Kate could see that Alan was sitting up in his chair. He got up, went over to the window, and stared out over the garden. He looked troubled.
“I did a postmortem on a young man last Thursday,” he said. “Body found dumped in the remains of a recently fallen tree on Dartmoor. He’d only been dead for thirty-six hours. The police identified him from fingerprints . . .” He looked back at Kate. “He matches the description that you’ve just given me. Matches down to a T, apart from the hair color, which is blond. He had a prior arrest for soliciting.”
“How did he die?” asked Kate, her heart thumping in her chest.
“Repeated strangulation. The petechial hemorrhages, which look like a red rash, show that he was strangled and then revived several times. There was Rohypnol found in his blood, along with alcohol, and evidence he’d been bound and sexually assaulted. There was no DNA evidence found on the body.”
“What have the police said?” asked Kate.
“Nothing to the media, and as far as I know, they don’t have any witnesses or suspects,” said Alan.
Kate had a call from Tristan when she left Alan’s house.
“I managed to find Ashley Harris, Joanna’s editor at the West Country News,” he said.
“Please tell me he’s still alive.”
Tristan laughed.
“Yes. The reason we couldn’t find him is because he got married and he took his wife’s name.”
“How modern of him.”
“I know. His change of name was listed on Companies House. His wife is Juliet Maplethorpe, so he’s now Ashley Maplethorpe. They run a company called Frontiers People Ltd.”
“What kind of company?”
“They have contracts to run back-to-work schemes for the UK government. They posted a profit of seventy million quid last year.”
“So, more lucrative than working for a regional newspaper.”
“Yes. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but he quit as editor of the West Country News two weeks after Joanna went missing,” said Tristan. “I found an old article online from the West Country News, dated January 2001, when they announced him as their new editor. He was thirty when he became editor, and he’d been an ambitious journalist. Starting as an apprentice at sixteen, working his way up. He was the youngest person made editor on a regional newspaper—then he gives it all up after Joanna goes missing. What’s interesting is that I messaged him this morning, when I found this out, and he’s agreed to meet us on Tuesday.”
“Good work, Tris.”
“That’s not all,” he said, sounding excited on the phone. “I had a look at Frontiers People’s website, and Ashley’s bio and photo are on there. I thought I’d seen his face recently. He’s in that photo taken at the opening of Jesper’s. He’s standing next to Noah Huntley with his wife, Juliet, and what looks like Noah Huntley’s wife. And when I looked on the Companies House registry, Ashley was also one of the original investors in Jesper’s hotel, along with Noah Huntley, Max Jesper and his partner, Nick Lacey, and three other local businessmen.”
“Tristan, that’s brilliant work! Bloody hell, this is all becoming quite incestuous,” said Kate.
“Yes, it will be interesting to ask Ashley about his links to Noah Huntley and Max Jesper.”
“I thought you were meant to be going to Sarah’s for lunch today?”
“She came down with a bug and canceled.”
“Sorry to hear that, but look what you did instead. Brilliant.”
“How did lunch go with Alan?” asked Tristan.
Kate went on to tell him about David’s and Gabe’s criminal records, her theory about searching for missing young men, and the discovery of the body in the fallen tree.
“That’s another step closer,” said Tristan.
“Yes. He took my theory seriously. I thought I was asking the impossible, but Alan thinks he’ll need to do a search on six or seven hundred unidentified deaths, which is still a lot, but not in the thousands.”
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait for him to come back to us?”
“It will involve a database search, so hopefully he’ll come back quite quickly if he finds anything.”
27
Kate and Tristan spent Monday in the office, prepping for their meeting with Ashley Maplethorpe. On Monday afternoon, a small article appeared on the BBC Devon and Cornwall website, saying that the body of a young man called Hayden Oakley had been found near the village of Buckfastleigh and that police were making inquiries. There was a picture of the huge fallen tree and a white forensics tent next to the roots at the base, but no other information was released.
On Tuesday morning, Kate and Tristan drove over to meet Ashley at his house, Thornbridge Hall in Yeovil, Somerset, fifty-five miles from Ashdean.
The house was gray stone, and they began to get glimpses of it when they came off the motorway. A mile-long tree-lined driveway wound through fields of sheep grazing, and then the drive opened out into a yard with stables where four big black SUVs were parked. Close up, the house was large with a pillared, grand entrance. The rows of windows looked rather sternly out on the countryside.
“Are we classed as tradespeople? Do we ring the bell or go around the back?” joked Tristan as they looked at a grand set of stone steps leading up to a front terrace and a huge wooden double door.
“We’re not going around the back,” said Kate. They climbed the steps and arrived a little breathless at the front door. A bell clanged from deep inside. They waited for a minute. Kate was about to ring again, when the door opened.
Ashley Maplethorpe wore denim shorts and a tight black AC/DC T-shirt. His feet were bare. He had short blond hair, was tall, and looked as if he kept himself in shape. Kate was surprised to see Juliet Maplethorpe with him. She was a head shorter, the same height as Kate, and she wore a beautiful aquamarine-colored caftan with a print of large red-and-yellow dragon flowers. Her hair was a rich henna red and was damp and a little wavy. Kate could see the straps of a swimming suit under the caftan. Juliet was also barefoot and had a gold ankle bracelet on her left leg.
“Hello! Do come in!” said Ashley cheerily, as if they were old friends popping over for Sunday lunch. He was very well spoken.
“Hello, welcome to Thornbridge Hall,” said Juliet. She spoke with a soft Geordie accent, but her green eyes were sharp and cautious. “Ashley should have told you to text when you got here. The house is so big, it takes a while to get to the front door.” Her green eyes ran over Kate and Tristan with precision. We’ll have to watch out for her, thought Kate.
They went through a long hallway and living room where french doors opened out onto the back garden. It was vast, with a tennis court to the left, a swimming pool with sun loungers and umbrellas, and beyond, at the end of their land, was an ornamental garden with a maze.