Meena fanned her hands as if to say,guilty as charged.
‘Anything from a vet to confirm the cat was put down that day?’ Harry asked.
‘Apparently, it choked on something,’ Cristy told him. ‘Or maybe it died in its sleep. It was very old – eighteen, from memory – so it wasn’t exactly a shock.’
‘How long after she claimed she’d buried it did they start digging up the woods?’ he wanted to know.
‘Five days,’ Jacks replied, reading from his screen.
Harry nodded. ‘So maybe a fox went off with it. Would a fox do that: dig up a dead cat?’
‘I checked and it could,’ Jacks confirmed.
‘The other theory,’ Cristy told them, ‘was that she, Nicole,took the cat and the twins down to the woods and handed them over to someone who was waiting there.’
Meena shivered. ‘Back to the cult thing.’
‘Which no one’s ever been able to make stand up,’ Connor put in, ‘but back then, a lot was said about it.’
‘Anything of substance?’ Harry asked, clearly searching his memory.
‘Not really,’ Connor replied, ‘but we’re hoping Julian Hargreaves, Nicole’s defence lawyer, might help us with that when we see him later.’
‘Definitely feeling cultish to me,’ Clove muttered to no one in particular.
Casting her a glance, Harry said, ‘Let’s go with the abduction claim for the moment. Tell me how anyone could have got them out of the house, which I recall is on a main road, and into a waiting vehicle, without anyone seeing? Is that what Nicole wanted us to believe, that someone drove off with them?’
‘She claimed never to have known what actually happened,’ Cristy reminded him, ‘only that the twins were gone when she got back to the house.’
‘Wasn’t the place covered in blood when the police arrived?’ Meena asked.
‘I don’t know about covered,’ Cristy replied, ‘but there were definitely traces found all over the place, mostly belonging to wildlife – hence the rumours of sacrifice.’
‘But some of it belonged to one of the twins, didn’t it?’ Meena persisted.
Cristy nodded. ‘Abigail.’
Meena took this in. ‘So what didyoubelieve at the time? Before you went a bit …’ She circled a finger at the side of her head.
Wanting to slap her, Cristy said, ‘To be honest, I changed my mind about it so often – we all did – that I can’t tell you now what I did or didn’t believe at any given time, but whatI do know is that Nicole never had any witnesses to stand up for her. No one, apart from her mother, could say that the cat had died; no one saw her go down to the woods or come back again. No one saw the twins being taken from the house, and no one came forward with any solid evidence to say she belonged to a cult.’
‘Where was her mother that morning?’ Meena asked.
‘At her sister’s,’ Cristy replied. ‘Apparently, Nicole was at home alone with the twins from the time her mother left the house at just after nine o’clock.’
Reading from her notes, Clove said, ‘There was a neighbour who came forward to say that he’d noticed Ronnie, Nicole’s father, leaving for work around seven, as usual. And Maeve’s sister confirmed that Maeve was at her house in Chippenham from around ten until two o’clock, when they got the call from Nicole to say the twins were gone. Same for Ronnie, who was alibied at his office all day until two.’
‘Remind me what he did,’ Cristy said. ‘From memory, he was some kind of an engineer, working at British Aerospace in Filton?’ She looked to Jacks for confirmation and received it.
‘Guidance, navigation and control,’ he said. ‘That was his thing. And it was BAE Systems by then, although I think a lot of locals still refer to it as British Aerospace even now.’
‘One of the glaring questions for me,’ Clove said, ‘is who was the twins’ father? I know he was never named, but … any thoughts?’ she asked Cristy.
Cristy shrugged. ‘Take your pick – the mystery cult leader was, unsurprisingly, the favourite theory, but with no proof of his existence …’ She simply shrugged. ‘There was also talk of a random rapist for a while – no, she didn’t ever report an attack – even Ronnie’s name was in the frame at one point.’
Meena’s lip curled. ‘Was he ever ruled out?’ she asked.
‘Not by the tabloids as far as we can tell,’ Jacks replied.
