The Gwynns were up and dressed well before daybreak. Matthew hesitated, and then plugged in the clock radio again.
‘Some use that is!’ said Alison.
‘We might still get help from home,’ he said sheepishly. ‘They are bound to know what a quandary we are in.’
Alison shrugged. As far as she was concerned the argument was over.
‘We’ll ring the police, as agreed,’ she said flatly. ‘That at least is in our control.’
‘Well, let’s think it out first,’ said Matthew, still hoping for some sort of last minute reprieve. ‘Let’s plan what we are going to say.’
Loyalty to Ormingat made them both determined to do nothing that would betray their mother planet. So, between them, they constructed as logical a story as they could manage. They went over it again and again. It was late morning before they finally called the police. A very calm voice asked their name and address and a few questions, and then promised that someone would be sent round within the next few hours to take further particulars. It was impossible to tell what the man behind the voice was thinking, but there seemed no sense of urgency.
‘You say she disappeared on Wednesday?’ said the sergeant who came round in answer to their call.
‘Yes,’ said Alison. ‘She went to school on Wednesday as usual and did not come home at tea-time.’
‘But, Mrs Gwynn,’ said the policeman, ‘it is now four-thirty on Friday. Why have you not called us before now?’
Alison opened her mouth to protest that they had reported Nesta’s disappearance five hours ago, but Matthew held up his hand to silence her. Such a quibble could lead nowhere.
‘We thought you wouldn’t bother, and perhaps rightly so,’ he said hastily. ‘Nesta is not an infant. She is nearly thirteen. She took money with her and she left a note. We expected her to come back as soon as she realized how foolish she’d been.’
‘If I might see the note?’ said the officer, still doubtful about the lateness of their report.
‘I have it here,’ said Alison, handing him a folded paper.
He opened and read,
Dear Mom and Dad,
I need to get away for a few days. I don’t want to go to Boston. I want to stay here in York. This is where I was born. I’ll come home soon. I want to give you time to think it over. I don’t want to live anywhere else.
Your loving daughter,
Nesta
‘What does she mean about going to Boston?’ said the sergeant.
‘That is where we came from – before Nesta was born. We have been talking recently about the possibility of going back there,’ said Alison as smoothly as she could.
‘She writes with a mature hand,’ said the sergeant, looking critically at Alison’s forgery. The young constable with him sat silent, watching.
‘She is bright for her age,’ said Matthew. ‘We think she will know what she is doing, but as the time goes on we are clearly more anxious than at first. We thought she would have come home by now. Really, all we need to know is that no harm has come to her.’
‘We have had no reports of any incidents involving a young person fitting your daughter’s description,’ said the policeman coldly. ‘We will naturally check with other forces in the area and do the usual hospital checks to make sure that she has not been admitted anywhere. We can also get her photograph into tomorrow’s papers, with your consent.’
He knew that there was something here that did not quite ring true. The woman looked distraught enough and her husband was clearly worried, but there was not that usual anxiety to shift the burden, to insist, however unrealistically, that the police should work flat out to find their daughter, abandoning all else.
‘Do you mind if my colleague and I have a look round the house? It is normal procedure. We might see something you have missed.’
Like blood stains on the carpet, or a body in the attic . . .
‘Now we’ll just have a scout round the garden,’ said the sergeant after they had pounded up and down the stairs finding nothing.
He caught the worried look Alison gave her husband and was intrigued.
‘That won’t be a problem, will it?’ he said.
Alison shook her head mutely.
The two policemen went out of the front door into darkness. Their torches made pools of light as they went round the side of the house into the back garden. They inspected carefully the high hedge that separated the Gwynns from their neighbours, the Marwoods. Between the Gwynn house and Mrs Jolly’s there was a two-metre fence covered with a tangle of rambling rose bushes. At the bottom of the garden was the pond, and beyond that three tall old trees that predated the house. There were places to hide, but Nesta was not hidden there.
‘Wow!’ said the younger policeman as he shone his torch on the frog in the middle of the pond. ‘That’s some piece of sculpture! It’s big enough to stand outside the Town Hall! I wouldn’t want it in my back garden.’
On the grass beside the pond there was a large circle of flattened blades that looked as if something heavy and symmetrical had rested there recently. The older policeman looked down at it and shuddered. There was something wrong here and he did not know what it was. Part of him did not want to know, not if it meant that a child was dead.
They went back into the house.
‘The grass near your pond has a flattened patch,’ said the sergeant, coming straight to the point. ‘Have you any idea what made it?’
‘The roller,’ said Matthew quickly. ‘I had to turn it on its side when it got jammed. It’s a hefty thing but it does make a good job of the lawn.’
‘In January?’ said the sergeant, getting more and more worried.
‘No,’ said Matthew with a nervous laugh, ‘of course not. That happened in September. I sprained my wrist turning it over and it was left there for a few days. I know it sounds a stupid thing to do. Every time I look at that stunted grass I wonder if it will ever come right again without replanting.’
There was really no more the sergeant could say. After all, there was no evidence of digging or burial, just a fairy ring of flattened grass. Matthew looked sheepish enough to make the explanation sound true.
‘Well,’ said the policeman, putting his notebook away in his pocket, ‘if you can give me a recent photograph of your daughter, we’ll see it gets circulated. And what about the newspapers?’
‘Yes,’ said Alison. ‘Put it in the paper – with the message that we want her to return home and that we have changed our mind about leaving York. We wouldn’t want to do anything that would make her so seriously unhappy.’
The sergeant looked at her anxious face and felt reassured. It takes all sorts to make a world. If this pair were rather odd, perhaps it was to do with them being foreigners. They were foreigners. You could tell by the accent, though it wasn’t very pronounced. And all that about going to Boston pointed to their being American. Americans, he believed, could be very cool customers!
‘We’ll keep you informed,’ he said. ‘And if your daughter does turn up, you will naturally let us know straight away.’
‘Of course,’ said Matthew. He showed them to the door and breathed a sigh of relief after it closed behind them.
‘I’m glad he didn’t ask to see the roller,’ he said.
‘We haven’t got one,’ said Alison. ‘There’s only the lawnmower.’
‘Precisely,’ said Matthew, smiling weakly.
‘If they ask about the roller again,’ he added, thinking rapidly, ‘I’ll have to say I got rid of it because it was too heavy.’