Chapel. The family, they’d suffered some bad luck, the two girls went missing in the summer. He phoned, told us what had happened, me and his mum, said he was staying on to help them out. Next thing, we get another call saying there’d been a big storm and the father, can’t remember his name, had gone missing. He said he didn’t feel as if he could leave them, but he’d visit at Christmas. He never turned up.’
‘Did you phone the Pembertons?’
‘We did. We were told that Travis had left the farm at the end of November. They said he felt he needed to move on.’
‘And when did you report him missing?’
‘It was between Christmas and New Year in 1992. My wife, Sylvia, Travis’s mother, she was beside herself. He’d been gone for more than a month before the police started looking for him, but they had nothing to go on. There hasn’t been a sighting or anything from that day to this.’
Tania can hear the sorrow and despair in his voice. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, genuinely meaning it. ‘I’m not sure how to say this, Mr Montgomery, but I contacted the police before I started ringing round and they don’t have Travis listed as a missing person.’
‘Ah, well, no, they wouldn’t. Travis was his middle name. He was called Julian, after me, but he hated it. Nobody ever called him Julian.’
‘Right. So, he’s listed as a missing person under his birth name of Julian Travis Montgomery?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to need to do some digging, Mr Montgomery. Am I okay to get back to you at some point?’
‘Of course. It’s just… why have you called? Why are you looking for Travis? You mentioned about the two girls going missing. Have they been found?’
For the first time in her life, Tania is stumped for something to say.
‘Are you still there?’ he asks.
‘Yes. I’m still here. Mr Montgomery, please, I promise I will get back in touch with you, but there’s someone I need to see. Take care.’
She ends the call without waiting for him to say goodbye. She leans back in her chair and looks up at the ceiling, furrowing her brow as she tries to understand what everything means. Travis’s car is missing, but not reported missing. It’s then found at the bottom of the lake thirty years later with, potentially, two bodies in the back. And Travis himself is reported missing at the end of 1992.
‘I wonder if he’s in the car as well?’ she asks herself.
Ordering a crane with a hydraulic arm and having a low-loader on standby is the easy part. The difficulty is getting the crane close enough to the edge of the lake in order for the divers to swim out to the submerged car and attach the cables to the axles. So Aaron told me when I took down a tray of coffees for him and his team at lunchtime. I decided not to wait and watch.
I’m in the living room, making notes on a pad, trying to work out how best to investigate Travis Montgomery without getting on the wrong side of Inspector Gill Forsyth. Everything I can think of could end up with Gill charging me with interfering with a criminal investigation.
I shrug. ‘Fuck it! Who cares? It might be fun to be the one who is arrested for once.’ I have to smile to myself when I picture it making the news. My boss would have a thousand fits. Is ACC Ridley still my boss? I still think of him as my boss so he must be. Does that mean I still think of myself as being a detective?
The door to the living room swings open.
‘They’re bringing the car up,’ Carl shouts, before turning on his heel and running back out of the room.
I slam the laptop closed and follow. Of course I’m still a detective. What else can I be?
* * *
It’s now dusk. The sun is setting over the horizon and the cloudless sky is lit up a brilliant red. Visibility isn’t great, and arc lights have been erected. A crowd has gathered, too. Rumour has spread that a car beneath the water belongs to Travis Montgomery. Does the car contain the bodies of the young Pemberton twins? It seems the whole of High Chapel has turned out to see.
Me, Carl and the two dogs have joined the growing crowd by the side of the lake. I look for Aaron and spot him in a skin-tight diving suit in the shallows, guiding his team into position. I nod to Gill Forsyth as we accidentally make eye contact. She nods back, though her face is grim. I scan the crowd, and I see Alison Pemberton, now out of uniform, standing separate from her mother and stepfather, who look as if the weight of the world is pressing down on them. They’re holding hands, supporting each other. I spot Tania Pritchard standing next to a uniformed sergeant I guess to be the Claire Daniels Tania has mentioned. We give each other a succinct smile. We don’t want Gill thinking we’ve joined forces and are in league together, which I suppose we are, really. We had a long chat earlier where Tania told me about Travis being listed as a missing person. I wasn’t expecting that. I’m now keen to know how many bodies might be in that car.
I look at all the other faces in the crowd, most I’m seeing for the first time. I wonder if one of them, perhaps hidden in the shadows of the nearby woods, is the mystery man Alison believes is her father. Surely, if he’s been keeping an eye on things for the past thirty years, he’ll want to be here to see this.
After a few false starts, the hydraulic arm of the crane begins to slowly rise. The slack cables tense and soon I can see movement below the surface of the clear waters of Lake Windermere. As the water breaks and the car becomes visible, I steal a glance across the crowd and look towards Alison. She’s moved to her mother and has her arm around her, whispering soothing words to her. Lynne nods, raises a tissue to her eyes and wipes away her tears.
It’s impossible to tell the colour of the Vauxhall Astra as it’s covered with an amalgam of mud, silt and algae. Everything is hidden. Once it’s fully out of the water, it’s left to dangle in the air as water runs off it. When that’s reduced to a trickle, the car is on the move again. Aaron and his team painstakingly oversee its removal to a nearby low-loader. In the background, Tania is taking photographs with something more professional than a smart phone. Once the car is in position and secured, it’s covered with a tarpaulin to protect any forensic evidence from the elements and is slowly driven away.
‘Are they going to look inside?’ Carl asks.
‘Not yet. It’s potentially a crime scene. It needs to be looked at carefully in a clean environment.’
