Here we go again, Josh thought. Parked in exactly the same place outside the school. Eyes on the workshop while he waited for the yard to empty.
It was first thing Wednesday morning. The school bell had just been rung, and the last of the students were filtering in through the doors. The silence was eerie after the previous cacophony of laughter, chatter and yells, the yard now a grey desert blotted only by a crisp packet rolling along in the breeze like tumbleweed.
She’s nuts, he thought. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. She’s nuts. It has to be all in her head. The whole thing is too crazy for it not to be.
And yet there was no denying that another young woman had gone missing. A woman who worked alongside Izzy. The connection was too strong to ignore. She had made a complaint, an allegation, and it had to be followed up. That was his job.
But he still thought she was nuts.
He got out of the car and strolled across to the workshop, prepared this time in case Plumley jumped out of the shadows again with another sharp implement in his hand.
But he found Kenneth at his bench, reading the newspaper and drinking from a mug. Not cutting up a body or sniffing female underwear. Just a regular guy in a regular work setting.
‘Mr Plumley,’ he said.171
Kenneth looked up from his paper as though he had been caught napping. ‘Oh, hello. Detective … Friendly, isn’t it?’
‘Frendy. DS Frendy.’
‘Yes. Hello again.’ He stood up. ‘Is this about the incident with Izzy?’
Josh was taken aback. Was there something in what Izzy had said?
‘The incident?’
‘When she ran into my van with her car. That’s quite a dent she made.’
‘Oh, no. That’s for your insurance companies to handle. But it’s related.’
‘Oh? In what way?’
‘Ms Lambert has made certain allegations about you.’
Kenneth sighed. ‘Yes, I heard her. She seemed a bit … off her head. Accusing me of abducting girls. Honestly, I don’t know where she got that idea.’
‘Yes, well, since then she has made another claim.’
‘Another one?’ He laughed. Actually laughed. ‘Go on, then. What is it this time?’
‘She says you came to see her at the bookshop where she works yesterday lunchtime.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
Again, Josh felt wrong-footed. ‘Would you mind telling me the purpose of your visit?’
Kenneth shrugged. ‘It’s no big secret. I just wanted to clear the air with her. We knew each other well when she was at the school. I thought we’d be able to have a reasonable discussion, as friends. I wanted her to know that I had nothing to do with the things she was accusing me of.’
‘How did you know where she worked?’
‘She told me, after she accidentally bumped into me on Saturday.’172
‘You don’t think it was an accident?’
He smirked. ‘You’ll have to check with her, but it seemed fairly deliberate to me.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘Again, I think Izzy is probably the best person to answer that.’
‘All right. So, this conversation yesterday. It was good-natured?’
‘Well, not exactly.’
‘What does that mean?’
Kenneth took a deep breath. ‘Izzy didn’t want to listen to reason. Didn’t matter what I said in my defence, she wasn’t interested. She just kept accusing me, saying terrible things about me.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘That I was perverted. That I had a thing for young girls. I’m a happily married man. I would never do stuff like that. It disgusts me.’
‘So what did you do when she said all this?’
‘Not much. What could I do if she wasn’t willing to listen? In the end, I just gave up and walked out. I was pretty upset about the whole thing. Still am, if you want to know the truth.’
Josh nodded slowly. ‘Mr Plumley, what you’ve just told me is a little different from Ms Lambert’s version of your meeting yesterday.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. She said that you went there to warn her off, and that you actually threatened her with harm.’
Kenneth’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘No, no. That’s … that’s not what happened at all. Oh, my God, that’s what she said? That’s so wrong.’
‘So you didn’t issue any threats?’
‘No. Absolutely not. I don’t know why she’s doing this to me. What have I ever done to hurt her?’
Josh watched him for a few seconds. His incredulity, his anguish seemed genuine. What was he to believe?173
‘Mr Plumley, when you went to the bookshop, was there another woman there with Izzy?’
‘No. The shop was empty.’
‘Do you know that she has a work colleague called Melissa Sawyer?’
‘No. I don’t think Izzy even mentioned her. Why do you ask?’
‘We’re concerned for her welfare. She went missing after leaving the bookshop yesterday. Nothing has been heard from her since then.’
Kenneth stared while he processed this information.
‘Hold on,’ he said finally. ‘Is she saying – are you saying – that I had something to do with that?’
‘The suggestion has been made.’
‘By Izzy? And you believe that lunatic? You’ve seen what she’s like with me. She’s crazy. This is all— I don’t believe this.’
He was becoming agitated now, pacing up and down the workshop.
‘Mr Plumley, please stay calm.’
‘Stay calm? How am I supposed to stay calm? Is this how it’s going to be now? Every time a woman goes missing, you’re going to interrogate me about it? And all because of the nonsense coming out of Izzy’s mouth? Why do you even listen to her?’
Because she does great card tricks, Josh thought. Which is all it comes down to when you think about it. Without that, her claims are pretty outrageous.
So why do I listen to her?
‘If what she’s saying isn’t true, why do you think she would make all these things up about you?’ was the best he could offer.
Kenneth chewed on his lip, as though preventing it from shaping words queued up behind it.
