The Betrayal of Trust (3 page)

Lafferton residents joined forces with
more than 100 police officers this week as the search for missing 15-year-old schoolgirl Harriet Lowther intensified.

Police and firefighters from across the county were joined by volunteers as they scoured wasteland, woods and playing fields in a bid to find the daughter of prominent local businessman Sir John Lowther and his wife, Eve, of Up Starly near Lafferton. Harriet disappeared after
leaving the house of a friend, to catch a bus on Parkside Drive.

Officers have also carried out extensive searches of the towpath and river areas and police helicopters have circled the region.

Detective Inspector June Whybrow of Lafferton Police said: ‘We’re still hopeful that we may find Harriet but as each day passes the search becomes more difficult and frustrating.’

Members of the public
who think they may have seen Harriet in the vicinity of Parkside Drive, Lafferton, at the bus stop, on the 73 bus or who have any other in formation that might be of help are asked to call the
dedicated
line at Lafferton Police HQ or to contact any police station.

Lafferton Police today confirmed that a 37-year-old local man has been arrested in connection
with the disappearance of 15-year-old schoolgirl Harriet Lowther, daughter of Sir John and Lady Lowther. Harriet has been missing since leaving the house of a friend on the afternoon of 18 August …

Police in Lafferton said that earlier today they released a 37-year-old local man, without charge. Neil Marshall was arrested on 19 September in connection
with the disappearance of 15-year-old Harriet Lowther …

Police today confirmed that the body found in Lafferton Canal, close to the town centre on Monday morning, was not that of 15-year-old schoolgirl Harriet Lowther, who has now been missing since August …

IT WAS FOUR
days before Jocelyn could get an appointment, partly because of the floods and their aftermath, partly because Dr Deerbon now only took two surgeries a week and as she was still very popular these booked up well in advance. But the receptionists and Cat had an understanding that patients she was concerned about, anyone with a serious condition or who just sounded more worried
than seemed normal should be given one of what the practice manager called the ‘secret slots’.

There had been no more rain, the water was going down quickly and the flood alert had been lifted, though the bypass was still closed and the town centre was filthy with the silt and rubbish left as the water receded. The shops which had been flooded out were mostly still closed as proprietors tried
to clean up.

For a couple of days after the storm Jocelyn had been too busy helping Penny, whose ground-floor flat had suffered water damage. Penny had a big case about to start at Bevham Crown Court and little time to organise anything, which meant that Jocelyn had had no space in which to worry about herself. She had made the doctor’s appointment and now felt foolish. She shouldn’t be taking
up surgery time. Her panic about being incapacitated had only come on because she was alone, it was two in the morning and the storm had seemed to be heralding the end of the world.

She would have cancelled the GP appointment if she had not
let
slip to Penny that she had one. That had been that of course. Penny was insistent, Penny the competent one, Penny the barrister, Penny who took charge
and was irritated that she had had to leave her mother to sort out the flat.

‘I don’t think I’ll bother, Pen. Someone else needs the appointment more than I do.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘It’s obvious. I’m perfectly fit.’

‘You must have made it for a reason, Mother.’

‘Yes, well.’

‘What are you frightened of?’

That goaded her, as Penny had known it would.

‘I am not frightened of anything.’
She met her daughter’s eye. ‘Fine, fine, I’ll go, waste Dr Deerbon’s time.’

‘It’s what she’s paid for.’

Now Jocelyn sat in the waiting room looking at a magazine for young women under thirty and feeling pleased that she had no need to starve herself or binge drink or worry about unfaithful men or wear skirts no wider than a hairband. By the time she was called she felt extremely cheerful and
even more of a fraud.

‘
MAKES A CHANGE
,’ Gordon Lyman said. The pathologist stood at the head of the dissecting table looking down at a sheet of heavy-duty plastic on which the set of bones was assembled into an almost complete skeleton. Serrailler had a momentary shock at not seeing a dead body, whole and entire.

‘Let me show you why I’ve got you in.’

Like most of the pathologists Simon had known, this one managed
to combine efficiency and enthusiasm with a laid-back air.

