Little Black Lies (22 page)

‘Ridiculous,’ I say. Not at the notion of Archie having two abductors, but at the entirely new idea I can see running through Skye’s head. If Catrin, in her new role as child abductor, had an accomplice…?

‘Catrin has no alibi for the time Archie went missing,’ says Skye. ‘She was working at home, all afternoon, by herself.’

‘Yeah, so was I,’ I say, which probably isn’t the wisest response in the world, given the turn this conversation seems to be taking. ‘So were half the people on the islands.’

‘There was a toy on her boat. Rachel recognized it as being Peter’s. I’m sorry, Callum, but it doesn’t look good.’

I feel massive relief at being confronted with a piece of evidence I can blow out of the water. ‘What sort of a toy? A rabbit, by any chance? Looking a bit worse for wear? It isn’t Peter’s. Catrin and I found it the other night on the
Endeavour.
Her own son had one exactly like it.’

‘Yes, Rachel told us that. We think maybe seeing Peter with a toy she recognized was the last straw for Catrin.’

‘Catrin wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

Skye raises her eyebrows. Fair point.

‘And there were hairs on her sweater. Fine, short, blond ones. Definitely not hers. Not yours either. They’ll have to be sent away, obviously, but—’

‘They were probably Queenie’s. She carries that dog around like a baby. Stopford’s going to spend a fortune having dog hairs tested. Where is Queenie, by the way?’

‘In the pound. I think she bit someone.’

‘Good.’ I step to the door and pull it open. ‘Can I at least see the dog?’

19

In the time it takes Queenie to eat what I’d planned for dinner, shit in my garden and leave dog hairs all over my bed, I’ve managed to hack my way into the police computer system. To be fair, it was harder than some I’ve encountered. Of course, it will be wasted effort if nothing relating to Catrin’s arrest or subsequent interview has been transcribed yet.

I start with Stopford’s private email account and find a request issued first thing this morning to the military up at Mount Pleasant to conduct a dive search of the bay where Catrin was anchored overnight. In the response, I learn that the search is to begin mid morning and hopefully conclude by mid afternoon. They also offer to get tidal experts predicting where something dumped overboard at Port Fitzroy is most likely to drift, in the event of nothing being found immediately.

I find another email to the forensic science laboratory used by the Metropolitan Police in London informing them that clothing taken from a suspect in a child abduction case will be flown over in two days’ time. A third is following up the request for detective assistance from the Met. Yet another is exploring the possibility of a forensic pathologist being flown to the islands to re-examine the body of little Jimmy Brown. Stopford is covering his back. An internal memo instructs all police personnel that a search of the land around the Grimwood home will not go ahead for the time being. As evidence suggests that Peter was driven away from his home, Stopford sees little point in investing valuable man-hours on a search that is likely to prove fruitless.

Twat.

I dig a bit deeper and find the transcript of the interview carried out with Catrin this morning. It was conducted by Detective Sergeant Josh Savidge, son of the headmaster of the local school. Savidge Junior is the most senior detective presence on the islands. He’s accompanied by Detective Constable Liz Wilkins. Catrin has chosen not to have a solicitor present.

I skim through the opening formalities, the reminder to Catrin that she is allowed legal representation, and her declining it again.

Savidge:
What time did you leave your office yesterday afternoon, Mrs Quinn?

Catrin:
I wasn’t particularly conscious of the time, I’m afraid. Mid afternoon.

Savidge:
Your colleagues tell us it was coming up to four o’clock, not long after the photograph of you on the front cover of the
Daily Mirror
arrived by fax. And just as the eclipse began.

Catrin:
That sounds about right.

Savidge:
So, just before four o’clock then?

(Short pause.)

Savidge:
For the benefit of the tape, Mrs Quinn, can you answer the question verbally?

Catrin:
Yes, I imagine it was around four o’clock when I left.

Savidge:
Alone?

Catrin:
My dog was with me. Where is she, by the way?

