Double Fault (10 page)

‘You would. Unless people don't want to be found. And we are talking twenty years ago, at least for Manton. Perkins – remind me when he left?' Fran yawned, by way of an excuse for her memory, though she couldn't recall ever having heard a date. The case hadn't been hers, after all.

‘June 1993. So he didn't make an immediate bolt. Which makes him look less like the killer.'

‘Logic? I'm sorry: I'm brain-dead without my siesta,' she lied. Actually, maybe she was telling the truth.

‘Because if he'd killed all the kids the false wall would hold, you'd have thought he'd go looking for others and other places.'

Fran felt sick. Nothing to do with Madge's driving, which still, like Dizzy's, would have done an undertaker credit.

‘After all,' Madge continued, ‘all the evidence suggests that once a man – and of course, it usually is a man – gets a taste for killing, he's not going to stop just because he hits a tiny snag. He'll find another source of victims, another place to stow them.'

Fran said quietly, ‘We'll just have to hope the reason we can't run Perkins or Manton to earth – whichever one did it, or both in cahoots, of course – is that they're dead.'

Mark sank into her better visitor's chair as if it was as comfortable as a bed.

‘The reason people have children when they're young,' he said, ‘is that they've got enough energy to keep an eye on them. And keep up with them. And answer inane and/or very sensible questions.'

‘But you were on the train most of the time – six hours doing nothing but relax,' she pointed out, tongue in cheek. She dunked a tea bag for him, and passed him a chunk of dark chocolate.

‘So I was!' He slapped his forehead. ‘And there I was forgetting the time at Steam! Not to mention the trip round some of the old works, now masquerading as a shopping centre. OK, an outlet, like Ashford's,' he conceded, ‘so at least the clothes and shoes Grandpa had to buy were discounted. I got some more tennis shoes for myself,' he added brightly, before recalling why he was in Fran's office. ‘Not that I can ever imagine playing again if we don't …'

‘In that case, we'd better find her, hadn't we? And PDQ. Go on, have some more – choc's supposed to be good for the heart, isn't it?'

‘I don't notice you pigging it down.'

‘With the wedding coming up? No, thank you.'

‘Marco tells me he's read on the internet that people who eat dark chocolate are slimmer than those who don't.'

‘Perhaps they don't eat anything else. OK. When you've wiped that bit off your mouth – just there – then we can talk to Ray. He's desperate for a breakthrough, and you've become a sort of talisman. I think he's right, actually – that you'll have absorbed far more club gossip than you think. And also that your recollection of the scene will be sharper than most.'

‘I'm an ex-cop, Fran, aren't I? Emphasis on ex. Not a thrusting new boy, with eyes like gimlets and ears like radar scanners. Which reminds me, I'm going to have to do something about my ears. I kept missing bits of what the kids were saying. Phoebe particularly – she's much squeakier than Marco, whose accent's becoming more British by the day.'

‘While Phoebe still sounds like an all-American girl. Those braces on her teeth can't make it any easier, poor kid.'

‘Right – Bugs Bunny with a mouth full of toffee. But I hope it'll be worth it,' he said dubiously. ‘Think of those celebs with the widest mouths you can imagine stacked with rows of incredibly white gnashers. They look deformed, some of them.'

Before she could respond, Ray Barlow phoned. Did they want to talk in his room or in hers? Hers, she rather thought.

‘
C
annabis Cop at Crime Scene! Crazy Ex-cop on Kidnap Case!
' Mark inserted quotation marks with his fingers. ‘You must be out of your minds, both of you. The media would have a field day. Don't you see? That was why I said I'd do back-room stuff. The moment I turn up at the club, someone in that posse of reporters will spot me and for want of something better to write about will go for my jugular. Again. And yours too.
Livvie Cops Stumped: Nutter on Case.
' He sat back in his chair, folding his arms implacably.

Ray Barlow smiled, just as he had in response to similar imaginary headlines conjured by Wren. More mildly, he suggested, like Mark hooking his fingers into quotation marks,
‘Have a Go Heroine takes over Livvie Case. Top Cop in Wheelchair visits Site.'

‘
Wheelchair
,' Fran squawked. ‘I don't even use a stick these days!'

‘Joe Public doesn't know that,' Ray said. ‘OK, how about a compromise? Elbow crutches? Just the one?'

