‘Did she say anything about finding something new to do with the crash?’
‘Yeah.’ This was from Mick. ‘She didn’t say what, though. She didn’t particularly want to go back to Morocco, but apparently there wasn’t any other way.’
Dan’s interest quickened. ‘She hadn’t been back before?’
‘No. She hadn’t flown since the crash either. This was the first time.’
‘Brave woman.’
‘One of the best.’ Mick was grave.
Dan stayed for a coffee before heading back to his car. He was puzzled. How had Kaitlyn got a lead after sixteen years? Who had she been talking to? Had she found something on the internet?
He called Lucy before he started the engine.
‘Any chance you can take a look at Kaitlyn’s computer?’
‘It’s with the tech team. What should I be looking for?’
‘Anything to do with the air crash, no matter how small.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’d like to see inside her cottage as well. Something triggered her trip to Morocco, I want to know what.’
‘I’ll see if I can get keys. Call you back.’
Dan waited in the car, half watching the vehicles on the track, half flicking through old reports of the Moroccan air crash. Looking at the photographs of smoking debris, metal and wreckage everywhere, he found it hard to believe he’d been there, let alone survived.
His phone buzzed. Lucy.
‘The SIO’s given me the go-ahead to check out the cottage with you. I’m getting the train to Chippenham. Can you pick me up? We can collect keys from the Wiltshire Police – they got them off a neighbour yesterday. The same neighbour’s looking after the horses at the moment apparently.’
‘Text me your train times.’
While he waited for Lucy, Dan went into the village and asked around about Kaitlyn. Everyone voiced shock at her murder. Some people were salacious, wanting gory details, but most were genuinely appalled. As Dan talked, he learned that Kaitlyn was a regular at the Castle Inn, especially for Sunday lunch. That she rode out with friends at weekends, took in friends’ dogs when they went away, that she was bubbly and popular, and that although she had boyfriends, she’d never stuck with any for longer than a year or two. A serial monogamist, one woman called her.
‘Anyone on the scene at the moment?’ he asked the publican of the White Hart.
‘She didn’t bring anyone in for a pint, if that’s what you mean.’
Two hours later, with Kaitlyn’s keys in hand, Lucy let them into Fox Cottage. It was cold and smelled of an intriguing mix of wood smoke mingled with juniper and sage that came from a variety of scented candles dotted around.
Silently, they moved through the rooms. It was neat and orderly, everything put away. Just as Dan liked to leave his house before he headed overseas. Before he’d had kids, needless to say.
While Lucy started in the kitchen, Dan moved upstairs, looking up at the ceilings, down at the floor. He flipped through drawers and cupboards. He didn’t find any evidence of male visitors. No shaving gear in the bathroom or male deodorant. Only one electric toothbrush. One set of towels. One bathrobe. In her study – a converted bedroom – he found nothing but investment valuations and tax returns. He was surprised to find nothing about the air disaster. Was everything on her computer?
Dan increased the depth of his search. He checked the undersides of wastepaper bins, felt the hem of each curtain, tested the edges of the carpets. Turned the sofa and armchairs upside down, fingered the stitching. Back upstairs, he opened the silver pine wardrobe and brushed some clothes aside. Immediately, he saw it.
A small handle set in the rear of the wardrobe.
14
Dan pushed open the miniature door.
‘Lucy,’ he called.
She arrived in a rush. ‘What is it?’
With Kaitlyn’s clothes now on the bed, he pointed at the tiny hidden room accessed through the wardrobe.
‘Very Narnia,’ she remarked. ‘Have you been in?’
‘Not yet. After you.’
While Lucy could bend her small frame double to go inside, Dan had to enter on his knees. Both of them straightened up and looked around, slack-jawed.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Lucy.
Sun streamed through a skylight above, lighting the miniature office. There was a desk with a computer and printer, a colourful rug on the floor, but it was the walls that took their breath away. They were covered in layer upon layer of papers and photographs. There were shots of the downed airliner, portraits of passengers alive and dead, newspaper clippings, printed-out letters and emails, and handwritten notes.
Police cover up! Corrupt! Defence minister, corrupt! GDNS, corrupt!
GDNS stood for Morocco’s General Directorate for National Security, Dan knew. The interesting thing about his memory was although his old job was forever lost to him, the odd piece of information sneaked through. Like the words ish jayyidan, live well. They’d popped into his mind unbidden just now and he wondered who he’d spoken them to.
‘Why hide away like this?’ Lucy puzzled.
‘Because people didn’t understand. They wanted her to stop thinking about what had happened but she couldn’t.’ He looked at a photograph of a torn suitcase with a severed hand lying beside it. ‘This way, she didn’t have to explain herself.’
He moved further inside the room. Read the document nearest to him.
Initial hypotheses included determining whether the aircraft could have been hit by a ground-to-air missile…
Dan scanned down, his eyes taking in the investigator’s name along with the on-scene commander’s, the first responders’ and the officer in charge of security.
Detailed photographs were taken of the bomb scene area before items of evidence were disturbed and before indigenous items of debris were moved to expose the forensically rich scene.
Both of them moved silently around the room. Newspaper headlines abounded.
Nightmare end for fairy-tale holiday. Air crash horror. Man proposes to girlfriend on plummeting plane. Passengers scream in terror. More than 200 feared dead. Final report on the fate of EG220.
‘There’s a system,’ said Lucy. ‘It starts here…’ She pointed at the wall to the left of the wardrobe door. ‘And works anti-clockwise to end here, at the
