Double Fault (12 page)

Neither the bath nor the whisky had done its job. Despite having drifted into a doze in the bath, he was now as wide awake as it was possible to be, and furious. Furious with himself; furious with Fran. In whichever order.

Now what?

His therapist had given him a range of relaxation and visualization exercises, and his GP had offered tempting sleeping pills. He knew exactly where they were, imagined the delight of sloughing off his worries – and then reflected on the inevitability of waking Fran when he went to get them, no matter how quietly he padded to the bathroom. More to the point, she'd have to be at her desk by seven at the latest the next morning, and someone needed to make sure she didn't sleep through the alarm and that she went off with more than black coffee inside her.

So the relaxation exercises it had better be.

Feet, knees, hips, back, shoulders, arms, fingertips. All as floppy as he could get them. Except it was supposed to be
let
not
get.
And the brain was supposed to sink into all this floppiness, not dart between theories about what had happened to poor Livvie. What if it had been a woman, not a man who'd taken her? But surely all leads, regardless of gender, had been followed up.

Why hadn't the locals come together to form giant search parties, as they had with other missing children? Look at the response to the Machynlleth abduction and murder, where everyone and their dogs had turned out to help. In this case there'd been a real lack of community involvement. Had Ray approached community leaders?

He snorted, enough to make Fran stir. What was a community in commuter-belt Kent? A herd of women in big cars? No, herd wasn't right. What might the collective noun be? A chatter? A text? A pamper! He must remember that one and see what Fran thought.

And who would be this pampered community's leaders? The nail experts? The yoga gurus?

He would suggest that he and Ray go through all the tennis club members' details tomorrow – something might click.

Such as Stephen driving a maroon Audi. Where had that come from?

And what on earth was lurking at the back of his mind? Something someone had said that had struck the most distant of chords. Only one thing to do – what he'd made himself do times beyond number when he'd been an operational officer: go to sleep knowing it would come to him in the morning.

If only. Then he'd counted lamp-posts on a motorway. Now, how about the leaves on the greening branches of the beech at the end of their lawn …

If ever there'd been a morning for dawdling over warm croissants with fresh butter and apricot conserve, this was it. The sun had already warmed the little patio by the kitchen, and when he stood at the edge he could see skeins of mist down in the valley, separating the tops of the trees from their roots with a ghostly swirl.

He filled the bird feeder: how long would their winter lodgers stay with them? He thought he could count on the self-interested robin, but what about the goldfinches? At least he knew the collective noun for them: a charm. He smiled at them as they swooped between niger seeds and sunflower hearts, jostling with each other as he withdrew to what they considered a safe distance. He imagined them congratulating each other on having trained him so well, producing food before they even needed it, and moving the feeders to a spot with plenty of leafy cover. They'd liked the sunnier spot better, he fancied – but they'd been exposed to the sparrow hawk, which had come in with terrifying killing power and taken three or four in succession. The goldfinches might not have noticed the depletion in their ranks but he had. Now the feeders hung just a wing-beat away from the trellis up which he'd been trying to coax a
Clematis Armandii
until the frost had killed it as swiftly as a pair of secateurs, though it was supposed to be hardy, evergreen indeed. At least the honeysuckle and wisteria had clung on, and while it had been just the skeletal stalks – there must be a proper name for them, but he couldn't recall it – that had provided a refuge, now buds promised thick foliage for later.

Perhaps the finches would stay, and bring their young broods. Perhaps the next generation would do the same. He liked the idea of perpetuity.

The seed put away and his hands thoroughly washed, he loaded the toaster. He hadn't got his home-made wholemeal loaves, with lots of extra seed, to produce the best toast yet – it was inclined to be chewy – but at least Fran consented to eat a couple of rounds as she was ferried about the countryside. He knew she mustn't take her painkillers on an empty stomach. Today he'd join her as she edged into the car driven by Dizzy. And surely something would trigger the memory of something important that was said last night that still, maddeningly, eluded him. But he'd better not hunt for it; far better to talk to Dizzy about the prospects for the forthcoming cricket season.

