We decided to leave the Nissan with the doors open to air out while Dominic called in with his Airwave which got, much to my surprise, better reception than either of our phones. I was that thirsty that I’d just started psyching myself up to brave a rummage in the Nissan when Dominic lowered his handset and beckoned me over.
‘Were you expecting a delivery?’ he asked.
Dominic’s mum was a round woman who barely came up to my chest. Her chestnut hair was streaked with grey and tied up into a rough bun at the back of her head. She’d obviously caught the sun that summer, because her skin was brown and she wore streaks of sunblock across her cheekbones. She came hurrying out of the bungalow as soon as Dominic had parked outside and thrust out her hand for me to shake. Her skin was warm and as soft as chamois leather and the bones underneath felt delicate like those of a small bird.
‘It’s nice to meet you at last.’ She was breathing hard as if the short dash from her front door had left her out of breath. ‘Is the room all right?’
‘Perfect,’ I said.
She nodded and withdrew her hand. I gave her a moment to catch her breath before asking about the delivery. She pointed to the paved area by her front door where two old-fashioned oxblood leather-bound trunks had been left side by side.
I sighed and asked Dominic to give me a hand.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said when he tried to lift his end. ‘How long were you planning to stay?’
‘It’s the housekeeper,’ I said. ‘She gets carried away.’
Dominic gave me an odd look.
‘Housekeeper?’
‘Not
my
housekeeper,’ I said as I tried to avoid knocking over a garden gnome. ‘Our nick has a housekeeper.’ Which I decided sounded even weirder.
‘Okay,’ said Dominic. ‘Well, Leominster nick’s got vibrating chairs in the rec room.’
‘Vibrating chairs?’
‘You know. You sit in them and they vibrate,’ he said. ‘It’s very relaxing.’
The inside of my room, a.k.a. the cowshed, was boiling, so once we’d dumped the trunks we retreated back outside with a jug of homemade lemonade provided by Dominic’s mum. When the air had a chance to cool inside, me and Dominic had a rummage in the first of the trunks. The top layer, thank god, consisted of about half the contents of my wardrobe, freshly laundered and the creases ironed to a knife edge – which just looks weird on a sweatshirt. The trunk was equipped with a number of convenient drawers and compartments which yielded a miniature brass camp stove with matching pot and kettle and a leather case which contained a cut-throat razor, a shaving brush and a stick of dehydrated soap that smelt of almonds and rum. I wondered if this was all Nightingale’s stuff or whether Molly scavenged it from elsewhere in the Folly. A lot of men must have left their belongings behind in 1944 believing that they were coming back.
I put the shaving kit back where I’d found it.
The second trunk contained a tweed shooting jacket, matching yellow waistcoat, a vintage Burberry trench coat, riding boots, a green canvas camp stool and a shooting stick. It was therefore less of a surprise when at the bottom, disassembled in their own oak and leather case, I found a pair of two-inch self-opening shotguns. Judging from the chasing on the mechanism they were Nightingale’s two Purdey guns that he kept in a locked case in the billiard room.
I looked at Dominic, whose eyes were bugging out.
‘You didn’t see that, okay?’
‘Absolutely not,’ he said.
‘Right.’
‘The Glorious Twelfth
was
Monday,’ he said. ‘So grouse is in season.’
I suddenly wondered if Nightingale’s contemporaries had bothered with shotguns, or whether they’d trooped out to the countryside and banged away with fireballs.
I say, good shot there, Thomas! Winged the blighter, by god.
It occurred to me that I was currently less than a half hour’s drive from a man who might be able to tell me – if the bees didn’t sting me to death on the doorstep.
‘What the fuck?’ said Dominic and, straightening up, looked back towards the front of the bungalow. I joined him just in time to see a column of vehicles roar past the front drive – I recognised a blue Peugeot from the public car park at Leominster nick, likewise a battered green hatchback. A pair of motorbikes with photographers riding pillion raced past, followed by more cars and a satellite van. It was the pack in motion and it was actually quite impressive – like a posh version of Mad Max.
‘Shit,’ said Dominic. ‘They must have got wind of something.’
