Still Standing: The Freeman Files Series - Book 24 by Ted Tayler

Author:Ted Tayler [Tayler, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-11T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

“Not to worry, Bethany,” said Gus. “If you remembered something you were confident of, that’s fine, but I don’t want you to hazard a guess. They can do more harm than good. I’ll be off now.”

Bethany Cunningham walked with Gus to the door. He thought it best he let her down gently.

“I’ll say the same to you as I did to Adie,” said Gus. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“I can’t see how,” said Bethany. “The detectives never found any suspects, no matter how hard they looked. Perhaps the uniformed officer was right.”

“Which officer was this?” asked Gus.

“He came to the house in Lime Kiln with the detectives,” said Bethany. “That would have been their first visit after Grandad had reported Mum missing. Two detectives came on Tuesday with other officers in uniform. One man stood outside the front door, and another went upstairs while I spoke with the detectives in the front room. I asked what he was doing, and the detective in charge, Mr Flowers, said he was looking for evidence in Mum’s bedroom, the bathroom cabinet, and the kitchen. They were checking whether Mum had packed a suitcase, taken her toothbrush, and gone away for a few days. I said that was a crazy idea, but they said it was standard procedure.”

“It would have been, Bethany,” said Gus. “They didn’t find anything, did they? So, what was it the officer who was upstairs said that stuck in your memory?”

“Because I was going to be alone in the house, the detectives called in the officer on the doorstep and asked him to get a WPC from the local station.”

“Someone we call a Family Liaison Officer,” said Gus, eager to hear about the man. “You were twenty, but with your mother missing, you needed support. I expect someone visited your grandparents too. Go on.”

“The other man was still upstairs, and then a van arrived.”

“A forensic team,” said Gus. “They didn’t know what they were dealing with less than forty-eight hours after Mum went missing. So they did everything by the book.”

“Two men, dressed in white overalls, worked upstairs for at least four hours. The detectives returned to Swindon after telling me when they wanted to see me next. They promised to get in touch if they had any news. I suppose it was thirty to forty minutes before the WPC arrived. Her name was Janet. I didn’t catch her surname. She came into the front room to sit with me, and I heard someone come downstairs and go into the kitchen. I wanted to see who it was and what they were doing, but Janet told me to sit still. She said it was one of her colleagues looking for clues. She walked into the hallway, and I heard her whispering to someone. I got up and listened by the front room door. The officer who’d been upstairs and was leaving had a thick, Scottish accent. There you are, Janet, he said, another woman who didn’t understand how things work around here.

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