TWO

Daniel wasn’t good with unsolved mysteries. He’d been the kind of copper who would think nothing of putting in hours of unpaid overtime just to follow up a lead or see an investigation through to its conclusion. At such times he’d been far more popular with his superiors than with his wife, but it was this same drive that saw him out of the bath after only a few minutes and reaching for his mobile phone.

A quick search through his call log brought up Reynolds’s number, and a few seconds later, a man answered curtly.

‘Patrescu.’

‘Er, can I speak to John Reynolds?’

There was a pause and then the voice said, ‘Who is calling?’

‘Daniel Whelan.’

After another short interval, Reynolds spoke. ‘Mr Whelan. I was going to ring you . . .’

He left the statement hanging, and after waiting a moment or two for him to elaborate, Daniel said, ‘So, any news? Have you found her?’

‘Yes, indeed. Katya is safe and well. She found her own way off the moor and reached us just after you left. She was cold and tired and very sorry for the trouble she’d caused, but we’ve put it all behind us now and we’re just glad to have them both back.’

‘That’s excellent news!’

‘Yes, well, I’m sorry I hadn’t got round to ringing you. We just wanted to get the girls home and into a hot bath.’

‘That’s all right. Just as long as they’re both OK.’

‘They’re fine. No harm done. Thank you for your help, Mr Whelan. And give your dog a big bone from me, will you?’

Daniel said he would and rang off, wondering why he didn’t feel more joy. By the time he’d sorted himself out some supper, he’d decided it was because the instinctive antipathy he’d felt towards Reynolds at the outset just wouldn’t go away, and neither would the memory of Elena’s desperate face. Reynolds had said all that was proper, but somehow his words lacked the ring of sincerity.

And who was Patrescu? The brother? Another relative? How many men were sharing this holiday with the girls? Daniel didn’t like the direction his thoughts were taking.

Waiting for the microwave, he found himself dwelling on certain inconsistencies in the day’s events and decided that, if only for his own peace of mind, he needed to clear them up.

The Internet connection at Daniel’s flat ran at a snail’s pace – due, he supposed, to its rather remote location. These days, he generally only used it to exchange emails with Drew and very infrequently with Amanda, so it didn’t bother him unduly, but on the odd occasion that he wanted to surf the net, it invariably reduced him to swearing at the machine in sheer frustration.

This was one of those occasions.

Hair curling damply from his bath, Daniel sat at the table that did duty as a desk, with a bowl of yesterday’s bolognese in his lap, and tapped his fingers impatiently as the screen morphed, bit by painfully slow bit, from one webpage to the next. He was dressed in jeans and a thick sweatshirt to make up for the inadequacy of the two-bar electric fire that was the room’s only heat source at present. The boiler was on the blink, and although his landlord had promised to get it seen to, as yet no technician had materialized.

From the table beside the laptop he picked up a photograph of Drew, taken last year on his eighth birthday. Daniel had taken him to Longleat Safari Park for the day. A day to remember, one of the last really happy ones before Daniel’s life began to disintegrate.

In the picture, Drew was smiling broadly, high on the excitement of seeing lions and wolves in the flesh. Opinion was pretty evenly divided on whether the boy took more after his mother or father. He had inherited Daniel’s wideish mouth, hazel-brown eyes and wavy brown hair, but there were definite echoes of his mother’s smaller, sharper features about him too. Luckily, he’d shown no signs, so far, of having inherited Amanda’s nasty temper, Daniel thought, replacing the photo.

The dog was asleep, lying flat on the rug close to Daniel’s chair, blissfully untroubled by the doubts that were disturbing his master. As far as he was concerned, he’d done his job, received his due praise and was content.

Feeling the cold air on the back of his neck, Daniel pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt, recalling a handful of times when he’d worn it that way as a disguise, on duty on the streets of Bristol.

Young enough, when he’d joined the police, to get away with mingling with gangs of teenagers, he’d quickly got a name for himself as one who could keep his cool in sticky situations, a reputation that had made his subsequent career interesting and varied.

Memories of his previous life brought depression pushing like a dark cloud at the edges of his mind. He didn’t dislike his job with TFS. With no references or work skills that were relevant outside the force, he’d expected to have to take manual work of some kind and indeed, after watching everything he’d lived and worked for swirling down the pan, he’d been grateful to find anything that would get him away, and the further the better.

