The Drowning Ground (17 page)

21

Powell's son lived in a small, neat semi on the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon, near the river. He seemed to be holding up pretty well, all things considered. His gentle but weary face brightened when he saw me framed in the door, and with his usual disconcerting familiarity he took me gently by the elbow and led me through the hallway and into the living room.

‘The old sod's had a good day so far,' Alex said in a hushed voice as we walked up the stairs to the bedroom. ‘Better than yesterday anyway. Just glad to get out of hospital for now. So that's cheered him up. Sometimes he's completely out of it, though. So, Will, do me a huge favour and try not to keep him up too long if you can help it?'

Alex was in his late thirties. Slim and good-looking, he moved gracefully and quickly up the stairs, knocked on the bedroom door and then without waiting for an answer pushed it open, while a dog yapped from somewhere else in the house.

Powell was sitting upright in an armchair by the bed, sneering over a paper as usual. Alex gave me a quick and grateful glance, gently nudged me farther inside the room and shut the door behind him when he left.

I had seen Powell when the illness had first taken him, and even then the speed of it had surprised me. But this … this was different. Powell had aged years in weeks. His once lean but full frame had been replaced by fragile bones. His shaggy, messy mop of black hair hung in damp-looking strands. His lips were bloodless, and his eyes were two glowing sparks beneath his eyebrows.

I stood rooted to the spot. Powell's high-browed and elongated face tilted towards me in malicious amusement, enjoying, in his usual perverse way, my discomfort. He waved the red top in the air as I walked in. I smiled lightly and stood there a little longer.

‘I've seen it,' I said. ‘Super was on the phone first thing this morning. Furious, of course.' I shrugged.

‘Who leaked it?'

‘We don't know. Could be anyone. We had around a dozen men out there clearing out the rubble to begin with. Could have been any one of them or someone they talked to down the pub. A fireman even.'

‘But it's true, is it? You've found one of 'em. Over at Frank's house. Buried down there? And you still don't know which one, do you? It doesn't say here.'

‘No. We don't know. Not for sure. There's no way of knowing yet. We've had to send the remains to the forensics lab in Oxford, and Brewin is comparing the DNA profile with the samples we took from Gail's and Elise's parents. There wasn't much left of her to begin with, and the fire got the rest. But it's possible – possible that it could be one of the girls. We'll know either way in a couple of days.'

Powell sat very still, studying me. He said, without much interest, ‘You look bloody awful.'

‘Well, I had to get her out.'

‘Oh, bloody hell, Will,' Powell said in despair. ‘
You
got her out? You know that's what they've got firemen for. Why didn't you let one of them do it?'

‘They wouldn't go in. They were just standing there, looking at her, to begin with,' I said, a little unfairly.

Powell shook his head in disappointment. ‘Christ. You never learn. The times I've told you … The times I've tried to…' He let out a gloomy sigh and, knowing it was no use, gave up.

‘I didn't have much choice, you know. There was –'

Wearily, Powell put up his hand, not wanting to hear it. ‘So if it is one of the girls under there, it means that we were right all along,' Powell said, and placed the newspaper in his lap. ‘After all these years. I suppose that's why the bastard never sold up and moved. That way he could be sure no one'd find them. And I suppose you're blaming yourself as usual,' Powell said and grunted.

I wandered over and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘A bit. The thing is, I can't help thinking that we should have tried harder. You know, back when we really had the chance. I don't know why we listened to O'Donnell. We should have taken that place apart or leaked it to the papers. Now we might never find the other girl at all. You haven't been out there yet, Len. But she was buried really deep.'

‘We didn't have much choice. But, Christ, did he have a fit. When he found out.' Powell smiled in grim satisfaction. ‘One of his worst.'

I nodded, remembering the superintendent's look of stunned rage when he learnt that Powell and I had been snooping around Hurst's garden weeks after we had discovered the hairpin. Both of us nearly lost our jobs when Hurst, incensed, phoned the station and made a formal complaint. It was my second reprimand in as many weeks.

