The Drowning Ground (28 page)

‘And her killer knew that?'

‘Maybe,' I said. ‘I think it's a question of timing. They may have known that if Rebecca vanished with all her things, everyone would just assume she'd walked out. Her father included.'

‘So no one would look for her?'

I fell silent briefly. Then I said, ‘We don't know how they played it yet, but it probably began slowly. The one thing we know about our man is that he's patient. And when he acts he acts quickly and with no hesitation at all. That's his MO and it's a very unusual one. You look at the way he made those two little girls just disappear like that. Gail and Elise went missing seven years ago. And Rebecca apparently left home when she was around seventeen or eighteen. So that's around three years ago, and no one has actually seen her as far as we know in all that time. That's around four years between the time those girls went missing and when Rebecca disappeared off the face of the earth. The MO is the same in both cases, if it really was Rebecca down there, and it's looking increasingly likely that it is. He watches. He waits. And when the moment comes…' I stared across the table, grimaced and took another sip. A bigger one this time. ‘He takes his time with her. Then kills her and buries her under that house.' For a moment longer I was silent. ‘I think whoever it was,' I said finally, ‘must have known she was going.'

‘So they must have known the house well too – known about that space underneath it,' Graves said.

I nodded. ‘And they've never left,' I said. ‘That's the most incredible thing. They're still here somewhere. Maybe even in the village. Could be anyone.'

Graves drained his pint. ‘Another one, sir?'

‘Sure, why not,' I said, and finished what was left in my glass.

Graves took our glasses and, dangling them in his hand, headed across the old threadbare carpet to the bar.

‘Get us some of those porky scratchings as well,' I called after him. I waited while the barman, who had years ago learnt that I was half Argentinian, eyed me suspiciously from time to time as he pulled my pint.

‘So,' I said conversationally when Graves came back, ‘how'd you end up out here? Pretty big station over there in Oxford. That's where you were, isn't it? I've been there a few times, you know.'

‘My super said he saw you play rugger once,' Graves said, deftly avoiding the question. ‘Said you got sent off.'

‘Did I?' I was not that surprised. I shrugged and tore open the pack of porky scratchings. ‘Well, it was probably me if he says it was. Must have come against your lot in the league. I used to play a bit just to keep in shape more than anything else.' I shook my head. ‘Christ, Graves, you've never seen such a dirty bunch of bastards in your life. You know, the first time I played, at half-time they opened a bottle of brandy and passed it around. I was expecting oranges.'

‘What position, sir?' Graves said, genuinely interested.

‘I used to be a flanker when I was younger, back home. Number 7. Of course, I was a lot quicker on my feet back then. And later I switched to Number 8. I never really enjoyed it as much after that, though. You ever play?'

‘Oh, yes, at school all we ever did was play rugger. I was a winger. When I went to university I gave it up. I suppose I'd had enough of it by then. Got interested in other things.'

‘Things like girls, you mean?' I said, and smiled broadly.

‘Yes,' Graves said, and laughed, surprised. ‘My father wasn't too happy about it, though, I can tell you. He had high hopes for me on that front and on other fronts as well. The school too. Let them down, I suppose.'

‘Public school, you said.'

‘Yes. I couldn't wait to get out of there, and to be perfectly honest I'd had enough of being half frozen to death in a soggy field. Didn't see much point in it.'

‘I know what you mean,' I said. ‘So why did they send you here? University graduate. Public school boy,' I said without malice. ‘I thought you'd be right up their street.'

Graves didn't answer. He smiled and said carefully, ‘You know I could ask you the same thing, sir.'

I had a huge weakness for porky scratchings, which were unheard of back home. I took a large one and swallowed it. I had brought the photo of Rebecca with me and I wiped my fingers before putting it carefully on the table. It had clearly been removed from a scrapbook, and there was some yellowish glue at the back. We looked at it. Rebecca was standing next to Frank in front of the house, and Sarah Hurst was standing on the other side of him. It was winter. Rebecca was smiling widely, showing two rows of very white teeth. Her hair was tied back in a bun. She was clinging to her father's arm. On Hurst's other side stood Sarah. She was taller than Frank, detached-looking and as beautiful as everyone had said she was. Her blonde hair lay loosely on her shoulders.