In Devon, no one knew him; no one had heard the rumours or asked awkward questions. Tavistock Farm Supplies was a small company; Bowden asked few questions about his police career; and everyone else seemed to accept without curiosity his vague claim of having been a civil servant.

Fred Bowden had proved to be a very fair boss, content to leave his drivers to their own devices, as long as they got the job done, and Daniel had met some friendly and decent people at the farms and stables he delivered to. It wasn’t all bad.

Google finished its search and the monitor flickered and triumphantly produced a list of results for the given keywords, ‘Dartmoor’ and ‘Search and Rescue’.

Daniel scanned the list, his eyes narrowing. There were no less than four subgroups in the area, all part of Dartmoor Search and Rescue. Considering Reynolds’s location at Stack Bridge, it seemed to Daniel highly unlikely that either of the two nearest groups would have been called out to a search near Bovey Tracey, as he had claimed. According to the website, it was usual for two groups to attend an emergency, with two remaining on standby in case they were needed, but Bovey was on the other side of the moor and it seemed logical that the Ashburton and Okehampton branches would have dealt with any such call, leaving Plymouth and Tavistock free to attend to the call to find Reynolds’s missing daughters.

It was interesting that Reynolds had used the local pronunciation of the name Bovey. In Daniel’s experience, that was fairly unusual for a visitor, but then maybe he’d visited the moor before.

Taking a twisted forkful of the cooling pasta, Daniel tapped in the name of the caravan park where Reynolds had claimed to be staying. Once again the computer began the peculiar ticking noise that meant it was cogitating and once again Daniel could do nothing but tap his fingers and wait. He supposed it would be less stressful to visit a library with Internet access after work the next day, but patience had never been one of his strengths when he was engaged on any kind of investigation. Unlike Taz, he was unable to rest content in the knowledge of a job well done and the more he went back over what had happened, the more he found to disturb him.

Reynolds’s insistence that Daniel should stay well back with the dog when the girls were found was not in itself suspicious – many people felt a little threatened by a dog of Taz’s size – but the forceful manner in which he had made his wishes known had bordered on threatening. At the time, Daniel had put it down to the natural stress of a worried father, but with hindsight he wasn’t so sure. Was it the dog he didn’t want close to the child or Daniel himself? Had Reynolds been afraid of what she might say?

The cry he had heard when Reynolds had found Elena had been bitten off short – perhaps by a hand being clamped over the child’s mouth to ensure her silence. What if it had been a cry of fear?

The computer coughed up its results for his latest search and Daniel turned his attention to these, pushing aside his empty bowl. Listings for ‘The Pines, Devon, caravan’ were numerous, but after half an hour or more trawling through them, Daniel still hadn’t found a caravan park of that name anywhere, let alone within a reasonable distance of Stack Bridge.

A search of the online phone directories didn’t produce anything more helpful and Daniel gave up, deciding to ask at the local post offices the next day. He wished he’d thought to get the 4x4’s number plate.

Sitting staring at the screen, his mind drifted again. Had the older girl really not heard their shouting when the dog had lost her scent, or had she been hiding somewhere, watching fearfully as they hunted for her? And why had Taz lost what had seemed to be such a strong trail? Katya might have waded up or down the stream with the intention of confusing the dog, but if that was the case, why had she then returned to her father of her own volition shortly after?

It brought him back to the original question: what was it that the girls feared? Had it really been a case of a family row that had gone too far, or was it something more sinister? Was their father abusive? Was he even their father? Daniel fervently wished that he’d asked more questions when he’d had the chance.

Reynolds had said that the authorities seemed uninterested, but Daniel was beginning to doubt that he’d ever called them. He turned cold as he realized that in helping the two men, it was just possible that he’d unwittingly delivered a young girl back into the hands of her abusers.

He toyed with the idea of calling the police himself, but several minutes passed and he made no move towards the phone. After all, what could he tell them? That two girls had been lost on the moor but had now been found? Case open, case closed, as far as they would be concerned. They were unlikely to be interested in a handful of unproven suspicions.

Quite apart from this, he had his own reasons for avoiding any contact with the police, being well aware that it would set off a chain of questions, starting with ‘May I ask who’s calling?’ and quite possibly culminating in them running a search and turning up his record, and that was something he could well do without.

