Best of British Crime 3 E-Book Bundle by Mark Sennen

Author:Mark Sennen [Paul Finch, Mark Sennen and Neil White]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

St Ives, Cornwall. Saturday 30th October. 10.51 am

It took Tatershall a few days to get round to returning to St Ives. The missing couple didn’t figure high on the list of priorities and if DI Peters hadn’t badgered him he might not have bothered. However, a break in the weather at last brought a beautiful clear day and the prospect of a nice drive, a spot of lunch and the sun falling on Kate Simbeck’s perfect face was too much to resist.

Now he and Simbeck were leafing through the couple’s papers, trying to sort them in some meaningful fashion, Tatershall wearing his new glasses and trying not to feel self-conscious with them on. A few weeks back his wife had noticed him squinting at the evening paper and insisted he went for an eye test. The result had been a pair of the least biddyish looking reading glasses he could find and a feeling of age catching up with him. Simbeck had said the grey of the wire-framed glasses matched his hair and made him look distinguished, which hadn’t helped a whole lot.

Finding the big cardboard box in the back of a cupboard in the flat’s utility room had been a bonus because it seemed to contain the only solid evidence that the couple existed at all. The rest of the flat had been devoid of anything much personal. As if they didn’t want to be reminded of who they were or where they had come from. The box contained a number of manila folders, each stuffed with documents. From share certificates to a car registration, from a manual for the microwave to old utility bills.

‘It’s like everything else in the flat, sir,’ Simbeck said. ‘All practical stuff. Nothing emotional. No letters, no postcards, no birthday cards, no memories. A couple who didn’t want to remember anything from their past.’

‘Very poetic, but I am not sure it’s the basis for a case against them.’

‘I wasn’t trying to say that. I just don’t understand how anyone’s life can be so sterile.’

‘Like the woman’s paintings?’ The gallery below the flat displayed several examples of her work, hyperrealistic watercolours of the harbour at St Ives with every detail painstakingly copied. You may as well have used a camera, Tatershall thought, though even a photograph would have had more warmth.

‘Exactly.’

They carried on the work, ploughing deeper into the box, making a note or two, but finding nothing to give them a handle on the couple’s life.

‘Remember, we are trying to find something to connect them with Devon, with Dartmouth maybe,’ Tatershall said.

They didn’t find anything. Tatershall even tried ringing Dartmouth police to see if they knew of the couple, but they didn’t. In fact the officer on the end of the line seemed to think he was a bit of a joker for even suggesting they might have. She asked if Tatershall realised how many hundreds of thousands of tourists visited Dartmouth each year. Tatershall didn’t know and didn’t want to know either, but the woman on the end of the phone proceeded to tell him anyway.

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