She almost managed to leave the thought in her head, the words unspoken. She did succeed in cutting it off at the knees, the bit that got past her completely innocuous. It could have been anything that she’d started to say and then thought better of.
But it wasn’t just anyone she’d started to say it to. Gabriel Ash had made his living by reading signs that were hardly there and extrapolating from fragments of evidence to the facts they were evidence of. He heard what people hadn’t said, what they had carefully avoided saying. Almost, he heard their thoughts. He heard Hazel’s thought, and it went straight through his armor and exploded in his gut.
“You thought I’d have understood that?” His voice was low, his dark eyes burning. “What, as a father myself? As the father of dead children—is that what you meant?”
Regret for her clumsiness rose in a dull flush up Hazel’s cheek. “Gabriel, I didn’t mean—”
“Of course you meant it. You thought that the way I feel about my sons is the way Mickey Argyle feels about his daughter.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Oh, that boat has sailed!”
They stared at each other for another moment, then Ash looked away. He gave a sigh of infinite weariness. “I’m sorry. I … overreact. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. You may even be right. Being a career criminal doesn’t prevent you from loving your children the same way law-abiding fathers do. Maybe I’m wrong, and Mickey Argyle would lay down not just his liberty but his life for any of his children, and do it willingly.
“But what if I’m right? What if all those years of preying on other people’s children have left him incapable of holding normal feelings for his own? What if it’s not that big a step from selling the drugs that kill other men’s daughters to deciding he’d rather sacrifice his own than spend the rest of his life behind bars?
“Men—not career criminals, but what you’d call ordinary men—have killed their children for crying during
Match of the Day
. Can you be sure that Alice Argyle, who defied her father and fell in love with a black law student, who faced up to him and told him so, who knows her fiancé is dead and who’s to blame, is going to do what’s necessary for his safety? Can she keep her mouth shut? Can she convince her father she’ll go on keeping it shut even when he’s not there to muzzle her?”
And when he put it like that, Hazel felt the doubt creeping back. Alice could be in real danger. “We have to find her, check that she’s all right. Give her some options about what happens next.”
She made some phone calls. To Durham University, where Alice had missed a week’s lectures. To some of her friends there, none of whom had heard from Alice since the previous Tuesday. Even, posing as one of those friends, to the Argyle house, where Phyllis Argyle said her daughter was unwell and couldn’t come to the phone.
“But she’s all right?” pressed Hazel. “She’s going to be all right?”
“Of course she is, dear,” said Mrs. Argyle; and it could have been imagination, but Hazel detected a hollow quality to her voice that was less than reassuring.
After she’d rung off Hazel sat for a moment looking at Ash. Then she passed a hand across her mouth. “You’re right. At least, you
may
be right. Nobody can contact her. Her mother says she’s at home in bed, but she sounded scared. I think she knows Mickey could hurt the girl and doesn’t know what to do about it.”
“What do
we
do about it?”
Hazel knew the answer to that one. “If someone’s in danger, that’s a job for the police. I’ll call…” And there the reality of the situation ambushed her. “I can’t call Meadowvale because Donald Murchison, and anyone else on Argyle’s payroll, will be keeping him informed. I could force his hand—push him into killing her now in case he doesn’t get the chance later.”
“IPCC?” suggested Ash.
“Yes.” Hazel nodded. “I could tell Rossi. What I can’t do is make him believe me. All he knows of me is that I’ve told him a story that’s radically different from everyone else’s at Meadowvale. If he has me marked down as a fantasist, telling him Argyle might murder his daughter won’t make him revise that opinion.”
“Then what?” Ash was on his feet, his arms clasped about his thin body, his voice rough with a kind of angry despair. “What do you suggest we do? There’s a nineteen-year-old girl out there somewhere, she’s already lost her fiancé, and if we know she’s in danger from her father, you can bet your life she does. What are we going to do about Alice Argyle?”
“I could try Mr. Fountain,” said Hazel reluctantly.
“Chief Superintendent Fountain? Who suspended you for telling the truth?”
“Maybe he hadn’t much choice. You know, rock.… hard place …
him.