With a sigh he turned off the computer, picked up the day’s paper and transferred to the sagging leather sofa, where the dog presently joined him.

That night, for the first time in several weeks, the nightmares returned.

With a busy schedule of deliveries the following morning, it was nearly two o’clock when Daniel slammed the door on the empty lorry for the last time and was able to concentrate fully on what had been in the back of his mind all morning. He wasn’t going to know any peace of mind until he’d settled one thing: had Reynolds contacted the emergency services the day before or not?

If he had, then – like him or not – Daniel had no real reason to suspect the man of any wrongdoing. If he hadn’t, then he’d blatantly lied, and if he’d lied about that, what else might he have lied about?

Just what he could do about it if he found out that Reynolds’s story was made up, Daniel didn’t know. His first problem was how to discover the truth without exposing himself to the curiosity of the local police.

‘How did it go yesterday? Did you find those girls all right?’ Fred Bowden came towards Daniel as he washed the lorry down with the pressure hose in the concreted-over farmyard that was the TFS head office and depot. At 5 feet 8, ex-army sergeant Bowden was 4 inches shorter than Daniel but probably a stone heavier, built like a nightclub bouncer. He looked tough, and was, with his receding grey hair cut razor-short and a small earring in his left ear, but the crow’s feet around his eyes spoke of a ready humour.

Daniel turned off the water and wiped his hands on the front of his boiler suit. His employer had been at a farm sale that morning and it was the first time they’d spoken.

‘Yeah, they both turned up, eventually,’ he said, and explained what had happened.

‘But you’re still not happy about it,’ Bowden observed, absentmindedly rubbing at a patch of paintwork that had escaped Daniel’s cleaning.

‘I just don’t trust the man. I’m not convinced he ever called the rescue people. I’d like to check, but I don’t know whether the police will tell me.’

‘No need for that,’ Bowden said. ‘Figgy’s a Search and Rescue volunteer. He’d know if anything was called in last night, for sure.’

‘Figgy? I didn’t realize. Is he still here?’

Andy ‘Figgy’ Figgis was one of Daniel’s fellow drivers at TFS, but such was the nature of the job that in the three months or so that he’d worked there, Daniel had exchanged no more than early-morning platitudes with him, or any of the others, come to that.

‘No, he’s gone on, but I can give you his mobile number. I’m sure he won’t mind. He’s a good lad is Figgy. Come over to the office when you’ve finished here.’

Ten minutes later, stripped of his overalls and with the lorry safely parked in its bay, Daniel rapped on the half-open door of Bowden’s office.

‘Come in, come in.’

Daniel did so, stepping a foot or two inside and waiting.

‘Come right in and shut the door. It’s brass monkeys out there! Where’s Taz?’

‘Outside.’

‘Well, call him in, man. Have a seat. Coffee?’

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Daniel said, but Bowden poured him one anyway, standing the slightly chipped mug on the corner of his desk.

Taz came eagerly in response to a low whistle, slinking in to sit at Daniel’s feet as he sank reluctantly into the chair opposite his boss.

‘He works well for you, considering,’ Bowden commented, apparently absorbed in leafing through an address book.

‘Considering . . . ?’

‘Well, Alsatians are pretty much one-man dogs, aren’t they? I know some of the army dogs would do anything for their handlers but might just as well’ve been deaf for all the notice they took of anyone else. Lucky for you he’s adapted so well.’ He looked up, fixing Daniel with a sharp eye, and Daniel suspected Bowden wasn’t fooled by his story of having got the dog from a friend.

‘Well, he’s only young, and besides, one whiff of a bacon butty and he’d work for anyone,’ he joked, electing to continue the bluff.

His interview for the job with TFS had been a casual affair. At the time, it had seemed that as long as Daniel had a current HGV licence, Bowden was happy and not too bothered about his employment history. Now Daniel was uneasy. If he probed, Bowden would find that while Daniel had told no lies, he had been economical – if not to say miserly – with the truth.

Bowden shook his head. ‘No, I’ve seen the way he looks at me. He’s happy to leave me alone as long as I behave myself, but if I put a foot wrong . . .’

‘It’s nothing personal.’

‘Oh, I know that.’ Bowden tossed a TFS business card across the desk to Daniel. ‘There you are. Figgy’s number. Use my phone. What’ll you do if Reynolds was lying?’