‘Mr Plumley?’
‘I don’t like to say.’174
‘Well, I don’t think this is something you should keep to yourself. Some pretty serious allegations are being made here. If there’s something you know that could help us …’
‘She … Izzy had a thing for me.’
‘A thing?’
‘An infatuation. A crush. Whatever you want to call it.’
‘When? At school?’
‘Yeah. I don’t know why. I mean, I know I’m not exactly George Clooney. But Hemingway is an all-girls school. There are a lot of hormones there, if you get my drift. Some of the girls can get a bit flirty.’
‘And Izzy got flirty with you?’
‘Well, a little more than that.’
‘Could you be more specific?’
‘She started getting very suggestive. She was always reading books, you know, and sometimes … sometimes she would insist on reading bits out to me. Like, the naughty bits.’
‘Sex scenes?’
‘Yeah, that kind of thing. Lady Chatterley’s Lover and some Jilly Cooper novels. Even Fifty Shades of Grey.’
‘I see. Did she do anything else?’
‘Yeah. She’d talk about wanting to try out some of those things, wondering what it felt like. She asked about me. About my … my vital statistics, if you know what I mean?’
‘And what was your response?’
‘I told her she had to stop it. It was completely wrong. I made it clear that I had absolutely no feelings for her in that way, and that there could never be anything between us. That really pissed her off.’
‘She got angry?’
‘Not just angry. Furious. I mean, off her head. She said she was going to start spreading rumours about me, telling everyone I 175tried to touch her. She really upset me. I thought we were good friends until then.’
‘So how did it end?’
‘I called her bluff. I was scared that she’d go through with her threats and I’d lose my job, so I said I was going to talk to the head of school about her if she carried on. She stopped coming to the workshop after that.’
Josh was silent for a moment. This was putting a whole new slant on things.
‘Mr Plumley, do you know that Izzy is gay?’
It didn’t faze him. ‘I don’t know what she is now. Back then, though, she was a very confused, weird girl with no friends. In fact, she’s still confused.’
‘Why do you say that?’
This one he found more surprising. ‘Well, look at what she’s doing. She’s stalking me.’
‘That’s a very strong word to use.’
‘I don’t care. It’s accurate.’ He paused. ‘Look, I really didn’t want it to come to this, but she’s forcing me to defend myself. Like I told you, she didn’t just bump into me on Saturday morning. She knew exactly what she was doing. She even knew what I’d bought in the shop I’d just left. She was obviously spying on me.’
‘And I asked you why she would do that. She left school five years ago. Why would she suddenly start harassing you now?’
‘Because of my TV appearance.’
‘Explain.’
‘She obviously saw it and it opened up old wounds. I know how ridiculous that sounds, and even I didn’t believe it at first, otherwise I wouldn’t have agreed to go to the café with her. I was really hoping she’d grown up a bit. And at first it all seemed okay, we were having a nice chat. But then she started to get weird.’
‘Weird how?’176
‘Well, saying nasty things about me. Saying that she hadn’t forgotten about how I’d turned her down at school, and now she had a chance to get even.’
‘Did you know what she meant by that?’
‘No. So I asked her. She said she could make my life hell about the Rosie Agutter story, that she could go around telling people I had something to do with it.’
‘She said that?’
Kenneth nodded. ‘The atmosphere turned pretty sour then, so I just got up and walked out. I was pretty upset that she still felt that way about me, but I tried to put it out of my mind. I really didn’t think she would go through with what she said. You’d have to be really screwed up to do something like that, right? But then she goes and crashes her car into my van and starts screaming at me in the street. You saw her. You saw how batshit crazy she was. The girl is off her rocker.’ He paused for a moment, and Josh could see that his hands were trembling. ‘I’m sorry,’ he continued. ‘I didn’t intend to say any of this. I hoped that if I ignored her, she would just go away, but she made it clear that wasn’t going to happen. When I went to see her in the bookshop, it was because I thought I had to give it one more try. I asked her to let bygones be bygones, but it just seemed to pour fuel on the fire. And now she’s blaming me for yet another girl going missing. Surely you can see how obsessed she is, can’t you?’
Josh didn’t answer the question, but he had to admit that Kenneth was making a pretty good case.
‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘Melissa Sawyer was last seen in the bookshop, shortly before closing time. Do you mind if I ask if you can account for your whereabouts between five and six yesterday?’
‘Between five and six? Sure. I was here, like I am every weekday.’
‘You were here till what time?’
‘About half past six.’177
‘Anybody vouch for that?’
‘Yes, actually. Same person as last time.’
‘Mrs Vernon? The school head?’
‘Yeah. She couldn’t get her car started. She asked if I could help her.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yeah. Took a while. There were all kinds of weird warning lights on her dash. I didn’t think I could do anything for her, but you know what it was?’
‘What?’
‘She has keyless ignition and the battery had gone in her key fob. I found a new battery and it was right as rain.’
Josh nodded slowly.
‘You can check with her if you like,’ Kenneth said. ‘I won’t be offended. And after that, why don’t you go and ask Crazy Izzy what she was doing between five and six yesterday?’