He always treated me with respect, even when he didn’t want to believe what I was telling him. I don’t think he thinks I’m lying. I think he hopes that I’m wrong, because it’ll be easier to deal with an overenthusiastic constable than a corrupt sergeant. But I think he’ll listen if I go to him with this. I think he’ll do something about it.”
“You can’t go anywhere near Meadowvale. It isn’t safe.”
“No. I’ll phone him.”
“All right,” said Ash. He had nothing better to offer. “Give it a try.”
CHAPTER 24
H
AZEL KEPT HER
guard up. She didn’t want all Meadowvale knowing she’d been in touch again. She told the switchboard she was calling from Division about a management seminar being organized for the deputy chief constable. It was a clever deceit: it sounded both official and uninteresting, and something that required her to talk to Chief Superintendent Fountain in person. If he wasn’t there, she’d have to call back.
God was on the side of the small battalion. Miss Patel asked Hazel to wait a moment, and then the unmistakable gruff Yorkshire voice came on. “
What
management seminar?”
“Sorry, sir, I made it up.” She thought, from the quality of the silence and the way it stretched, that he recognized her voice immediately. But she didn’t want to give him an excuse for hanging up on her, so she said it anyway. “It’s Constable Best, sir. I know—you were looking forward to some peace and quiet. But you need to hear this.”
To his credit he heard her out, and neither snorted nor laughed when she said where her concerns about Alice Argyle had originated. When she’d finished, after another protracted pause Fountain said, “What exactly do you want me to do?”
“Make sure Alice is safe.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“No, sir. But if she isn’t updating her Facebook page, I’m guessing she’s nowhere with wi-fi access. Not at Durham and not at home.”
“You want me to find her.”
“You have the resources. I don’t.”
“True enough.” Fountain considered. “I still don’t have any evidence—actual evidence, the sort of thing juries like—against her father.”
“You don’t need it. You don’t need to accuse him of anything. Just say that you’re concerned for her safety and need to see her. What responsible father can say no?”
“
Responsible
and
Mickey Argyle
are two things not normally found in the same sentence.”
“I know that,” said Hazel, “and you know that. But Argyle can’t use it as a reason for not producing her! He may know that the only threat to his daughter is him, but he can’t say that, either. If you ask, he has to cooperate. He’s giving you grounds for suspicion if he doesn’t.”
More silence while the chief superintendent thought. “You’re not afraid that an approach will bounce him into doing something rash?”
Hazel had already considered that. “Not yet. It’s less than a week since Jerome was killed—he probably still believes he can talk Alice around, convince her either that it wasn’t his doing or else it was for the best. In another week or two, if she’s still not buying it, that’s when he’ll start wondering what he has to do to protect himself. He can’t keep her under wraps forever. Even if he could bully his family into keeping quiet, she’d be missed at Durham.”
“But in that case,” rumbled Fountain, “he’s not going to want her talking to me. He can’t risk her telling me that her father killed her fiancé!”
“It
is
a risk,” agreed Hazel, “and he won’t like taking it. But what choice does he have? If you ask to see Alice, he has to decide which is the most dangerous—refusing, or producing her, with the caveat that she’s in a terrible state emotionally, she hardly knows what she’s saying, the poor girl even thinks
he
might have been involved.… He has to take the risk. He can put the fear of God into her first, he can no doubt produce a medical certificate from some tame quack saying she’s in a state of grief-induced psychosis and nothing she says can be counted on, but I think he has to let you see her.”
“All right, so I see her. What then?”
“Protective custody?”
“Constable Best,” he said wearily, “were you absent from training college the day they covered
just cause
? I can’t take someone into protective custody because someone with a good future in the police behind her and someone else who talks to his dog think it might be a good idea!”
The way he put it was unnecessarily brutal, but Hazel had to concede his point. “The mere fact that you’ve asked to see her should be enough to keep her safe. If Argyle knows you’re watching him, he can’t hurt her. He knows what you’d find if he gave you a reason to look.”
“I’ve been looking at Mickey Argyle for ten years,” growled Johnny Fountain. “Don’t you think he’ll assume that, if he’s been smarter than me for that long, he can be smarter than me for a bit longer?”
