Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

think Kate Harper had anything to do with Sally’s disappearance; we accepted that she did, as claimed, drop Sally off at the end of Arton Place. We spoke to everyone present at the Winding Wheel party, but again we got nothing. The days and weeks rolled by.’

‘Mr Ford, I know you want to tell this story, but for the sake of the documentary, I’d like to hear it by asking questions. Can we do that?’

‘Sure, yeah, go ahead. As long as I get to say my version for the interview.’

‘I just want to confirm that your team investigated the chance that Sally ran away? And did you suspect a local or a stranger? If she was taken from the green, that seems like a user-friendly zone that outsiders wouldn’t know about.’

‘Exactly. As soon as we got the call, our thoughts were on transients, Lampton being a tourist spot and all. We considered that the abductor could be passing through, or had left. We sought information on visitors who might have cut short a holiday, and anyone who seemed suspicious in the days before or after she went missing. But one look at that green area told us we probably had a local perpetrator, and that was our main focus.’

‘I get the impression that the people of Lampton wouldn’t take too kindly to being suspected. Any problem there?’

‘Hell yes. Sorry, I won’t swear on the video. Anyway, we got that same feeling, so at first we tried to keep the theory of a local perpetrator quiet and work on it on the sly. We sent undercover officers into the pubs and shops, just to gather gossip.’

‘Let me guess. Nobody really talked about it.’

‘That’s right. Christ, you’d have thought a dog had gone missing instead. Sorry, I didn’t mean to swear again. Anyway, when this tactic failed to get us anything worthwhile, we got a bit bolder. We sent out questionnaires to the womenfolk, hoping they’d feel guilty if they knew anything. We started visiting men of possible interest at home. Again, nobody stood out. Then, we upped the boldness. We announced our intention to hold a mass DNA screening of all males in Lampton at the village hall. We let out a rumour that there was DNA found at the playpark. It was a lie though. I mean, we weren’t even sure that was a crime scene because we found nothing there to indicate a snatch. So it was a ploy to see if it prompted anyone to suddenly leave the area, or to try to avoid the DNA test.’

‘Any takers? Or non-takers, I mean?’

‘It failed. We commandeered the village hall to do it, but the people called their own meeting at the same time. Outside, one of the local big shots–’

‘One Councillor Richard Turner, by any chance?’

‘That’s him. He rallied his people, condemning us for daring to accuse one of their own. He said his people would know if someone amongst them did this, and he would know if his people knew.’

‘Hive mind,’ Bennet said.

‘Exactly. So, in front of a bunch of police and reporters, he proved his people had had nothing to do with Sally’s disappearance. Ready for this? He asked his mass of people if any of them had taken her. And they all shouted no. And that was that. He gave us a smug look, as if to say, there you go. You believe that?’

Bennet did. Now it made sense why Turner had earlier mocked Bennet’s claim that a child abductor would not admit to being so. Did this guy think his people worshipped him? He was just a councillor living in a tiny village.

Ford continued: ‘So now the people insisted the police should focus on the perpetrator being a transient, some tourist passing through. They have a word for visitors…’

‘Loper.’

‘That’s it. They were dead certain that if Sally hadn’t run away, she’d been taken by a Loper. Needless to say, many of the local men refused to give their DNA because of this. Nothing we could do without a serious hue and cry, and it was a trick because we had no DNA, prints, anything. So our killer, if there is one and he was one of the Lampton locals, got a lucky break.’

‘So Turner and his people were a hindrance? He told me the police did a shoddy job. Sounds like they were shoddy only because they didn’t follow his directions.’

‘He was an obstacle for sure, but he didn’t see it that way. When we were quite insistent that we needed to search the village, he organised searches. He got people to check their barns, sheds, to look in all the nooks and crannies. It took about an hour, tops, and then he came to my boss to declare it done. As in, look, we catered to your whims, and now we’ve proved it wasn’t one of us, and now can you please stop thinking she’s still here.’

‘Richard Turner to a T. Did his people really just accept what he said? Nobody thought it could be one of them?’

‘No, some people were worried. Kids were kept indoors. We would see that at night if we were about. Kids used to play in the evening all the time. Not after Sally went missing. But could you get a parent to admit they were keeping their kids close because there might be a wacko in the village? Good luck with that. His people knew not to spread gossip. But, you know, time favoured Turner. How often do we see weirdos like this snatch one kid and never do it again?’

A fair point. The kind of man who’d abduct a child, and possibly kill them, didn’t satiate those urges forever with a single affair. ‘I understand his people worshipping his every word. But not the police. You didn’t listen to him, I assume.’

‘Of course not. We couldn’t just take the townsfolk at their word that they’d performed a thorough search. I mean, if Sally’s abductor was in the