Daniel shrugged. ‘I don’t know, really. If I can’t track him down, there’s not much I can do. Let’s hope he wasn’t.’

‘Then you’ll be happy?’

‘Well, maybe happy is pitching it a bit strong, but happier, definitely.’

Figgis answered his phone promptly and seemed incurious as to why Daniel wanted the information.

‘Last night? Nah. Quiet night, last night. Been a quiet few days. No call-outs, just training.’

‘What about over Bovey way?’

‘Not that I know of. I’ll likely see Brian in the pub later. He’d know, but I haven’t heard anything, and usually I do. All right, mate?’

‘Yeah. Thanks for that.’ Daniel replaced the receiver and sighed.

‘Reynolds was lying,’ Bowden said, watching his face.

‘Yes, he was. Damn him.’

‘So he has got something to hide.’

‘Looks that way, doesn’t it?’

‘So what now?’

‘Well, right now I’m going to take Taz for a walk. As for Reynolds – or whatever his name really is – I’ll have to give it some thought.’ He finished his coffee, put the mug back on the desk and got up to go. Taz stood instantly, waving his bushy tail in anticipation. Walk was one word he thoroughly approved of.

‘You should come to supper one night,’ Bowden suggested. ‘Meet my wife. She’s gagging to see Taz. She loves dogs.’

‘Thank you.’ Daniel responded automatically but without any intention of taking Bowden up on the offer. It was a shame. He liked the man, but in his experience social occasions nearly always led to awkward questions sooner or later. It was only natural.

Over the next few days, with nothing he could usefully do about it, Daniel tried to relegate the Reynolds affair to the back of his mind. Further attempts to track down The Pines had proven unsuccessful and led him to conclude that there was no such place.

He had toyed with the idea of contacting one of his ex-colleagues to see if anything could be gleaned from Reynolds’s mobile number, but he shied away from actually doing it, unsure of his welcome. His departure from the force had been attended by much unpleasantness, and he had no doubt that in the intervening months his reputation would have been further blackened by those he had crossed.

If those last days and weeks had taught him anything, it was that when push comes to shove, most people ultimately look after number one. Even, it seemed, those who professed to be friends.

He might still have chanced it if he’d been a bit more certain as to what he could do with any information he might obtain. Even if he had an address for Reynolds, he could hardly ring the doorbell and demand to see the girls: he had no authority or grounds to do so.

Reluctantly he let the idea go and life settled back into its unexciting routine, until the Friday a week after the search, when Daniel was making an early delivery to Quarry Farm Racing Stables, southeast of Tavistock, a regular drop on his round.

It was a smallish yard, nestling in a steep-sided valley, where owner Tamzin Ellis trained around a dozen point-to-point and National Hunt horses. The stables were old but serviceable, and beyond them, a number of paddocks sloped up on either side of a small stream.

As he parked the lorry close to the feed store, Tamzin herself appeared.

‘So, where were you last week?’

Large, expressive grey eyes, long fair hair caught up in a loose knot and a pencil-slim figure made her a sight to gladden the heart of any red-blooded male, and Daniel was no exception.

He made a rueful face. ‘Figgy did this area instead. Luck of the draw.’

‘I missed you,’ Tamzin said. ‘Figgy’s OK, but he doesn’t do this . . .’ She leaned forward to give him a lingering kiss in the privacy of the open cab door.

‘Oh, I don’t know . . .’ Daniel responded straight-faced. ‘I’m sure he would have done. Did you ask him?’

Tamzin dug him in the ribs with a stiff forefinger. ‘Cheeky bugger! You’d better get on with your work or I’ll report you to Fred!’

She moved away, laughing, and after an appreciative look at her departing rear, Daniel went round to the back of the lorry. The attraction between them had been instantaneous, and although he’d fought it at first, he had eventually given in to loneliness and her blatant encouragement and asked her out.

To begin with, it had all been very casual and Tamzin seemed to accept his reluctance to talk about himself, but of late she’d started to tease him about his ‘secrets’. Because of this, the relationship had begun to be a stress Daniel could well do without and he’d almost subconsciously started to back away from it.

He sighed, wondering if he would ever feel able to trust anyone with the mess of his past.