Hazel had no answer to that. She’d thrown every bit of persuasion she could muster into her argument. If it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough. The problem was what it had been all along: the lack of forensic evidence. If Chief Superintendent Fountain thought her case too flimsy, he wouldn’t want to pin his reputation to it.
But it was a girl’s
life
they were talking about. The life of a nineteen-year-old girl. And whatever her father had or hadn’t done, and whatever he might or might not do in the future, Alice was entitled to the protection of the law as much as anyone else. And Johnny Fountain was the embodiment of the law in Norbold. He
had
to find a way to help her.
After an agonizing minute and a half, it seemed that was the conclusion he’d reached. He vented a gusty sigh that reached all the way from Meadowvale. “Hazel, Hazel.” She could hear him shaking his head. “What a dull place Norbold was before they posted you here! Yes, all right. I’ll tell Argyle I need to see his daughter. After all, if she knew the Cardy boy, it’s reasonable enough that we should want to speak to her. Then I suppose we play it by ear. If she says anything, I’ll act on it. And if she doesn’t, maybe Argyle will take the view that she never will. I’ll let you know how I get on.”
Even then, with relief washing around under her heart, and even at the risk of offending him, Hazel remained circumspect. “I’ll call you, yes?”
Fountain seemed not to notice her lack of trust. “Give me twenty-four hours. And Hazel…”
“Sir?”
“Be careful. You did the right thing. But as you’ve discovered, righteousness isn’t always a shield. Sometimes it’s a target.”
* * *
Ash took Patience for a walk. Hazel tidied the cottage. He made coffee; she made lunch. Three hours had passed. Ash washed the pots and Hazel took Patience for a walk. The road turned to a track beyond the cottage, so she went that way.
It wasn’t picture-postcard countryside. It was too flat, and the stretching vistas of new green crops needed the punctuation of trees and houses and people. Right now, though, it was ideal for Hazel’s purposes. She wanted space around her, and no people. She didn’t want to be worrying what lay behind the blank canvas of strangers’ faces, or whether a passing car was just that or a sign they’d been discovered. She saw a tractor perhaps a mile away, and one car trundling along a stretch of elevated laneway not much closer, and no people at all.
Town dwellers are afraid of what might befall them in remote, unpopulated areas. Hazel—essentially a country girl—knew that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the biggest danger to people is other people. If you want to feel safe, being alone is a good start.
She sat on a bank amid the primroses, her knees drawn up to her chin, watching the white dog root around under the hedge. After a while, feeling her gaze, the animal turned with an amiable grin and ambled over to sit beside her, scratching an ear with a back paw.
“So what do you make of all this?” asked Hazel. “I suppose
you
think we’re on holiday, and it’s a nice change from cars and crowds and pavements. Although what I suspect you
really
think,” she went on, warming to the task of second-guessing a dog, “is that you don’t care where the hell you are as long as you’re with him.” She glanced back the way they’d come. “Which is the best thing about dogs, and why people put themselves to trouble and expense to keep one. Dogs love you without qualification. It doesn’t matter to you that folk think he’s crazy. It wouldn’t matter to you if he
was
crazy, as long as he looked after you. A very simple view of the world, dogs have. Which is not altogether a bad thing.”
The white dog turned her head to look into Hazel’s face, happy drool trailing from the corners of her mouth. Then she licked Hazel’s nose.
“Er—thanks.” She went for her handkerchief; then she paused, worrying that she might cause offense;
then
she reminded herself, impatiently,
It’s just a dog!
—and wiped the cool wet spot off her face. So far as she could tell, Patience didn’t take umbrage.
They strolled back to the cottage.
Or almost. A hundred yards from the garden gate the dog suddenly froze. The hackles on her shoulders rose and a low growl like machinery came from her chest.
All Hazel’s instincts were honed for danger. Maybe it was just a wandering badger the lurcher had got wind of, or the local stud come to check out the new bitch on his patch, but Hazel wasn’t taking any chances. She grabbed the dog’s collar and crushed the pair of them into the hedge. “Shhh!”