We exchanged looks – neither of us liked the implications. Dominic pulled out his phone and called the outside inquiry office. After talking for a minute his face relaxed – not bodies, then. He glanced over at me and then told whoever he was talking to that indeed I was here and ready to spring into action – as soon as instructed as to which direction.
‘They want you over at the Marstowes’ house right away,’ he told me. ‘Before the thundering herd come rushing back.’
‘Have they found something?’ I asked.
‘Not really,’ said Dominic. ‘That’s the problem.’
Even with all the windows open, the Marstowes’ kitchen was stuffy and smelt of hot laminated chipboard. DS Cole had Joanne and her husband sitting on one side of the table and us on the other. Ethan was asleep upstairs and Ryan and Mathew had been packed off to an aunt in Leominster for the afternoon.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Andy Marstowe as soon as we had our legs under the table. He was a short man, just a bit taller than his wife and built with that kind of solidity you get from doing manual labour all your life. He had a pointed chin and deep-set hazel eyes. His light brown hair was receding sharply and he’d obviously decided to bite the bullet and cut the rest of it short. He looked like the classic sawn-off psychopath I used to dread meeting doing the evening shift in Soho, except there was none of the angry violence in his eyes – only fear.
‘First,’ said Cole, ‘let me assure you that we have not found any indication that either Hannah or Nicole have been harmed in any way.’ Andy and Joanne didn’t look particularly reassured. ‘Normally we wouldn’t bring something like this to your attention, but unfortunately the media got hold of it and we wanted you to have all the facts before getting a garbled version from them.’
The pack had swept back into the village less than ten minutes after they’d left, and come boiling up the cul-de-sac like the return of a tide, licking at my heels as I ran up the path and only stopping at the hedge line because it was held by a special constable called Sally Donnahyde who was a primary school teacher in her other job and so wasn’t going to take any lip from a bunch of journalists. The kitchen was at the back of the house, but I could still hear them as a restless murmur, like surf on a pebble beach.
I watched the parents shift in their seats and brace themselves.
‘We found a child’s knapsack just off the B4362, four hundred yards from the assembly point. But it was immediately apparent that the item had been lying there for at least ten years, so we don’t think it’s connected to the case.’
Andy’s fists unclenched and Joanne let go her breath. DS Cole opened the case on her tablet and showed them a picture of the knapsack. It had been laid out on plastic sheeting and had a ruler placed next to it for scale. It was made of see-through plastic and although it was fogged by age and neglect it was obvious that any contents had been removed. Cole asked, she said purely as a matter of routine, whether either of them recognised it.
They said they didn’t, but I thought Joanne hesitated just a little bit too long before speaking. Then she sprang up and asked if anyone wanted tea. Cole took the opportunity to fill them both in on the current state of the search. Andy fidgeted throughout, and in the first pause said if that was all he’d like to get back to the search now, thank you very much. Then, either not noticing or ignoring his wife’s angry look, he got up and left.
I’d have liked a chance to talk with Cole about Joanne’s hesitation, but Cole obviously didn’t want to leave her alone. I wondered if I should press Joanne on the subject myself, but I figured it would be a mistake to pre-empt a senior officer. It was probably nothing . . . but that sounded a little bit too much like famous last words.
‘He’s not dealing with it,’ said Joanne when her husband was safely gone. ‘He’s just keeping himself busy.’
‘I’m not sure there is actually a way to “deal” with it, Jo,’ said Cole.
‘Peter,’ Joanne said suddenly, and turned to me. ‘Truthfully – what are the chances?’
Now Cole was staring at me, too – no pressure there.
‘I think the chances are good,’ I said.
‘Why?’ Joanne’s eyes were wide, desperate.
‘Because they went out together,’ I said. ‘If someone had harmed them locally we’d have a lead by now. And if it was someone from outside we’d have sightings of them coming in.’
Joanne subsided. It was all bollocks, of course. Not even very plausible bollocks at that. But I didn’t think Joanne wanted facts – just an excuse to hold it together.
It left a bad taste in my mouth, though.
A phone rang, the fake old-fashioned telephone ringtone that comes as standard on most phones. It rang three times before I remembered that I’d switched it over from my usual tone – the
Empire Strikes Back
theme, because you didn’t want
that
going off in front of a distressed family member – and I had to scramble to answer the call before the voicemail cut in.