She zipped her mouth. There was no need for them to know the pain trying to rely on one crutch had caused. Perhaps twisting her body for such a short time wouldn't have such a bad effect as prolonged use. Maybe she should consider the wheelchair after all …

‘They'd be so busy snapping you and hanging on your every word,' Ray continued, ‘that they wouldn't notice anyone else. Come on, Fran, you know you've got the pizzazz to carry off a solo performance and distract everyone's eye. Mark and I would just slip in as part of your entourage and not a soul would notice.'

‘Sand to Arabs, fridges to Eskimos,' Mark murmured. ‘All the same, Ray, I truly don't want to risk it.'

Ray looked him in the eye. ‘May I be blunt, Mark? When you were ACC not a lot of us in the force would have recognized you if we'd met you in the supermarket in civvies. I'm truly desperate here. Or I wouldn't ask. Would I? My judgement on the line too. And Fran's.'

‘He's done every last bit of forensics, Mark,' Fran put in, getting bored. ‘It isn't as if he's not tried to do without this.'

Mark clearly wasn't going to give in easily. ‘What about the raincoat? Has that made any difference?'

Ray shook his head. ‘Mock-up pictures of Livvie wearing the raincoat have been out with each regional news bulletin. It made the national headlines with the BBC and ITV; Channel Four are leading with something political but have promised coverage. But none of the CCTV in the areas has helped. It's as if some giant bird swooped down and took her off.' His grin was tired as he added, ‘And no, we've checked with the aviation authorities – Livingstone's chopper was where he said it was at the salient time. And I think even your Golden Oldies might have noticed one landing on your courts.'

Mark opened his mouth and shut it again. Then he said, ‘We might have noticed a high-wire act, or a trapeze artist too. Even Tarzan, provided he'd worn his leopard skin. Though with all the noise we'd probably not have heard his classic call.' He demonstrated, if quietly.

Undeterred, Ray returned to his original wish. ‘How about going in white coveralls, Mark? Complete with head gear? I wouldn't recognize my dad like that.'

Fran pulled herself to her feet and went walkabout, as if exercising her leg. In fact, she was exercising her mind. Letting it go blank. Or not. Leaning against the desk, she waited as Ray asked, ‘What noises might you have heard, had it not been for the kids? Say you turn up early for your lesson with Zac. No one but you there.'

‘Not a lot, as I said. The ears are going,' he told him apologetically. ‘So I don't get much birdsong these days.'

‘My dad went to Specsavers,' Ray said. ‘Lost his upper frequencies, apparently. How about things that are lower frequency?'

‘You mean such as cars and such? I can hear chainsaws in the woods, sometimes. The plop of other people's tennis balls.'

‘Before anyone else turns up.'

‘Pigeons. The odd cow. The loo emptying people. They always seem to arrive the same time as I do. But not, sadly, yesterday afternoon. Sad in more than one sense: because it might have been a lead and because the whole loo – well, you wouldn't have used it if you didn't have to, not after those kids and their poor aim had sprayed it.'

‘They take away the whole unit and replace it, do they?'

‘There's some pattern. Mostly they just empty the sump, or whatever they'd call it. Every so often we get a freshly sanitized one. Perhaps not often enough. Suffice to say when it's bad, like it is now, I'd swear some folks nip over or through the fence and use a tree. No names, no pack drill.'

Ray leafed through notes. ‘No mention of the loo anywhere on anyone's statements, as far as I can see at least. No, some lads used it. I don't see how it would help us, unless, as you say, the men who service it came during the game. Which you confirm they didn't.'

Fran started prowling again. ‘I heard you say, Mark, when you phoned Ray, that Livvie was a fastidious little girl. Would she have used the loo if it was foul?'

‘All the other kids did. I presume she did too … Ah.' He looked at her and held her gaze, before turning to Ray. ‘Any trace of her on the fencing? A hair, anything?'

‘Would you excuse me, guv, if I called the forensics people?'

Mark nodded. Neither Fran nor Ray showed any sign of registering his gaffe.

‘When you talk to them,' he said, pausing as Ray started to dial, ‘you might want to get them to see if they checked for any traces the far side of the nearest tree. I know she told Jayne she had to stay where she could see her dad, but I don't know any little girl who'd lower her knickers and pee where she could be seen. Or perhaps not the nearest tree. That'd smell too.'

