‘Well, that presupposes she wrote them. I have to tell you, Mrs… Miss Bellamy.’
‘You know what? Call me Margot. Titles are a moral minefield right now.’
‘Margot,’ he said, raising an eyebrow, and there was a glitter of something beneath it that took me aback for a second, raised butterflies in my stomach. ‘Call me Martin. I suppose what I’m saying is that there are many more reasons to assume it’s the work of our killer rather than any of the victims.’ His lips twisted into something rueful, something compassionate. ‘I think you need to brace yourself for that possibility.’
I didn’t reply. The thought was repugnant – but I saw his point.
He perused the letters for a few moments longer and scratched his stubbled chin with a thoughtful unselfconsciousness. ‘Still, all of these new details… Hmm. I suppose it would be pointless to ask if you had any idea who’d written them?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Absolutely none.’
‘There is something you could do for us on that front, actually,’ said Martin, as though deep in thought.
‘Which is?’
‘I imagine,’ he said, ‘based on your column, that you have relationships with mental health professionals who provide you with feedback and advice.’
‘I do,’ I said warily.
‘You could take a copy of the letter around to the local psychiatric hospitals. See if any of the staff know anything about it.’
I rubbed my tired eyes, careful not to smudge my mascara. ‘I suppose it’s worth a go,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know how successful that’ll be. There is such a thing in the world as medical confidentiality.’
‘Hmm,’ said Martin, absorbing this, his piercing gaze falling upon me once more.
‘Though,’ I said, thinking, ‘what I could do, now you mention it, and probably should have done already, is go back through the files I keep of all the letters I get on the column, and see if the handwriting in any of them resembles these. I think that’ll be a dead end, too, but it would be stupid not to try. I mean, I think we can assume she’s a local woman, if it is a woman. The Examiner isn’t exactly the most obvious place to send a letter like this – if it has a circulation of more than twenty thousand I’d be amazed,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ murmured Martin. He seemed lost in thought, looking at the letters again. ‘I wonder what Mo will say,’ he muttered. ‘Lovely forgeries…’
‘Are you so sure they’re forgeries?’ I asked, then instantly regretted it. Of course they were probably forgeries. I was letting my imagination run away with me for the thousandth time – the notion of the captured girl, now a woman, trapped and trying to write her way out of her fate possessed me, made my heart thud dangerously in dread.
But now I’d asked the question, I had no real desire to retract it.
He raised a heavy eyebrow in surprise. ‘Well, I suppose I can understand that you want to believe…’
I cut him short. ‘I understood that the assumption of death was never much more than that. An assumption.’
I think I was giving him a fairly wild stare at this point.
‘Yeah, it’s an assumption.’ He waved a hand in dismissal. ‘And it’s true that there’s a lot we can’t assume – because we simply don’t know what happened to her. But the overwhelming preponderance of evidence suggests that she was held against her will somewhere, probably by whoever murdered Peggy, and that she received a serious injury, possibly while trying to escape. It all suggests that whoever attacked her finished the job and buried her somewhere. And then moved on to the next girl.’
‘But you can’t be absolutely sure,’ I said. ‘What if she is still being held somewhere? We know she was injured, agreed, but what if she was recaptured… What if whoever it was treated her for her wounds? There are tons of cases where kidnapped women and girls have been held for decades, in some instances. Maybe that’s what’s happening here…’
‘Then how is she sending these letters? Is her kidnapper providing her with stamps? And here’s the big question – why doesn’t she just write to the police? Mrs Lew- Margot, listen to me. I don’t know if these letters are forged or not, or whether Bethan Avery is alive or dead. That’s why we’re showing them to Mo. These letters interest me because they’re strange and very similar to Bethan’s journals, and I’ve never seen or heard of anything like them before. If this is a scam, it’s a very elaborate one.’ He held out his hands in appeal, inviting me to see reason. ‘But it doesn’t prove she’s alive. Far from it. So far, it only proves that someone wants us to think she is.’
I sighed.
‘Or rather, for you to think she is.’ I was pinned down again by that green stare. ‘These letters could have been sent to any paper, local or national, and got a response. And yet somehow they’ve ended up with you.’
I thought about this for a long moment and shrugged. ‘I have absolutely no idea why.’
He leaned back in his chair, then let out a sigh, lightly misted with compassion and barely hidden exasperation.
‘You know’ – his gaze rolled up to the plain plaster ceiling – ‘it would be fun to imagine that this girl had somehow managed to survive for seventeen years. It’s not that I’m…’ he was choosing his words carefully, ‘immune to the imaginative appeal the idea has,’ he said. ‘But until someone can prove it…’ He shrugged.
I sighed. ‘Of course you’re right.’
He regarded me with a thin sliver of suspicion for a long moment, as though he was trying to work out whether I was humouring him.
Suddenly he was on his feet. ‘Come on, you’ll be late. I’ll walk you out.’
We strolled back across the courtyard, which was starting to fill up as students and staff wheeled back into college for lunch.
‘Margot, I wouldn’t build too much upon these letters. Even if we do find out they’re real, what good does it do us if this woman won’t tell us what she calls herself now? Or where she lives?’
I felt a pain in my chest, and realized it was my heart beating against my ribs. Martin was talking to me as though I were an overexcited child. He sounded momentarily like one of the counsellors at the clinic. I shuddered. Maybe life really is as simple as the people at the clinic suggest. I always have trouble believing it. I expect that’s because I know it’s not true.
‘Perhaps she doesn’t know where she lives, if she’s being held captive in this place. She doesn’t know she’s been forgotten. I’m sorry,’ I said as we reached the heavy darkness of the gatehouse. ‘But somehow I believe in the letters.’ I gave a tiny, apologetic twitch. ‘I just do.’
We faced each other. The cool air blew between us and I could feel myself anchored to the ground by the stony weight of my conviction. ‘This woman, Bethan Avery, could still be alive. I’m not even saying she’s being held prisoner. She believes she is, though. She’s still the girl kidnapped twenty years ago. She wants to be set free.’
Martin rubbed his chin once more, seemed about to speak, then fell silent, with a sharp shake of his head, a policy decision in action. ‘I’ll take the letters to Mo tomorrow. There’s no point discussing anything until then.’
We had reached the gate, and with an old-world courtesy he reached out and shook my hand. Again that warm, firm grip, surprisingly gentle from such a burly man.
‘It was genuinely lovely to meet you, Margot. And I’ll let you know the minute we hear anything,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, if there are any more letters, don’t hesitate to call.’
‘I will.’
He turned away, but before he could leave…
‘Martin, wait.’
He paused mid-step, regarding me.
‘You said that there was something else interesting about the letters. In your first email. I meant to ask you what it was.’