Savidge:
Why did you leave then?

Catrin:
Have you seen the photograph of me that millions of people all over the world are looking at?

Savidge:
Answer the question, please, Mrs Quinn.

Catrin:
I was upset. I wanted some time on my own.

Savidge:
Where were you planning to go?

Catrin:
Home.

Savidge:
Which way did you head?

Catrin:
I went up the Airport Road, the easterly arm.

Savidge:
That’s not the most direct route, is it?

(Short pause.)

Wilkins:
Mrs Quinn?

Catrin:
No, it’s not. But sometimes I drive that way.

Wilkins:
Why?

Catrin:
There are very few roads on the Falklands. Sometimes I just get bored.

I stop reading and lean back in my chair. No sound from upstairs, not even the gentle rumble of canine snoring. Back to the transcript where, not surprisingly, Savidge hasn’t accepted a desire for variety as the reason Catrin drove along that particular road yesterday. He’s pushing her. She doesn’t want to answer. He persists. She gives in first.

Catrin:
That road takes me past Rachel Grimwood’s house. I used to spend a lot of time there, when I was younger, when my sons were alive. I suppose it reminds me of when I was happy.

(Indistinct murmuring.)

Savidge:
Mrs Quinn, we spoke to Christopher Grimwood yesterday, the eldest child. Nice lad. Just turned twelve.

Catrin:
Christopher is my godson. I know who he is.

Savidge:
Yes, exactly. When did you last spend any time with him?

Catrin:
I’m sorry, you want to know when I last saw Christopher?

Savidge:
Yes. When did you last, I don’t know, have a meal with him? Go for a walk with him? Sit and watch a television programme together?

Catrin:
I haven’t spent time with any member of that family in three years.

Savidge:
Three years? And yet he’s your godson?

Catrin:
Josh, you know perfectly well what happened three years ago. You know why I don’t see Rachel or her family.

Savidge:
Yes. And we were very sorry to hear of your loss back then.

(Short pause.)

Catrin:
Are you waiting for me to say thank you?

Savidge:
I’m waiting for you to tell me why, given that you no longer want to associate with the Grimwood family – for understandable reasons, by the way, but given that, why you drive unnecessarily past their house. Why you spend so much time parked outside it in the dark.

Catrin:
Who says I do?

Savidge:
Christopher. He’s seen you. His bedroom window overlooks the road and he says he’s seen you more than once, parked outside at night-time. He’d made a note of your car registration, so there really isn’t any doubt it was you he’d seen.

Catrin:
I’m sorry to hear that. I wouldn’t have wanted to frighten Christopher.

Savidge:
So you admit you park outside the Grimwood house in the dark, on a regular basis?

Catrin:
Yes, I suppose I do.

Savidge:
How often?

Catrin:
I’m not sure I can answer that. I don’t keep a record.

Savidge:
Once a day? Once a week?

Catrin:
Less often. A couple of times a month.

Savidge:
Always at night?

Catrin:
I drive past at other times. I only park at night. When I think no one will see me.

Savidge:
Why?

Catrin:
I’ve told you. I have memories of that house.

Savidge:
Parking outside it at night strikes me as being the action of a pretty disturbed mind.

(Short pause.)

Wilkins:
Mrs Quinn?

Catrin:
Sorry, was that a question?

I get up to stretch my legs. To anyone who knows her well, Catrin is just being Catrin. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly and Savidge isn’t the sharpest knife in the box. Unfortunately, I don’t have to be in the room to know she isn’t winning any friends. They might not be able to prove she did it, but while their attention is on her, they’re not looking for Peter.

The irony does not escape me. I have been banging on for months that there is a killer here and nobody has been paying the slightest bit of attention to me. Now, finally, they’re coming round to my way of thinking and they’ve decided it’s Catrin.

I go back to my desk.

Savidge:
Tell us about what happened yesterday. When you drove past the Grimwood house again. Only in broad daylight this time.