With the tailgate lowered, he began the laborious job of unloading. In the past, he had used the gym when he felt in need of a workout, but he had no such need these days. Some of the bigger farms had their own forklift trucks, but the smaller clients outnumbered those by far, and shifting heavy bags and bales of fodder and bedding all day long was keeping Daniel leaner and fitter than he’d been for a long time.

As he worked, he watched the lads and lasses leading their charges out preparatory to mounting, the thoroughbreds’ thin skins protected from the cold wind by striped blankets over their loins. Daniel loved the horses. He’d grown up in the countryside, and he and his brothers and sisters had cadged rides on friends’ ponies from an early age. Since moving to Bristol and joining the police at the age of eighteen, he’d barely given riding a thought, until his transfer to the Dog Unit had brought him into contact with the mounted division at HQ and he had once more felt the pull of equine contact.

Minutes later, the Quarry Farm string was mounted and filing out of the yard on to the road that led to the gallops, their many hooves beating a tattoo on the concrete and tarmac.

Tamzin stood by the gate, scrutinizing her charges as they went past, occasionally speaking to one of the riders.

‘Watch Shiner when you go past Tyler’s Farm, Maggie. He’ll throw a hissy fit if that bloody dog runs out – I don’t want him slipping and coming down on the road. Steve, take Romany quietly today – I don’t want a repeat of yesterday’s fiasco!’

Daniel glanced up, wondering what form ‘yesterday’s fiasco’ had taken, and saw a rather sullen youngster slouched in the saddle of a lean grey horse. He knew the turnover of staff in the yard was very high – in common with many racing stables – and guessed that the unhappy Steve would soon join the ranks of ex-employees: he didn’t look the persevering sort. Turning back to his work, Daniel’s eye was caught by the rider of a chestnut mare, immediately behind the grey.

With cropped dark hair and a boyishly slim figure, Daniel’s first impression was that it was a boy, but the size of the eyes and the fine bones of the face suggested a girl. It was something about that heart-shaped face that had arrested his gaze. Why did she look familiar?

He left the lorry and walked across to join Tamzin.

‘Who’s the girl on the chestnut?’ Daniel asked quietly.

‘Which chestnut?’

There were three chestnuts in the string of eight horses.

‘The one that’s just gone out.’

‘That’s Kat. She’s new.’

‘How new?’ Kat – Katya. Could it be?

Tamzin turned towards him as the last horse filed away up the lane.

‘Very. Just a couple of days. Why?’

‘Do you know where she comes from? What’s her surname?’

‘I have to say I can’t remember. She just wandered in while we were doing evening stables and asked if there were any jobs.’

‘And you don’t even know her surname? That’s a bit casual, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, I know. She may have said – I’m not sure. I was just so bloody glad to see her. We lost two last week – went home for the weekend and didn’t come back – so we were a bit short-staffed. I can’t tell you more than that because I haven’t done any paperwork yet. To be honest, I don’t bother until I’m sure they’re going to stay more than a week or two. Otherwise I spend all my time filling out forms and then they bugger off! She’s a very competent little rider, though. The horses go well for her.’

‘And Kat is short for?’

‘How would I know? Kathryn, Kathleen, Katrina . . . ? She didn’t say. Your guess is as good as mine. Why the interest?’

‘It’s a long story.’ Daniel was still watching the last of the horses’ rumps disappearing up the lane, his mind racing. ‘Does she live in?’ Several of the stable hands that weren’t local lived in a couple of purpose-built log cabins adjacent to the yard.

‘Yes, she does. Look, I’ve got to go now, if I’m going to get to the gallops before they do, but why don’t you come over tomorrow night – say sevenish. I’ll rustle up a stir-fry and we can crack open a bottle of wine and you can tell me this long story of yours. Unless, of course, it’s another of your secrets?’

‘No. That sounds good. And maybe I could have a word with Kat too.’

Tamzin shrugged. ‘I don’t see why not. Now I must go.’ She leaned towards him and they kissed lightly. ‘Until tomorrow.’

Daniel returned thoughtfully to his unloading as the Land Rover left the yard. It seemed incredible, but was it just possible that Tamzin’s new stable lass was Elena’s sister?