Or was it? The conversation, meant to be a casual enquiry from a front-seat passenger whiling away the time – the real guv'nor sitting in the back, working – took a more serious turn than he'd been expecting.

‘Thing is, Mr Turner – OK, Mark – I've got this chance of turning professional. Cricket,' he added, as he checked his mirror, signalled and manoeuvred as if Mark was a driving examiner. ‘Warwickshire.'

‘I thought you were keen on training as an elite driver, driving royalty and so on,' Mark said. ‘Fran was saying you'd come out top on all the courses you'd been on.'

‘I was. And I did. But how long before they privatize protection driving? Get G4S or someone to ferry them. OK,' Dizzy admitted, ‘they might lose a few passengers or turn up late for a royal visit, but that's privatization for you. There's a lot of us thinking of jumping before we're pushed,' he added glumly. ‘At least I've got my bowling to fall back on. If I make it big time, it's a good career. If I don't, then at least I've tried, haven't I?'

‘Of course you have,' Mark agreed brightly. With a change of voice, he added, ‘Is morale really that bad?'

‘You want to talk to the Police Federation rep,' Dizzy said. ‘Sir. Mark. Not just my level. Higher ranks, too. After all,' he added reasonably, ‘
you
left.'

‘But I'd served my time and I wasn't well.'

‘And you get a pension, don't you? They're saying we'll have to work years longer and get much less when we go. And a good cricketer – a really good one – can think of hundreds of thousands a year. Only for a few years, I know, but even so.'

He ought to counsel him against giving up a safe career for a job with such a short shelf-life. He ought to remind him about the training he'd had so far, all the opportunities ahead of him. What about the respect of the community, the knowledge that you were making a difference? Weakly, he remarked, ‘The Bears are a really good team, aren't they? And all those changes at Edgbaston … I've only seen them on TV, of course. It looks a truly wonderful ground.'

‘Actually Sussex have started sniffing round too.'

‘Have they? Great. Which would you prefer?'

‘Whichever offers me the best terms,' the kid said soberly. He must have had all the talk of respectable careers up to his ears. And then some.

‘You've got to want to work with the people there, too. Check the set-up. Talk to people.'

‘Already doing that, guv.'

‘Excellent. Now, your first game at Lord's, I want tickets – right?'

‘Right. First game or first test match?'

Careers counselling over, how would he spend his day? Drifting up to the incident room where, thanks to the influx of CEOP's MATC unit staff, he would be nothing but an unemployed loser, didn't feel like a good option. But neither did returning to the rectory to garden till he dropped, and then retiring to channel-surf the Saturday afternoon sports options. The idea of turning up at the tennis club in hopes of finding another spare player was repugnant, although Zac had used the club website to thank people for their support and encourage them to return to the court.

Perhaps, perhaps, he might just do that. Just in case any of his friends might react to a familiar face by recalling something that an official questioning had scared away – like whatever he needed to remember had completely gone.

But Dizzy had slowed the car to an impeccable stop, and Fran had finished texting and emailing and was ready to be eased out of the car. On the plus side, she leant much less of her weight on him than she had been – she was definitely getting better.

‘It's a good job the media can't see you as agile as this,' he said with a grin.

‘I must keep the crutch handy, just in case you need to go into the woods again. You look as knackered as I feel. But there's no reason why you shouldn't get some sleep. Take the car and go back home for a bit.'

‘While you run round in circles doing something meaningful,' he snapped.

‘While I'm closeted with Wren, who didn't like my bringing in CEOP, any more than you disliked my not bringing them in.' Fran could still manage an ironic smile. ‘Hell, Mark, there's nothing I'd like more than your input in every single meeting going today. And I know Ray relies on you utterly. So don't take out your retirement blues on me, please.' She linked arms with him. ‘Come and have a coffee.'