Catrin:
I drove up the hill. I turned the last corner before the house and saw Peter in the road.

I can practically see the increased interest in the room. Savidge and Wilkins exchanging glances. Both sitting up a little taller in their seats.

Wilkins:
Peter was in the road?

Catrin:
Yes, right in my tracks.

Wilkins:
What did you do?

Catrin:
I pulled over. Switched my engine off. Got out, went over to him, picked him up, put him on the other side of the garden gate, made sure it was locked and he couldn’t get out again. Then I turned my car round and drove back down the hill.

Wilkins:
Why didn’t you knock on the door? Hand him over to his mum, make sure he was OK?

Catrin:
I knew he was OK. A small kid can’t get out of that garden if the gate’s closed.

Wilkins:
Most people would want to talk to his mum, don’t you think? Let her know what happened. Especially given how dark it was.

Catrin:
I’m not most people. I’m the mother who lost her children because of that woman’s recklessness. I never talk to Rachel.

Savidge:
You really hate her, don’t you?

Don’t answer that, Catrin. Please don’t answer that.

Catrin:
I hate her more than I’d ever have believed it possible to hate someone.

For a while I can’t read on. I get up, go upstairs and cuddle Queenie. I make coffee and stare out at the hills.

Catrin doesn’t care. Even in the transcript that’s obvious. She has nothing left to lose. She doesn’t care if people think she killed the kid. She’s already the woman capable of slaughtering nearly two hundred whales and, as she’s perfectly well aware, in many people’s heads, that’s far worse than killing one child.

Determined to see it through, I go back and skim through the rest. I read about Savidge asking about the blond hairs on her sweater and Catrin explaining, with thinly disguised impatience, that if they are Peter’s they transferred when she picked him up and carried him back to his garden. I read about him asking what large bundle she was carrying out to her boat, and her explaining that it was bedding from the main cabin that had got wet the day before.

Made wet by me, I imagine, when Queenie and I crashed the other morning. I can corroborate that. Also the rabbit I found on the
Endeavour.
I’m going to need to talk to them soon. I check my watch again. I’m not sure how long they can hold someone without charging.

Savidge moves on to talk about our trip to the
Endeavour
on Tuesday night. About why we went, what we found. Catrin answers everything put to her with brutal honesty, except that she makes no mention of my attacking her. She does, though, admit something I wasn’t aware of. That she often anchors in Port Pleasant and the adjacent Port Fitzroy overnight, that she knows the bay, and the wreck of the
Endeavour
as well as anyone.

I need to talk to them. Searching the
Endeavour
was my idea, not hers. If anything she was pretty reluctant to take me out there.

Savidge, in the transcript, is asking Catrin what she dumped overboard in Port Fitzroy this morning. She’s denying she dumped anything. He’s insisting she was seen doing so. She’s challenging him to say who it was. He can’t. Or won’t. She’s claiming that if she did want to dispose of a body, she wouldn’t pick that bay because the water isn’t deep enough. She says there are any number of other spots around the islands where the chances of a weighted body being found are tiny. I’m willing her to shut up, even though I know the conversation is already over in real life, because that sends Savidge off on a whole new tangent. Where would she dump a body? Is it something she’s given much thought to?

When he gets nowhere, he moves on. Did she see anyone else on the Airport Road? No, she didn’t. Did she take Peter Grimwood from his home yesterday? No. Did she take him on to her boat? No, she left him safely in his garden. Where was she three days ago when Archie West was taken from his family? At home, working. No, no one can confirm that, she lives alone.

She breaks his flow to ask what will happen to her dog. Savidge doesn’t know. He presses on. Does she think it coincidence that Archie West was kept in a hut belonging to her, one that relatively few other people would know existed? She has no opinion on the subject. Did she take Archie West from his family? She’d never seen Archie West before finding him on the Darwin Road the other night.

It goes on, until even I’m exhausted. The interview takes a little over an hour. I search for more but can’t find it. If she’s been interviewed again since, no record has been made on the system.