Where Everything Seems Double by Penny Freedman (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

I should shut up and gaze respectfully at him, waiting for the professional to enlighten me. Instead, like the class swot, I have my hand up with the answer.

‘Bunk, abduction, accident, murder,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Are you debriefing here or am I?’

‘You are,’ I say, ‘but you could save yourself time if you bear in mind that I am not an idiot.’

David chooses to ignore this. Instead, he starts to tick off the options.

‘Starting with the least likely – accident. It is very improbable that she could have fallen from her boat without anyone noticing, even though there was not much light. And there are several witnesses who say that she had someone in her boat with her. And the clothes that were found in the abandoned boat don’t fit with an accident. Unless it happened after everyone went back into the theatre. Whoever was in her boat with her is in the frame as her possible abductor or killer, but he could also have been involved in a fatal accident. There is a possible scenario where he persuades her – or they decide – to skip the rest of the show and go off – skinny-dipping or whatever. A dare. She gets into difficulties, he panics, she drowns and he does a runner.’

‘So we add that to the likelihood that if she has been abducted or killed, it was the guy in the boat that did it.’

‘Yes.’

‘What about a bunk? If she was running away, how do you see the guy in the boat fitting in then?’

‘Two possibilities. The phone call that took Dumitru Budescu back to the hotel was obviously planned to keep him out of the way. It looks as though it was designed so that someone else could replace him, but suppose Ruby herself set it up so that she would be alone in her boat and could stage a disappearance but some helpful guy, seeing her without a rower, volunteered himself at the last minute and she had to accept. If so, she would have let him out of the boat when the interval finished and then taken the boat further along the lake, where she put on other clothes that she had in the boat with her and—’

‘And then what? She couldn’t have gone anywhere at that time of night without help, could she,’ I object.

‘Tomorrow first thing I want to go and look at the area where the boat was found. The local guys say that it’s an easy scramble from there up onto the road. Forensically, that looks more likely than anything violent happening in or near the boat. They’ve found her DNA in the boat, and plenty of other people’s, of course – it’s a hire boat – but no blood, saliva, semen et cetera. And no DNA except Ruby’s on her costume, though she could have taken it off herself under duress. And the grass isn’t flattened on the bank there.’

‘So she might have climbed up the bank and then hitched a lift?’

‘There are still buses running along there, one an hour, until about ten, but all the drivers insist that she didn’t get on their bus.’

‘And hitching?’

‘If you’ve been reading the papers you’ll have seen that there has been an appeal for information from anyone driving along there that night. It’s a difficult one, though. Giving a lift to a young girl is problematic, isn’t it? People are very wary. A woman might do it, I suppose, if the girl looked very distressed. But in the dark, on a lonely road, if they had any sense they would be worried about the boyfriend who would emerge from the bushes as soon as she stopped the car. And any man with sense would worry about the accusations that the girl might make later.’

‘Unless he saw it as an opportunity.’

He looked at her. ‘It’s a possibility we have to consider – she makes a plan to run away and then she gets picked up by a predator.’

‘It doesn’t feel right, somehow – the hitching. If she made such a careful plan to get away would she have left it to chance to get a lift? That’s pretty desperate, isn’t it? Do your colleagues have any reason to think that she was desperate to get away?’

‘No. Her parents say she was fine – no trouble, hard-working, good at school. The school says the same. A bit of a loner but mature and good academically. Quite a bit of pressure to do well from her father but she seemed to be coping. You’ve talked to the parents, haven’t you? I thought you might have some insights. And Freda in her undercover operation.’

‘I only talked to her parents once. I think her father might have a temper. His wife’s afraid of him, I think.’

‘The school didn’t mention any concerns about domestic violence. Has Freda picked up anything from her friends?’

‘I’m afraid my cunning plan hasn’t worked out all that well. Freda’s gone native, basically. She likes them all, especially Milo – and he’s the most problematic, isn’t he? Is it too much of a coincidence that he was the person who took the phone message for Dumitru and he has had Ruby’s phone for days without telling anyone? Have they traced where that phone message came from, by the way?’

‘They have. And it did come from the hotel. What they can’t trace is which extension was used, but it was from the hotel number.’

‘So Milo’s story stands up?’

‘Sort of.’

‘But no-one at the hotel admits to having made the call?’

‘They’re a difficult lot, the staff there, apparently. They’re all EU, including the restaurant manager – mostly Romanians and Poles – and they’re very twitchy about their immigration status with things as they are. Plus they come from countries where the police are less than friendly.’

‘Unlike here, where they spend all their time helping old ladies across the road?’

‘Exactly. So they’ve all clammed up, and the locals haven’t been able to get anything out of