‘Don't bloody patronize me. You're not ACC yet,' he said, probably loud enough to be heard by Dizzy and any other passing officers. He flung her arm away and fished the car keys from his jacket. ‘Any errands you need running? Any shopping? I'm supposed to be doing the Sainsbury's run today, aren't I?'

‘Y
ou look as if you've lost a fiver and found a rusty button,' a voice greeted him, as he stood among plants he didn't recognize, which was, he supposed, his fault for going to a nursery specializing in recherché flora at sky-high prices. But since one of the owners had landscaped much of their garden, he felt he couldn't betray him by nipping off to a garden centre chain and buying boxes of bright petunias. In any case, it was too early to risk planting petunias, or any of the other bedding plants he'd find at places where he'd found tomato seedlings in January. If their plants wouldn't have grown, their profits certainly would.

He picked up an attractive shrub but registered how much his impulse might cost and put it back again as he turned to the speaker.

‘Caffy!' His pleasure was genuine: he'd first met the young woman when she was part of PACT, a team of restorers and decorators who'd rescued their rectory. The acronym stood for Paula and Caffy's Team but was more appropriate than most.

She jerked a thumb in the direction of a tiny café offering none but healthy options. ‘They need your money: organic produce is one of the first things people cut back on in a recession.'

‘Even in a niche location like this?' Naturally he had fallen into step with her.

‘You colonize that table and I'll get you – tea? Or would you prefer coffee?'

‘Tea, please. Green.'

He returned with a tray on to which a couple of slices of rich fruit cake seemed to have migrated of their own accord. Having heard Caffy denigrate cupcakes for comprising everything that was bad for one, from the colouring to the refined sugar and saturated fats, he thought he'd better play safe.

‘We've not seen you for a bit,' he said mildly. Most builders disappeared as soon as their work was done, but Caffy wasn't most builders. She'd become far more than simply a valued professional. She'd become a nurse, mentor and – yes – very dear friend, declaring early on, much to the chagrin of his old boss who wanted to be his best man, that she would be his best woman. When he'd been at his most depressed, at times when most of his former colleagues had found it hard to approach him, Caffy had turned up at odd hours of the day and made him do things. Walk. Do a bit more digging. Paint another wall. Join the tennis club. He could understand the impulse that had driven a former pop singer and his lawyer wife to take her into their home, where she now had her own apartment, and to treat her as a daughter, for all she must be in her early thirties now.

Best not think about daughters, with his own, much the same age as Caffy, now doing time for drug-dealing, and for some reason that no one, even her husband, could understand, denying Mark access to her children, though he'd have thought that without a mother, they could have used a grandpa.

Despite his sudden surge of gloom, Caffy's smile made the whole room glow. ‘I've been on a fabulous course about restoring old buildings.'

‘But you know all about that. Unless our rectory rebuilt itself.'

She grinned and poured the tea. ‘But that's only Georgian, and truly Paula was the expert there. No, this is much older vernacular architecture. You know the craze these days for inhabiting everything in sight – did you see that piece in the paper about a couple who'd turned a public lavatory into a bijou residence? Well, some people are trying to restore absolute ruins, and English Heritage want to make sure the work is done appropriately. So we've had a wonderful time in hard hats and goggles, scrabbling round where even rats wouldn't attempt to run.' She paused to sip tea and test the cake, which earned a nod of approval. ‘So what's this about the missing child? It's your tennis club, isn't it? You must ache to be properly involved.' She shot him a look under her eyebrows. ‘You're not taking it out on Fran, I hope?'

How did she make such leaps? ‘Not until this morning, when she started being kind to me.'

‘When all you were doing was being kind to her?'

‘Not quite. In fact, last night I nearly gave her a dressing down for not doing her job properly.'

‘Did I hear that right?' She looked genuinely shocked, but more than that. Angry for Fran and disappointed in him. Clearly she was biting back words he deserved but didn't want to hear.

‘I know. I forgot I wasn't the boss any more. I forgot she'd only taken the case over a few hours earlier because the person running it had asked for help. I forgot she was running someone else's case too because he'd ended up in hospital.'