The Betrayal of Trust by Susan Hill Read Free Book Online

earlier.’
    ‘Even so. But obviously we’re checking. If we don’t turn anything up, we’ll widen it to a national search.’
    Simon sat back in his chair, hands behind his head, listing what had to be done. The Harriet Lowther files reopened and gone through line by line. Follow-up interviews with anywitnesses still living in the area, last known movements worked out carefully, contact made with every living relative, friend, neighbour , chance acquaintance, pupil, teacher. The sort of routine that had to be meticulous and painstaking, that took nothing as read, nothing for granted, made no assumptions. Sixteen years of life and change muddied the waters. Sixteen years meant memories faded,events became confused. People had died, moved away, grown up, changed jobs, had families. Sixteen years of events and everyday routine had altered everything. Suspects, if there had been any, must be located, re-interviewed, their subsequent lives gone over in fine detail. Anything like suspicious behaviour, let alone arrests, charges, imprisonments, would have to be examined in the light of theLowther case and an individual’s relation to it.
    The second body was a second inquiry. Not a cold case because at the moment it looked as if it had never been a case at all. A new inquiry then. But the body was of a girl who had gone missing somewhere, her absence reported by someone, surely. Young girls, unless they were on the streets of a city, did not vanish without someone wondering whyand where and how. Young girls had families, friends, childhoods, previous lives, they had lived here or there, they were remembered.
    It was a huge amount of work. He had hoped for a team – a deputy, and a close-knit group of three or four, working side by side, talking, bouncing things off one another, propping one another up. At the moment, it looked as if he would be lucky to get anybody.
    He sat upright. No, he thought. No, he would not ‘be lucky to get anybody’, he would get a team. He was SIO on what was no longer a Missper from sixteen years ago but a definite murder inquiry. There was a second inquiry which would have to be opened, another murder, and probably related to the first. Somewhere out there was a person or persons who had taken the lives of two young women and buriedtheir bodies.
    The Chief – or in her absence, the ACC – had a duty to provide him with a full support team, cuts or no cuts, and although he was perfectly prepared to put in extra hours himself and take on the work of others, he was not going to be hamstrung by lack of officers. A team he needed and a team he was bloody well going to get.
    He reached for the phone.

Eight
    JOHN LOWTHER TOOK the papers out of their folder and arranged them neatly on the conference-room table in front of him. He had glanced around the room on entering and nodded, but in general, not catching anyone’s eye. There were eight of them, eight men and women well used to difficult meetings and differences of opinion, well versed in what to say and how to say it, eight in prominent positionsin various areas of public life. And not one of us, Cat Deerbon thought, has any real idea of how to handle this.
    There was none of the usual murmur as they waited for him to begin. The silence was perhaps the worst of it.
    At last, he moved a typed sheet of paper slightly to his right. Looked down at the agenda sheet. Looked up.
    ‘Mr Chairman …’
    Pamela Vaughan, the hospice chaplain, was lookingdirectly at Lowther. His face had changed, Cat thought, even in a few hours, it was all registered there, in the pallor, the way the flesh seemed to have fallen in, the lines deepened. His eyes had a deadened look. The waiting, the strain and anxiety and fear of sixteen years had fallen away, to be replaced by grief and weariness and more dread, more dread. There was an answer, but that had onlyraised new and dreadful questions. She felt great sorrow for him, sorrow and some of the same dread.
    ‘Before