Reynolds had claimed she’d turned up safe and well, but had she? Daniel only had his word for it, and that had so far proven to be worth very little. He thought back over his telephone conversation with the man, remembering the pause when Reynolds had waited for him to state his business. ‘I was going to ring you . . .’ he’d said, but instead of immediately sharing the good news about Katya’s return, he’d waited for Daniel to ask.

Was that because he thought Daniel might himself have some news of the girl and therefore catch him out in his lie?

Daniel turned up at Quarry Farm with a bottle of wine in hand, just after half past seven the next evening.

Taking the path behind the stables and down the stone steps that led to the cottage, he was met at the door by Tamzin, who leaned forward for a kiss before standing back to let him into the low-ceilinged interior.

‘Sorry I’m late. I took Taz for a walk and went further than I intended.’

‘So where is he now?’

‘In the car. He’s a bit wet,’ Daniel said, handing her the bottle and bending down to greet her menagerie of dogs. ‘Besides, I didn’t want to scare Kat. He can be a bit daunting at first.’

‘Ah. About Kat . . .’ Tamzin shut the front door and followed him into the kitchen, her Labrador, spaniel and Yorkshire terrier bustling through the doorway with her. ‘There’s a bit of a problem.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, I asked her to come down here at about a quarter to seven – get some of her details sorted out and stuff – but she didn’t turn up. So I went over to the cabins and they said she’d gone.’

‘Gone? Where?’

‘Gone gone. Taken all her things and cleared out – not that she had much. I must say, I was surprised. She seemed to be settling in quite well, but there you go.’

‘Did you, by any chance, tell her that I was coming?’

Tamzin frowned. ‘Yes. Wasn’t I meant to? I’m sorry. You didn’t say.’

‘I didn’t think of it. It’s not your fault.’

‘So what did you want her for? Do you know her?’

‘I know of her – if she’s who I think she is, and that’s beginning to look increasingly likely. You say she didn’t come with much gear?’

Tamzin shook her head. ‘Hardly any. Just the clothes she was wearing – jeans, jumper and a jacket – and she had a tiny rucksack bag, you know, like the kids carry to school. I had to lend her some jodhs – she didn’t even have those. To be honest, I wondered if she was a runaway, but she swore she was sixteen.’ She took two wine glasses from the kitchen cupboard and, from a drawer, a corkscrew, which she handed to Daniel. ‘Here, make yourself useful. So, was she a runaway?’

‘In a way, yes.’

Tamzin paused in the act of taking stir-fry ingredients from the fridge and turned to face him. ‘Are you going to tell me any more, or do I have to prise it out of you? Because – I don’t mind telling you – I’m getting just the teensiest bit fed up with all these bloody guessing games!’

‘I’m sorry.’ Daniel couldn’t blame her for losing patience with him. He handed her a large glass of ruby-coloured wine and, settling his rump against the edge of the granite worktop, proceeded to tell her the tale, including his subsequent doubts.

‘And you think Kat is the missing girl?’

‘I think it’s possible, don’t you?’

‘But you don’t know for sure she’s still missing. I mean, why would this Reynolds guy lie about finding her?’

‘Because he quite plainly doesn’t want the police involved and I think he guessed that if he admitted she was still missing, I’d call them myself.’

Tamzin put a pepper on her chopping board and began to slice it. ‘So why all the secrecy? What’s he trying to hide?’

‘I think he’s scared of what they might say – I mean, he made damn sure I didn’t get close enough to Elena to speak to her.’

‘Oh my God! You don’t think they’re being abused?’ Tamzin turned round with a pepper in one hand and a knife in the other, her face twisted with disgust.

‘I don’t know. It’s one possibility, but there are others. Tell me, would you have said that Kat was English?’

‘No, she wasn’t, but that’s the norm for this industry. Almost all the lads who come through the yard are Eastern European or Irish. I’m becoming multilingual. I can say, “Get a move on with that stable!” and, “Stop mucking around!” in six different languages. Kat speaks pretty good English, but Rafa – that’s Rafail – says she’s Romanian. I asked him.’

‘I thought she might be. I’m pretty sure Reynolds and his so-called brother are too. I’m wondering if the authorities know they’re here. That might explain the nervousness about getting involved with the police.’ There were other possible explanations too, but he decided to keep them to himself for now.

‘Will you go to the police now you’ve seen her?’

‘And tell them what, exactly?’