‘It’s been surprisingly straightforward actually. Pity. I don’t often get a build-your-own-skeleton kit to play with.’

‘They seem to have sifted everything out of half a hillside pretty quickly.’

‘Thing was, it had pretty much stayed together – clods of damp earth formed a protective mould around it.’

‘How long has it been there?’

‘Well, sixteen years, give or take. These are the remains of Harriet Lowther.’

‘Right. No doubts?’

Gordon shook his head. ‘Firstly, we know Harriet wore a brace on her front teeth, even without accessing her dental records, and these braces always fit pretty snugly. It’s still there … see?’

Simon leaned over and looked at the jaw. The brace, discoloured but undamaged, was still firmly fixed
to the upper front teeth.

‘But we have her dental records as well. Perfect match. One other thing is the clincher … Harriet only had four toes on her left foot. Congenital thing.’ He pointed again. ‘Everything else fits – height and so on.’

‘One hundred per cent sure?’

Gordon shook his head. ‘With a skeleton there always has to be a sliver of doubt, but what are the chances of the body of a
girl of fifteen with a tooth brace, and only four toes who disappeared near the burial spot sixteen years ago –’

‘I get it. Right, thanks for the heads-up. The press are already panting at the door but we can let them pant a bit longer. There’s enough here for me to alert the Chief and reopen the case.’

He looked round the cold-tiled room under its blue-white light. Harriet Lowther had been
found but it would be some time before she could be laid to rest in a place of her family’s choice, not of someone else’s.

It was still well before nine o’clock when he slipped the Audi into his parking space. The pathologist had been on the ball in alerting him, as they always were. It was a fascinating job, he thought, going up the stairs two at a time, he could see its attraction. You needed
to have a certain detachment, an eye for minute detail, an orderly and meticulous nature with a flair for interpretation, the ability to solve puzzles logically yet allow for the occasional flash of understanding or enlightenment – inspiration even. If he had become yet another doctor in the Serrailler line, he could see that the career might well have suited him.

The Chief Constable, Paula Devenish,
was on sick leave following an emergency appendectomy and a post-operative infection, so he had to put in his call about the identification to the ACC.

‘Thanks, Simon. All systems go then. I’ll authorise the reopening of the case now. You head it up, get a team together.’

‘Sir. The first thing is for Harriet’s family to be informed. I’ll do that myself this morning.’

‘Parents live in Lafferton,
don’t they?’

‘Nearby, but only the father, Sir John Lowther. Her mother died about four years ago and there were no other children. I’ve met him a couple of times – family connections.’

‘Helpful. These things are never easy. And the interview board meets today to appoint your new DCI so you’ll have another pair of hands, make it easier for you to focus on the case.’

Simon wondered about taking
DS Ben Vanek with him but in the end decided it would be better to go alone. The Lowther house was in a village four miles out of Lafferton and to reach it he would drive past Hallam House. A word with his father might be useful – Lowther was in the same Masonic Lodge and Simon thought they had also been on a hospital committee together. Lowther had made a fortune in pharmaceuticals, and both
before and even more since his retirement had given a lot of time and business expertise as well as money to Lafferton. He and his wife had retreated from the public eye after their daughter’s disappearance, but John Lowther had thrown himself back into the swim after being widowed and become involved in a number of causes.

There was a broken-down vehicle holding up traffic and Simon was about
to turn round and make a detour when his phone rang.

‘Serrailler.’

‘Guv – Dave Keys. The station said you were out and about. You anywhere near us?’

Dave was heading up the search team that had sifted through the debris on the bypass. Everything had now been put back and the road reopened; the team was clearing up and should be leaving by the end of the day.

‘I wasn’t but there’s a traffic
block so I’m making a detour.’

‘Better come over.’

