Chapter Sixteen

  Thursday the 11th of June, 11.03. Waters checked his mobile again but there was nothing from John Murray since the brief text saying he was on his way back to Kings Lake Central. That was an hour and a half ago, so he should be arriving in the office at any moment. Murray had left early, heading straight up to the Lincolnshire coast to avoid the morning bottlenecks on the A17, and intending to arrive at James Leadsom’s place before nine so that there was more chance he would find someone at home. Terseness was in Murray’s nature but if he had found anything he would have given some sort of hint, and if it had been something significant that needed following up in the office, he would have called. This appeared to have been a wasted journey.

  Waters opened the map again and zoomed in onto the stretch of Lincolnshire coastline where Leadsom supposedly lived now – supposedly because perhaps Murray hadn’t found the place. But he would have called about that, surely… Switching to the satellite view, Waters clicked again until the details of the property were visible. When the image was taken, three blurred vehicles could be seen parked in front of the large and very detached property; even at a lower resolution, it was the only house on the map. There were outbuildings and it looked as if the place really had once been a farm. Less than a mile to the east was an empty-looking beach, and the first thing of any significance to the north was a golf course, some three miles distant. From that beach, looking south south-east on a clear day, Mr Leadsom would be able to make out the north Norfolk coastline, and with a good telescope he might find the village of Marston and maybe even the last cottage along The Drift.

  Waters had developed the habit of silently interviewing himself at times. What can we learn just from looking at this map? James Leadsom still has money, or he did when he bought a place like that. James Leadsom likes his privacy – Marsh Farm was remote, and you have to go to certain lengths to make your personal mobile number invisible to the authorities. Clearly one can run financial businesses from a laptop but what else does he do out there in the wilds? Play golf? Go for long walks on the beach? Waters didn’t spend too long trying to answer those questions because the door opened at that point and Murray entered the office.

  The team had all left their individual workstations and re-formed around the centre table without being invited. Lots of departments do not run like that but this was DI Greene’s take on collaborative working – that they were all responsible adults and experienced detectives who should not need to be given orders very often. Though Greene and Smith were quite different characters, this was something they had in common. Waters could not imagine running a team of his own in any other way.

  John Murray told them he had made good time and had pressed the bell at twenty minutes to nine. The gates were the sliding automatic sort but they had not automatically opened for him – he had to get out and press the button on the post. A seven-foot wall ran off to the left and right, and a couple of strands of razor wire had been run along the top of it. There was a modern security camera looking down at him from the pillar to his right.

  After the third press, a male voice spoke from the speaker in the control box next to the bell, asking him who he was. Murray had answered. The voice asked him to show his ID, and Murray did so, holding it up towards the camera which he saw move slightly – someone was actually reading it through the camera. Then the gates opened, he drove through, and the gates had closed again behind him.

  Murray told them, ‘I’d say he’d only just got up. He looked a bit dishevelled and hadn’t shaved. He’s a bloke in his fifties who’s gone to seed, basically. It’s a huge old house, and as far as I could see he was there on his own apart from a couple of Labradors.’

  Waters said, ‘How many cars? Could you see?’

  Murray answered, ‘Two. A Tesla and a Range Rover. I got the numbers, and we can check if any other vehicles are registered there. But I don’t think anyone else was at home this morning.’

  Greene said, ‘What did he have to say when you mentioned Wissingham Hall, John?’

  ‘That it was a long time ago. He remembered the story and the investigation but he said more than once that by then he’d more or less moved back to London with his wife and children. He told me he’d already decided to sell the place because it was costing an arm and a leg to run. If you ask me, he’d just got bored with it. He’s a city boy.’

  Some seconds passed. Waters was thinking it and wondering whether he should say it, when Serena did so – ‘John, if he’s a city boy, why is he stuck out in the sticks, even more than when he was at Wissingham?’

  The question did not take Murray by surprise. He said, ‘I wondered that. He didn’t look at home, as if he belonged out there, even with a Range Rover. It’s flat and it’s bleak, even in the summer. It makes Marston look like a metropolis.’

  Another short silence as six detective minds processed the latest piece of information. Then Tom Greene said, ‘And what did he have to say about his brother, Ronnie?’

  Murray said, ‘Not a lot. He confirmed that Ronnie had been living at Wissingham that summer when the festival took place. He said Ronnie had been interviewed by the police as a potential witness, which we know. When the estate was sold, Ronnie went back to London as well. James told me they didn’t have much to do with each other. His exact words were “We went our separate ways. We were never particularly close.”’

  Tom Greene stopped making notes which usually indicated that he was about to say something significant. He looked around at the group and then said to Murray, ‘I get the feeling you’re going to tell us that James Leadsom told you he doesn’t know the whereabouts of his brother.’

  Murray nodded and said, ‘That’s correct, sir. He said they lost touch years ago. He thinks Ronnie is probably still in London but they haven’t spoken in a long time.’

  Greene put down his pencil – Waters had noticed a while ago that the detective inspector always used the same brand and a B rather than an HB lead – and said, ‘How unfortunate.’

