Helen Callaghan - Dear Amy

In the midst of this, within an hour of Bethan’s last sighting, Peggy died on the operating table. While she was under the knife, it became clear that there had been nothing accidental about her death – her skull bore clear, sharp little hammer marks, and bloodstains later confirmed that she’d been killed in her home and dragged to the doorstop after she had been seen waving Bethan off at the door.

The police visited the school, to nod sagely over tearful testimonies and the wringing hands of the headmistress. Flyers of Bethan’s face appeared in the local shops, were nailed to telephone poles and taped to streetlamps. The papers cried for public enquiries, for people to be sacked, for safer streets, for a return of the death penalty. The Fens and the river were all searched.

There was nothing.

But life continues for all the living, and Bethan was slowly forgotten. Two months after her disappearance, a stout middle-aged woman called Angie Holloway was walking her dog at nine in the morning along a public bridleway that tracks out west to the Fen edge. I know it well – Eddy and I had taken long summer walks along it in our early courtship, as it passed a rather marvellous country pub called the Black Swan, which served an exemplary steak pie. The pub, like our marriage, changed hands and has closed down now.

The gravel track crossed a stream called Bin Brook, and it was there that Angie spotted a white rag, stained with maroon-brown, flying like a banner from one of the posts lining the bridge, caught up in the chicken-wire fencing. There was something about the stains that drew Angie’s attention; that and the fragile white fabric. It was a nylon nightdress with lacy edges, of the type not currently fashionable, and liberally drenched in blood.

Angie was able to testify that this garment had not been on the bridge post the previous day. The hunt began again in earnest, and the forests and hills were scoured once more, the locals questioned, and all the houses, great and small, searched to no effect. The inquiry had become, through a process of slow degrees, a murder investigation.

A team of frogmen arrived to dredge the brook. At the end of three weeks, they had found a vertebra, which later turned out to belong to a sheep. They never found anything else, ever, though they dug all around the surrounding parkland. The bloodstained nightdress was, to all intents and purposes, the entire estate of Bethan Avery. Little enough to have, and anyone could have disputed her possession of it.

For instance, me. I dispute it. I’ve read the letters sent to me from someone who says she’s Bethan Avery. What if she had escaped her captor in some way; injured, yes, but not killed? Who knows, or could dream, what terrors or pressures controlled her? What sort of woman would she be, seventeen years on? She would be utterly different from the girl who’d been lured away and seized. And she’d also be the same girl, trapped and terrified, living an ancient lie. Somewhere out there a child cried out within the woman for comfort, for rescue, for escape…

The thought chilled me.

Then again, conceivably some pervert, hunched over a Formica table long after his wife and children had gone to bed, with palms sweating and brow contorting, had penned these letters to me, dwelling lovingly on his fictional heroine’s helplessness.

Perhaps it was even someone who knew what had happened to Katie Browne.

I didn’t get around to mentioning any of this to anyone. I tried the police with the second letter, urging them to consider both in the light of Katie’s disappearance. They were polite and attentive, they offered me institution-grade instant coffee in a tiny paper cup while I talked, but they were absolutely not convinced. I was being indulged, and I knew it. It felt worse than the first time, when they had actually laughed at me. That at least had been an honest response.

I tried to get them to take the letters, which they reluctantly agreed to do, but there was something about their attitude that made me think they considered me a crazy person and that the letters were likely to go straight in the bin the minute I was out of the building. I suspect that I was being paranoid and that they would have done nothing so rankly unprofessional, but I couldn’t shake the idea once it had entered my head. In the end, they took the photocopies, and I left with the letters still in their brown paper envelope, tucked in my bag.

I had taken to calling by the Examiner every other day, though Bethan, or whoever it was, had fallen silent.

But on 14 November, I received an email.

Dear Mrs Lewis,

Forgive me for contacting you like this. I obtained your details from the Cambridgeshire police.

I understand that a couple of weeks ago you received some disturbing letters, and that copies of these were handed into the station in Cambridge. I am writing to tell you that after some tedious detours these copies have found their way to my office.

My name is Martin Forrester, and I am the senior criminologist in the Multi-Disciplinary Historical Analysis Team. At this point you’re probably wondering what we do, a question I frequently wrestle with myself. In simple terms, we work in partnership with various public bodies and police forces to analyse crime data.

I don’t know who is writing you these letters. I do know that we compared the handwriting in them to copies we have of Bethan Avery’s diaries – excerpts from these diaries are reproduced in Moore’s book. As you observed to the police yourself, the handwriting in the letters is similar.

However, there are other reasons why the letters are interesting. To that end, and with your permission, we want to show the original letters to the forensics expert that worked on the case at the time.

If you can assist us in this, please contact me at my email address – mdf17@crim.cam.ac.uk – or call me at the Institute.

I look forward to discussing this with you in person soon.

Yours sincerely,

Martin

P. S. I’m a big fan of your column.

Dr Martin Forrester

Head of Multi-Disciplinary Historical Analysis Team

Institute of Criminology

Cambridge University

Cambridge

01223 335360 (ext. 9873)

I wrote an answer to Martin Forrester that evening on my MacBook Air while I was meant to be writing my column. I had already Googled the Institute, and though I found the MHAT web page and his biography, there was maddeningly little information. I intended to dig a little further, perhaps find a picture of him, but within minutes of clicking Send , there was a reply.

‘You’re at St Hilda’s, right? Off Trumpington Road? M’

How had he known that? At the police station I had appeared in the character of Dear Amy, or rather the Margot Lewis who worked under that name. I hadn’t mentioned my day job.

How curious.

‘I am,’ I replied, since it was pointless denying it. ‘Well guessed.’

It was designed as an opening, one where he could volunteer how he’d learned this about me, but he wasn’t drawn. It was impossible to tell whether this was subtlety or social denseness at this point. He was a Cambridge academic, I thought ruefully, and after marrying one I knew it could be either.

‘Could you meet me for coffee on Monday or Wednesday, depending on your schedule? M’

He was keen, I’ll give him that, and clearly quite direct. I typed a quick answer: ‘I have a free period between 11 and 1 on Monday, if that works. I’ll bring the letters with me.’

Within thirty seconds, my email pinged in reply.