‘Remember, a lead can come from just the tiniest little bit of information,’ David said emphatically. ‘Make the people you talk to consider whether they’ve noticed anything unusual or out of place in a neighbouring house: maybe the sound of a baby crying, shouting, extra food carried in, lights left on, or coming and going at strange times. Stress that they might be saving the girls’ lives!’
Tears welled up in Simon’s eyes, Adam looked grimly determined, and Scott thought it was astounding that he could feel so close to and involved with men he’d known for such a short time.
Scott bought a newspaper before he and David set off and felt gratified to find another full page about the girls’ disappearance. Ever since David found Lotte on the beach, they’d all felt the press had failed to maximize on the drama of the story. It might have alerted Scott and Dale that the girl was Lotte, but it hadn’t had a huge impact on the general public. Likewise, the police had appeared less than dynamic in their investigation. Yet now the paper reported that they were conducting a house-to-house search in the Selsey area.
‘Why there?’ Scott asked David, as they sat in the car reading the report. ‘Have we got it wrong? Or is it them?’
‘Maybe they’ve got some new evidence,’ David suggested. ‘But they told me that day I found Lotte that she’d been washed along the coast from the direction of Bracklesham Bay. If she’d fallen from a boat sailing out of Selsey, or was pushed, she would’ve ended up around Pagham harbour or even further along the coast towards Bognor.’
‘Should we ring Simon and Adam and tell them about this, then?’ Scott asked, thinking it was pointless them searching on the other side of the harbour if the police thought the girls were in Selsey.
David shrugged. ‘I don’t believe they are there,’ he said. ‘People don’t launch boats in Selsey and there’s certainly no moorings there that I know of.’
‘But Lotte could’ve been kept there and then taken by car to wherever the boat was moored? Maybe the police have had a tip-off?’
David frowned, looking a lot less certain. ‘Maybe I should ring and ask DI Bryan?’
‘Worth a try.’ Scott grinned. ‘He can only tell you to keep your nose out.’
David got his phone out of his pocket and rang the number.
‘It’s David Mitchell,’ he said when Bryan answered. ‘Just read in the paper that you are doing a house-to-house at Selsey. We wondered why there? Have you got a new lead?’
Scott watched David as he listened to the lengthy reply, but there was no discernible excitement, or disappointment. Scott thought he ought to take up playing poker.
‘Yes, we did, and we’re checking out Birdham and Itchenor today,’ David said eventually, his tone defensive.
‘Of course we’ll ring you if we turn anything up,’ he said a few moments later. ‘As long as you do the same for us,’ he added cheekily.
David put his phone back in his pocket. ‘He’d been told we were asking questions in the marina yesterday. I think he was dying to tell us to bugger off home and leave this to professionals, but he didn’t quite have the brass neck to. Instead he gave me a lecture about not harassing people.’
‘So what did he say was going on in Selsey?’ Scott asked.
‘The night before last, several people heard banging and screaming. But none of them was able to pinpoint exactly where the noise was coming from, and each one lived in a different part of the town. This has led Bryan to think the noise might have been coming from a van which was moved several times.’
Scott looked puzzled. ‘Surely no one with any sense would risk taking two people they’d abducted into a built-up area unless they’d bound and gagged them?’
David grimaced. ‘It might just be a few kids bombing around the town in a van winding people up for a laugh. That’s the kind of thing I would have thought hilarious when I was seventeen or eighteen.’
‘So we carry on with the original plan then?’ Scott asked.
‘Sure thing!’ David grinned. ‘Let’s go!’
They had almost finished in Birdham at two o’clock when Scott struck lucky.
Birdham was a small, pretty village, just a lovely old church and a primary school, but not much else. There were a few old cottages, but in the main the houses and bungalows were modern and expensive-looking. Fortunately the people who were at home were keenly interested in what the boys had to say, so much so that they had sometimes found it difficult to get away.
