Old as it was, Benny Price’s Land Rover took the change from tarmac to forestry track without blinking. Hazel was glad she’d left her own car behind. It could probably have coped with the stony surface, but she’d have been picking mud out of the grille for days.
‘How far up here did Saturday drive?’
‘A bit further than this,’ said Benny. ‘I told him I didn’t mind walking the last mile, but he looked rather horrified.’
Hazel chuckled. ‘Saturday’s not really mountain-man material. He prefers the urban jungle.’ Her fondness for him was a pang beneath her breastbone. ‘I hope we find him. I hope he’s all right.’
‘I’m sure we’ll find him,’ said Benny. ‘Er …’
Hazel glanced at him. ‘What?’
‘It’s really none of my business,’ Benny demurred.
‘But?’
‘He seems an unlikely … companion … for you. I was a little surprised when he answered your door.’
‘He’s just staying for a few days,’ Hazel said off-handedly. ‘He used to rent a room from me, before he went to London. I hadn’t seen him for ages, then suddenly he turned up again.’
‘Then you two aren’t …?’
Hazel stared at him. ‘Me and Saturday? Good grief, no. He’s ten years younger than me. What do you take me for, a baby-snatcher? A desperate baby-snatcher?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. It really is none of my business.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Then, relenting, she added: ‘You’re not the first one to wonder. But he’s a good kid, and he needed a helping hand, and I was in a position to offer one. That’s all it was.’
‘It’s good to have friends,’ said Benny Price wistfully.
‘Yes, it is,’ said Hazel.
There was a long pause while he worked up to saying what he wanted to. ‘I hope you’ll always consider me one of yours. That young thug on the train – I know we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but it’s the truth. I thought I was going to die. I felt that knife sliding into me. And then you … And you did it so easily. With such … grace. I thought then, I will never meet anyone like that again.’
He was making Hazel uncomfortable. Ingratitude was much easier to deal with than adulation. ‘Benny, I told you before, I was only doing my job. What I was trained to do. Trucker was a thug, there’s no getting away from it. But if there weren’t people like Trucker, there wouldn’t have to be people like me. I can’t say I liked him. But I’m sorry he didn’t live long enough to grow up and learn some sense.’
‘He doesn’t deserve your pity,’ muttered Benny Price.
‘He didn’t deserve what he got, either.’
Among the trees ahead was a sudden flash of yellow. ‘That’s it,’ exclaimed Hazel. ‘That’s Saturday’s car. So he did come back here. And he never left.’
She thought it had run off the track into the wood. But there was a small area of hard standing where the forestry workers could park equipment without blocking the lane. Benny turned down into it and pulled up beside the sports car. Hazel was out and peering through the windows before the jeep was fully stopped. But Saturday was neither inside nor in sight.
‘He meant to come straight back,’ she said, disappointment a lump in her throat. ‘The keys are in the ignition.’ She raised her voice in a penetrating hail. ‘Saturday! Saturday, where are you?’
But though they both listened hard, there was no answering cry among the trees.
‘All right,’ said Hazel levelly. ‘If the car’s here, he can’t be far away. We just have to look. But first’ – she took her phone out – ‘I must let DCI Gorman know where we are.’
‘Can you get a signal?’
‘Er – no.’ She glared at the trees, as if demanding that the culprit own up. ‘I’ll go back up onto the lane.’
‘We should go this way.’ Benny was already heading for a path leading down into the wood.
Hazel frowned. ‘Usually, you get better reception higher up.’
‘The waterfall is this way.’
That made a difference. ‘How far?’
‘Three hundred yards, maybe. It’s rough going, though. Too rough for logging, which is why it’s overgrown.’
‘Rough I can do,’ she said stoutly. ‘You lead the way.’ She put her phone back in her coat pocket.
The helicopter was equipped with infra-red. The jeep’s engine was the biggest heat source in this part of the wood, and when they got out the two figures appeared as bright signatures beside it. The pilot dropped down for a closer look and the observer detected the yellow gleam through the bare branches.
They put a call through to DI Gorman. ‘We think we’ve got the car.’ The observer read out the map reference. ‘But someone’s beaten us to it.’
Dave Gorman frowned at his phone. ‘Who?’
‘No idea,’ admitted the observer cheerfully. ‘Infra-red’s a wonderful thing but it isn’t psychic. Two people in what looks like a Land Rover. They’ve gone into the woods on foot.’
