Josh Frendy wondered what the hell he was doing here.
He was parked up on the street outside Hemingway High School, directly opposite the gates, and he couldn’t understand why.
She was nuts. Had to be. You only had to look at her to know that. She was like a mystic in a fairground tent, or someone who sold crystals and hobbit paraphernalia. And these powers she claimed to have? Utter bollocks. Nobody can do that. Okay, the card trick was neat, but it was no better than things he’d seen done by David Blaine or Derren Brown, and with a lot more pizazz.
And yet here he was, probably wasting time, and it was starting to irritate him that Izzy had sown just enough doubt in his mind to make him come here just so he could cross it off his list of Things To Double-Check. He was particular in that way, always having to be certain even when the information came from someone who seemed to be a complete loon. He had tried telling himself that it was no bad quality in a copper, but sometimes it drove him loopy.
His eye caught movement in the school yard. A door had opened in one of the single-storey buildings, and a man had stepped out.
It was Plumley.
He stood in the doorway, drinking from a mug. Seconds later, another figure came out of the building next to it: a young girl, dressed for PE in a T-shirt and shorts. As she ran across to the 71main school building, Josh thought that Plumley spent a disturbing amount of time watching her.
Stop it, he told himself. You’re letting Isobel Lambert’s baseless accusations get to you. The man’s probably in a world of his own, not even aware he’s looking in the girl’s direction.
When Plumley disappeared back into his workshop, Josh got out of his car. He walked across the yard, listening to the sounds of young voices and thudding feet and squealing trainers from the gym, and then he reached the workshop door, ready to knock and announce himself, but finding that Plumley was suddenly there in front of him, a glinting craft knife in his hand.
He jumped slightly, as did Plumley, but something told Josh that the caretaker’s display of surprise was fake, and that he really had meant to instil fear in whoever was daring to darken his door.
Thanks, Miss Lambert, he thought. You’ve really put me on edge with this guy.
‘Mr Plumley,’ he said. ‘Detective Sergeant Frendy. We spoke yesterday.’
‘Oh. Yes. That’s right. Please come in.’
Plumley led the way to a long bench, its surface heavily scarred and pitted, where he put the knife down and climbed onto a wooden stool. As he took a stool opposite, Josh searched in vain for signs of any recent activity that might have required use of the craft knife.
‘Is there any news?’ Plumley asked. ‘Have you found Rosie?’
‘No. Not yet, I’m afraid. I just wanted to check a few things with you, if that’s okay?’
‘Of course. Fire away.’
Plumley didn’t look worried. If anything, he seemed eager to help.
‘We’re having trouble locating the car you mentioned. So far, nobody else has come forward to say that they saw it too.’
‘Okay.’72
Still unflustered.
‘Is there a possibility you may have been mistaken?’
‘About the car? Well, like I said, I didn’t have any reason to take much notice at the time. It was just a big dark saloon. Pretty new, I’d say. Other than that …’
‘But you definitely saw Rosie Agutter getting into it?’
‘Well, that’s not what I said. I saw a girl who looked like Rosie to me, but I don’t know all the students here. It’s possible I saw a completely different girl. And it was dark too, you know. It gets dark so early now.’
‘I see. And the driver? You said it was a foreign gentleman …’
‘Foreign-looking, is what I said. He had dark hair and olive skin, but I suppose that doesn’t necessarily make him foreign, does it?’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
Josh considered his next move. If it was Plumley’s intention to send the police on a wild goose chase, he wasn’t being very forceful about it. On the other hand, he might simply be backtracking because he was worried that police suspected his involvement.
‘Mr Plumley, I’ll be frank with you. A witness has approached us with a version of events that contradicts your own.’
‘Contradicts? What do you mean? Contradicts it how?’
‘I can’t go into details. Let’s just say that it’s not possible for both accounts to be accurate.’
‘I don’t know what that means. Who is this witness? Are they calling me a liar? How the hell would they know what I saw or didn’t see?’
A good question, Josh thought. Easy to answer, though. I can just tell him about my little visitor and about how she occasionally spoke to him five years ago and so now knows everything about him, and I could tell him about the card trick because that would really clinch it, that would definitely convince him to confess everything. 73
‘I hope you understand that I have to ask these questions. Sometimes it happens like this, where we get different eyewitness statements that contradict each other. Usually, it’s not malicious. Someone has made a mistake, that’s all. It’s our job to work out what the truth is, because obviously we don’t want to start investigating things that don’t need investigating.’
Plumley seemed appeased. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you were saying— Anyway, you’re right. Maybe I did make a mistake. Maybe the girl I saw wasn’t Rosie. If that’s the case, then I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’
‘No. Not at all. Someone got into that car, right? What time did you say it happened?’
‘After five thirty. Maybe a quarter to six.’
‘Right. That’s quite late for a student to leave the school. We’ve spoken to the art teacher, and she also confirms that Rosie left at about that time, so if it wasn’t her you saw, then who was it? So far, we’ve got no other reports of any student being picked up in a dark saloon at that time, so yours could be the best lead we have.’
‘Well,’ Plumley said, ‘that’s why I came to you. I know I could have been mistaken, but I just thought …’
‘Absolutely. You did the right thing.’ He paused. ‘So I can put this whole thing to bed, can I just confirm what happened after you saw Rosie?’
‘After?’
‘Yes. What did you do after that? Did you go home?’
‘Not straight away, no. I had some more jobs to do.’
‘Oh, okay. You work long hours.’
Plumley shrugged. ‘It’s a big school. There’s always stuff to be done. These kids, they break things all the time.’
‘Yeah, I can imagine. So you stayed longer. A few minutes more?’74
‘No. More like an hour.’
‘An hour? Couldn’t it have waited?’
‘No. We had a careers fair starting early the next morning. I had to set everything up in the gym.’
‘The building next to this one?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you weren’t working in the main building, then?’
‘Not on that job, no.’ He paused. ‘Is there a reason why you’re asking all these questions? Am I a suspect or something? Has this witness you mentioned said something bad about me? Because not all the students here are saints, you know. Some of them would love to see staff members get into trouble, especially the ones who get told off on a regular basis.’
Josh wondered about that. Was this revenge on Isobel Lambert’s part? Getting back at Plumley for something he did or said to her, even after all those years?
‘No, nothing like that. I’m just trying to build a more complete picture of what happened that night. Just to summarise, then: you were setting things up in the gym, you saw Rosie leave, and then you carried on working until, what, a quarter to seven?’
‘Yeah, about that.’
‘Okay. But you said you work alone, right?’
Josh was thinking, You’ve got nobody to verify this, have you, Kenneth? You could have gone anywhere in that time, done anything.
‘Usually.’
‘Usually?’
‘Yeah. Mrs Vernon is very particular about these things.’
‘Mrs Vernon? The head?’
‘Yeah. She likes to supervise things like that. She wanted it to look just right – flowers and placards and refreshments and that kind of thing.’75
‘Mrs Vernon was with you while you were working in the gym?’
Plumley nodded. ‘Pretty much every minute. She’s very hands-on. Even helped me carry trestle tables in from my van.’