The Valley of Longing 9

‘No, not yet,’ Mitchell admitted, not that he could pretend otherwise. ‘We’re investigating, to try and work out where she could have gone.’ ‘I hope you are having more success than you did when you investigated Lynne Hendricks’s disappearance.’ Theresa’ voice betrayed her doubts. ‘I understand that if it was not for Mr Wild, you would still be in the dark as to the whereabouts of that poor girl, and that you have no idea who is responsible for attacking her.’ Mitchell was not surprised that news of the morning’s discovery had reached Theresa, he was sure everyone in the village had heard it by now. ‘Do you know Mr Wild?’ he asked, thinking that if she did it would lend weight to the theory that Lily had returned to the Dorpie the previous afternoon to see the author. ‘No, we haven’t met, yet,’ Theresa dashed his hopes. ‘Though I have written to him regarding the charity event I am organising for next month. I don’t see that - that has any relevance to Lily’s disappearance, however, unless there’s something you need to tell me.’ She fixed Mitchell with a look that would have done an interrogator proud.. ‘At this stage, we have nothing definite,’ Mitchell told her. ‘But we have spoken to several people already about Lily and her last known movements. Trinity told us she saw Lily yesterday lunchtime, leaving school, and that she didn’t return for the afternoon session.’ ‘I was already aware of that. In fact, I told inspector Stevens as much when he called to see if Lily had returned home, as if I wouldn’t have called him straight away if she had. Surely you haven’t come here to tell me what I already know.’ Mitchell shook his head vigour sly. ‘No, of course not, but I assume, when you spoke to Trinity…’ ‘I didn’t speak to Trinity,’ Theresa said quickly. ‘It was Anna who called Lily’s friends.’ ‘Okay. Well, Trinity told us that as far as he knows, Lily left school at lunchtime to return here to Doring Draad so she could meet someone; she couldn’t say who though, Lily didn’t tell her.’ Theresa responded to that without hesitation. ‘It must be Oliver Hendricks. I can’t tell you how many times her father and I have spoken to Lily about that hooligan - too many times. I swear, she only goes out with him to annoy us. If Raymond should ever find out the sort of person she is seeing, well, I don’t know how he would react, but he wouldn’t be happy. Have you spoken to him yet?’ ‘Raymond?’ Mitchell couldn’t think why he should speak to the famously tough entrepreneur. ‘Oliver Hendricks. Why on Earth would you think I meant Raymond?’ Theresa gave Mitchell no chance to answer the question. ‘Surely you realize that Oliver has to be your prime suspect in Lynne’s ….her murder,’ her voice stumbled for a moment, ‘and Lily’s disappearance. You’ve never been the brightest of people, Mitchell, but even you must see the connection; first his sister disappears, and then Lily, his - his girlfriend, disappears after leaving school early to come back to the Dorpie to see him.’ ‘We don’t know that it was Oliver, Lily came back to the Dorpie to see,’ Mitchell said, not reacting to Theresa’s out of character display of emotion. ‘We’ll be asking him about Lily, and about Lynne, just as soon as we catch up with him. First, though, we have some questions we need to ask you, and we need to take a look around Lily’s room.’ ‘What on Earth for?’ Theresa asked, startled. ‘Surely you don’t think you’ll find Lily there. I can assure you, it was the first place Anna and I looked.’ Mitchell hastened to reassure Theresa. ‘Of course not, but we do need to search the room for anything that might tell us who Lily was coming back to see.’ He continued hurriedly when he saw that Theresa was about to speak again. ‘Trinity couldn’t tell us who Lily was coming back to see, but Lily did, apparently, indicate that the person she was meeting was someone who could make her dreams come true. Her dream, as far as Trinity is aware, being writing. Because of that, we believe she may have been intending to meet Mr Wild; we want to see if there’s anything in Lily’s room that might indicate she knew, or had any connection with, Mr Jack Wild.’ The startled look on Theresa’s face grew. ‘Writing? Are you talking about Lily’s scribblings?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘You can’t believe she has a dream that has anything to do with writing. The only things Lily dreams about are money, shopping, and causing problems for her father and me.’ ‘You may be right,’ Mitchell said. ‘But we still need to check to be sure. And if it isn’t Mr Wild she was coming back to see, we might be able to find out if it was Oliver Hendricks, or someone else. We might also be able to find out if there’s anyone we should be talking to that we haven’t previously thought of, anyone that might have a grudge against Lily.’ Briefly, Theresa looked as though she was going to debate the suggestion that someone could have a grudge against her daughter.’ Very well, do whatever you need to,’ she finally said, grudgingly. ‘Thank you.’ Mitchell was about to leave the office when he thought of something. ‘If you don’t mind, can you tell us where you were yesterday afternoon, from about half on onwards?’ He figured that was the earliest Lily could have made it back to the Dorpie, if she didn’t get the bus until lunchtime. Theresa looked mortally offended. ‘Are you trying to suggest that I may have had something to do with Lily’s disappearance?’ ‘No, of course not,’ Mitchell said hastily. ‘I didn’t mean that at all. I just want to find out where everyone was, so I can be certain of their movements.’ Theresa did not look mollified by his words, but she did deign to answer him after a brief pause. ‘I was in town from ten o’clock yesterday morning until a little after five. I was in a meeting with Beth Silver from Action on Homelessness until about Midday, and after that I was working with the committee to organise the event we are running next month. If you wish to check, you’ll find that I have more than half a dozen witnesses to my presence, including Anna - she was there to help me.’ ‘Thank you, that saves me asking Anna where she was,’ Mitchell remarked. ‘I’ll try and finish my search of Lily’s room as quickly as possible so I can get out of your hair.’ Melissa turned her attention from the bookcase in front of her to the housekeeper. ‘What should be here?’ she asked, indicating the large gap on the second shelf from the bottom. Anna left her post by the doorway and bent to examine the gap when she reached the bookcase. It was a few moments before she straightened up. ‘Six or seven books,’ she said, without seeming to be aware that her answer was all but useless since it was obvious that it was books that were missing. ‘Who are they by?’ Mitchell asked, guessing at the thinking behind Melissa’s query as he joined the two women. ‘I’m trying to remember,’ Anna said, her brow furrowed. ‘They’re all by the same person, I remember that, a man, but I can’t remember his name.’ She bent again to run her eyes over the other books on the shelf. ‘It begins with a W. They’re big books, heavy, hardbacks; Lily won’t take them from the room, they’re so heavy, she only reads them here. You’d think, given how many times I’ve seen Lily reading them I’d remember who they’re by, and what they’re by, and what they’re called.’ Melissa frowned. ‘If they’re too heavy for Lily to take them out of the room,’ she said slowly. ‘Why would she have taken all of them off the shelf at the time? You haven’t seen them anywhere around the house, have you? They’re not anywhere in the room as far as I can see.’ ‘No. IF I had, I would have brought them back up here.’ ‘Do you remember when you last saw the books, and where they were?’ ‘Yesterday Morn…’ Anna started to say before stopping so she could cast her mind back. After several moments, she nodded. ‘Yes, they were there yesterday morning. I did my dusting, and I remember the only gap was here.’ After a brief search the only gap was here.’ After a brief search for the right spot, she put her finger on a book on the third shelf. ‘This one wasn’t here when I dusted yesterday.’ ‘You’re certain that that book was missing, and the other books were here when you dusted yesterday?’ Mitchell asked. When Anna nodded, he went on, ‘What time did you do the dusting?’ ‘Between half - past eight and nine o’clock; after Lily left for school, and before I went into Town with Mrs Potgieter.’ ‘Is it possible that someone other than Lily could have taken the books?’ Mitchell asked. It Didn’t surprise him when Anna shook her head. ‘Okay, so if Lily is the only one who would have taken the books, and they were here when Lily left for school yesterday, she must have come home at some point.’ ‘Could the books have been by someone called Jack Wild?’ Melissa asked. Anna’s face brightened and she nodded quickly. ‘Yes, that was it; I can’t think how I could have forgotten it, it’s such a simple name to remember.’ Melissa looked significantly at her sergeant, though her gaze quickly moved from him to the desk visible behind him. ‘DO you want me to check it?’ she asked, indicating the computer that sat on the desk. ‘You’ll have to,’ Mitchell told her. ‘I wouldn’t have a clue what to do. While you do that, I’ll check the rest of the room.’ Immediately, Melissa crossed to the desk and settled into the luxurious, padded swivel chair before pressing the power button on Lily’s laptop. It was only when the Windows logo appeared on the screen, that she thought to worry that the system might be password - protected - fortunately, it wasn’t. Melissa sat and started at the desktop screen for more than a minute doing anything, unsure how to proceed. Finally, she decided that the place to start was Lily’s email and social media accounts; sixteen was recent enough for her to remember how keen teens were on social media, and how often they used it. The moment she brought up Lily’s web browser, and accessed her email account, she saw that Lily got more emails in a week than she got in a month. Most of the emails were notifications, of one sort or another, from social media, indicating that it was a good idea for her to check Lily’s Facebook, Twitter and other accounts. It took a while to go through the emails, and once she was done Melissa moved on to the social media accounts themselves. She didn’t expect to find anything on any that she hadn’t she hadn’t already seen in the notifications, which had had nothing to do with Lily’s disappearance, but she had to check anyway. ‘What do you make of this? Mel?’ Melissa welcomed the distraction, and spun the chair away form the desk so she could get to her feet. When she reached the bed, where Mitchell had dumped out the contents of the laundry basket, she saw that the small pile of clothes was made up of a school uniform and some underwear. ‘When did you last empty this basket, Mrs Ramabela?’ Mitchell asked. ‘Yesterday morning.’ Anna answered straight away. ‘I put a load of laundry on before going into town with Mrs Ramabela.’ ‘It definitely looks as though Lily came home yesterday afternoon,’ Mitchell observed. Melissa nodded her agreement as she reached out to pick up the underwear, saying. ‘This is odd, though.’ ‘Why d’you say that?’ Mitchell wanted to know. Looking extremely uncomfortable, he stared at the items in Melissa’s hand. ‘Well, I can understand Lily changing out of her uniform, if she was planning on meeting someone, especially someone like Mr Wild, she would have wanted to wear something better, but why would she change her underwear.’ The look on her face conveyed her confusion. ‘I imagine she already put on clean underwear before going to school.’ ‘Yes,’ Anna confirmed that. ‘Them why change, unless …’ Melissa’s voice trailed off as a thought occurred to her. ‘Unless what?’ Mitchell asked. ‘Unless….unless she was planning something more than just meeting Mr Wild, or whoever it is he was going to see,’ Melissa finished. ‘What do you mean?’ He realised what she meant before she could answer. ‘Surely you don’t think she could have been intending to …to have sex with Mr Wild.’ ‘Or whoever she planning to meet.’ Melissa said. ‘I can’t think why else she would have changed her underwear. Speaking as a woman, the only reason I’d change my underwear, if I already had fresh on, was to put on something sexy for whoever I was meeting. How well do you know the clothes in Lily’s wardrobe?’ she asked of Anna. ‘Pretty well,’ Anna said. ‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve washed everything, so I should know it.’ ‘Can you tell us what’s missing, what she might have changed into?’ ‘I think so.’ Anna’s voice betrayed a touch of doubt, nonetheless she moved away from the bed and over to the wardrobe so he could look inside. ‘Did you find anything on the computer?’ Mitchell asked of Melissa while the wardrobe was being checked.’ Anything that shows if it was Wild she was planning on meeting or someone else?’ ‘Not so far. I’ve checked her emails and her social media accounts, but there’s nothing there; if she was talking to someone about meeting up with them, or about meeting up with someone else, she wasn’t doing it through any of them.’ ‘Could she have done it in code or something?’ ‘It’s possible I suppose,’ Melissa said doubtfully. ‘But I can’t see why she’d have done so; she didn’t even have a password on the laptop, so she obviously didn’t worry about anyone looking at her stuff. If she did have a code she used, it’ll be almost impossible for us to figure out what she was saying; we don’t even know who she might have been saying it to, since she apparently didn’t talk to Trinity about it. ‘I’ll have to look at her internet history, maybe there will be something there to help us.’ Mitchell left Melissa to work on the computer and joined Anna at the wardrobe. ‘Can you tell us what Lily changed into?’ he asked. Anna nodded, her eyes on the colourful array of clothes in the wardrobe. ‘A mini - skirt, a red micro thing that’s positively indecent, and a low - cut top, red, like the skirt.’ ‘If that’s what she was wearing, I don’t think there’s any doubt she wanted to get attention,’ Mitchell observed unhappily as he wrote down the details of the outfit Lily was most likely wearing when she left the house the last time. Melissa listened with half an ear to what the housekeeper said, but she was more interested in her search of Lily’s internet history. It Didn’t take her long to discover that there was only one thing on there of interest, and it was the site Lily had visited before leaving the house to see whoever it was she came back to the Dorpie to meet. ‘It seems pretty certain now, doesn’t it, sergeant; Lily was planning on seeing Jack Wild,’ she said, showing the author’s website to Mitchell. ‘Yes, we’ll have to go back later and find out what he knows.’ ‘You Don’t want to go now?’ Melissa asked. ‘NO’, Mitchell said with a shake of his head. ‘We’ll speak to Oliver first, see what he knows, if anything, then try and speak to Mr Wild. He might, genuinely, not have been home when we tried earlier, so we should give him some time to return from wherever he’s gone. If he’s not home later, we’ll have to think about how we’re going to find him.’ Melissa shut the computer down once she had determined there was nothing more to see, and went with Mitchell as he returned to Theresa Potgieter’s office. ‘I assume you did not find Lily in her bedroom,’ Theresa said when the sergeant was once again standing in front of her desk. Mitchell shook his head. ‘No, we didn’t. We did find evidence that Lily came home and got changed, and evidence to suggest who she might have come back to see.’ ‘And who might that be?’ Theresa wanted to know. ‘Not Oliver Hendricks, I take it.’ ‘NO, not Oliver.’ Mitchell debated for a moment whether to say anything more, in the end he decided he should. ‘We believe Lily was intending to pay a visit to Jack Wild. She has a number of books by him, according to Anna, all of which are missing, and the last thing Lily did on her computer before leaving home yesterday afternoon is check Mr Wild’ website.’ ‘Do you really think that’s proof? I realize I have not met Mr Wild yet, but I cannot imagine that he would be involved in whatever has happened to Lily. I don’t suppose you are aware of it, but Mr Wild is not just a successful author, he is a former detective inspector.’ ‘How do you know that?’ ‘One of the committee members from my charity told me; since we are interested in gaining his help with the charity, it was necessary that we know as much about him as possible.’ Melissa watched out the window of the head groundskeeper’s office as a ball landed on the fairway she could see through a gap in the trees. The ball bounced forwards, landed on the edge of the green, and then rolled down the incline towards the water she could see only because of the sun that was bouncing off it. ‘Is there a penalty if your ball goes into the water?’ she asked of Stefaan Visagie, whose office it was. The head groundskeeper offered an amused smile. ‘That depends on how good a golfer you are,’ he said, ‘and how deep the water is, if the water’s shallow, and you’re a good golfer, you can get the ball out, you might even be able to get it somewhere useful. Most people, though, will take a penalty and drop a replacement ball near the edge of the water; in the long run, it saves a lot of time, effort and aggravation. I take it someone’s just put a ball in the water on the sixteenth….’