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- Herausgeber: David Fickling Books
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Serie: The Garvie Smith Mysteries
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
Amy Roecastle is beautiful. Selfish. And missing.Vanished without a trace in the middle of the night, she's taken her ferocious dog - and something else, too. Something deadly.Amy's best friend is lying to Inspector Singh, who has no leads and no idea.Cue Garvie Smith. Teenage slacker. Undeniable crime-solving genius.Garvie's one step ahead of the investigation. But there's nothing simple where Amy is involved. And this time Garvie's about to find himself in way over his head.
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TEN FACTS ABOUT GARVIE SMITH
Lazy, rude, golden-hearted, aggravating, economical with the truth, kind (to those who deserve it).Highest IQ ever recorded at Marsh Academy.Lowest grades.Best mates with Felix (cat burglar), Smudge (stupidest boy at school and proud of it), Alex (who’s been selling something he shouldn’t).Wouldn’t dream of telling his mother he loves her. Besides, she wants to move back to Barbados, and what’s the point of that?Smokes, mainly tobacco.Liked by girls.Hated by the police, teachers, other boring adults.Exceptionally good at maths.Scared of dogs.A GARVIE SMITH MYSTERY
HEY, SHERLOCK!
SIMON MASON
For Gwilym and Eleri
And in memory of Joe Nicholas (1951–2019)
Contents
1
It was a wet and windy August night. A storm was coming. Rain from the east began to fall in ragged bursts out of swirling cloud. There was a low groan of thunder, a sudden fracture of lightning, and the deserted downtown streets jumped with water. The long, low suburbs of Five Mile and Limekilns blurred under the downpour.
Up at Froggett, trees in the landscaped gardens of the elegant villas swung sluggishly in the wind. Froggett was the most expensive postcode in the city, a leafy enclave of tasteful old homes surrounded by woodland. None of the houses had numbers. They had names – ‘Meadowsweet’, ‘The Rectory’, ‘Field View’. It gave them personalities, standing at ease with a sort of plush modesty behind pink brick walls or copper beech hedges in grounds laid out with ponds and lawns, tennis courts and terraces. Now, in the storm, rain-mist boiled in their immaculate gardens, their ponds crackled and fizzed, their exotic trees clashed their boughs.
It was midnight. In the living room of one of these houses – ‘Four Winds’, a late Victorian villa in biscuit-coloured brick, all gables and chimneys – Dr Roecastle sat alone working on her notes. She was a senior surgeon at City Hospital, a slender middle-aged woman with dark hair in a feminine cut and a narrow face that never relaxed. From time to time she sipped herbal tea with a look of careful concentration.
The living room was a direct expression of her personal style. It was decorated entirely in monochrome: a white rug on the black japanned floor, a glossy black table on the rug, two sharply geometrical black-and-white sofas and a number of chairs receding towards the black glazed fireplace in the end wall, above which hung a huge silkscreen print of a black triangle against a brilliant white background.
Hearing thunder, she glanced towards the streaming window as it flared suddenly with the shocking exposure of lightning. Irritated, she looked at her watch. Eleven minutes past twelve. At that moment, cocking her head, she picked out a different sound among the clatter of the storm – the muted opening and closing of the front door, and she pushed aside her laptop and sat there, waiting severely.
Her sixteen-year-old daughter appeared, advanced slowly into the room, head down, and stood there, dripping.
‘I don’t call this ten o’clock at the latest,’ her mother said after a moment. ‘Do you?’
Amy Roecastle said nothing. She had a beautiful, unruly face – blue eyes, heavy eyebrows, a wide, crisp mouth – and she stood there, soaked, in black bondage trousers, German-issue army jacket and drenched woollen hat pulled down over her forehead, staring at the floor, saying nothing while her mother talked. She was very still. Occasionally she trembled. Water dripped from her sleeves onto the white rug.
‘We had an agreement,’ her mother said. ‘Which you have broken. What’s the reason?’
Her daughter remained silent. Blank-faced.
‘There is no reason, of course,’ Dr Roecastle said, watching Amy carefully. ‘I don’t know why I ask. Thoughtlessness is the reason. Selfishness. A complete disregard for anyone else.’ She thought she saw her daughter briefly smile. ‘Are you drunk?’ she asked sharply.