David had signalled to Scott when he had finished his side of Cherry Lane that he was going to walk back to the car to wait for him, when the door Scott was knocking on was opened by a stout, elderly woman with hairs sprouting on her chin.
‘I don’t buy anything at the door,’ she growled at him. ‘So be off with you!’
It had rained hard all morning and Scott was wet through despite the cagoule David had lent him, so he was tempted just to turn on his heel and walk away from the cantankerous old woman.
‘I’m not selling anything,’ he snapped. ‘I’m conducting a house-to-house inquiry to see if anyone has seen this girl.’ He handed the woman Lotte’s picture. ‘I expect you’ve seen pictures of her in the paper,’ he added.
‘I never read newspapers, they only print lies,’ she said abruptly.
Scott couldn’t bring himself to be as rude as she was. So he explained how Lotte had disappeared for a year and was then found washed up on the beach. All at once the woman took the photo and peered closely at it.
‘I’ve seen her at Pagham Nature Reserve,’ she said.
‘You have?’ Scott exclaimed incredulously, not really believing her.
‘Yes, once, last autumn. I often go birdwatching there when the tourists have all gone home. The reason I remember this girl was because she stared at me, almost as if she wanted to say something to me.’
‘Was she alone, or with someone?’
‘With a man and a woman, much older than her. The woman was bossy, she took hold of the girl by the arm and almost dragged her back to the car park.’
‘I don’t suppose you can remember what the couple looked like?’ Scott could feel his pulse quickening with excitement.
‘The woman looked like Rita Hayworth,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘Of course you’re too young to remember her, but she was a famous Hollywood film star with red hair and very shapely. This woman was taller though, might have been five foot eight.’
A mental picture of Fern Ramsden from the cruise popped into Scott’s head. ‘Did you hear her speak?’ he asked, his pulse beginning to race. ‘The red-headed woman, I mean?’
‘She spoke sharply to the girl, but I couldn’t hear exactly what she said.’
‘So you wouldn’t know if she was an American?’
‘No, son, she was too far away from me. But I’m sure the girl in your picture is the one I saw. I was a bit worried about her afterwards, she had the look of a frightened deer. Do you know what I mean?’
Scott did know, he’d seen Lotte look that way on several occasions, all big blue eyes and quivering lips. He’d even teasingly called her Bambi at times. He felt like hugging this odd woman, who liked to pretend she was a miserable old dragon but was in fact an observant and caring person.
‘Yes, I do know. You’ve been a tremendous help, and if you don’t mind I’ll pass your details on to the police because they’ll want to speak to you and show you pictures to identify this couple. May I have your name and phone number?’ he asked.
She said her name was Miss Margaret Foster and told him she was a retired schoolteacher. Now she’d got over her resentment at him knocking on her door, it was as if she wanted to keep him there. She said she couldn’t remember what the man looked like, she only noticed the two women, and she was sure they weren’t mother and daughter.
‘Will you let me know if you find the girls?’ she said after he’d written down her phone number.
Scott smiled at her. ‘If we find them I’ll bring them round to meet you because y
ou’ve given us a great lead and they would certainly like to thank you.’
He could hardly wait to get back to the car to tell David and get him to ring Bryan too.
The policeman was disappointingly cool and was not convinced the couple could be the Ramsdens. ‘They went back to the States, we checked with the airline,’ he said. ‘They haven’t come back either.’
‘Maybe not as Ramsden, but they could have with a different identity,’ David pointed out.
Scott took the phone from David to say his bit. ‘I’m telling you Miss Foster’s description of the woman she saw was spot on for Fern Ramsden. Dale used to nickname her Rita and she once showed me a picture of Rita Hayworth to explain. It was incredible how much she looked like the actress. Why don’t you get some pictures of the Ramsdens from the cruise ship and go round and show them to Miss Foster?’
David took the phone back. ‘What do you think then?’ he asked.
‘A day’s house-to-house qualifies you two as detectives, does it?’ Bryan asked sarcastically.
David pulled a face at Scott who was listening to what was being said. ‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to tell you how to do your job,’ he said, making a gesture to Scott that implied he knew he was being smarmy.
