The Oakhurst Murders Duology

3

3

Michael Black was elbow deep in soapsuds when the front door banged open. Since the weather was pleasant, he could only conclude that someone had entered the station, an angry someone since calm people didn’t bang doors.

Knowing that angry people didn’t like to be kept waiting, he pulled his hands from the sink and grabbed a tea-towel to dry off with as he made for the reception counter.

“Good evening, Mrs Goulding, how can I help you?” he asked when he saw who was waiting for him.

Theresa Goulding fixed the constable with her sternest look. “There’s nothing good about this evening,” she said stiffly. “My daughter is missing; I want you to find her.”

“Your daughter – Lucy?” Black queried.

“Of course, Lucy, who you did think I was talking about? I have only the one daughter, as you should know.”

Black flushed at that but didn’t respond, instead he said, “When did you last see Lucy?”

“What difference does that make?” Theresa demanded. “She’s missing, and I want you to find her, that’s all that matters.”

“It’s not as simple as that, Mrs Goulding,” Black said, wishing that he were not the one stuck dealing with this problem. “Lucy is sixteen...”

Theresa flared up again. “I know how old Lucy is, what difference does her age make to her being missing?”

“A lot. Being sixteen, Lucy cannot be reported missing until she has been gone for at least a day, unless you have cause for concern. Given her history, and her habit of doing whatever she wishes, I think it likely the inspector will insist that we wait until Lucy has been out of contact for forty-eight hours to make a search. There’s every chance she’s off with friends, probably in town. She’ll turn up when she’s finished having fun.”

“Forty-eight hours! You want me to wait two days before you’ll consider looking for Lucy? How can you even suggest such a thing? Especially when poor Georgina Ryder is still missing after a week, and you have no clue what’s happened to her. Don’t try and deny it,” Theresa said sharply when Black opened his mouth to respond. “Did you even look for her after the first day?”

“We searched for her,” Black said defensively. “We searched the entire village, and we spoke to just about everyone; no-one saw her after she headed up the road to the Wright Farm, though. We’ve searched again and again, throughout the week, but there’s been no sign of her.

“You can’t compare the two situations, though,” he told her. “Georgina Ryder has never been in trouble, and she’s always told her parents exactly where she was going, what she was doing, who she was meeting, and when she would be home. The same can’t be said for Lucy; Lucy has a long history of bunking off school, staying out all night, getting into trouble, and associating with people she would be better off avoiding.”

“I am well aware of my daughter’s history, more so than you, I imagine. It is irrelevant on this occasion, however,” Theresa said. “No matter what she might have done in the past, or how she may have acted, I can assure you, Lucy is missing on this occasion.”

“Can you tell me what makes you so certain the circumstances are different this time?” Black asked, curious to know why Theresa, who had never been concerned about her daughter before, was concerned now.

The look on Theresa’s face suggested she thought the question rude in the extreme, nonetheless she answered him. “I’m certain Lucy is missing because she was supposed to meet her father, myself, and her great-uncle, Sir Virgil, for dinner at The Oaks. She was supposed to be there early to greet Sir Virgil, he comes to stay every couple of months, when his work permits – The Oaks was his first hotel and he has always been especially fond of it, and when he visits he expects to be met by Lucy. She wasn’t there, nor did she show up for dinner.”

“Perhaps, on this occasion, Lucy decided she didn’t want to have dinner with her great-uncle,” Black suggested. “Maybe there was something she preferred to do, and that’s where she is now.” He braced himself for an explosion that didn’t come.

“Under other circumstances, Lucy might well have decided not to do what her father and I wished; when it comes to her great-uncle, however, she’s a different person to the girl you know. She’s polite, punctual, respectful, considerate, everything you could want of a daughter.”

Black tried to reconcile that description with the Lucy Goulding he knew and found it difficult. “Okay, so you have reason for concern,” he conceded. “But there could be any number of reasons why Lucy wasn’t at the hotel to greet Sir Virgil, or at the family dinner. She could have gotten involved in something and lost track of the time, she could have missed the bus, or been unable to get a lift back to the village.”

“If that had been the case, she would have called either me or her father, or Anna. Sir Virgil is a stickler for punctuality, Lucy would have called if she was going to be late, so we could give her apologies. I was put in the most uncomfortable position of having to lie to Sir Virgil; I told him that Lucy was at home, ill. I can only hope he never discovers I lied to him, he hates liars, even more than he hates people who aren’t punctual.” Her unhappiness was clear. “Something has happened to Lucy, that’s the only possible answer, and I want you and your colleagues to find her, without your usual bungling and bumbling.”

Black ignored that comment; instead of reacting to it he chose to act as though Theresa Goulding had a case to be dealt with. “When and where did you last see Lucy?” he asked, pen poised.

“What on earth difference does that make?” Theresa wanted to know. “She isn’t a set of keys, to be found in the vicinity of wherever she was last seen.”

“Of course not, Mrs Goulding, I’m sorry if that’s how it sounded, but to find Lucy I need to know where and when she was last seen, what she was wearing, who she was with, and, if possible, where she was heading.”

Theresa scowled at the constable before sighing. “I last saw Lucy this morning before she left for school, Anna will be able to tell you what time that was; she was wearing her uniform, so I assume she was intending to go to school. That’s as much as I can tell you,” she said. “Anna may be able to tell you something more.”

“And she hasn’t been seen since then?”

“Since lunchtime.”

“Who saw her then?”

After taking all the details Theresa could provide, Black promised to look around the village, and to make sure that both the inspector and the officer on duty in the morning knew Lucy was believed to be missing.

As soon as she was gone, slamming the door to make it clear how dissatisfied she was, he locked up the station and completed the end of shift chores he had been in the middle of when Theresa arrived.

He was about to get into his car, so he could do as promised and drive around the village looking for Lucy, when he thought better of it. Instead of getting into his car, he wandered down the road, stopping at a house a short distance from the station, a house rented by a trio of troublemakers, one of whom was the person Lucy Goulding was supposedly dating. If Lucy was in the village, he thought it most likely that she would be there with Ollie Ryder.

The house being quiet and dark, he doubted anyone was home, but he thought it best to knock before making a tour of the village, just in case. He didn’t want Theresa to be able to say he hadn’t done everything he could to find her daughter.