‘Well . . .’ Tamzin hesitated. ‘Yeah, I see what you mean. So what now?’

Daniel shrugged. ‘Think again, I suppose.’

‘I wish I hadn’t told Kat you were coming. I’m sorry. It was stupid.’

‘Don’t be daft – you weren’t to know. I expect she was afraid Reynolds had sent me after her. She might even have seen me with him on the moor the other day.’

‘I wonder where she’ll go, poor kid. She won’t know anyone.’

‘You say she seemed competent with the horses?’

‘Oh, yes. She’s been around them before, without a doubt.’

‘Well, she might get out of the area altogether, but if Elena is her sister and she’s close by, I have a hunch she’ll stick around. I might try leaving word at all the local stables. If it’s what she knows, it’s just possible she’ll try again. After all, she’s got to eat.’

‘I can have a word with the one in the village,’ Tamzin offered. ‘And also the trekking centre over at Goats Tor. I know Hilary quite well, and she’s usually looking for staff with Easter coming up.’

‘Thanks, that’d be great.’

Tamzin turned back to her chopping board but made no attempt to continue with her preparation.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked after a moment.

‘Doing what?’

She swung back to face him. ‘Going to all this trouble to find the girl? I mean, most people would have given up and forgotten about it after this Reynolds guy said she was back home. Why not you?’

Daniel shrugged. ‘I told you. It just didn’t feel right. The more I thought about it, the less I liked it. I couldn’t just do nothing.’

‘Some people would.’

‘Yeah, well . . .’ Daniel didn’t know what to say.

‘OK. You don’t have to answer this, but what did you really do before you started working for Fred? You said you were a civil servant. Policemen are civil servants, right? Were you a policeman?’

Slowly Daniel nodded. ‘For ten years.’

‘So why all the secrecy? You’re not undercover, are you?’

‘No, nothing like that. I’m not in the force any more.’

‘Am I allowed to ask why? I mean, I thought it was normally a lifelong career thing – a calling.’

‘It is.’ The horror, tragedy and humiliation of his last weeks on the force flashed uninvited into Daniel’s mind, and with an effort he closed the memories down, saying tersely, ‘I left. Stress basically.’

Again a half-truth. He was getting too good at those.

‘Well, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It must be a terribly stressful job,’ Tamzin said with a note of relief. ‘I know I couldn’t do it. But I wish you’d told me sooner. I was imagining all sorts of things! I mean, I even wondered if you’d been in prison or something.’

Her easy acceptance of his white lie made Daniel feel uncomfortable, but if the alternative were unpalatable to him, how much more so would it be to her?

When Tamzin and Daniel had finished their meal, they retired to what Tamzin called the snug, but which was in fact the cottage’s only sitting room. There they sat on a blanket-covered leather sofa, wedged between two of Tamzin’s three dogs, drinking wine in front of the small wood-burning stove that heated the whole building. Taz had been brought in from the car and now lay in the doorway, one eye sleepily fixed on his master.

Daniel sighed with rare contentment, and Tamzin slanted a look at him.

‘I think that’s the first time I’ve known you be really relaxed,’ she commented. ‘When we’re out anywhere, you’re constantly on the watch. You probably don’t know you’re doing it, but your eyes are everywhere. If someone moves, you see it. If someone new comes in, you watch them. It puts me on edge too.’

‘God, I didn’t realize I was such bad company,’ Daniel said. ‘Sorry. Old habits, I guess.’

‘It’s OK now I know. But all the same, it’s good to see you kicking back.’

There was silence for a moment, punctuated by the sound of a log collapsing in the burner.

‘What’ll you do if you find Kat?’ Tamzin said then, pulling her feet up on to the sofa and leaning against him.

‘I don’t know. I’ll have to play it by ear, I guess. If she does turn up, we must be careful not to scare her off again. Best tell people to say nothing and just ring me.’

‘OK. But before you give your phone number to half the females in Devon, how about putting another log on the fire and then giving me a cuddle?’

‘We-ell.’ Daniel made a show of looking at his watch, pursing his lips and shaking his head – ‘I should really be going . . .’

‘You ain’t going anywhere with half a bottle of wine inside you, mister!’ Tamzin told him. ‘You’re gonna have to stay right here, like it or not!’

‘Well, I suppose I could be a gentleman and pretend to like it,’ he said generously.