‘Of course. All I ask is you don’t disturb Arabella again. She’s a first-calf heifer, you see, and quite close to her time.’
Recalling the massive cow, while ignoring the smirks fromClove and Jacks, Cristy said, ‘We can probably be there by early afternoon tomorrow, if that works for you?’
‘C’est excellent,’ he declared.‘We will see you then. Oh, by the way, there is plenty of parking a few metres past the stables, so no need to enter through the woods.À demain.’ And he was gone.
Suppressing a growl that was more of a laugh, she said, ‘Well, I guess we’ve made contact.’
‘Why didn’t you ask about the Klanner?’ Connor wanted to know.
Disappointed with herself for having momentarily forgotten it, she said, ‘Because he’s already laughing at us, and if it turns out that little stunt was staged, we’ll only make ourselves look even more foolish – if that’s actually possible, and I’m not sure it is.’
‘I’d pay money to have seen the shitshow.’ Clove laughed. ‘I wonder if he recorded it?’
‘Not one of your most successful stealth ops,’ Jacks remarked dryly. ‘But hey, at least he seems willing to talk.’
‘We could have gone today,’ Connor pointed out. ‘It would have given him less time to come up with any more little sideshows.’
‘I have an appointment at five,’ she replied, returning to her computer, ‘and I don’t want to miss it.’
There was a moment before he said curiously, ‘Something we need to know about?’
Experiencing a flash of impatience, she said, ‘Nothing to do with the series.’ Then, making an attempt to level off with irony, ‘I do have a personal life, you know, and sadly it doesn’t come to a stop just because we’ve got a great story on our hands.’
Connor continued to look at her.
She eyeballed him back, clocked the moment he assumed it was about David and felt horrible when he nodded reassuringly, before turning to pick up where they’d left off when Meier rang.
Cristy was only half-listening as they discussed Jacks’s ongoing efforts to make contact with Meier’s friends during his time in Bristol – so far, he had a couple of names: Johan Bauer, a German national, and Freya Jensen from Copenhagen. If he could track one or both of them down, it would be great to get their input – their perspective, even – on those colourful times. For her part, Clove was fixed on finding someone, somewhere, who might lead them to Lauren Hawkes.
‘You know what bothers me most about Lauren’s disappearance,’ Clove remarked later in the day, ‘is that her mother’s only received cards or emails since she left – no calls or visits. So I keep asking myself: is someone else making contactforher? And if so, why isn’t she doing it herself?’
The very same issue had been bothering Cristy. However, the only answer she could offer right now was, ‘If she hadn’t been visiting Nicole in prison all this time, we might have reason to think the worst, but apparently she has, and so I guess that tells us she’s at least still this side of the Pearly Gates.’
‘And possibly on that farm?’ Jacks suggested.
‘Not ruling it out,’ Cristy assured him.
Connor said, ‘It could be worth asking her mother if we can take a look at the cards and emails?’
‘I’ll get onto it,’ Clove declared, and a few minutes later, after setting up a meeting with Bridget Hawkes for the next day, she went to write it up on the whiteboard.
‘Have you let Honey know we’re seeing Meier tomorrow?’ Connor asked Cristy, as Clove added their return visit to Wales to the board.
‘No, but we should,’ Cristy replied. ‘Can you do it? I need to leave now.’
It was still too early for the last-minute appointment she’d managed to grab with a menopause specialist – getting to see her GP could take weeks, and she didn’t want to waste anymore time – but she was suddenly overcome by an urge to call Matthew.
Waiting until she’d driven away from the studios, she instructed handsfree to connect to his number and was both relieved and nervous when he answered.
‘I want to apologize for last night,’ she told him. ‘I shouldn’t have flown off the handle like that so … I’m sorry.’
After a beat, he said, ‘OK.’
Irked by the brevity of his response, she said, ‘Is that it? Am I forgiven?’
His tone was terse as he said, ‘Your apology is accepted, but forgiveness is a different ask, and frankly I’m not feeling it right now. So, thanks for the call, much appreciated, but I’m about to go into a meeting.’
As the line went dead, furious tears stung her eyes, and for one ludicrous moment, she wanted her mother so badly that she felt she might scream with it. She took a breath, swallowed hard, inhaled again and drove on towards the Downs, wondering if she could dare to call David’s mother, or even David himself.