‘That’s OK.’ Bryan chuckled. ‘I really appreciate your help, thanks for this. We’ll keep in touch.’
They rang Simon and Adam to give them the news, and as they hadn’t had so much as a sniff of a lead, Simon said they would come back to join up with Scott and David and blitz Itchenor.
The Ship Inn down by Itchenor harbour was where they arranged to meet up. David, who had been to the pub many times before, said the landlord was a great character and he felt sure he would give them any assistance he could.
As they turned into the road which led to the harbour Scott was surprised by the many different kinds of houses, everything from mock Tudor mansions and stone cottages to palatial, colonial-style bungalows. Many were tucked away behind high hedges, only glimpsed through wrought-iron gates, and the gardens were beautiful.
‘There’s obviously some seriously wealthy people live here,’ he said. ‘And I bet most of them have got boats.’
David agreed. He said he often came to the pub during the summer and the talk was always about sailing.
‘I wish we had a picture of the Ramsdens to show around,’ Scott said as they drove into the pub car park.
‘I think saying she looks like Rita Hayworth will be enough,’ David said with a smile. ‘People are a bit older here, they will know what the actress looked like. And somehow I think women who fit that description in a sailing community must be rather thin on the ground.’
As the boys were in the pub ready to begin asking more questions, Kim and Clarke Moore, Dale’s parents, along with her younger sister Carrina were knocking on the Wainwrights’ front door in Brighton.
At home in Chiswick, no one would look twice at the couple’s unconventional appearance, for there were hundreds of people trapped in a Sixties time warp in their neighbourhood. Kim had flowing, henna-dyed hair, and she favoured vintage clothes in silks and velvets, usually jazzed up with brightly coloured scarves, fur or feather trims, and chunky, ostentatious jewellery. Today she was more soberly dressed because of the seriousness of the situation, in a mid-calf-length black linen dress and a checked jacket, yet with Clarke in a buckskin fringed jacket and his grey hair tied back in a pony-tail, they still stood out as middle-aged hippies.
Carrina was twenty-three, and so frightened for her older sister that her pretty face was pale and drawn. She didn’t share Dale’s exotic appearance; she had light brown hair, blue eyes and a delicate pink and white complexion. But she had a curvy, womanly body like Dale.
They had driven down to Brighton the previous morning and spent most of the day at the police station hoping to hear that Dale and Lotte had been found. When it became clear to them this wasn’t likely to be imminent, they had contacted the press and offered a substantial reward for information about where the girls were being held.
During the late afternoon they had driven out to Marchwood Spa to talk to some of the staff there, hoping Dale might have revealed something useful to one of the other girls. While Quentin Sellers, the general manager of the hotel, was very sympathetic, and all the staff were deeply concerned about Dale, the Moores couldn’t fail to notice that Marisa the spa manageress was barely civil to them.
Frankie, one of the hairdressers, urged them to ignore her. He said Marisa had been irritated by the way Dale reacted when Lotte was found on the beach; she felt it was hysterical. But Frankie also pointed out that Marisa might have felt her role at the spa threatened by Dale because she was not only very efficient, but popular with the other staff and clients. Now Scott had disappeared to help find the girls and Marisa couldn’t get anyone qualified to take over his duties, she was blaming Dale for that too.
After a night in a hotel, Kim and Clarke had gone straight to the police again to see if there had been any developments. It seemed the house-to-house search in Selsey they were undertaking had not as yet revealed anything, so Kim thought they should call on the Wainwrights.
‘Why?’ Clarke asked his wife. ‘We’ve been told they don’t care much about Lotte, so we can’t hope they’ll be any different about Dale. It’s only going to upset you.’
‘I daresay it will,’ Kim agreed, her eyes filling with tears once more because she was so afraid she was never going to see her daughter again. ‘But our girls became close friends on that cruise and I feel I need to do this for their sakes.’