Graves took the photo, examined it and put it back again. ‘She looks all in, doesn't she?' he said.

‘Who?' I said.

‘Sarah. Sarah Hurst.'

I picked up the photo. Sarah wasn't looking at the camera. She was looking away, towards the far side of the garden, with a neutral expression above a thin smile. I looked more closely. Her eyes were slightly sunken, and there was a haggard look to her, as if she had not slept very well for some time. And she seemed strangely cut off from the other two people in the photograph, bewildered, almost as if she couldn't quite figure out what she was doing there.

I slipped the photo into my pocket, not sure what to make of it. Graves shrugged. We sat for a little bit longer and finished our drinks. Then we trudged downstairs and stepped outside into the cold. I waved goodbye to Graves and walked towards my car, which was parked outside the station, thinking that Graves maybe wasn't so bad after all. Then felt guilty for thinking it and for taking him to one of Powell's old drinking holes.

I walked quickly to the car and tried to remember what Rebecca had really looked like when I had seen her. But I had seen her only that one time, staring at me from a high window.

Then I started to think about the crumbling graves and the thick vines clinging to the walls of the church in Lower Quinton. I remembered the flowers on the grave in the cemetery and the Hurst family plot out there.

Another image of her came to me as I remembered the black-and-white picture I had seen of her in the house. That school photo in the newspaper stuffed at the back of an old drawer. Her father had cut out the text but kept the photo. It was odd. In my mind I stared at the printed page, and from far off it was as if I could hear the crisp sound of ice cracking. I walked on. Already the memory of the photo was slipping away from me, becoming distorted.

I tried to bring it back. The dots in the picture once more joined together and contrived to form a face. Her hair was tied back behind her head in a bun, making the smooth curve of her jaw more pronounced. But then the image of her disappeared again and all that remained were dots.

39

I had a late dinner, which I cooked and ate with complete indifference. Then I phoned Powell and talked to him for a while. He started going on about some old wives' tale concerning the pond in Quinton. He wasn't able to focus, and his voice sounded ragged and almost incoherent.

These remote Cotswold hills had always held a fascination for him, and for years he had regaled me with innumerable stories and anecdotes about each of the villages. For Powell, this was his way of showing you who he was. When he reached out into the past it was as if he were seeing it. But on the phone it all seemed garbled and incomplete. He described how they used to drown witches in the pond; ‘swimming a witch', they had called it. In the end Alex took the phone from him, apologized and hung up.

I was just about to go upstairs to bed when I heard a car drawing to a stop in my driveway. Seconds later the doorbell rang. It had actually been so long since someone had rung it that for a second I was sure that it must have been the television. Then it rang again. A hectoring bullying demand. Frowning, I walked quickly through the hallway, switched on the light and swung open the door. Warm light flowed on to the path of snow and on to the two people standing in front of me, shivering with cold. The woman in front of me smiled. And then a camera flashed behind her.

‘Chief Inspector Downes?' the woman said. ‘I was wondering if we could have a quick word. I know it's late. But we thought you might want to talk to us, as it's about Gail and Elise. We hear you've stopped searching out Hurst's house. And that you've still to make an arrest – is this true?'

‘How the hell did you get this address?' I said, shocked.

‘It's just a few questions,' the woman said. ‘May we come in? You know, it's really freezing out here and poor old Bob's been stuck in the village all day, taking pictures.' She smiled. Behind her the roofs of the other cottages gleamed in the moonlight. ‘We won't take much of your time. Maybe we can help.'

‘Help?'

I turned around, went back into the hallway for my house keys, stepped outside and then slammed the door shut behind me. I took a quick step forward. The camera was raised once more, aimed at my face. I took another step and, catching the photographer off guard, snatched his camera from him.

‘Hey,' the man said. ‘You can't do that.'

The journalist, however, seemed unperturbed. ‘It's Guillermo, right?' she said.