‘But at least we might find out what happened to those little girls now,' Powell continued. ‘It could be that while we were running around like a couple of headless chickens, they were under his feet the whole time.'

‘Did you think Hurst was lying?' I said.

Powell shrugged. ‘You never could tell with him. Anyway, what the hell does any of that matter now? The thing is, you were right. And you kept your eye on him. Nobody asked you to do that either.'

‘I couldn't keep my eye on him all the time.' I stared for a moment at the carpet. ‘Look, I need to see what you make of something,' I said. ‘Turns out that Hurst was keeping his eye on a couple of fellas himself. Some fellas we used to know quite well.'

I drew out the first two names very deliberately. It took a few moments for them to register. Powell repeated the names twice in a low voice. His face, lit by the yellow lamp by his side, contorted suddenly in recognition. His heavy eyelids opened wider.

‘Edward Secoy,' I said.

‘Moved to Canada.'

‘Ben Tanner.'

‘Heart attack,' Powell said straightaway. ‘Neighbours found him two weeks later, dead in bed. And good riddance too.' Powell threw the newspaper on to the table next to him. ‘Both of them had a thing for little kiddies,' he said. ‘We found that out when we looked at all the local sex offenders who could have been around at the time of one or both disappearances. And we listened very carefully for any rumours flying around about any of the local weirdos. We were able to rule them out as well.'

‘Secoy. Nothing ever proved about him, just a few nasty rumours,' I said. ‘A co-worker came forward with his name when the second girl went missing. But there wasn't much in it as far as we could see. Papers got hold of his name, though. And Tanner's as well. And Tanner had a definite track record, if you remember. Was in jail twice, for sexual assaults on girls. Each man was near one of the scenes when Elise and Gail went missing. And both had access to a vehicle.'

Powell nodded and reached for a glass of water. Downstairs, I could hear Alex busying himself in the kitchen. A tap being turned off and on. Plates clinking in the sink.

‘And there was a third one. You remember Christopher Gardner?'

Powell's mouth turned down in disgust. ‘He'd gone to jail as well – molested a teenager. He was in his early twenties; she was just fifteen. Her old man had got wind of it and called in the police.' Powell became thoughtful. ‘There had been rumours about him for a while before he was arrested. Rumours that he liked getting all pally with teenage girls – earned him a busted jaw once, if I remember rightly. The little prick deserved it no doubt. He was doing a decorating job just outside the village when the girls went missing, wasn't he? Or something like that. Christ, I can't remember now.'

I nodded. ‘Gail's mother spotted him in a van around an hour after Gail was seen for the last time.'

‘And so Frank was keeping an eye on Gardner,' he said. ‘But whatever for?' He paused, thinking, and looked up. ‘I don't get it,' he said. ‘You've already found one of the girls under Frank's house by the looks of it. That proves that these men were innocent all along. It was just a coincidence that they were in the area at the time. I mean, we ruled them out pretty quickly. Especially Gardner. So why the hell would Hurst have the remotest interest in these three men, unless…' Powell said, and then stopped abruptly, as the realization sank in. He looked away. ‘Oh, no,' he said so quietly that I could hardly hear him. ‘He was watching them himself, you say?'

‘No.' And then I told him about Bray. ‘He knew that Tanner was dead and that Secoy had emigrated. But he was still interested in Gardner. Wanted to know what he was up to. I think that could be the reason … the reason why we weren't able to tie anyone – any
one
– person to the disappearances. We'd always thought it was someone working alone. Someone who had been watching these girls for some time. But what if it was more than one person?'

‘Four men with a shared interest,' Powell said, his voice harsh all of a sudden. ‘All of them working together. Three of them we were aware of, but Hurst … And that house of his,' Powell said, catching his breath sharply.