Kim knew her daughter had never connected with anyone before as she had with Lotte. When she came home after the cruise Kim saw how this friend had influenced her for the good, for she was more thoughtful with people, kinder and far less bumptious. Kim felt she was prepared to love Lotte just on the strength of that, and when Dale told her how she was raped, she took the girl she’d never met to her heart.
But this feeling changed when Dale told her over the phone about Lotte being found on a beach suffering from memory loss. While she felt sorry for her, it was all too mysterious, and Kim felt her daughter might get sucked into something which would pull her down too. She warned Dale that some people were natural victims, and went through life attracting trouble, even going as far as to say she thought Dale shouldn’t involve herself.
But now Kim had talked to DI Bryan and discovered a little more about Lotte and her family background, she felt ashamed she’d taken such a line. Dale was to be admired for caring for her friend, and even though that meant she was now in danger, Kim felt proud of her.
‘You’d better come in,’ Mr Wainwright said as he opened the door. ‘The missus don’t think there’s any point in us getting together. But I’m glad to see you.’
Kim looked hard at Lotte’s father, with his thin, deeply lined face and faded, sad blue eyes. She guessed that he was no more than fifty-five, but he looked much older. From what Dale had said about him, and that wasn’t much, it sounded as if he’d spent his entire adult life going along with whatever his wife wanted. She was already pitying him.
‘Our girls have been abducted, surely that is enough of a point to us meeting,’ Kim said crisply. ‘I’m Kim, this is Clarke and our other daughter Carrina.’
‘Ted,’ he said, shaking their hands. ‘I’m pleased to meet you. Do come through, we’re in the kitchen.’
He led them down the passageway and as he walked into the kitchen his wife got up from her seat at the table. ‘I’m Peggy,’ she said. Kim got the idea that it had taken a great effort on her part to hold out her hand and smile as her husband introduced them all.
‘Tea or coffee?’ she asked.
Kim and Clarke often came up against difficult people in buying and selling second-hand goods, but Kim was famous for winning over even the most frosty and cantankerous. Undeterred by the strained atmosphere, she said they’d like tea, and admired the garden she could see though the window.
&n
bsp; ‘You must have green fingers,’ she said. ‘Look how much colour you’ve got there! All those lovely delphiniums and lupins. My garden is always dreary after the spring bulbs until I get the summer bedding in.’
‘I spend a lot of time on it,’ Peggy admitted, but she looked pleased at having her efforts admired. ‘It’s a shame it’s raining today, it would be nice to sit outside.’
Kim kept up her charm offensive while the tea was being made. She admired the pot plants on the window sill and some old jugs hanging under the wall cupboards, and discussed the pros and cons of dishwashers. It was only once the tea was on the table and a plate of biscuits had been passed round, that she spoke of Dale and Lotte.
‘Lotte’s two male friends have joined Scott from Marchwood Manor and David, the guy who found her at Selsey, to do a house-to-house search around Chichester harbour,’ she said. ‘It’s my suggestion that we go there and help. What do you think?’
‘Oh no.’ Peggy shook her head. ‘I couldn’t do that!’
‘Why on earth not?’ Kim asked. ‘I’m sure if you were being held captive you’d expect Lotte to come looking for you.’
‘She hasn’t been near nor by me for years,’ Peggy replied.
‘Whose fault is that?’ Kim said bluntly. ‘As I understand it, you didn’t welcome her. This is your chance to change things between you now. Get out there and be a real mother.’
‘I’d expect Mum and Dad to come looking for me if I was in Lotte’s position,’ Carrina spoke up. ‘We’ve had our ups and downs but when something serious like this happens you just have to forget all that.’
‘You don’t know anything that’s gone on between us,’ Peggy snapped. She looked to her husband for support but he turned his head away.
‘But we do,’ Kim said pointedly. ‘We know you turned against Lotte when her older sister died. How could you take that out on Lotte? It wasn’t her fault. I bet she wished she’d never regained some of her memory when she recalled that! But now’s your chance to put that right.’