‘Might as well stay. I’d like to talk to you too – so no reason we can’t kill two birds with one stone, for now …’
Charlie stared at him, tension locking his features into a mask of what looked like impatience. ‘Whatever,’ he said.
Ratcliffe put his hand up in a gesture of peace. ‘It’s just a chat, nothing formal. Not yet. I wouldn’t be here on my own if that was the case.’
His words didn’t do anything to alter the other man’s demeanour.
Ratcliffe heard the lock click back. Rachel was dressed and standing pensive, but with the door wide open.
***
‘Tell me about Stella – what’s she like?’
Rachel looked from Ratcliffe to Charlie, taking her time in constructing a suitable answer. ‘Stella is quiet, nondescript and timid really. She cared for my mother after her stroke, which wasn’t an easy task. The fact that she’s gone surprises me. She loved The Limes. I didn’t think she would ever leave. I don’t know what to tell you really. She might have changed. I’m not sure I would know her at all any more.’
‘You said “my mother” – that’s an odd thing to say. What do you mean?’ The distinction in her words had sprung out at him.
Rachel sighed. ‘Stella is my half-sister. She’s Valerie, my mother’s, stepchild. Stella’s mother died when she was young. Our father married Mother when Stella was twelve. She had Frances already and I came later. The Limes was her birth mother’s family home, so Stella always had more of a connection to it than the rest of us I suppose. I think she felt it was more hers than ours. Our father inherited it when his first wife died and Mother got it after he went.’
‘So Frances is a half-sister too?’ Ratcliffe asked. Rachel nodded, her face tense. He guessed that Frances might be a sore subject. ‘What happened to your father?’
‘I never knew him. He died when I was a baby. We didn’t talk about him. Mother wouldn’t and Stella wasn’t allowed to. The past was always the past with Mother.’
Ratcliffe turned to Charlie. ‘Do you remember him?’
‘Before my time – never knew him. My mum mentioned him from time to time. She didn’t think much of him.’
Having met Delia Jones, Ratcliffe wasn’t surprised at this. Other than her own son, Delia didn’t seem to have a high opinion of anyone. He turned back to Rachel. ‘Have you managed to remember anything about where Stella might have gone – friends or relatives she may have decided to visit?’ he asked.
Rachel shook her head. ‘There are no relatives, and no friends. Stella is a shy person so she never had friends. Our mother didn’t encourage friends. But I’ve not seen them for a long time – maybe that changed.’
Despite his questions Ratcliffe knew more about the family than he was choosing to let on. Angie had done some homework on them. ‘What about the shop? Didn’t Stella work in the family business? Might she have met people there?’ The Porters had owned a haberdashery, closed for years now, but Stella had worked there.
‘I really don’t know. I think the shop closed when our mother got ill. I haven’t seen them for so long, I don’t know. I’m sorry but I’m really not much help.’
He turned to Charlie. ‘What about you, Mr Jones? You knew her – where do you think she might have gone?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. I haven’t set eyes on her for thirty years. Neither did I want to. Sorry, Rach, but you know it’s true.’ Ratcliffe knew it was true too. The last time Charlie Jones had clapped eyes on Stella Baxter was the day she had given evidence against him in court.
He sighed. Why the hell did none of these people know anything? ‘Rachel, do you have a photograph of her?’
Rachel laughed as if surprised by the request. ‘No. We didn’t do photos, unless Frances has one. There are pictures of her wedding, I think.’
Ratcliffe nodded. Typical. ‘OK. Now can you tell us anything about the body that you found yesterday, the child?’
It was the first time that Rachel had shown any real emotion in front of him. Her eyes began to fill with tears as she shook her head. ‘I don’t know, I really don’t. I didn’t even know that there was a cupboard there until yesterday. Oh my God, I can’t believe that someone would do that to a baby!’ she said, her voice trembling.
Ratcliffe noticed Charlie’s body stiffen at Rachel’s words. ‘People are capable of some terrible things,’ he said, looking straight at Charlie.
Charlie looked away.
He asked a few more generic questions and got no further forward. Whatever these two were hiding, he wasn’t going to get it out of them in the casual confines of a hotel room. Sooner or later he’d have to call them both in for a formal interview, put them under a bit more pressure. For now they’d at least given him a few hints as to which direction those formal interviews would take. In Ratcliffe’s mind nothing was ever wasted.
As he drove back to the station he figured that there was no alternative but to get a picture of Stella and give it to the press as soon as possible. Someone would have seen her recently. All they had to do was pick her up when that someone came forward, and they would – they always did. Whatever had gone on in that house over the years, Stella was the one who would know; Ratcliffe was convinced of it.
Strangely, it still bugged him that Charlie had been in Rachel’s room. The air between them had been crackling with tension when he had walked in and whatever their agenda was, it was surely loaded with something more than curiousity.
It hadn’t taken him long to work out that there was more between Charlie Jones and Rachel Porter than met the eye – Charlie’s links to the Porter house went further than his past criminal record. The fact that his mother owned a photograph of a girl who was the spit of Rachel had sparked Ratcliffe’s instincts and he’d been more than a little smug when the team had turned up a marriage certificate and a birth certificate.
Maybe Rachel and Charlie assumed that he already knew that they were married, but neither of them had volunteered it and there had been no mention of their child. Though Jones had balked when Rachel got upset about the dead baby. If Rachel was telling the truth about having left years before and having no contact, she had left her kid too.
She came across as a nice woman – shy, worried, but nice. Could a woman who’d left her own child be called nice? It depended on the circumstances he supposed, but Charlie Jones had been convicted of murder and quite frankly Ratcliffe wouldn’t have left Delia Jones in charge of his dog. To leave a baby with those two would be a determinedly odd thing to choose. Rachel Porter needled him. She wasn’t what she appeared to be and there was far more to that situation than met the eye. And he was going to find out what it was.
***
Back in the incident room, he picked up a message to call Ferris. News was in on the bodies. All he wanted at that point was a decent cuppa and time to think, not a visit to the morgue.
Why couldn’t these forensic people just send a report? He never had understood the necessity of having to be shown the gruesome evidence in all its glory laid out on a slab. What was he supposed to do with the mental images? Chat about them to his wife over dinner? Although it might make an interesting change to Maria Ratcliffe’s usual moaning. Not that he could blame her for getting hacked off. She was a good woman who’d had to put up with a lot from him over the years.
Ferris had completed a basic exam on both victims. Her initial conclusions were that Baxter, whose identity she had confirmed by discovering his wallet still intact inside his rotting clothes, had still been alive when he was placed in the trunk. She showed the detective the feeble scratch marks that scarred the underside of the lid.
‘I don’t