‘Anything?’ Vera handed over a mug of tea.
‘Yeah.’ Holly looked up. ‘Not sure how useful it is. When the chapel in Corbridge closed Neil Elliott moved on to be group minister of a rural circuit in the borders. Then he moved again two years later to take over a city church.’
Vera wondered if that was itchy feet or his particular brand of ministry hadn’t gone down well in the country. ‘Where is he now?’
Holly looked up from the laptop. ‘He died three years ago.’
‘Murder? Suicide? Ill-health?’
‘Accident. His car crashed when he was coming home from a church meeting one night. The weather was awful. A bit like this. He left a wife and a couple of kids.’
‘Including Thomas, friend of Jenny Summerskill. Have you dug up anything about him?’
‘Nothing showing yet.’
Vera looked outside. It was still snowing, the flakes big and white against the grey sky. She was thinking about the other family in the case: the raggle-taggle gypsies. She’d never had George Summerskill down as an angry man. Passionate about his various causes and given to publicity stunts, but rather a gentle a soul, she’d always thought. If she’d got that wrong and George had upset Jenny as much as Helen the bookseller had implied, Vera would have to start looking at the case again. She wished she could go back to the house by the Wall with its tower and its fierce, close family, see them again with the new perspective. But she knew she’d never get there until the weather changed, even in the Land Rover. She turned back into the room.
‘Leave the Elliotts for a moment. Can you dig out all you can on the Summerskill family? What’s been going on in the last ten years? They seem frozen in time there. They’ve all got older but nothing has changed. I wonder if they knew what happened to their daughter all the time and they’re held together by a shared guilt.’
‘Maybe,’ Holly looked up from the laptop. ‘But wouldn’t a shared grief do that to you too?’
Vera ignored that; she didn’t like being questioned. ‘Can you find out if George has been in trouble since Jenny disappeared?’
‘Sure.’
Vera drank tea and stared into the fire. While Holly was working her magic on the internet, she was recreating the day of Jenny’s disappearance. There’d been a minibus to take the kids to the Roman site, a guided tour round the fort and a talk by the archaeologist. The minibus had dropped the students in various locations on the way back. Why take them back to the high school in Hexham, the distraught headteacher had said after Jenny’s disappearance, when they’d just have to travel home? The parents had all agreed to the arrangement. Jenny had been dropped off with a group of others, but had wandered off on her own. Vera had talked to the youngsters to find out why, but they’d just shrugged, implying that was the way Jenny was. She did her own thing. Ploughed her own furrow. The last time they’d seen her she was walking up the lane towards the family home.
Vera got to her feet, felt the strain on her knees and thought, very briefly, that perhaps she should try to lose weight again. Her Summerskill witness statements were in a file on the table. Holly was still working at the computer. It was quite dark now. Bleak mid-winter. The time of year when Jenny had gone missing, so it would have been almost dark then too, as she’d walked off alone. Vera checked through the file. Thomas Elliott had been one of Jenny’s group and he’d talked to the police.
I offered to walk with her but she said she’d be OK. I thought her Dad or her brother Matt would be coming to pick her up.
Vera turned to Holly. ‘Anything?’
‘No. Jenny’s father seems to have become a reformed character. No court appearances and no mention in the media at all.’
‘Check out the brother too, will you? Matthew the famous sculptor.’ But Vera was thinking about Jenny again and the way her friends and teachers had described her: brave, confident and fiery, confident beyond her years. It wouldn’t have scared her to walk home alone in the dark.
Holly starting talking about Matthew’s achievements: the exhibition at the Baltic, the commission by the Hepworth Gallery. His most famous work was a bronze of a young female Briton that stood outside on a mound to the north of the Wall. Vera nodded occasionally to show she was interested and then she turned back to the file. She couldn’t find anything about George or Matthew driving to fetch Jenny. The girl had been reported missing later that evening when she didn’t turn up at home.
That night Holly slept in the room that had once belonged to Vera. Vera made a show of supplying clean sheets and a pile of blankets. The next morning, she woke first and had coffee in the pot and toast ready buttered when Holly came into the kitchen.
‘Jack’s cleared the track, so you can escape as soon as you like. Get back to Kimmerston and let them know they way our minds are working.’
Holly shot Vera a glance to show she didn’t have a clue which way her boss’s mind worked, but she knew better than to speak.
In Corbridge, Helen had taken Vera’s advice and the bookshop’s event had been moved to the cafe on the square. They’d turned it into a coffee and cake session instead of an evening meeting because more snow was forecast for later in the day. Forum books was still surrounded by police tape and a uniformed officer stood on the door. The cafe was packed and Vera slipped in and found a place at the back. When she arrived, the proceedings were coming to an end. The primary school choir sang the Coventry Carol and Vera was pleased Joe wasn’t there.
