“So she staged this business with the car as a red herring and headed for Spain or wherever?” Resnick asked. “That’s the assumption?”
Helen tapped ash into the metal waste-bin near her feet. “A lot of the evidence pointed that way. There was a suitcase and clothes missing from home and her passport wasn’t found. But I never believed it.”
“Why not?”
Behind blue-gray smoke, Helen Siddons smiled. “Because of the ransom demand.”
If she hadn’t had all of Resnick’s interest before, she had it now. “I don’t remember anything about a ransom,” he said.
“We asked for a media blackout and got it.”
“And you think that’s what’s happening here?” Resnick asked. “With Nancy Phelan? Ransom?”
Helen Siddons took her time. “Of course,” she said. “Don’t you?”
Half an hour had passed. More. From somewhere Jack Skelton had magicked a half-bottle of Teacher’s and they were drinking it from thick china mugs. Somehow the clock slipped past midnight without any of them noticing and no toasts were offered up. Ash sprinkled here and there down the pale blue of Helen Siddons’ dress as she talked.
Painstakingly, she took them through the Rogel case, stage by stage. When the first ransom note had been delivered, pushed through the door of the missing woman’s parents’ house in the early hours of the morning, it had gone unnoticed for the best part of a day, the envelope pushed between a pile of old newspapers and unsolicited catalogs. When a follow-up phone call was made, at four o’clock that afternoon, Susan Rogel’s mother had had no idea what it was referring to, took it as some kind of sick joke and hung up. By the time the second call came through, though, they’d found the note. It was asking for twenty thousand pounds in used notes.
Rogel’s father was a retired army colonel, not someone to be toyed with. He made it clear they wouldn’t as much as think of handing over a penny without proof. He also immediately contacted the police.
Nothing happened for three days.
On the fourth, the Rogels drove to the nearest supermarket to do their weekly shopping and when they returned, someone had jimmied open one of the small windows at the rear of the house. Naturally, they thought they’d been burgled, looked anxiously round but found nothing obviously missing. What they did find, folded neatly inside tissue paper in one of the drawers in the spare bedroom, the room that had been Susan’s when she had lived at home, was one of her blouses, the one she had been wearing when she was last seen, filling her car with petrol at a garage on the Wells road.
The family wanted to pay the ransom, asked for time to find the money; they were given another three days. Instructions were given about leaving it in the courtyard of a pub high on the Mendips. All of this information was passed immediately to the police. On the morning the drop was to be made, the location was carefully staked out, it would have been difficult to be more discreet.
“What happened?” Resnick asked.
“Nothing. The money was left in a duffel bag by the outside toilet of the pub. No one came near it. Not many vehicles came over the tops that day and all that did were checked. Nobody suspicious.”
“He got scared then? What?”
“There was one final call to the Rogels the following day. Angry with them for trying to trick him, get him caught, going to the police. There was no attempt at contact after that.”
“And Susan Rogel?”
Helen Siddons was standing against the window, outlined against the white strips of blind. “No sign. No word. If she did simply run off, if the ransom note was somebody’s bluff, she’s never resurfaced, never been back in touch with anyone in her previous life. Husband, lover, parents, not anyone.”
“And if it was real?”
Helen smoothed one hand down the leg of her dress. “This was almost two years ago. If someone kidnapped her, it’s difficult to believe she’s alive now.”
“You double-checked everyone in the area of the pub that day?” Skelton asked.
“Double, triple.” Helen shook her head. “No way we could connect any of them with Susan Rogel or the way she disappeared.”
“How easy would it have been for this person to find out you and her parents were hand in glove?”
Helen Siddons lit another cigarette. “I was the liaison officer. Any meetings we had were well out of the way, never the same location. Phone calls call box to call box, never to their house or the station. No mobile phones used because they’re more susceptible to being tapped. If he found out, rather than guessed, that wasn’t the weak link.”
“Have you any idea what was?”
She gave a quick shake of the head. “No.”
“Near enough two years back,” Skelton said, looking at Resnick. “Time to lay low, move maybe, try again.”
“Blouse aside,” Resnick said, “there’s not much says this case is the same.”
“Not yet, Charlie.”
“Wait till Nancy Phelan’s parents get the morning post,” Helen said. “Special delivery.”
“And if they don’t?”
Helen blinked and looked away.
Skelton tipped the last of the bottle into the three mugs. “So, Charlie, what d’you think? If this is a runner, where does that leave young Hidden in the scheme of things?”
“Between Dana Matthieson leaving the flat and our bringing Robin Hidden in for questioning, he had time and plenty to get round there and leave those clothes. And he knew the layout of the flat well, remember, in and out in no time.”
“I thought you had your doubts about Hidden for this,” Skelton said. “That was the feeling you gave. Now you want to keep him tied in.”
“One way or another, he already is.”
Skelton looked thoughtful, sipped his scotch. “Helen?” Skelton said.
“I think we should make good and sure,” she said, “the minute anyone contacts the Phelans, we know about it. And by the time they do, we know how we’re going to respond.”
“Charlie?” Skelton said.
“That only makes sense,” Resnick said. He was uncomfortable with the knowledge that he was bridling inside every time Helen Siddons said we, at the way she seemed to be edging herself more and more into the heart of things.
“I’ll give you a lift then, Helen,” Skelton said, hopefully holding her coat.
Resnick knocked back the last half-inch of whisky, rinsed out the mug from which he had been drinking, and wished them both goodnight; whatever was going on there, as long as it didn’t get in the way of the task in hand, it didn’t have to concern him.
“Night, sir. Happy New Year, sir,” said the young constable at the desk.
Resnick nodded in reply and stepped out on to the street; it wasn’t clear if someone had wiped the blood away or whether it had been trodden clean by a succession of passing feet. Above, the sky had cleared and there were stars, clustering close to the moon.
In little more than minutes he was standing at the far end of Newcastle Drive, hands in pockets, looking up at the blank windows to Dana’s flat. If she had decided to stay, he hoped by now she would be safely asleep. For several long moments he allowed himself to recall the warmth of her body, generous beside him in her bed.
“If I did stay here, would you come back? Later?”
By the time he had crossed town, avoiding the raucous celebrations continuing in and around the fountains of the Old Market Square, and arrived at the Polish Club, almost the last of the cars was turning out of the car park, exhaust fumes heavy in the air. Those that remained belonged to the staff. There was a taxi idling at the far side of the street, but Resnick didn’t linger to see who it was waiting for. He would call Marian tomorrow, make his apologies with a clear head.