Ray, already talking, raised a thumb.

Fran wandered to the window. ‘Nice bright evening. Remember we planned drinks on the terrace after work each day?'

‘We've managed them at weekends. Sometimes. OK, once or twice. When that wind wasn't blowing. Yes?' Mark asked Ray, now finished with his call.

‘They'll be checking within the hour. Fence and unofficial latrine. I've asked for a much wider sweep, too.'

‘Tell you what,' Mark said, ‘I'll take up your offer. What's one white suit more or less? So long as Fran does her one woman show for the media.'

‘No wheelchair, mind,' Fran said, as if it had ever been a serious suggestion. She reached for her jacket. She added as if she was happy with the idea, ‘But an elbow crutch if you insist. By the way,' she asked, as Mark passed it over, ‘what sort of car did that guy Stephen drive? The one with the dentist's appointment?'

‘A red Audi Three; not lipstick red, more towards the maroon end of the spectrum.' He gave a bemused look as Fran and Ray high-fived each other, and Ray reached for his phone again.

Fran leant towards Mark, and asked quietly, ‘Have you had time to phone Zac and his wife? As a friend, of Zac's at least?'

‘With the kids hanging on my every word? Actually, while they were off spending their Easter money, I did try. But I couldn't get past the Family Liaison woman – she sounds a veritable Gorgon.'

She could always offer to pull rank with the FLO and make sure Mark got through. But how would he feel about that?

‘I did insist she let Zac know I'd phoned and tell him to call me whenever he wanted,' he continued. ‘But since I'm neither flesh nor fowl – well, it's like this walk in the woods tonight, isn't it? I'm in a very grey area.'

She couldn't deny it. But as she reached to squeeze his hand, Ray ended his call and there was no chance to continue their conversation.

Fran wasn't known for giving impromptu press conferences, usually preferring to leave her front-line colleagues dealing with the case in question to front them. But today she would give a bravura performance, if her silence as they left her office was anything to go by.

‘I can almost hear the wheels turning,' Mark said, touching her temple as they walked to the car park. ‘Go for it, sweetheart!' He kissed her lightly on the lips, probably lese-majesty, of course, but what a man might do to the woman he loved. Although Ray was happy for him to travel with him and Fran, Mark was firm in rejecting the offer, and with a wave of the hand moved away to join the forensic team, with whom he'd be travelling.

He'd just be looking, not touching, he insisted. On Ray's orders someone gave him a clipboard so he'd look ultra-useful. He'd probably just doodle, something he'd seen Fran do profitably over the years. The more florid and complex the doodle, the more convinced you were she couldn't even be listening, let alone concentrating, and the more likely she was to come up with exactly what you needed. Pray God it worked for him this evening.

Fancy remembering the car like that. Funny thing, memory.

Smiling wryly, he nonetheless kicked himself for his earlier refusal to come along – he should have trusted Ray to manage the press, who were penned at the end of the long, potholed track to the club. Even keen snappers, perched on stepladders, with cameras capable of shooting images in the dark wouldn't be able to spy into the crucial area. Since the track curved back and forth and was lined with clumps of mature trees, not yet fully in leaf but dense nonetheless, their ultra long-focus lenses would be useless. The personnel carrier swept past them. Just to make sure no one would be able to see him, let alone register his face, he bent down, as if to pick up his dropped pencil.

The wooded area itself was as brightly lit as you could wish for – with, unfortunately, concomitant deep shadows. He stumbled a couple of times as he headed for an outpost where he could watch but not disturb his colleagues. A path, much better maintained than the track they'd just bumped along, wound alongside the fence, but was always more than seven or eight metres away. It was iron hard, and much easier to walk along than plunging through than the undergrowth – what they called a bridle path. When he was a kid, he'd thought it was spelt
b-r-i-d-a-l
, and wondered why brides needed separate routes when they were heading to church. In any case, all the brides he'd ever seen had been in limos with white ribbon. And then someone had told him it was a path set aside for horses. He smiled back at his younger self. And frowned at his older one. He reached for his phone. No damned signal, of course. But there'd be one somewhere in the car park. After all, that was where he'd been when he'd first called for help. Or he could borrow a colleague's radio. Correction:
former
colleague's radio.