How do you know this?
KH is CV. CV + KF had been previously trained by MH at the PoW and returned to cover for him while he was on holiday. KH claims to be the person who found the lost items and said this was on Sunday. AFAIK the only source for this being on Friday is AL, who also however says he and SJL never went there. Sunday makes more sense if CV and KF were covering from the Monday.
That was how I read it too. Under a pub is a terrible hiding place; only the manager at the time she disappeared could have done that (or connived at letting someone else do it).
That's actually quite a good shout in that it shows nobody has disturbed that space since then. However, he rather undermines this by later mentioning that somebody had in fact disturbed that space. About 8 years later, the floor was lowered. I can't imagine how you take up floorboards, put in supporting joists or whatever lower down, then put the floorboards back without noticing a dead body where the floor had been.
The claim that KH handed the plod a phone number when they arrived in 1986 arose in 1987, when he was re-interviewed. The plods concerned claimed they had no recollection of his doing so. Either they were incompetent, or he misremembered. Either seems equally plausible.
The anomalies in KH's words and actions do a lot of heavy lifting in DV's account. KH may have been alone in the pub at lunchtime, if the handover stocktake prevented normal opening, but this doesn't get bottomed out. The pub could have been open and with the usual punters and staff about. If he actually was alone there, then the only source that SJL never turned up there was him. The decision not to search based on that looks negligent. It was one of five places she was known - or plausibly likely - to have headed, the others being home, her parents' house, 123SR and 37SR, all of which were searched. If she'd come to harm there obviously he'd say she never showed. It's potty to search 123SR but not the pub.
Either KH mentioned these phone calls in 1986 or he didn't. If he did, one wonders where the followup went - I'm not aware of any having been done (Barley and Dickie are both very confused on this, thinking the calls were made to the office). If he did not, then one wonders why he mentioned them first only a year later.
The only reason I can think of is that if he had something to hide - a huge 'if', on what we know - then in 1986, it made sense to say she was due at 6pm and never showed. A year later, he's seen the photos of the diary page with a 6pm appointment proving she cannot ever have intended to go to the PoW at 6. So the story changes to suggest she was expected - and was inquired after - sooner, or at no special time.
The other oddity about KH is that according to MH, it was only a year later that he found out the missing items that turned up belonged to Britain's most famous missing person. The police turned up at the PoW in 1987 to reinterview the landlord and that's when he discovered they previously interviewed the relief landlord. So in 1986 MH gets back from holiday, asks KH if anything happened and KH evidently said Nah, quiet mostly. Eh?!