Still Amy said nothing. Rain drummed against the windows, but the silence inside the room was very silent.
Her mother got to her feet. ‘I’m going into the kitchen to get another cup of tea. You’re going to wait here and think about your behaviour. And when you’re ready, you’re going to come in and explain yourself to me.’
Amy spoke. ‘All right,’ she said.
Dr Roecastle scrutinized her daughter for a moment, then turned and left the room. On her way, she stopped at the front door to put on the night-time alarm, then went on to the kitchen.
There was a bang of thunder and almost immediately another flare of lightning, and for a moment she thought she heard a cry somewhere, and muffled shouting, then a gust of rain clattered against the windows and the sound was lost. Sitting at the kitchen table, she pulled her collar round her throat and shivered.
She made her tea. Several minutes passed.
‘I’m waiting,’ she called out.
Waiting, she brooded. All summer Amy’s behaviour had been intolerable and, reviewing the situation now, she felt all the force of righteous anger inside her. Frowning as she picked a speck off the rim of her cup, she rehearsed what she was going to say.
After a while, she called out again, more loudly, ‘Amy! I said I’m waiting!’
At last, exasperated, she got up and went back into the living room.
Her daughter was no longer there. Just a wet patch on the white rug where she had been standing.
Dr Roecastle strode out of the room into the hall and stood at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Amy!’
No answer. Only the rain trying to crack the windowpanes.
‘Amy!’ she shouted once more. ‘I’m not chasing after you. I can wait as long as necessary. You will come down and explain yourself.’
A long rip of thunder reverberated round the house, and in the quiet aftermath Dr Roecastle heard the wind-bent trees shudder and moan. There was no sound anywhere in the house, but again she thought she heard a cry outside, immediately swept away by the crashing of the storm. She looked at her watch. It was half past twelve.
She went back into the living room and sat down at her laptop to wait.
2
Branches whipped Amy’s face, and she slipped and fell with a cry, and got up wet, and staggered on again through the roaring trees. Rain blinded her. She ducked and skidded along the path as the storm boomed and crashed around her like a surging sea.
From time to time she paused, panting, to look behind her anxiously, wiping her eyes with a muddy sleeve and squinting through the darkness, before hurrying on again, drenched and shivering. Twice she cried out at shadows flung towards her by the wind. Thunder made a noise like cliff faces breaking apart; she fell again, hauled herself up and stumbled on.
She was already deep in the woods. In the heaving darkness she stopped and looked behind her. Her house was lost to view; there was nothing but the chaotic darkness of the wood. A sudden noise nearby made her spin round, looking frantically from side to side. Through the trees ahead there was a gap of moonlight flickering with rain, and she shielded her eyes and peered towards it. There was something there. What was it? Was it … a van? A van parked in the middle of the wood?
She stood in the shadows, dripping. Then one of the shadows lurched forward and grabbed hold of her.
3
As arranged, Smudge’s brother picked them up in his Ford Transit at the corner of Pollard Way, a little after 6.00 a.m. He was a dark-haired man with a distracted face, and he said nothing, just glanced round once, as Garvie and Smudge settled in the back among the tools. The other men in the front said nothing either. One was a baby-faced giant with corkscrew hair and a missing front tooth. His name was Tar. The other was a pale Welshman called Butter. All three wore dust-caked boots, baggy sweat pants and hooded tops crusted and stained like the clothing of victims of violent crime.
It was a shiny, tranquil morning after the storm, nauseatingly early. All along Town Road it looked as if the tide had just gone out, leaving behind the naked city exposed to daylight: puddled pavements, flooded parking lots and glittering streaked windows of empty showrooms. They drove east into the rising sun, a second van following, towards the dual carriageway. On the radio were sports results, jingles and a news report on a riot in Market Square the night before: extensive damage to property, a fatal shooting, an injured policeman and a police horse with a broken leg.
Smudge paid it no attention. He was seventeen and had just passed his driving test. He lovingly patted the armrest of his seat and said, ‘What I like about the Custom is the rear air suspension. Don’t you? Like gliding.’
He grinned. He was a morning person.
Garvie said nothing. He was not.
