DCI Gorman was pretty sure he was lost.
He and Presley had followed the instructions called down from the helicopter as best they could. But neither of them had any experience of orienteering, and an increasingly impatient voice from above had kept warning him he was getting further away from the people on the trail instead of closer. Then it reported that the helicopter was running low on fuel – it had, of course, come on from its earlier exercise instead of directly from its base – and would have to leave. A last volley of directions closed with the words, ‘Keep that heading and you really can’t miss them,’ and then the aircraft banked away and the sound of the rotors quickly diminished.
That was ten minutes ago. Now Gorman was surrounded on all sides by trees, he had no idea what direction he was walking in, he’d fallen twice on the muddy trail, and if Tom Presley said, ‘I still think we should have taken the left fork back there’ one more time he was going to get a knuckle sandwich.
Ash left Patience in the car and hurried – insofar as he was capable of haste – to that one of the Studley Row cottages where Hazel had found someone in. She was still in: a woman of about seventy doing her housework in an apron. Her name was Mrs Morris.
Yes, she said, needing no more encouragement to gossip about her neighbour than an attentive ear, Benny Price had grown up in the next-to-end cottage. His mother had had it from her parents; her father was an agricultural labourer at a time when the words meant something. Benny’s father? He didn’t live with them, but he visited regularly, made sure they had what they needed. What’s this his name was? Murdoch? Witchell? Mrs Morris didn’t want telling, it would come to her in a minute …
‘Mitchell?’ asked Ash softly.
That was it: Mitchell. Martin Mitchell. He worked in the big ceramics factory in Norbold. Jenny Price mightn’t have got a wedding ring out of him, but she had the finest tea set in the whole of Studley Row.
‘Did Benny ever talk about his sister?’
That would be a short conversation, cackled Mrs Morris, since he didn’t have one.
‘Half-sister, then,’ said Ash. ‘Martin Mitchell’s daughter with his wife.’
That rang a bell with Mrs Morris. Yes. Benny hadn’t known her when he was growing up. He’d found her on that inter-web thing. She was some kind of a writer. He was very excited when they arranged to meet, told Mrs Morris all about it: where they went for lunch, what they ordered. He showed her newspapers – proper newspapers, London ones, not that Norbold rag – with her name on the articles. They were as thick as thieves for months. Then …
‘Something changed?’ asked Ash.
Mrs Morris thought there’d been a falling out. If she asked after Benny’s sister, which – striving to meet her obligations as a nosy neighbour – she not infrequently did, he would grunt and change the subject, or make an excuse and go inside. Only once was he more forthcoming. Mrs Morris thought the disagreement between them had come to a head, leaving him angry and unguarded.
‘It was about a girl. Benny had managed to get himself another girlfriend. I never met her, but I could tell he was a bit smitten. I just hoped it would work out better for him this time. He was smitten with the other one too, took it desperate hard when she disappeared.’
The hairs on the back of Ash’s neck stood up. ‘Literally?’
Mrs Morris squinted at him. ‘Don’t be so wet. I mean, she stopped coming round. He stopped taking her out. It was over. Pity, really. I did meet her, I thought she was a nice enough sort. Miriam, she was called. Bit on the plain side – bit of a mouse. But he was never going to pull a stunner, was he, not Benny, and he seemed pretty satisfied. He thought they were going to get married.’
‘What went wrong? Do you know?’
‘Benny blamed it on the lads he worked with. Said he took her to the place where he worked – wanting to show her off, you know. But Benny always gets things that little bit wrong, and instead of treating him like the conquering hero, which is what he expected, they made fun of him. Harmless enough, I’m sure, but it got under his skin. They asked Miriam if she’d really thought this through, and told her she could do better. Told her Benny wasn’t much of a catch and she ought to set her sights a bit higher. Benny was furious. Furious. He hates being treated with anything less than respect.’
‘These were men he worked with at the council?’
‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Morris, ‘this was before he was a park warden. He worked for a joiner or something, in Coventry. When the workshop burned down he had to find a new job.’
Ash was confused. ‘So why was Benny angry with his sister?’
‘That was later. Like I told you, he got another girlfriend. He thought his sister’d be pleased for him, but she seemed to think it was a bad idea. He said she was no better than the men at the workshop, putting him down, trying to spoil things for him. Disrespect – see? He can go on a bit, can Benny, once he’s riled. Anyway, she said his colleagues weren’t the reason Miriam left: that she left him because he’d become obsessive and controlling, and if he made the same mistake with the new one he’d lose her too.
