‘Yes.’
He moved his finger, a centimetre to the right. ‘Jodie Trigg lives— lived here, five hundred metres away.’
‘Half a kilometre away, on a caravan park with how many hundreds of homes on it?’
‘She could walk past this house every day.’
Jessie took a moment. ‘Her school is in East Wittering. She wouldn’t need to walk past Carolynn and Roger’s house to get to school. In fact, she’d go in the opposite direction, down the beach, most probably, as that’s the most direct route.’
‘She had hours alone every day after school to wander. I believe she would have passed this house regularly, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that she saw them, met them, knew them.’
Jessie stepped back from the map. ‘You’re right, Marilyn: it is not beyond the realms of possibility that she knew them. She could have come out of the caravan park and wandered past this house many times. But you need evidence, Marilyn, not subjectivity and conjecture. Evidence. That’s what a good case is built on.’
‘Thanks for the 101, Dr Flynn.’
‘Pleasure.’
Folding the map, he tossed it into the glove compartment. ‘Hop into the car and let’s chat on the way back to the office. Perhaps we can swing by the Co-op and get a bottle of gin to share. I could do with some alcoholic anaesthetization.’
‘I’m not coming with you.’
He threw up his hands. ‘Oh, come on, Jessie, I wasn’t that bad with Reynolds.’
‘And I’m not that juvenile, Marilyn. I want to walk around the caravan park to get a sense of where Jodie lived. I’d also like to look in her room, at her things, if I may. I have a vague sense of Zoe from my sessions with Carolynn, though most of it was probably lies, but I have no sense whatsoever of Jodie.’
Marilyn nodded. ‘I’ll radio the PC guarding the Triggs’ caravan and let him know that you’re coming. I’m sure he could do with some company to break the monotony. I have some other things I’d like you to look at too. I was going to give them to you when we got back to the office, but it would be useful for you to have them now.’ Opening the boot, he produced two brown paper files and an iPad and held them out to her. ‘One file is Zoe’s, the key information from the ten-metre-high stack we amassed. The other file and the iPad are Jodie’s. Take a look at her Instagram account. The password is Odie, like the dog in Garfield.’
‘Do you take these everywhere with you?’
‘Those and all my mental whips for self-flagellation. I was going to leave the files and iPad with you at the B & B if you refused to help.’
‘Guilt me into it?’
‘I was pretty sure the crime scene photos would succeed if my rhetoric failed.’
With a roll of her eyes, Jessie took the files and iPad from him. ‘Is Jodie’s mother at the caravan?’
‘No, she’s gone to stay with her sister in Guildford. I’ll drop you.’
‘I’ll walk.’
‘To get a sense?’
‘We’ll make a psychologist of you yet, Dr Simmons.’
He shook his head. ‘I didn’t buy you a big enough pancake for that.’
41
The sign said ‘Breakfast Van’. Nothing solid had passed Carolynn’s lips since breakfast yesterday and she was famished. Easing her silver Fiesta from the slow lane of the A3 into the lay-by, she parked behind the van. Roger had chosen the Fiesta for her, as it was one of the most common cars on the road, in the most common colour. Though it had been purchased precisely to blend, she had felt far from invisible since leaving the slipway an hour ago, must have checked her rear-view mirror a hundred times expecting to be dazzled by flashing blue lights, seeing only singletons like her, couples and families staring blankly through their windscreens as they ploughed through the morning traffic towards London.
An eighteen-wheeler lorry, curtains drawn around its cab, was parked beyond the breakfast van and a small silver hatchback had pulled into the lay-by behind Carolynn, a woman, she noticed, her heartbeat slowing with relief. She watched the blonde occupant flip down the sun visor and apply mascara to her lashes, blusher to her cheeks, getting ready for a coffee with friends or to see a boyfriend, perhaps? Carolynn felt a twinge of sadness. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d had cause to apply make-up. The trial, of course. Another twinge, sharper, which she quickly suppressed. She had worn make-up, nothing too showy, completing her look with a plain navy work suit, white blouse and sensible low-heeled navy court shoes, as her barrister had instructed.
Juries hate glamorous female defendants. Handsome men typically receive lighter sentences than ugly men, but the opposite is true for attractive women. Juries like to make attractive women pay. We’re aiming for neat, reliable, dowdy.
She had also applied make-up when she’d been to see Jessie Flynn, she remembered now. Not for the first session: she’d thought her psychologist would be a frump, but for the second. She hadn’t consciously acknowledged why she’d done it, but as she was leaving the house, she’d turned back, gone upstairs and pulled her make-up bag from the bottom shelf of the bathroom cupboard, dust motes flying as she unzipped it, smudged some concealer over the black rings under her eyes, coated her lashes with mascara and added a touch of pink sorbet lipstick. Nothing too glamorous – still playing the role. Neat, reliable, dowdy. But then she didn’t want to look too dowdy for Jessie. She wanted to look more like her old self, a bird of a feather. Dragging her eyes from her rear-view mirror, from the woman, from the unsettling glimpse of normality, Carolynn climbed out of her car, locking the door, leaving Zoe’s cat curled up on the passenger seat.
The young man behind the breakfast van’s counter had oily black hair and custard-headed acne spots peppered his jaw. The thought of him preparing food made Carolynn want to spin