When I answered, a cheerful woman asked me to confirm that I was Peter Grant. When I did, she informed me that she was DCI Windrow’s Personal Assistant and could I come in, because the chief inspector would like to have a word.
‘When?’ I asked.
‘Just as soon as you can get here,’ she said.
The Falcon Assessment
The first thing I noticed was that somebody, contrary to Health and Safety regulations, had jimmied the windows in Leominster nick so that they opened all the way out. Given the inquiry offices were all on the first floor, they got a surprising amount of breeze – I figured that, and a truly stupendous amount of caffeinated beverages, was all that was holding the MIU together. I seriously doubted the vibrating chairs were making much of a contribution.
Edmondson and Windrow were waiting for me in the Learning Zone again. They asked me to sit down and offered me some cold water – which I took gratefully. I resisted the urge to rub the bottle against my forehead.
‘How are you finding it?’ asked Windrow.
‘Sir?’ I asked.
‘The operation,’ he said. ‘How do you think it’s going?’
Nothing unnerves a junior officer quite as much as having a much senior officer stare over a desk and ask your opinion on something. It’s always tempting to fall back on that strangled mixture of cop-speak and management-ese that has proved the modern police officer’s friend when he wants to talk a great deal and say nothing. Still, from the look in Windrow’s eyes, blurting out that I thought that West Mercia Police were taking
an aggressively proactive approach in line with best practice as laid down in national guidelines
was not the way to go.
‘As well as can be expected,’ I said, which was almost as bad.
Windrow nodded benignly – a gesture I’ve seen interviewing officers use on suspects dozens of times.
‘What’s your impression of the Marstowes?’ he asked.
‘They’re hanging in there,’ I said.
‘There’s no possibility that they might have orchestrated the disappearance?’ asked Windrow.
God, I thought. But as a theory it certainly had its attractions.
‘Is there some evidence that they might have?’ I asked.
Windrow shook his head.
‘Oh, congratulations by the way,’ said Edmondson. ‘You’ve made the papers.’
He passed me a copy of the
Sun
which had pushed the page three girl all the way back to page eleven in order to devote more space to MISSING GIRLS. Since they didn’t know anything we didn’t, and we didn’t know anything, they had a lot of pictures to cover up the lack of text. In the upper right-hand corner of page five was a good one of me and Dominic standing by the village hall. We were obviously talking and, fortunately, both of us were looking suitably grim and intense. The caption read ‘ALL HANDS ON DECK: Police from all over the country are involved in the search for Hannah and Nicole.’
‘Sorry about that, sir. They must have used a telephoto lens.’
‘Not a problem,’ said Edmondson. ‘The ACC thought it reflected well on the force – diversity wise.’ He gave me a humourless smile. ‘Everyone pulling together and all that.’
That’s me, I thought. Poster boy for diversity.
Windrow steepled his fingers.
‘You’ve been with the SAU for over a year,’ he said. ‘Correct?’
‘Since February last year,’ I said, wondering where the hell this was going.
‘So you’ve had experience of unusual cases?’ he asked. ‘Cases involving the—’ He stalled. Behind him Edmondson shifted his weight uneasily and spoke.
‘The supernatural,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said, and there was a pause while we all tried to think of what to say next.
The two men glanced at each other.
‘Do you see any of that in this case?’ he asked.
‘Sir?’ I said. Because if I’ve learnt one thing, it is to let the senior officers make their position clear before you risk opening your gob.
‘You came up to interview . . .’ Windrow checked a yellow sticky note attached to his policy book. ‘A Mr Hugh Oswald over by Wylde?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘It was a standard TIE.’ A Trace, Implicate or Eliminate is the backbone job of any major inquiry, find someone and either make them a suspect or eliminate them from the inquiry.
‘And you’re satisfied that he’s not involved?’ asked Windrow.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘On account of him being ninety-three and pretty much confined to a wheelchair.’
‘And there’s no possibility of an accomplice?’ asked Windrow.
There was his daughter, who I hadn’t thought to check. But then I’d assumed that the main purpose of the trip had been get to my moping self out from under Nightingale’s feet. I should have at least statemented her – Lesley would have killed me for being that sloppy.