‘Though to be fair,’ Smudge added after a moment, ‘I like it all. Adaptive cruise control, parking distance sensors. Auto high beam.’
Butter turned in the front seat. ‘Intelligent all-wheel drive.’
‘Rain-sensing wipers,’ Tar said, also turning. ‘Everyone loves a rain-sensing wiper.’
They all looked at Garvie.
Butter said to Smudge, ‘Doesn’t say much, does he? This genius friend of yours.’
‘Vans not really his thing,’ Smudge said apologetically.
Tar said, ‘What’s your thing then, brainbox?’
Garvie looked at him. ‘Listening to van lovers talk,’ he said. ‘Luckily.’
There was banter in the van. It washed over Garvie like the radio, which twittered on with other news stories. Two people critically injured in a collision on the ring road. An arson attack on an office block. Further delays to the police enquiry into money-laundering at the Imperium casino: they still hadn’t traced the principal ‘smurf’ – the runner who had been colluding with the club to exchange dirty money for gambling chips.
On the ring road they hit the early morning commuter traffic and went slowly in convoy as far as the Battery Hill exit, then picked up speed climbing the shallow hill towards Froggett Woods.
‘Well,’ Smudge said, peering out of the window, ‘it’s another great day for fencing.’
Garvie reflected on this. It was a fresh, sunny morning in August, that much was true. It was also his ninth straight day of working for Smudge’s brother, of weekend overtime, early morning starts, jolting rides and chit-chats about vans. And, of course, fencing. Two months ago he had been at school; now he was in the world of work. He wasn’t sure about this world yet. It got up too early for his liking.
The van went slowly now along a single-track lane, rocking slightly, between high green banks frilly with hedge parsley, the houses a rumour of roof tops and gables beyond hedges and walls. Turning by an ornamental bus shelter with a thatched roof into a recess, it pulled up in front of the gates of ‘Four Winds’, home of Dr Roecastle FRCS. Before Smudge’s brother could speak into the entrance intercom, the automatic gates trundled open, and both vans accelerated up the long sweep of driveway towards the house.
A silence descended, a moment of contemplation of the day’s fencing ahead. And into this silence, Garvie said calmly:
‘Something’s wrong.’
Smudge looked at him blankly.
‘It’s a non-sequential term,’ Garvie said.
‘What is?’
‘You know what she’s like. The woman whose house this is.’
‘Yeah. Bit uptight. So?’
‘Always ready for us when we get here. All the blinds up. Door open. Waiting for us with our instructions.’
‘Yeah. So?’
‘Every day so far she’s asked who we were before she buzzed us through. Today she didn’t ask. Just opened the gates straightaway. Non-sequential term. It breaks the sequence.’
After he finished speaking there was a moment’s silence, then, except for Smudge, they all broke out laughing.
They drove up the rise until the house came into view, and then Smudge said, ‘Oh, look, the blinds are still down.’
Now they fell silent, looking up at the house as they drove slowly along the front and parked. It was true. All the blinds in all the windows were still down.
Dr Roecastle was not waiting at the door.
Everything was still and quiet.
There was a moment of awkward silence. Butter said, ‘Come on, man. It’s not exactly hardcore. What do you want us to do, call emergency?’
‘No need,’ Garvie said. ‘If it’s bad enough, she’ll have done that already. She’s that sort of woman.’
Even as he spoke, a squad car came into view round the drive behind them.
Getting out of the vans, the men stood there warily, watching it approach. They were not the natural friends of law enforcement; Smudge’s brother was just coming off the back of a charge – or, as he preferred, ‘mistake’ – about stolen property. The car came at speed up to the house and stopped, and a policeman got out. He was a small, trim, bearded man of about thirty wearing a correct-looking uniform and bulletproof turban, and he carefully adjusted both before setting out towards the house. As he went, he glanced over at the eight men standing awkwardly by their vans in their sloppy sweat pants and creosote-smeared hooded tops – and stopped in surprise, staring at Garvie.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘The fencing.’
For a moment Inspector Singh’s mouth remained open, but it seemed that he could find nothing else to say, and at last he collected himself, gave a curt nod and made his way to the front door, which was abruptly opened as he approached by Dr Roecastle, still wearing her clothes from the night before, who said in a critical voice high-pitched with emotion, ‘At last!’