‘What?'

‘We were at Frank's house this afternoon. We were surprised to see that no one's out there any more, weren't we, Bobbie? Nobody's searching at all. Surely it must be a possibility that there are more victims out there? Victims you don't even know about yet. Why aren't you still looking?'

‘Hey!' the man said. ‘Give me back my camera.'

I was so stunned by the intrusion that I very nearly threw the camera into the bushes. ‘I asked you how you got this address.'

The woman ignored me and took a step closer. ‘What about Nancy Williams? Do you think she was an accomplice? And someone knew. Same way they knew about Hurst.'

‘No, I do not, and don't go printing anything about Nancy,' I said.

‘Why not?'

‘Because it's none of your damned business, that's why. Get the hell out of here.'

‘But why? Frank was a suspect all along,' she said almost gleefully. ‘We didn't know that. But you found a hairpin years ago in his swimming pool, didn't you? Apparently he wasn't even brought in and questioned when you found it. Which just seems incredible, really, seeing that the hairpin exactly matched one Gail Foster had been wearing the day she disappeared.'

I didn't even bother to answer. I just handed back the camera, went inside and slammed the door behind me. I closed the curtains. There were mutterings from outside. Then, later, the sound of steps crunching through the snow. I waited until I heard their car disappear down the drive, then went into my kitchen.

How had they got my address? God, they were relentless. It was the only way to describe them. They made the local journalists look like complete amateurs. Hard not to admire it in a way, though. The persistence.

But it was a different matter altogether when you were on the sharp end of it. Of course, it wasn't hard to know where they had found out about the hairpin, now that I thought about it. They must have talked to Gail's mother and she must have told them and exaggerated its importance. Made it out to be a complete match. I couldn't say I blamed her for it. It was a good way to get their attention.

I refilled the kettle, put it on the hob and made myself a
mate.
It's best served at around 80°C, and it's easier to judge the temperature with a stove-top kettle than with an electric one, which boils too quickly. Then I slumped down into my armchair.

All was silent. Outside my window, the snow-covered fields stretched out under the moonlight. Bloody journalists. Coming out here in the middle of the night. I tried not to think about them and started to think about the pond instead. What had Powell been talking about on the phone? A witch they had drowned years ago in Quinton. No. Drowned was not the right word.

Swimming a witch.
That was the phrase Powell had used. They had dragged the poor woman out of her cottage, stripped her, bound her hands to her ankles and thrown her into the pond to see if she would float. It was a known fact that water rejected those who had signed pacts with the devil. And so she had floated. But she hadn't floated for long.

Christ, what a nice little tale. I suddenly caught sight of my reflection in the window. A fierce look of worry crossed my face. But it wasn't Powell I was worried about this time.

I stared through my reflection at the hills rising into the distance and at the wide strip of trees beyond. I sat there for a while thinking of that old story. Why had Powell told me that one? My arms lay limply at my sides. I had left the kettle on for too long. It had begun to boil and steam rose up, leaving beads of moisture hanging on the ceiling above the stove.

I stood up, grabbed a cloth and absently took the kettle off the hob. I moved back to the window, pulled the curtain back farther and leant against the wall. Looking outside, I remembered staring at the pond from the silence of the graveyard after I had talked to Nancy. I remembered the pond staring back at me from the middle of the village like a black unblinking eye. And then I thought of Rebecca. For a moment, the unformed outline of something falling fast came into view. Rebecca burning in my arms.

40

I was waiting on the library steps in Stratford when the librarian came to open up the next morning. I spent hours searching through the newspaper archives and reading about the Taylor boys and their accident in the pond. The story had even made some of the national newspapers at the time.

It went very much as it had been described to me. The two boys had gone on to the ice along with Rebecca. They met at just after midnight on a school night in December, a few days before the Christmas holiday. Both boys, Ned, aged twelve, and Owen, aged thirteen, fell through the ice and drowned. Rebecca had been lucky. She had fallen in the water but managed to get out. Both boys were pronounced dead at the scene.