‘I’m about’ – Gorman did a quick calculation – ‘six minutes away. Can you keep them under surveillance till I get there?’
‘As long as nothing blocks our line of sight. Infra-red can’t shoot round corners either.’
Gorman let DS Presley drive so he could make some calls. The first failed to connect, which tended to reinforce his suspicion about the identity of one of the bright signatures in the wood. The second was picked up so quickly the phone’s owner must have been waiting for it to ring.
‘Gabriel? Where are you?’
‘Er …’
‘Please,’ said Gorman with chilly emphasis, ‘please tell me you’re at Railway Street, and that Hazel is with you.’
‘Sorry, Dave, I wish I could,’ Ash said quietly. ‘We’re a couple of miles up towards Wittering. Someone thought Saturday might have gone into the woods north of the road.’
‘And Hazel’s with you?’
‘Not right now. She went ahead with someone she knows who has a Land Rover. She didn’t want to get her paintwork dirty.’
There was a lengthy silence that suggested dirty paintwork might be the least of their problems. ‘Then who’s “we”?’
‘Me and Patience,’ mumbled Ash, embarrassed.
Gorman forbore to comment. ‘So who is it that Hazel’s gone with?’
Ash told him all he knew of Benny Price, but it wasn’t much. ‘He works for the council,’ he finished lamely. ‘And he hikes or birdwatches or something. She asked if he could identify the waterfall in the photograph, and he thought maybe he could. He took Saturday up there yesterday morning.’
‘And left him there?!!’ Gorman’s indignation pierced through the slightly patchy reception.
‘Of course not. But he might have gone back later.’
‘All right,’ decided Gorman. ‘Stay where you are, Gabriel. I think the helicopter has them spotted – Hazel and her friend, anyway. I don’t know about Saturday. It looks like his car’s there, but they’re not getting a heat signature from it so the engine’s cold. I’ll have boots on the ground in ten minutes, we’ll catch up with them in fifteen. Then you can take her home. And this time, try to keep her there.’
‘She won’t leave until you find Saturday.’
‘She’ll do what she’s bloody well told,’ snarled Gorman, ‘if I have to cuff her and sling her in the back of a Black Maria.’
A few minutes later Gorman’s car passed Ash on its way up the Wittering road. It didn’t stop, but Gorman raised a hand in acknowledgement. Increasingly restless, knowing there was no point in following but too anxious to do nothing, Ash cast around for some contribution he could make while he was waiting. But the best he could come up with, in his current fragile state, was to go over in his mind what they knew, what they thought they knew and what they only thought, and hope that some kind of a revelation would present itself.
In the last couple of years, this kind of exercise had mostly involved playing mental ping-pong with Hazel, bouncing ideas between them until solutions began to take shape. Clearly, that wasn’t an option today. He turned to look at Patience. ‘I guess you’re it.’
Can I sit on the front seat?
‘If you’ll sit on the blanket, and not shed any hairs.’
He moved into the driving seat, cleared his throat and began. ‘Trucker Watts and Gillian Mitchell were murdered in the same way, a few days apart, probably by the same person. To the best of our knowledge they had only one acquaintance in common: Leo Harte. As a target criminal, Leo Harte would seem a promising suspect, except that Hazel believes he was in love with Gillian Mitchell.’
People do kill people they love, said Patience.
‘Yes, they do,’ Ash agreed slowly. ‘And more often they kill people they don’t love any more. But Hazel thinks Harte wants to find the killer as much as the police do.’
She could be mistaken.
‘Of course she could. So maybe we don’t dismiss Mr Harte just yet.’ He considered a little longer. ‘The other potential suspect is Gillian’s brother, or possibly half-brother. Jam.’
Jam?
‘Jam,’ Ash said again, firmly. ‘All right, that’s probably not the name on his passport, but it’s the only one we have for him so it’ll have to do for now. The notes on her laptop suggest Gillian was becoming increasingly worried about his mental state. She thought he’d committed arson somewhere he used to work because his colleagues teased him. He blamed them when his girlfriend left. I think that’s what the psychiatric fraternity, of which I have some experience, describe as a paranoid delusion. If Jam decided his sister was being less supportive than she should be, he might have become violent towards her as well.’
And Trucker? Patience remembered the young man well, following a close encounter with the seat of his trousers.