‘He was wildly indignant about that, wanted to know what an old spinster like her knew about it anyway. He said she was just jealous, because he had someone and she was going to be an old maid. He said – what was it he said? – he said if she tried to spoil things for him again, he’d put her nose in a sling. I said that wasn’t a very nice thing to do, to threaten his sister, and Benny said she started it. She threatened to tell his new girlfriend that he was a weirdo and she should have nothing to do with him. Or words to that effect.’
‘Do you think he’s a weirdo?’
‘Probably,’ admitted Mrs Morris cheerfully, ‘but it doesn’t bother me. He’s just Benny – I’m used to him and he’s used to me. By the time you get to my age, dear, most of the people you’ve ever known seem a little weird.’
Ash considered. ‘The new girlfriend. Did he tell you anything about her?’
Mrs Morris gave a gap-toothed leer. ‘He said she was a police officer. I mean, really? Benny?’
Ash sucked in as deep a breath as his ribs would allow. He was about to thank her for her candour – a politer word than gossip – and leave, when his brain flagged up a query about something she’d said earlier. ‘Benny’s a park warden? I thought he was something to do with roadworks. Pipe laying, potholes – that kind of thing.’
‘Don’t know what would make you think that, dear,’ said Mrs Morris dismissively. ‘Benny’s always been an open-air fanatic. Hiking, camping, that kind of stuff. He knows the woods round here’ – she indicated with a gesture, in case Ash might think she meant some other woods – ‘like the back of his hand.’
Ash tried to phone Dave Gorman. But his signal was patchy and Gorman’s non-existent. Now desperately anxious for Hazel’s safety, he was still worrying how to get what he’d discovered to those who needed to know it when one of the squad cars from Meadowvale sailed past the end of the lane, heading up the Wittering road. He’d given chase almost before he’d decided to.
By the time he got there, the hard standing at the top of the stony laneway was full. Saturday’s yellow sports car was there, so was Price’s Land Rover, and so was Gorman’s smart new saloon, an indulgence he’d treated himself to when his promotion came through. There was also a maroon hatchback that Ash didn’t recognise. The squad car had squeezed in by shoving its bonnet into a bush, and Ash parked beside it. If anyone wanted to leave in a hurry, there’d be chaos.
DC Emma Friend came over as soon as she saw him. ‘We’re organising a search of the wood for the missing boy. The chief and Tom Presley have gone ahead, but we’ve lost communication with them. All these trees.’ She made a gesture not unlike Mrs Morris’s.
‘It’s not just Saturday who’s in trouble: Hazel is too. The man she’s with – Benny Price, the man from the council, who offered to show her the waterfall’ – Ash was aware from DC Friend’s expression how little sense he was making, but the situation was too urgent to explain more fully – ‘I think he’s the one who’s been stalking her. He’s Gillian Mitchell’s half-brother, and I think he’s the one who killed her.’
If he’d stammered that out to DS Presley, the sergeant would have laughed out loud and then started to explain, carefully, as to a child or an idiot, why he couldn’t possibly be right. But Presley remembered Ash in his doolally days, when he was known at Meadowvale as Rambles With Dogs, and Friend had arrived in Norbold more recently and was more aware of the things he and Hazel Best had accomplished.
So she listened, and took in what he was trying to say, and turned back to her colleagues and raised her voice. ‘Listen, everyone. It’s not just the boy we’re looking for now – Hazel could be in trouble too. We need to move off and find her. And the guy she’s with? – exercise caution.’
It was as simple as that. No one asked for details: they spread out among the trails leaving the little car park, and no one spoke because they were listening as well as looking. Within a minute they had disappeared entirely among the trees, leaving Ash alone.
He wanted to be with them. Not because he thought he could do anything that they couldn’t, but because Hazel was his friend and she mattered to him, more even than pain. He got as far as clambering out of the car. But the rational part of his brain knew he couldn’t move far enough or fast enough to be of any use in the search, and if he came to grief too they’d have three potential casualties to look for. He eased himself back behind the wheel.
He looked at Patience. He took her seatbelt off. ‘I guess this is where we find out if you’re as smart as you say you are.’
Certainly I am, said Patience.
‘I can’t do anything to find Hazel, and I couldn’t do anything to help her if I did. You can. Even an ordinary dog could. I’ve seen the Lassie films. Go and look for her. Stay with her till help arrives.’