Simon had pulled off to take the call but now he sped towards the bypass, wondering as he did so about the new DCI. The internal candidate who had made the shortlist was not strong and he prayed it wouldn’t go to him, but he knew nothing about the rest. While he was going to be occupied full-time on the Lowther case – and who knew for how long
– the ACC was right, he needed someone at the station to head up CID who would
hit
the ground running and keep the team and its still fragile morale together. Before she had been taken ill, the Chief had talked to Simon about it. He was sure that she would be gunning for a woman in the job. There were too few in senior positions in the force and Simon, who knew Paula Devenish well and liked her,
was fully aware that she sometimes felt beleaguered. Although she herself was based at Bevham HQ, she would appreciate a woman DCI on her side in Lafferton. Did he mind either way? There were two women on the team in CID but both sergeants and the DI were men. Uniform had a bigger female complement. If the DCI was to be a woman, so long as it was one with a strong personality as well as all the
other necessary qualities, Simon would be happy, and he knew that to balance his own liking for working alone – not to mention being a maverick occasionally – the new DCI needed to be a team player. It wasn’t going to be the easiest job to come into.

He turned into what was left of the car park at the bottom of the lower slopes, found a space near the forensic vans and got his rubber boots out.
The team was on a temporary ledge above him, one of their green tents erected over a section of ground. A couple of them were moving a huge tree branch out of the way, another was stamping the earth down to pack it hard. The usual scene, but he had not expected so many of them still to be there.

Dave Keys watched him climb the last few yards. The ground was very wet and it was not easy to get
a proper foothold.

‘What’s that?’ Serrailler nodded at the tent.

Dave shook his head. ‘Take a look. Mind your feet.’

He held one side of the nylon tent up for Simon to duck under. There was barely room for his six foot four and he had to stoop but there was enough light for him to see a hollowed-out area some seven or eight feet long, shallow and marked out with the forensics’ small metal stakes
and flags.

It was a grave and it held a skeletal body, entire this time and pushed slightly to one side, the left leg bent.

He stared at it for a moment before backing out again and stretching upright.

‘That wasn’t opened by the force of the storm.’

‘You’re right. A tree root had come up like a tooth out of a socket and when we were checking over this part the corner of the grave was just
visible. We almost missed it, but then Lyn Pearson went back – she had a hunch something looked not quite right. Only took a bit of careful scraping away.’

‘Could Harriet Lowther’s body have been buried in it as well? Looks to be a bit of room.’

‘No. Harriet came down with the landslip. She must have been further over there.’ He indicated the gouged-out area of hillside fifty yards or so away
to the left.

‘This one might be our Roman soldier then.’

Dave looked blank.

‘It’s OK, I had this theory.’

‘You wouldn’t find Roman remains as near to the surface as this. They sink a long way over time. Often find them when a farmer does some deep ploughing.’

‘Pity.’

‘You an archaeology buff then, sir?’

‘Nope. Just thinking how much less hassle there’d be if it was a thousand years old,
that’s all.’

‘Cold case then.’

‘Stone. But probably still not cold enough. Thanks, Dave. You moving it?’

‘When Lyman’s had his turn. He’s on the way.’

‘We can’t close up here now. Any sense of how wide an area you might have to start trawling through?’

‘We can’t dig up the whole Moor, if that’s what you’re thinking. But in point of fact, this is a pretty self-contained section. Off this level
area and you’ve a steep climb for quite a way – nobody’s going to have dug a grave on that incline. We’ll cordon off around here and take it inch by inch, but my guess is there may well not be anything else.’

‘I hope to God you’re right,’ Serrailler said, turning and almost slithering backwards on the churned-up ground.

Dave Keys made a grab for his arm and hauled him up. ‘It’s the rubber soles,’
he said with disapproval.

‘If I’d known I was coming mountaineering I’d have brought my climbing boots.’

He left forensics to their job and drove away. It was just after eleven and he needed to see Sir John Lowther. No one working on the Moor would have alerted the press – it was more than their jobs were worth – but in Serrailler’s experience everyone in the media on crime desks had a sixth
sense for this sort of news. Once he had spoken to Lowther, he would call a press conference – always give them something, always keep them in the loop, always be one step ahead of them and never the other way round. Those were his rules when dealing with the media and he had a good relationship with the press office, who mostly went along with him.