Ash was puzzled. ‘Maybe they did know one another. It’s hard to think that a professional journalist and Trucker Watts had many acquaintances in common, but if they had one they may have had more. Could Trucker have been one of the workmates Jam was angry with?’
I don’t think Trucker was ever anybody’s workmate. I shouldn’t think he’s ever worked.
‘Good point. Then perhaps he upset Jam in some other way. This girlfriend who left him – could she have ended up with Trucker? Not likely,’ he said then, answering his own question. ‘Trucker was twenty years younger than Gillian Mitchell – a different generation. Even if Jam was her younger brother, and his girlfriend was younger than him, that’s a big age gap.
‘Well, perhaps we don’t need to know what Trucker did, only that somehow he drew the wrath of a man losing contact with reality. He caught up with Trucker behind the skips at the shopping centre and beat his head in. Ten days later he did the same to his sister. Because she’d found out about Trucker? She was a journalist, she would have extensive contacts, she may have learned something that made sense in the context of what she already suspected. Or maybe he told her, and then wished he hadn’t. He’d expected her to take his side. When he began to suspect she was going to tell the police, he had to protect himself.’
What did you do to offend him?
Ash stared at her. ‘We don’t know that was the same man.’
Hazel thought it was. And Hazel …
‘… Has good instincts,’ admitted Ash. ‘All right, let’s think about that. Hazel’s been the subject of a fairly aggressive stalking. It began with nice little presents, and ended up with someone breaking into her house while she was sleeping. That’s the person Saturday and I sat up watching for, and that’s the person who used me as a football.’
Having first knocked you senseless with a blunt instrument. Such as was used on Trucker and the journalist.
‘True. But he didn’t kill me, or try to kill me. He was warning me off. He said as much. He was warning me off because … because he was jealous. He thought there was something going on between Hazel and me.’ He sighed sadly.
And Saturday?
‘That’s a good question.’ Patience looked pleased. ‘Where does Saturday fit into the pattern? Does Saturday fit into the pattern?’
Hazel decided not.
‘And Hazel has good instincts. But not …’
… Infallible ones.
‘Two possible scenarios. Hazel’s right, and Saturday was doing a bit of detecting on his own and had an accident. Couldn’t get back to his car, wasn’t able to call for help – either because he’s hurt too badly or because he couldn’t get a signal. In which case she’ll find him. She may have found him already.’
Or?
‘Or Hazel was right the first time, and he really has been kidnapped. Or at least, led into a trap. Which would fit the pattern, insofar as there is a pattern, if the man who was jealous of me was also jealous of him. For the same reason: he didn’t like Hazel wasting her time on unworthy companions – me too old, Saturday too young – when she could be with him. He’s convinced himself he has some sort of a relationship with her. Some sort of a future with her, if he can just discourage her hangers-on.’
Are we talking about two men here? A murderer and a stalker? Or just one?
‘I don’t know. If we can’t find a connection between Gillian Mitchell and Trucker Watts, or between them and me, how the hell are we going to find one between the three of us and Saturday?’
Then he paused. If Hazel had been there, she would have seen his face grow still and his eyes slip out of focus, gazing over the inner landscape of his mind. Perhaps Patience saw it too, because she said nothing to interrupt his thought processes.
After a couple of minutes, Ash came back. ‘Hazel is the connection. Apart from Gillian Mitchell, Hazel is or was known to all of us – to Trucker, me, Saturday, and the stalker. And if the stalker is also the killer, he was known to Gillian – he was her Brother Jam.’
Which means, Patience said quietly, Saturday probably didn’t have an accident.
‘Not unless we’re very, very lucky.’ Ash chewed his lip, thinking still. The mental electricity was probably disrupting broadband speeds all the way back to Norbold. Abruptly he looked up, frowning, and back over his shoulder up the hill they’d driven down. ‘If Hazel is the connection, this is the nexus. The place where things come to a point. This is the Wittering road. Gillian Mitchell’s father’s mistress’ – he had never said Bit on the Side, and never would – ‘lived out Wittering way. It’s all we know about her. We don’t even know for sure that she had a son. But if she did, it’s entirely possible that he stayed in the same area where he was brought up. He may still live in the same house.’
He started Hazel’s car, turned it clumsily – he hoped she was too far away to hear him clash the gears – and drove back towards Studley Row.
‘And one name that Jam just might be short for …’
… Is Benjamin.