I nodded. My forehead suddenly felt hot. I forced myself to say what I was thinking out loud. ‘The house would have been ideal for their … well … for their purposes. If they had wanted to draw things out. If they were working together, one of them could drive the girl to where, say, Hurst was waiting in his car. He takes her back to the house, and the other one goes back to whatever he was doing. So he's gone for only a matter of minutes. Then they meet later in the house. Far away from the village, where nobody can see them. To that big old house in the middle of nowhere. And there'd be plenty of time to get rid of the bodies afterwards. They decide to do it twice and then never again – which is really unusual, because these pricks can't seem to help themselves once they get started. And they choose both of the girls well in advance. They take great care over that.

‘We were able to tie Gardner to Gail but only vaguely. He was in the area. But not to Elise at all. Secoy was in the area when Gail went missing, but when Elise was taken, he wasn't even in the same county. And the same goes for Tanner. There was never more than a vague connection between them and the girls. Hurst we didn't even know about then.'

‘Until later,' Powell reminded me. ‘I did a bit of checking when we found the hairpin, remember? He was out working most of the time. Out on his farm. Usually alone. But he could have easily taken off in that Land Rover.'

‘They may have been kept alive … for some time out there,' I said. I could sense the horror of what had happened clawing at me, though I did not want to think about it. For years the fate of the two girls had been like a constant presence, eyeing me patiently from somewhere deep within my mind. Now it was as if I could actually see them. First Elise and then Gail. I imagined footsteps; the door opening. The long shadow of one of the four men. Perhaps Hurst himself. And with that image the old anger came tearing through. Pure and clear and undiminished by the years.

I remembered Gail's mother sitting slumped and helpless in her kitchen as I asked her as gently as I could about her daughter. Where had she last seen Gail? Did she have any idea where she may have gone? She'd tried all her friends? Had there been any kind of trouble at home? She was recently divorced, I understood. Might that have caused Gail to change her behaviour? Had she been late home before? Had there been an argument, anything like that? Something that might make her stay away from home?

She had answered as best she could. She was in a daze. Her house was full of strangers – police – but it was as if she didn't know who had let them in. Radio static screeched from somewhere far out in her garden. They had been searching the fields beyond her gates. I promised her that I would find her daughter, no matter what it took.

‘Hurst wasn't married then,' Powell was saying. ‘So he could have just sent his kid off somewhere – off to some relative for the night.'

I nodded in agreement. It was good, sound logic, and it was what I had come to expect from Powell over the years. Powell glanced away and stared in silence at the carpet. Then there was a hesitant look in his eye. ‘You always seem to know,' he said almost angrily. ‘You knew it with Hurst. I couldn't understand why you kept on going on and on about him. Needling him like that, even though we'd just pulled his wife out of the swimming pool. Most of us would have backed off just a little bit. But not you, Will. You had it in for him right from the start. But you never told me why.'

I didn't say anything. He was right of course.

‘You might not like it,' he said. ‘But I want to understand. If I can. Humour me.' Powell grinned, but his eyes betrayed a keen curiosity. ‘It's not just Hurst. I've seen you do it more times than I care to remember. You get an idea inside your head and –'

‘It's not hard to know when someone's lying to you,' I said, cutting him off quickly. ‘You know that better than anyone.

‘Anyway, there's still no sign of Rebecca. She didn't even show up to his funeral. Just sends him postcards when she feels like it. That's what Nancy said.'

‘You spoke to her?'

‘A couple of days ago. At the funeral.'

‘At his funeral,' Powell said sharply. ‘Not much love lost between those two. She's up to something, Will, you mark my words. Girl like Nancy. She's smarter than she lets on.'

Powell was silent for a moment. ‘So he was having 'em looked into. But why? You reckon that Hurst wanted to make sure that none of them would ever do anything like that again and put them all in danger? Is that it? If another little girl went missing, all four would be in the spotlight again. That's why he was having them followed. The moment this fella … this detective seemed to be on to something with Gardner, Hurst told him to stop. Didn't he, Will? Told him to leave it alone.'

‘Yes,' I said.

‘So of course it works the other way too.'

‘Hurst was a risk to the others, you mean?' I said.

‘Exactly. Maybe Hurst was up to his old tricks again – planning something else – and Gardner got wind of it. Or what if Gardner found out that Hurst was having him followed?'