  But Greene was still looking directly at Murray because he had learned to read this team as well as anyone by now. Murray said, ‘Sir. You could say it was a wasted journey…’

  ‘Except?’

  ‘Except I didn’t believe a word of it, not when he was talking about his brother. He was too vague, there was too little detail even when I prompted him for some. I’m not saying Ronnie was hiding up in the attic but Leadsom wasn’t telling the whole truth.’

  Denise Sterling said, ‘If you’re right, John, we have to ask why not. What motive could he have for not wanting us to find Ronnie?’

  A rhetorical question – every detective around the table could fill in those blanks. People do not tell the police all they know for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes those reasons are perfectly sound, but we can be certain of one thing – if the police officer concerned suspects you of concealing information, he or she will assume the worst. It comes, as they say, with the territory.

  Greene said, ‘I’m beginning to see why this became a cold case. We have a body with no name, and now we’re getting names but no bodies. Ronnie Leadsom. Seth and his brother Saul. Where are they now? It’s a bit of a bugger.’

  That was the first mild swearword Waters had ever heard the detective inspector utter – the pressure must be getting to him.

  Greene looked at Clive Betts and said, ‘Ronnie’s national insurance. He has a number but there’s no record of him paying tax or contributions?’

  Clive shook his head and said, ‘Been over it twice, sir. He doesn’t seem to have had a proper job, ever.’

  Serena said, ‘Funded by his brother. Even though they were never very close.’

  That brought a few wry smiles. Greene said, ‘All right. I’d like to know all there is to know about James Leadsom before we speak to him again. Lincolnshire is my old patch, so now I’m going to let them know what we’re up to, and ask whether they’ve ever looked at the owner of Marsh Farm. That’s a very long shot but-’

  The door opened and Freeman entered followed by Priti. Approaching the table, she said, ‘Sorry, been hanging on for a call back. James Leadsom – fill me in, John.’

  As Murray did so, Waters kept one eye on Freeman. Something had happened. She wasn’t smiling – she rarely did – but there was a glint in her eyes. When Murray had re-told his story, Freeman thanked him, looked around the group and opened the slim file she had brought with her. Here we go, thought Waters.

  ‘I’ll try not to sound surprised when I say this, but Europol have been very good. They must work some funny hours, though… Anyway, last night they put me in touch with a senior officer of the police judiciaire for the Bouches-du-Rhone departement, which, if you haven’t already guessed from my appalling pronunciation, is in the south of France.’

  Waters had dropped French at GCSE and the first opportunity, but he had been on family holidays there – Freeman’s pronunciation of “judiciaire” had sounded rather convincing. She continued, ‘Whatever… There was some to-ing and fro-ing while we established the ground rules, but this guy was obviously interested in our case, or the bits of it I’d given to Europol. The upshot is, last night I broke into the system from home and sent him the results from Oxford and the DNA profile. I’d like to offer my formal apologies to the desk officer, Detective Inspector Greene.’

  As Greene nodded a straight-faced acceptance of her mock apology, she added, ‘But not my resignation. Not yet, anyway. That might come after I’ve presented the bill for all this to Regional Serious Crimes.’

  She glanced at her watch – ‘About fifteen minutes ago, Monsieur Blanchet – I’m not clear on his rank but he’s up there – tried to call me back. We had a few words and got cut off. I couldn’t return it for some reason, so I’ve been waiting in my office…’

  They thought it over in silence, and then Denise said, ‘I checked over what we did twenty years ago. There’s no record of them sending a DNA profile when they tried to link Rose to missing persons in Europe. They went through some cases of missing women of the right age group – that’s all as far as I can see. So DNA could throw up something.’

  Freeman took her mobile out of her pocket and placed it on the table in front of her. Somehow this made the situation worse. She said they should get everything together on James Leadsom before they interviewed him more formally, and they’d better let Lincolnshire know what was happening now. In answer, Greene raised his notepad and the DCI shrugged and nodded – after all, she had chosen these people for a reason. Priti offered to fetch coffee or tea; Freeman said a polite no thank you but told everyone else to go ahead. Nobody did, and the silence grew again. Eventually Clive Betts asked what time it was in that part of France, as if this might have some bearing on the absence of M. Blanchet from this briefing. Greene said it must be an hour or two later but opened his screen as if making certain of that mattered. And then Freeman’s phone began to ring.

  She answered it with her rank and name, listened and then said, ‘Ah, Monsieur Blanchet! Je pense nous avons été coupé. Merci de m’avoir rappelé…’

  As already noted, Waters was no linguist but he knew this was not schoolgirl French. Freeman sounded fluent and was barely hesitating to find the right word even when the conversation had obviously moved on to the more technical details involved in discussing the scientific probabilities of DNA matching. He looked at the others and saw the exchange between Serena and Denise, the well-fancy-that faces they made at each other; this was a veritable nugget of intelligence in their long-running investigation into the private life of their commanding officer.

  As she talked and then listened, Freeman reached behind and Priti put a notepad into her hand. Then the DCI began to write down details of what she was being told. Waters could hear the very French voice speaking quickly as they always seem to do, and he had no idea how Freeman could keep up with that, let alone write notes at the same time.

