The Valley of Longing 11

‘That’s right,’ Mitchell said. ‘I’m sorry, I wish it wasn’t necessary to trouble you with this, and I wish you hadn’t had to hear about this from the Dorpie gossips, I had to tell the family first, though.’ ‘I understand, of course you had to tell Lynne’s parents first.’ ‘I hope you also understand that I need to ask you some questions. Some of them might have been asked before, but I need to ask them again, in case you’ve remembered something you didn’t think of before.’ ‘What sort of questions?’ Kerwin wanted to know. ‘Well, first off, where were you of Friday evening, a week ago?’ ‘You already asked me that, last week.’ ‘I know, but as I said, some of the questions I need to ask, you’ve already answered, but I need to ask, you’ve already answered, but I need to be sure you didn’t forget something that you remember now,’ Mitchell told him. ‘So, where were you last Friday?’ ‘At the Tavern.’ ‘What time was that?’ ‘I got there, musta been been half - eight.’ ‘As I recall, you said you were supposed to go to the tavern together. She text me just after six to say she was stopping at her brother’s and would meet me at the farm after, then we could head into town. She never turned up, though. I hung around for ages, waiting for her, then I went looking, but couldn’t find her. In the end, I gave up and went into town on my own. I never saw her.’ ‘Weren’t you worried when she didn’t show up like she was supposed to?’ Kerwin thought about that briefly and then shook his head. ‘I think I was more annoyed than worried. When she didn’t turn up, I figured Lynne had let her bloody brother talk her into sticking around and cleaning up after him, and his two moron friends, like he always does. I thought, if that’s what she wanted to do, it was fine with me, I’d just go and have drinks by myself, instead of the waiting for Lynne.’ ‘What time did you get back from the tavern?’ Kerwin shrugged. ‘Half - twelve, one am, something like that I’d guess. I don’t really remember like that I’d guess. I don’t really remember. It was definitely after midnight, ‘cause the DJ didn’t finish ‘til about eleven, and it’s over an hour’s drive to get back here from the tavern.’ ‘Can any of your family confirm what time you got here?’ ‘No, they were all in bed, so it was definitely after midnight. Wait, yes, Tara can. She might not know exactly what time it was, but she can give you a rough idea,’ Kerwin said as he remembered. ‘A ninja I’m not, I dropped my phone on the way up the stairs, and it bounced all the way down; the noise woke Tara, she came to see what was going on, had a go at me for waking her, went to the bathroom for a pee, and then went back to bed.’ It took another couple of minutes for Mitchell to be sure he had everything Kerwin could tell him about the evening Lynne had disappeared. ‘Just a couple more questions, Kerwin, then you can get on with your day.’ Kerwin sighed but didn’t react beyond that. ‘Why didn’t you Pick Lynne up, instead of her coming out here to meet you? You could have met her at Ollie’s, it would have been more sensible than her walking up here.’ ‘I was supposed to meet her down in the Dorpie,’ Kerwin admitted. ‘But I was having problems with my car. I’ve been trying to save up enough to get it fixed for good, but I can’t afford it right now, so I’m having to bodge it. Damn thing conked out on me just as I was leaving to pick Lynne up, took me and dad about twenty minutes to get it going again. I text Lynne to let her know what was going on, that’s when she said she was gonna stop in at her brother’s, and head up here, if she didn’t hear from me first.’ ‘Why didn’t you head down to Ollie’s to pick her up once you got the car going?’ Kerwin snorted. ‘You’ve seen what he’s like, he hates me, attacks me every time he sees me. Lynne hates it when I fight with her idiot of a brother, so I avoid him as much as I can.’ Mitchell doubted that that was the only reason Kerwin avoided Oliver, he suspected it was more because he wan’t as tough as his girlfriend’s brother, and didn’t want to get beaten up. ‘I didn’t want to get into a fight, that’s why I stayed away; besides, I figured if Lynne was gonna choose to hang out with her brother, instead of going to the tavern with me, I was better off going on my own,’ He shrugged, as if it didn’t really matter, but his indifference was quickly replaced by a deep sadness. ‘When I - when I heard the next morning that Lynne was - that she was missing…’ He fell silent for several long moments. ‘I wished I’d looked for her, wished I’d done more than just text to ask where she was, and then gotten annoyed when she didn’t answer. ‘Maybe - maybe if I’d been able to make her see how obsessed Oliver, that fucking asshole,’ he snarled,’ ‘Is with her, she would - would’ve been alright.’ Mitchell saw the accusation implicit in the teen’s words, and knew he would have to ask more questions before he could move on. ‘What is it, exactly, that makes you think Oliver might have had something to do with Lynne’s disappearance, and how she was found?’ ‘Come on, you can’t tell you don’t know about his obsession with Lynne,’ Kerwin said. ‘he acts like she’s his girlfriend, not his sister. He texts and calls her all the time, has her at his house cleaning up after him and his friends, running errands; he always touching her as well, like he wants her, you know what I mean?’ Mitchell didn’t need to be a genius to understand what Kerwin was trying to say even if he didn’t believe it, so he nodded. ‘I think that’s what happened,’ Kerwin said. ‘He forgot Lynne’s his sister, not his girlfriend - I mean, he gets aggro whenever she starts seeing someone - tried it on with her, and then snapped when she threatened to tell her parents what he’d done, confused guy.’ ‘It’s certainly a theory we’ll have to look into,’ Mitchell promised ‘There’s something else I need to ask you about.’ ‘What?’ Kerwin didn’t even try to conceal his frustration. ‘Dad’ll be home for lunch any time, he’ll want his food ready, and he won’t want to see this mess.’ ‘I’m sorry, I’ll be as quick as I can,’ Mitchell said. ‘Did you see Lily Potgieter yesterday afternoon? Specially, at any point from lunchtime onwards.’ Kerwin nodded. ‘Sure, I saw her yesterday,’ he said without hesitation. ‘Is she in trouble?’ ‘No, but we are concerned about her. As far as we’ve been able to tell, nobody has seen Lily since she got on the bus in town yesterday lunchtime to come back to the Dorpie. She would have made it back here a bit before one; did you see her after that time?’ ‘Yeah, I saw her, must have been about two, something like that.’ ‘Where?’ Mitchell asked, hoping that he was about to hear something that would advance his investigation. ‘Just down the road actually,’ Kerwin told him. ’I was heading out to get some stuff done after a late lunch when my bloody car conked out again. I didn’t make it more than a hundred paces beyond the gate. I was trying to get it going again when I saw Lily, she was at the old Vermaak cottage, being let in by that new guy, I forget his name, the one Amy’s (Amelia) been helping with his gardens.’ ‘Jack Wild?’ ‘Yeah, that’s the guy.’ Mitchell could not believe it had been as easy as that to get confirmation of what he and Melissa suspected. ’Thank you, Kerwin, now I’ve got just one last question for you, then I’ll be out of your hair,’ HE could see that the teen was frustrated to the point of swearing, so he got straight on with it. ’Do you know how long Lily was with Mr Wild for?’ ‘No.’ Kerwin shook his head. ’But it was a while. I was fifteen, twenty minutes fixing my car, and she hadn’t come back out by the time I was done. Mind you, I’m not surprised, given what she was wearing.’ ‘What was that?’ ‘The shortest skirt I’ve ever seen her wearing. It was so short I didn’t think it was a skirt at first - she had a hell of a lot of leg on show.’ A smile played about his lips at the memory. ’If I was that guy, Wild, I’d’ve wanted to keep her there for as long as possible, if only for the view.’ ‘I’ll leave you and the girls to get things ready for your dad,’ Mitchell said. ‘Thanks for your help.’ he left then, collecting Melissa from the living room on the way out of the house. Mitchell entered his superior’s office in response to the summons he had received, leaving Melissa to secure Oliver in one of the station’s two cells. ‘Ho’s the investigation going?’ Stevens asked once his sergeant was seated. ‘Have you made any progress?’ ‘If you mean with what happened to Lynne, then no; all I’ve got on that front so far is the theory that Ollie got confused about whether Lynne was his sister or girlfriend, and killed her when she rejected him after he made advances on her,’ Mitchell answered. ‘Is that why you brought Ollie in?’ Mitchell shook his head. ‘No. He’s here for assault and resisting arrest. He attacked Kerwin Wright, and Mel caught a wallop while trying to break the two of them up: she’s going to have a lovely bruise come morning, thankfully, that’s all she suffered.’ ‘Okay, so you’ve got nothing on Lynne’s murder so far, beyond a theory that doesn’t have anything to back it up. What about Lily’s apparent disappearance? Have you got anything on that?’ ‘I still don’t know where she is,’ Mitchell admitted. ‘But I have discovered that she came back to the Dorpie yesterday afternoon to meet someone. I don’t yet have proof of who the someone she was meeting is, but I’ve got reason to think it’s Jack Wild…’ ‘The gentleman who found Lynne’s body this morning?’ Stevens asked, surprised. ‘Why would Lily have wanted to see him?’ ‘Because, according to what I’ve discovered, she wants to become an author, and she wants whatever help he can give her.’ Mitchell allowed that to sink in. ‘Lily’s best friend, Trinity Hunter, told us about her desire to be an author, and we found evidence of that when we searched her room; we also found that after she returned home yesterday afternoon, and before she left again, she visited Mr Wild’s website, she also took a number of books written by Mr Wild with her when she left the house.’ ‘That’s all well and good, Venter, but have you got any proof that Lily actually visited Mr Wild? Have you asked him about it?’ ‘He wasn’t home when Melissa and I went to speak to him, we’re going to try again later. We do have confirmation that Lily went to Mr Wild’s house, though, and that she went inside, she was seen being let in yesterday afternoon around two.’ ‘Did she leave again?’ ‘No idea on that score. Kerwin, he’s the one who saw Lily go in, was down the road, fixing his car for about twenty minutes and didn’t see her leave.’ ‘So Mr Wild is the last person to have seen Lily?’ ‘As far as I know right now. Hopefully I’ll be able to confirm that when I catch up with Mr Wild.’ Inspector Stevens contemplated his sergeant for a short while. ‘Do you think Mr Wild cold be involved in Lynne’s murder and Lily’s disappearance?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to leap to conclusions based on what may just be a coincidence, but he found Lynne’s body in an out of the way place, where almost no - one goes, and he’s currently the last person known to have seen Lily. He’s also the person in the Dorpie we know the least about. Again, I don’t want to leap to any conclusions,’ Mitchell said, before doing exactly that, ‘But I can’t imagine anyone else from the Dorpie being a killer; we know them, if that was the sort of person they were, we’d have discovered it by now.’ He ground his teeth in frustration. ‘This would be a lot easier if we knew anything about Jack Wild beyond what he’s told us, which isn’t much. I know he’s definitely an author, but we don’t know anything other than that for sure.’ ‘In that case this might help.’ Stevens slid a file across the desk to his subordinate. ‘It’s only a summary of Mr Wild’s service record with the Suid - Draai police, but it’s bound to give you some idea of the sort of person he is. The full file is being couriered over, it should be here later this afternoon. I’ve added whatever other information I’ve been able to find out so far, it’s not a huge amount, but it might help.’ He watched Mitchell pick up the file and flip open the cover. ‘You’re due a break, why don’t you have a read of that while you take it, then you can take Billy Hendricks into town to identify Lynne.’ Melissa used the excuse of bringing her superior a mug of coffee to slip into Sergeant Mitchell’s office so she could try and find out what the file inspector Stevens had got, said. ‘Here, I thought you could do with a fresh coffee,’ Melissa said, putting the mug down in front of Mitchell, after moving the old, cold coffee out of the way. ‘Thanks,’ Mitchell said absently, without looking up from the file he was reading. ‘is there anything good or interesting in there?’ she asked. She had time to sip about a quarter of her own coffee before she got a response. ‘Haven’t you read it?’ Mitchell asked, and then immediately answered his own question. ‘No, of course you haven’t. Here, have a read.’ He passed the folder over. ‘It makes for interesting reading,’ he said, his attention no longer on the file, he lifted the mug, so he could sip his coffee. It was interesting, Melissa thought as she read, but also very brief. It took her barely a minute to get through the file, which only made her more curious about the author who had moved into the Dorpie and gotten himself mixed up in the first murder there had been in more than a decade. ‘It makes Mr Wild seem a viable suspect, doesn’t it,’ Mitchell said. ‘Multiple violent incidents, several against women, it’s not positive proof, but it definitely looks like he could be our murderer to me. Don’t you agree?’ he asked of his partner. ‘Not really,’ Melissa disagreed with a shake of her head. ‘We’re got nothing but a few facts and coincidences. The coincidences mean nothing right now, and we don’t know enough about the supposed violent incidents to tell if they have any relevance; for all we know he could have been justified in the things he did. If you’re going to make Mr Wild’s a suspect on that basis, you’ve got to make Oliver one as well, he’s definitely violent, and he’s connected to both Lynne and Lily - one’s his sister and the other’s his girlfriend, if that’s the right word to describe their relationship.’ ‘Surely you think Jack Wild’s a better suspect than Oliver.’ Mitchell said, speaking with a mouth so full of tuna mayo sandwich that it was almost impossible to make out what he was saying. ‘We know Oliver, we don’t know Jack Wild.’ ‘That doesn’t mean anything.’ Melissa protested. ‘We still don’t know there’s a connection between what happened to Lynne, and Lily’s disappeared, she could be anywhere, doing anything. Even if Lily has disappeared, and there is a connection, we don’t have a clue what it is or who’s responsible, because we don’t have a clue what happened to Lynne before she was found this morning, For all we know, it could be just about anyone in the Dorpie who’s responsible.’ ‘Oh, come on, Melissa, you can’t believe that someone we know could have done what we saw this morning.’ Melissa didn’t respond to that, instead she took a chocolate bar from her pocket, tore open the wrapper, and stuffed half of it into her mouth to keep her from saying what she was thinking. ‘Can I help you?’ ‘Sergeant Mitchell, from Doring Draad, we’re here about Lynne Hendricks.’ The morgue attention, looked from the sergeant to the two with him, ‘I’ll get someone to help you,’ he said before disappearing through the double - doors behind the counter. He returned almost immediately with another attendant, who took charge. Silent and solemn, Mitchell, Melissa and Billy Hendricks followed the attendant along the passage, past several doors, and through a set of double doors, and through a set of double doors at the far end. The room they entered was the storage area, with three of the walls make up of cabinets, which held the bodies of the recently dead. ‘It’s Lynne Hendricks you’re here for, isn’t it,’ the attendant said. ‘Came in this morning?’ ‘That’s right,’ Mitchell said with a quick nod. ‘Okay, she’s in thirty - eight,’ the attendant said after checking a list on the desk in the corner of the room. ‘If you’ll sign in, I’ll show you her.’ Mitchell, Melissa and Billy Hendricks all filled out the sheet on the clipboard they were given, and with that formality taken care of the attendant led them over to the appropriate cabinet. ‘I assume you’re here to make an identification,’ Clark said. Billy nodded, unable to bring himself to speak, though he did gasp when he caught his first sight of the girl believed to be his daughter, and the daughter, and the damage done to her face. ‘Is that Lynne?’ Mitchell asked in a low and compassionate voice. It was a minute and more before Billy recovered sufficiently from his shock to react to the sight before him. ‘My baby, oh my poor baby; who could have done this to you?’ With a wail of grief, he threw himself, weeping, on the body. Melissa turned away, embarrassed by the obvious and painful grief that was displayed. It was not that she was heartless, but Billy’s display was hard to watch. Mitchell was shocked by his friend’s reaction, which seemed excessive. ‘Come on, Billy, you’ve got to get control of yourself,’ he said, placing a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘Lynne wouldn’t want you acting like this, and Felicity’s going to need your support, she’s barely managing as it is. If you collapse, who’s going to help her through this.’ ‘You - you’re right, Felicity needs me to be strong.’ Billy said as he fought back his tears. ‘It’s just …’ He sniffed. ‘How could anyone have done this to my baby, my Lynne? Who did it? D’you know?’ ‘I’m afraid not,’ Mitchell admitted. ‘WE’VE barely begun investigating. It’s liable to take us some time to figure out what happened, and who’s responsible. We’re doing everything we can, though,’ he assured him, ‘and we do have a suspect we’re looking at. As soon as we have proof, we’ll arrest him.’ ‘Who is it?’ Billy asked desperately as he grasped at the front of Mitchell’s uniform. ‘Please, Venter, you have to tell me, who did this to my beautiful baby girl? She never did anything to anyone, she was an angel; how could anyone hurt her like this?’ He reached out to stroke Lynne’s face, in doing so he dislodged the sheet covering her body. It was only the timely reactions of the morgue attendant that kept him from seeing the full extent of his daughter’s injuries. What he saw was enough to break the veneer of control he had in place over his emotions and make him collapse again. ‘OH GOD, OH GOD, oh my pooor baby.’ Melissa guessed that the suspect Mitchell had referred to was Jack Wild, and that made her uncomfortable, for in her mind they had nothing to justify making him a suspect. Even if Wild was guilty of the assaults listed in the file she had read, and that was not certain, it did not follow that he had committed murder. It seemed to her, and she did not like the thought, that her superior had latched onto Jack Wild as a suspect because he did not want the murderer to be someone he knew, someone he was friends with; she could understand him thinking like that, but didn’t agree with it, because of the chance that the real suspect might get away. She said nothing of her misgivings, however, sure that her sergeant wouldn’t want to hear them. ‘Are you certain it’s Lynne back there, Billy?’ Mitchell asked, a hand on her friend’s shoulder as he steered him gently but firmly away from the sight that had caused him such distress. ‘I’ll understand if you’re not positive, it’s hard to make an identification under such circumstances,’ he said, making it sound as though he had attended dozens. ‘There are other ways to be certain whether it’s Lynne - dental records and the like.’ Billy shook his head. ‘NO,NO, I’m sure, it’s Lynne.’ Now that he could no longer see his daughter’s brutalised body, he was much calmer, though no less grief - stricken. ‘I’d recognise her anywhere, even after what - what - what was done to her.’ He sobbed a couple of times before managing to finish what he was saying. ‘Even if I couldn’t, she’s wearing the earrings Felicity and I gave her last Christmas.’ Silent tears ran down his cheeks as he allowed himself to be led along the passage. ‘How - how did she die?’ Billy asked as they approached the double - doors at the end of the passage. Mitchell hesitated before answering, and Melissa was sure he was trying to decide how best to answer the question, without adding to his friend’s distress. ‘I’m afraid we don’t know at the moment,’ Mitchell said, hoping he sounded believable. ‘We won’t know the answer to that until the post - mortem, when is that happening?’ he asked of the morgue attendant, who was escorting them out. ‘Not sure it’s been scheduled yet,’ Clark said. ‘It’ll probably be Monday sometime, though, depending on how busy the pathologist is. If you want to know a definite time, you’ll have to ring up Monday morning.’ ‘Thanks, I will.’ Mitchell hoped the post - mortem would provide him with something that might prove who had killed Lynne. He suspected it was Jack Wild, but without proof, suspicion was all he had. ‘Was, was …’Billy couldn’t bring himself to finish the question, instead he closed his mouth with a snap and continued out of the building.