No stone unturned

Talking to friends

On her return to the incident room Barbara informed James that there was no CCTV at the pub but she and other officers had spoken with Elizabeth’s colleagues, on the evening of the 12th about 7 p.m. eight of them had taken over a small private room in the eagles pub, and they had ordered food and bottles of wine to be brought up from the bar. The evening was to be a bachelorette for their co-worker April. At just after twelve the party broke up. Two of the girls’ husbands had turned up to give them a lift home and April who had not been drinking that much had her car, had offered to give two of the girls a ride home as they lived quite close to each other. The other two phoned a uber, but Elizabeth had said she would get her own as she lived in the opposite direction.

The last sighting of Elizabeth was as the girls were driven off in their uber. She had waved to them from outside the pub, standing in the car park.

All the girls were certain that Elizabeth had been the last to leave. None of them could recall ever seeing a butch lady near them and not one of them said that Elizabeth was the type of girl to get into a stranger’s car, let alone agree to have s*x with a woman.

Elizabeth was a very calm, quite woman and in a loving relationship with her husband. April in particular, was inconsolable. She said that Elizabeth was one of the nicest people she had ever known, always helpful and had bought a beautiful wedding gift. She swept when she said that Elizabeth had confided that she and her husband Mike were desperate for a child and were saving for IVF treatment as Elizabeth has some medical problems with her fallopian tubes. She was adamant that Elizabeth would not have accepted a lift from Linton (even if it were a woman), she was by far too cautious.

Barbara said their accounts of the evening matched Linton’s description of seeing the group of girls leaving the pub just after closing time, but if Elizabeth had been going to get her own uber home it seemed strange that she should start to walk up the road as Linton had described. James wondered if yet again Linton was lying and she had in fact hit her over the head and dragged her into the van whilst still in the eagle car park.