Lynda La Plante: Twisted

He could hardly believe it, but he didn’t want to interrupt as she described booking and paying for a flight online for Amy, who downloaded and printed off the e-ticket at an internet café. Amy’s flight was a one-way trip to Santa Fe and so as not to create any suspicion, she herself left for Peru and they had a tentative plan to reunite if Amy succeeded in leaving the UK.

‘So when did she fly to Santa Fe?’

‘About a week or two after I left the school. You have to understand that for Amy there was no going back, so she stopped reading the papers or watching the news. She genuinely didn’t know about what happened to her father and mother since she ran away.’

‘So how did you end up in this godforsaken place?’

‘When my art tour finished I took a flight from Peru to San Francisco, bought the old Land Rover and, not even knowing if she would still be there, I drove to Santa Fe. It took me a week or so to find Amy. She was working in a restaurant, living in a commune with other kids, hippie types, junkies and runaways like herself.’

She gave a long sigh and seemed defeated as she quietly explained how they planned a trip to Mexico City and subsequently decided to keep on the move to Mazatlan. They had agreed to not use any mobile phones or even her laptop; they had wanted to be completely free of any possible contact from England.

‘We found this place, and together made it habitable, and this is where we have been living since Santa Fe.’

He looked around and gave a half-smile: it was not in any way luxurious but with the lit fire and the warm glow of the candles it was comfortable, albeit with no electricity.

‘I suppose you want to know how we financed it all?’

He nodded and she continued.

‘To start with, my savings, and then Amy had numerous bits and pieces of jewellery she said she had been given, and we prised out the stones and I would drive into town and sell them, but she never accompanied me. We were very careful not to create any suspicion, but had more than enough to buy the hens and the furnishings and obviously groceries, in fact everything we needed.’

She rubbed at her curls and began twisting one round and round in her forefinger. He remembered her doing the same thing when he had interviewed her in England.

‘Go on,’ he said quietly.

‘At some point we were starting to get a bit worried as funds were low and she wanted me to use the tiara to raise cash. She wanted to prise out the stones, but it seemed to me to be too destructive as it was such a beautiful art deco design and I knew it had to be worth a lot of money undamaged.’

‘Did she tell you where she got it from?’

‘She said she had been left it all in a will, that it was hers to do whatever she wanted with. The other pieces had been a couple of rings, a bracelet and a pearl necklace.’

She sucked in her breath and sighed. ‘Stupid, it was so stupid of me, and I ruined everything by trying to sell it in Mexico City. I had created too much interest as the men in the jewellery shop wanted me to show them something to prove I owned the tiara and I think they thought it was stolen.’

He decided to let her finish her story before telling her he suspected the jewellery was stolen from Simon Boatly, and that the use of her passport to fly out of London had been the reason he had been able to trace her. She rubbed her head, making her curls stand up on end, and then got up to place more kindling on the fire. She drew a cushion to sit beside it and told him how she had read the advert in the New York Times from the lawyers.

‘I was even more stupid because I called them from the jewellery shop, and that was when I found out that Amy’s father was dead.’

She sniffed as the tears welled up in her eyes and she used her shirt cuff to wipe them.

‘Did they mention that Amy as her father’s beneficiary was possibly in line to inherit three million pounds?’

She gasped. ‘Three million?’

‘Whether or not she would be able to claim it is doubtful because her father had been left it in Simon Boatly’s will on condition that he divorced her mother. As he died before the divorce was actually agreed it is legally very questionable, but the lawyers seemed to be treating it as a possible legacy.’

‘Three million? My God, she doesn’t know. I am a bit confused about Simon Boatly, what happened to him?’

‘He died a few days before Marcus Fulford.’

‘Oh my God,’ she said and drew up her knees to rest her head against them.

‘I think the jewellery Amy told you was inherited belonged to Simon Boatly and she stole it.’

‘Oh Christ,’ she muttered, still with her head on her knees.

‘She must have taken it when she was hiding out at his house in Henley.’

‘Did he know she had taken it?’

Reid shook his head, saying he doubted it and that Boatly was a very wealthy man who had probably not even looked at the jewellery for many years, as he had not even bothered to renew the insurance. He was by now aching with tiredness. Although so many unanswered questions had now been ironed out, the most important one remained: where Amy was now? It was as if Jo had read his mind because she looked up and stared at him before turning back to the firelight.

‘I don’t know where she is. She took the tiara and left early this morning.’

She got up and walked into the bedroom, as his head dropped forward and he jolted up.

‘This morning?’ he said loudly, getting to his feet.

She came out with the letter.

‘For Christ’s sake, I took it that she had left a while ago, but this morning?’

‘Yes,’ Jo snapped and pushed the letter towards him. ‘I have been out searching for her. I don’t know where she has gone, but they had not seen her at the bus station. I asked everyone and searched all the roads but she was nowhere to be seen. I don’t know where she has gone, she could have hitched a ride. She’s broken my heart, just walked out on me as if all we have been through together stands for nothing. I don’t know how she could do that to me.’

He was not even listening as he stood by the lit candle reading the letter. Finishing it, he folded it and held it out for her to take.

‘Well, what she has written certainly answers many of the questions I have wondered about for so long, especially over Amy’s state of mind and why she ran away from her parents. Question is, do you believe everything she has written is true?’ he asked.

Jo pressed the folded pages to her chest. ‘How do I know if anything she has told me is the truth any more?’

‘Do you remember when I saw you at the school I said that we suspected Amy was prostituting herself…?’

‘Yes, I asked her about that.’

‘And…?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows.

‘She’d seen her father with prostitutes and wanted to know why and how long he’d been seeing them, but was scared to ask him. She was confused and thought that if she dressed up in her school uniform she could get closer to the girls and talk to them. A man pulled up in a car and asked her something but she didn’t hear him so she asked what he wanted and he drove away. One of the prostitutes threatened her, she was scared and ran off.’

Reid smiled ironically, realizing the actual innocence of the situation, and thought to himself how crass it was that DCS Douglas was convinced from the CCTV that Amy treated prostitution as some sort of hobby. He took a deep breath and sat down. ‘Listen, I am really exhausted. I mean, part of me wants to go out and drive around to try and find her, but I think it will be more beneficial to search in daylight. I also think I need to tell you what has happened in the UK and the shockwaves her disappearance has caused.’