  The call lasted several minutes. Towards the end he could hear that email addresses were being exchanged, that they were agreeing to keep each other informed on certain matters. Bizarrely, Waters thought it would have been nice if Detective Chief Superintendent Allen had been present to hear this – such smooth cooperation with a foreign police force would have made him happy for a week at least. Undoubtedly this was going to get a mention in that televised appeal because when Freeman ended the call and looked up from the notes she had made he could see it in her face again.

  She said, ‘OK. This is quite a story. We should start receiving files this morning, Tom. Most of it will be in French and we’ll need a translator to go through it properly – we’re not relying on Google for that.’

  Serena said, ‘Couldn’t you do it, ma’am?’

  Freeman took that in good part and said, ‘No. I can manage a bit of conversation. My mother was a Francophile and dragged me over there whenever she could. And I went to a posh school where they thought it was important for young ladies to speak a language…’

  More looks were exchanged – the DCI investigation team were having a brilliant morning. Freeman continued, ‘Cutting to the chase, then. They must have run these results overnight. I had no idea the French fuzz were so on the ball. They have a full match. One hundred per cent.’

  She gave them time to absorb that, looking around for their reactions. Denise Sterling shook her head and said, ‘So that’s been sitting in their records for twenty years? And if one of our SIOs had sent our results across, they’d have found her straight away?’

  It was an appalling thought. How many hundreds of hours had been spent on this case altogether? Even twenty years ago, a basic check of DNA would have found out the young woman’s identity.

  Freeman said, ‘No. They would not. They didn’t have her in their system then, and they don’t now.’

  She looked first at Greene and then at Waters, offering them the opportunity. Greene said, ‘Then it’s familial…’ and Waters put in, ‘But that’s not more than fifty per cent.’

  The idea was forming somewhere in his mind, coalescing wherever it is such things coalesce in the fractions of seconds before we are able to articulate them, when Freeman said, ‘What they have is the DNA of Chloe Favreau. Chloe had a twin sister who disappeared twenty years ago. Her name was Sylvie Favreau.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Commissaire divisionnaire Alain Blanchet was as good as his word. Within an hour of the briefing, attachments began arriving in Greene’s email inbox, along with a message from the English-speaking officer who had been appointed as their liaison with the Bouches-du-Rhone police force. John Murray pointed out to no one in particular that their French counterparts obviously still considered themselves a force rather than a service. Greene had found a translator but he would not be available until the next morning, and so Freeman did a perfectly good job of explaining what had arrived in the meantime – waiting another twenty-four hours after almost twenty years was unthinkable, of course.

  The Favreau twins had been born and raised in Aubagne, a few miles east of Marseille. The records sent suggested that the family had never come to the attention of the police until Sylvie disappeared shortly after her nineteenth birthday, in the March of the year that saw her body discovered in a Norfolk wood. As the team talked through each new piece of information, Greene typed notes directly into his computer and these appeared on the whiteboard as he did so; periodically the group read these over and made suggestions. Waters had never seen the job done in this way before, but he could see its value, both as creating an accurate record of the discussion and a sense of ownership among the team. Serena questioned whether the word “disappeared” was accurate – the notes made by the French police showed plainly that she had told her sister Chloe she was planning to meet friends in Paris before travelling that summer. Greene re-phrased their own record to show Sylvie had simply left home that spring.

  In the August the first concern had been raised that the family had lost contact with her; there was surprise when they read that the report was made by her sister, Chloe, and not by the parents. The French gendarmerie in the 11th arrondissement – it was not then viewed as a criminal matter – told Chloe Favreau only what an English uniformed officer would have told them: Sylvie was of age and had left the family home of her own free will. Unless there were circumstances of obvious concern, they would not get involved. The fact she was not getting in touch was upsetting for the family but of no interest to the authorities.

  Denise Sterling said, ‘To me, the fact she had a twin would have raised some concerns, to be honest. It runs in my family a bit, and I remember praying to God that I’d only have one at a time. I have cousins who are identical twins. I don’t care what anyone says about the science – they have something weird going on.’

  Greene said, ‘You’re saying that Sylvie would have kept in touch?’

  Denise nodded and then Freeman, still reading and translating, said, ‘She did, to a degree. She contacted her sister in April and again in… right, in early May. Doesn’t say how exactly. Then it’s three months before Chloe goes to the police.’

  Freeman looked at Sterling, who had just been appointed the consultant on all things twins-related – this brought a shrug and the comment that she still thought it was odd. They all considered this, and then Waters said, ‘We might need to speak to Chloe ourselves, ma’am. Is that going to be possible?’

  Freeman said, ‘I’ve no idea. Tom, when you make contact with the liaison officer, we’ll raise that and see. What I can tell you is this. After her initial contact with the local police, she did not accept what they were telling her. Quite the opposite. There’s language here which suggests they ended up viewing her as something of a nuisance. She started turning up at police stations in person and eventually began making formal complaints. Hold on, let me read this… In the year following Sylvie’s disappearance – sorry Serena, but she had definitely disappeared by then – Chloe was interviewed by a local paper and reported as saying the police had failed in their duty and that she would find her sister herself.’