mirror again. I knew, from the police report, that Korin’s Ford Focus had been towed away and impounded. It had never been claimed, because Korin was never found and she had no family to take ownership of it in her absence. After six months sitting in a pen, the Focus was eventually sold for scrap.
While I was still thinking of that, my eyes happened to move to the exterior of the cabin and I noticed a slim L-shaped tube made from black rubber poking out of the side of it. It was like a downpipe. Its end was embedded in a patch of concrete and secured there with rivets the size of ten-pence pieces. It took me a moment to realize what it was, but then I looked to the CCTV camera, mounted on a pole at the entrance, and saw wiring breaking out of the ground at its base from a similar rubber tube.
It’s the wiring for the security system .
I remembered then what Ewan Tasker had told me. The security system here was old, disc-based, which meant the recording equipment must be inside the cabin.
I gestured to the downpipe. ‘I don’t suppose you’d bewilling to let me take a look at the CCTV footage from the day Lynda disappeared, would you?’
‘If it were possible, son, you’d be welcome to it,’ Fordyce said, producing a big bunch of keys from his pocket. Each one was marked with a number.
‘But it’s not?’
‘We keep six months of discs inside.’
‘And after that?’
‘After that, they get dumped. The police might have a copy, though.’
I smiled, trying not to show my disappointment. I was going to have to find some magical way of building friendships with Avon and Somerset Police.
‘Did you ever see the footage yourself?’ I asked.
‘Over someone’s shoulder, yeah.’
‘What did you make of it?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s like they said.’
‘She just vanishes?’
‘She comes into the car park here …’ He paused, looking towards the peninsula. ‘And she never comes back out again.’
11
The traffic was much heavier on the way back to London, but I still made it home by 11 a.m. My phone had pinged a couple of times on the way up, so I knew I had emails waiting, and when I sat down at the back of the house with my laptop, the sun beating down, I saw they were both from Spike.
I’d really been hoping for a response from Wendy, but it was still 5 a.m. in Minnesota, so I decided to give it another couple of hours before chasing her up.
In the end, there wasn’t much to get excited about in what Spike had sent over, even though he’d collated information from a much bigger time period. He’d got me statements, financial history, phone records, emails, but – as I meticulously went through it all – it became clear that, if the search for Lynda Korin had stalled, it hadn’t been because White had missed an email, or a phone call, or a clear and damning piece of evidence. That was a disappointment and a relief: it meant there were no new leads in what Spike had sent me, and he’d spent all night wasting his time on my behalf; equally, it meant the focus of the search had narrowed, and I could concentrate my efforts elsewhere. For now, that meant the inscription I’d found in the tree at Stoke Point, and the article in Cine magazine.
I spent some time doing the same searches for Lake Calhoun as I’d done earlier, making sure I hadn’t overlooked anything. When it was clear I hadn’t, I set that strand of the investigation aside until I could speak to Wendy, and switched tack. It wasn’t just the name of the lake that hadbeen carved into the tree, it was also the image of an old-style movie projector. I didn’t know who had put it there or why, but the name of the lake was an obvious link to Lynda Korin – so it was logical to assume the projector was too. That made me think that I needed to know more about her film career, such as it was.
In the end, it took about five minutes to bring myself up to speed. I didn’t need to read user reviews to know that Korin’s films were
While I was still thinking of that, my eyes happened to move to the exterior of the cabin and I noticed a slim L-shaped tube made from black rubber poking out of the side of it. It was like a downpipe. Its end was embedded in a patch of concrete and secured there with rivets the size of ten-pence pieces. It took me a moment to realize what it was, but then I looked to the CCTV camera, mounted on a pole at the entrance, and saw wiring breaking out of the ground at its base from a similar rubber tube.
It’s the wiring for the security system .
I remembered then what Ewan Tasker had told me. The security system here was old, disc-based, which meant the recording equipment must be inside the cabin.
I gestured to the downpipe. ‘I don’t suppose you’d bewilling to let me take a look at the CCTV footage from the day Lynda disappeared, would you?’
‘If it were possible, son, you’d be welcome to it,’ Fordyce said, producing a big bunch of keys from his pocket. Each one was marked with a number.
‘But it’s not?’
‘We keep six months of discs inside.’
‘And after that?’
‘After that, they get dumped. The police might have a copy, though.’
I smiled, trying not to show my disappointment. I was going to have to find some magical way of building friendships with Avon and Somerset Police.
‘Did you ever see the footage yourself?’ I asked.
‘Over someone’s shoulder, yeah.’
‘What did you make of it?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s like they said.’
‘She just vanishes?’
‘She comes into the car park here …’ He paused, looking towards the peninsula. ‘And she never comes back out again.’
11
The traffic was much heavier on the way back to London, but I still made it home by 11 a.m. My phone had pinged a couple of times on the way up, so I knew I had emails waiting, and when I sat down at the back of the house with my laptop, the sun beating down, I saw they were both from Spike.
I’d really been hoping for a response from Wendy, but it was still 5 a.m. in Minnesota, so I decided to give it another couple of hours before chasing her up.
In the end, there wasn’t much to get excited about in what Spike had sent over, even though he’d collated information from a much bigger time period. He’d got me statements, financial history, phone records, emails, but – as I meticulously went through it all – it became clear that, if the search for Lynda Korin had stalled, it hadn’t been because White had missed an email, or a phone call, or a clear and damning piece of evidence. That was a disappointment and a relief: it meant there were no new leads in what Spike had sent me, and he’d spent all night wasting his time on my behalf; equally, it meant the focus of the search had narrowed, and I could concentrate my efforts elsewhere. For now, that meant the inscription I’d found in the tree at Stoke Point, and the article in Cine magazine.
I spent some time doing the same searches for Lake Calhoun as I’d done earlier, making sure I hadn’t overlooked anything. When it was clear I hadn’t, I set that strand of the investigation aside until I could speak to Wendy, and switched tack. It wasn’t just the name of the lake that hadbeen carved into the tree, it was also the image of an old-style movie projector. I didn’t know who had put it there or why, but the name of the lake was an obvious link to Lynda Korin – so it was logical to assume the projector was too. That made me think that I needed to know more about her film career, such as it was.
In the end, it took about five minutes to bring myself up to speed. I didn’t need to read user reviews to know that Korin’s films were
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