She showed him into the house and shut the door behind them, and all the men outside turned as one to stare at Garvie, who was smoking quietly, looking at his boots.
4
In the black-and-white living room Dr Roecastle sat on one sofa and Detective Inspector Singh of City Squad sat on another with his recorder.
‘So,’ he said, in his usual careful manner, ‘tell me what has happened.’
She told him her daughter had disappeared.
Speaking with emotion, much of which was anger and irritation, she described Amy coming in after midnight, their conversation, and how she’d waited for Amy to continue it.
‘At first I didn’t realize she’d left,’ she said. ‘I’d just put the alarm on, I would have heard her if she’d deactivated it, so I searched here for an hour before it became clear. How she left the house I don’t know. Then I waited for her to return for two more hours before calling the police. I haven’t been to bed at all.’
‘And, understandably, you are now very anxious,’ Singh said.
‘I’m furious. I’m extremely busy and I frankly don’t have time for this.’ She looked at him critically. ‘And now that I’ve reported her missing, I’d like to know what happens next please.’
Singh outlined standard procedures. A risk analysis would be run and the police would coordinate with other services to develop the appropriate strategy; local support would synchronize with national networks. Dr Roecastle did not appear to be listening.
He moved on to practical details. Could Dr Roecastle remember what Amy had been wearing when she left the house? Could she provide him with a recent photograph?
Abruptly, Dr Roecastle raised a hand to silence him. Getting up, she went to the door and looked out into the hall before returning to her seat.
‘I have workmen on the premises,’ she said, ‘not all of them well-behaved, and I have to keep an eye on them when they come in for a toilet break. There are valuable artworks in the hall. Please go on.’
She listened to him with a distracted air while he asked about Amy’s movements the night before.
‘She spent the evening in town with a friend,’ she said. ‘When she got in, frankly I thought she was drunk.’
‘She’s sixteen, you said?’
‘Seventeen next February. She’s at Alleyn’s studying for her A levels.’
‘She’s very young to be drinking in town, isn’t she?’
‘I can tell you don’t have children of your own,’ she said drily.
He hesitated, then went on, ‘Who was the friend she was with?’
‘Sophie Brighouse. A friend from Alleyn’s. She lives at Battery Hill. She’s the same age as Amy. Of course, they can both look much older when they want to. Suddenly they think they’re adults.’
‘Do you know where they went?’
‘Sophie will be able to tell you. You’ll want to talk to her, I assume.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll go there on my way back to the station.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Has anything happened recently to prompt Amy to leave? Trouble at school? An argument with a boyfriend?’
‘She doesn’t date.’
‘An argument with you?’
‘She argues with me all the time. Little things.’
He thought about that. ‘Has she left home before?’ he asked.
Tight-lipped, Dr Roecastle said, ‘In February she disappeared for three days.’
‘What happened?’
‘We didn’t involve the police, we conducted our own enquiries. We were worried, of course. Searched everywhere. And in the end we found her checked into a hotel in town. Where she’d run up a not inconsiderable bill for room service. My daughter thinks she’s a rebel, Inspector, wearing all these goth-punk clothes, flirting with unsuitable boys, smoking weed at her exclusive school, protesting against politicians, but at heart she’s like any teenager. Thoughtless. Thinking only of herself. She’s discovered alcohol. The summer’s been an absolute nightmare. I’m a single parent, I have a senior position at the hospital, and it’s not possible for me to monitor her all the time. Because it’s still the holidays I’d allowed her to go out on the understanding that she would be back by ten o’clock at the latest. She wasn’t. Of course, I’ve been too liberal with her, I know that. She has her own credit card. We’re not poor. She’s extremely privileged, but she’s abused my trust. She did it before; now she’s doing it again.’
Singh considered all this. ‘What was happening in February?’ he asked after a while.
Dr Roecastle’s nostrils flared. ‘That’s when my marriage was falling apart.’
Singh nodded sympathetically. ‘And Amy’s father lives elsewhere now?’
‘He does.’
‘Could she have gone to him last night?’