I don’t like leaving you here alone.
‘I’ll be fine,’ insisted Ash. ‘If Price comes back, I’ll lock the doors and blow the horn.’ If Price came back alone … ‘Please, Patience. I need you to do this.’
All right.
He leaned across and opened the passenger door. Even a very smart dog, even a dog that can talk, lacks opposable thumbs.
In a couple of bounds the slim white lurcher had vanished into the undergrowth.
When the last branches parted so that Hazel could see clearly, she slowed to halt, unable to feel the broken ground beneath her feet. Then she sank slowly to her knees and put both fists against her mouth to keep from screaming.
They’d found Saturday. And they’d found him too late.
She thought at first, staring, unable to drag her eyes away or even to blink, that his killer had crucified him. But actually he was tied there, under the waterfall, his arms stretched by ropes to trees either side of the stream, the little cataract crashing down on his head and shoulders. His head was on his chest now, his wet hair in his face, his thin body slumped as far as the ropes would permit. The flash of white she’d seen through the trees was his T-shirt. Whoever had strung him up there had left him nothing that might keep in a little warmth.
Somewhere deep in her brain, where she was not just a friend and compassionate human being but also a police officer, the question was forming: How long had he been dead? How long had he suffered the icy chill of the winter stream beating down on him, exposed, immobile, unable to help himself, before he yielded up his life? Hours, certainly. In Britain, even in winter, healthy young men don’t die of exposure in a few minutes. He’d been missing a full day. Had he been here most of that time? Had he been here all night? Had he stayed conscious long enough to feel himself dying by inches? If she’d got here an hour sooner … two hours …?
A cry wrung itself from her throat, and it didn’t even sound human. It sounded like a trapped animal.
Benny Price was on his knees beside her, his arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m so sorry …’
‘Get him down.’
He looked doubtful. ‘Should we?’
‘Cut him down!’ Right now she didn’t care that it was a crime scene that needed preserving. All she cared about was that her friend had died cold, miserable and alone; that in all likelihood his last conscious thought had been to wonder where she was and when she would come for him; and she hadn’t come. She wasn’t leaving him strung up like a beast in an abattoir any longer than she had to. She staggered to her feet. ‘If you can’t, I will.’ She didn’t have a knife. But she had fingernails, and a knot that one person can tie can always be picked apart by another.
Price was rooting through the contents of his backpack. ‘Wait. I have a knife.’ There were other tools in there, too, that chinked and rattled as he searched.
Armed with a sheath-knife, he climbed down into the gulley, crossing the stream sure-footedly using two of the bigger boulders as stepping-stones; from the far bank he reached up and cut the rope securing Saturday’s left arm. The boy’s whole body sagged towards Hazel’s side of the stream. She leaned down, grasped his wrist in both her hands and hauled.
Though he’d grown since she first knew him – a little taller, a little broader – there still wasn’t a lot of him. But the water soaking his jeans and T-shirt made him heavier than usual, and the effort required to drag him up the bank was beyond her. She knelt in the mud, oblivious of the cold and the splashing water, tugging fruitlessly and sobbing with grief and frustration.
Benny Price came back across the stream, hooked an arm round Saturday’s knee and dragged him up the bank with a grunt. Then he straightened up and, reaching into the nearer tree, cut the rope securing the boy’s right wrist.
Hazel eased the body of her friend onto his back. She had nothing to put over him except her own coat. She told herself that would be silly – that it would do him no good now, and she needed it herself. Then she shrugged it off and put it over him anyway. Two sweaters were not enough to keep the winter at bay. Stray droplets from the waterfall burned her skin like ice.
As she leaned over him, Saturday’s eyes fell open.
Shock jolted through her. Then she told herself it was just a physiological response to the way they’d been manhandling his body. And then she saw intelligence and a flicker of recognition in his gaze, and her jaw dropped.
‘Dear God, he’s alive!’
Benny Price spun back as though galvanised. ‘What?’ He peered into the wet face, fish-belly white, and Saturday looked back. He blinked. A tremor ran through him, and Hazel realised he was trying to move, to sit up, but his chilled body wouldn’t obey him.
She leaned closer. ‘Lie still. Help’s on its way.’
Blue lips moved in his white face. A whisper of sound escaped him. Hazel leaned closer, struggling to catch the words.
The words were, ‘It was him. He did this.’