The Family by P R Black

Author:P R Black [Black, P R]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789543070
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2019-05-01T16:00:00+00:00

33

Rosie Banning sucked down the last of the pina colada until it gurgled. The sun had brought out a light dusting of freckles on her cheeks which reminded Becky of a favourite dolly in her childhood. Becky recalled that if you’d rubbed the dolly’s belly, it gave off a whiff of ice cream and strawberries.

‘I quite like these,’ Rosie said, pushing the foam-rimmed glass aside. ‘I’m surprised. I thought they were like something your grandma might drink.’

Becky sipped her fresh orange juice. ‘You remember the song? Radio 2? A Ken Bruce classic.’

‘Who’s Ken Bruce?’

‘I hope you’re joking. Never mind. What have you got for me?’

They were still in Spain, in the fishing town where the Ramirez family had vanished in 1992. A Tiki bar on the seafront had seemed a little gaudy when they’d driven past it first time, but it had drawn them in nonetheless. Inside, everything gleamed; it had only been opened a matter of weeks, and the leather on the benches was smooth and the pinewood tables and fittings largely unmarked with graffiti. It had been marketed for surfers and many of the people who passed in and out were in neoprene bodysuits, their hair sometimes clinging wet with the sea.

There was even a place to park one’s surfboard, right next to a freshwater shower on the edge of the beach. Becky had felt a dull ache upon first sight of this place, which had only just begun to show up on tourist websites and yearly ‘best-of’ lists in Sunday supplements.

The weather was perfect. It couldn’t have been less of a holiday, but Becky’s brain was duped by the blue water, the rising heat, the sugar-candy sand, and above all, the white-crested waves.

Rosie turned round a laptop computer. ‘Your theory has made a bit of a splash in the community.’

‘I’m amazed no one put it together before now.’

‘This is the point – no one had heard of these other cases before now. There’s so little information out there. And the police wouldn’t admit to anything.’

‘I got a very polite “we’ll check it out”, when I told them about it. The cases that are unsolved are said to be unrelated. There’s just a little difference in each case, something off about the MO – enough to raise doubt that it’s not the same killer. Then there’s the knife traced to Miles Crandley. That’s the new evidence they thought they had turned up. It seems the DNA evidence is inconclusive and probably couldn’t be used to bring a prosecution. And there’s DNA evidence here and there that doesn’t match, which I must admit counts a lot of cases out.’

Rosie almost bounced on the bench in excitement. ‘But that’s where you might be wrong. A couple of our guys reckon a lot of these murder scenes were staged to raise doubt in anyone who might be looking for a link. The knife left at the scene in the first French case, with the fingerprints no one can match. He might as well have painted “Red Herring Here” on the walls.

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