‘Amy’s relationship with her father is even worse than with me. They don’t talk. Besides, neither of us knows where he is. He’s a mathematician; he conducts research into string theory. The last I heard he was in California. Typically, he’s not around to give me support now. No. I warned Amy that if she ever did anything like this again I would not hesitate to involve the police, and I’ve been as good as my word. You could do worse than begin your search with the smart city hotels.’
Singh nodded. ‘Thank you for being so frank. We’ll check the hotels, of course.’ He paused. ‘Is there anything else that might be relevant?’
‘I think I’ve said all that needs to be said. I’m handing this over to you.’
He got to his feet. ‘May I look upstairs?’
‘Why?’
‘I’d like to see Amy’s room.’
Dr Roecastle shrugged and led him out of the living room into the entrance hall.
‘Oh, one other thing,’ Singh said as they went. ‘Did anything else unusual happen last night?’
‘Unusual?’
‘Anything out of the ordinary.’
She stopped to think at the foot of the stairs, and Singh waited, glancing round the hallway. Like the living room, it had been redesigned along artistic lines, the original dark panelling of the nineteenth century replaced by modern features in glass, pale wood and chrome. Now sunshine flooded in through sash windows, brightening the whitewashed walls and illuminating the artworks which rested on plinths in front of them, tubular shapes in glossy scarlet ceramic vaguely resembling sex toys. It was less like a room than a gallery, in fact – the result, Singh thought, of a firm, even rigid, mind. The only thing out of place was a Doc Martens shopping bag – buff-coloured, thick black lettering – dumped on its side at the end of a table. Otherwise, it was almost mathematically perfect.
‘Now you mention it,’ Dr Roecastle said, ‘by a strange coincidence there was another disappearance last night.’
‘Really?’
‘Our guard dog, Rex. A Dobermann. He sleeps in the outhouse. He was chained up last night as usual, but this morning he’s gone.’
‘Might Amy have taken him with her?’
She looked at him with scorn. ‘I doubt the Astoria or the Hilton allows pets. No. In any case, Amy’s always been frightened of the dog. He’s a bit of a brute, in truth. The chain is old and worn; I expect it broke. Perhaps the storm agitated him and he pulled against it. Still.’ She reflected for a moment. ‘It is a coincidence. Two disappearances on one night.’
She proceeded up the stairs, Singh following with a frown.
As he went, he checked his watch – 08:00. Amy Roecastle had been missing for seven and a half hours.
5
In the garden, above the rise and out of sight, Smudge’s brother stepped across to give Garvie an earful.
‘Something’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. Your fucking useless bit of fence.’
The garden of ‘Four Winds’ was an extensive affair half an acre in size, rising beyond the stone-flagged patio up three levels of trimmed lawn to a picturesque fringe of shrubbery. The new fence, half finished, would be just as extensive, a graceful, encircling stockade, disappearing at points above the rise, threading its way through the edge of woodland. Classic featherboard in red cedar, comprising twenty-nine taper-sawn pales per 2.4 metre section on 150 mm traditional cured gravelboard, with 2.70 metre inter-posts capped with custom ball-and-collar finials. Not insignificant. Not cheap either.
The section along the side of the lane had been erected by Tar and his team, the section from the gate to the pond by Butter’s team, and the section between pond and shrubbery, furthest away from the house, by Smudge’s brother, with Smudge and Garvie’s help. All of these sections stood complete, trim and upright – except for Garvie’s single 2.4 metre span, in the middle of Smudge’s brother’s section, which had somehow collapsed.
‘Three days,’ Smudge’s brother said. ‘That’s how long you were working on it.’
Garvie said nothing.
‘Well?’
Garvie said, ‘Two days, four hours, fifty minutes.’
Smudge’s brother stared at him. ‘Two days, four hours and fifty minutes of complete fucking uselessness.’
Garvie took a drag on his cigarette and blew out smoke. ‘It was standing last night,’ he said.
‘You understand they’re meant to last longer than a day, don’t you? We don’t do pop-up fencing, you know that, right?’ Smudge’s brother walked around the fallen panel while Garvie finished his cigarette. ‘How many times did I tell you about the depth of the post holes? What did I tell you about the ballast? Did you even use a string line?’
Garvie gazed down the garden to the shrubbery, where Smudge had stopped working and was looking at him anxiously. He lifted a hand and waved.
‘Well, Wonder Brain?’ Smudge’s brother said. ‘What’s the news?’
‘Remind me what a string line is.’
Smudge’s brother went a little apeshit, and Garvie lit another Benson & Hedges, and waited until the noise stopped. When he looked again, Smudge’s brother had gone back down the lawn, where he was talking to Tar and Butter. Garvie sighed. Without looking at his fallen panel, he walked across it, stepped over the remains of the previous wire fence at the perimeter of the garden, and stood there for a moment, smoking. Ahead of him, to his left, was rough pasture. To his right was woodland, a thick black tangle of birch and sycamore. A footpath, coming up from the direction of the road, curved at the fence where he stood and ran away between pasture and wood into the distance.
It was peaceful, the birds in the trees sounded pleased with themselves, and Garvie stood there envying them. As he turned to go back into the garden his attention was caught by something on the fallen panel of fence. He bent down and removed from a nail head a long scrap of black fabric.
Like the rooms downstairs, Amy’s bedroom was beautifully decorated. Unlike them, it was chaotically messy. Alternative lifestyle and music magazines were scattered across the floor. The wardrobe doors were open, and clothes had spilled out onto the floor, where they lay in heaps, punk and goth-wear, mainly black, combat gear, T-shirts, belts with silver studs, aggressive-looking shoes and lace-up boots.
Singh stepped through the mess, looking round alertly.
Little details struck him: on a high wooden shelf above the bed, a row of tiny hand-painted papier-mâché models of people in strange poses; on the desk, still lit by the anglepoise lamp, a half-finished picture of a woman in war paint; next to it a school exercise book open at an advanced maths problem. The impression of an artistic, clever, rebellious person.
For a moment he hesitated by some flowers in a jug on the mantelpiece. They looked out of place, thin and dirty, not the usual immaculate bouquet from a shop.
He went to the window and looked out across the garden below, then stood again in the room, looking around. Something in the wardrobe caught his eye, and he went over to it, pulling on his latex gloves.
After a moment he called Dr Roecastle in.
‘Is this the jacket she was wearing last night?’ he asked.
Stuffed into the back of the wardrobe’s top shelf was a short olive-green jacket, still soaked through.
Dr Roecastle peered at it. ‘Yes, I think so.’ She frowned. ‘Though I don’t know why she would have taken it off before going out again. The rain was torrential.’
‘Does she have another coat?’
‘She hates coats. I didn’t even know she had this one. She has a budget with which to buy her own clothes.’ She gestured around the room. ‘You can see for yourself what the result is.’
They went out onto the landing.
Singh said, ‘The bedroom is now an area of police interest. It will be sealed so that Forensics can carry out their work. Please avoid going into it.’
‘Another inconvenience.’
‘And now I’d like to look in the garden, if I may.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘Her bedroom window is unlatched. Does your alarm monitor only the ground floor?’
‘Yes.’
‘I assume your daughter knew that when she climbed out.’
Leaving Dr Roecastle there, he went down the stairs and out of the front door round to the patio at the back of the house. There, he saw immediately the clear impression of footsteps visible in the flower bed directly below Amy’s bedroom window. The soil was still wet from the rain the night before. Mud footprints led across the patio onto the grass, and Singh followed them up the rise, bending occasionally in his usual methodical way to examine marks on the ground, watched warily all the way by the men doing the fencing.
Only one of the fencers did not stop work to watch him. But it was towards his length of collapsed fence that Singh made his careful way.
As he reached it, Smudge’s brother reluctantly went over and Singh immediately began to question him.
‘All this fencing is new?’
‘Yeah.’
‘All of it erected before last night?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Including this panel?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you notice anything different this morning?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well? What?’
Smudge’s brother finally took his cigarette out of his mouth and pointed it diffidently at the fallen panel. ‘It’d fallen down.’
Both men looked at Garvie, who had continued all this time with his back to the policeman, whistling quietly to himself.
‘Anything else?’ Singh asked Smudge’s brother. ‘As you arrived this morning, for instance, did—’
Without turning round, Garvie said, ‘Probably it fell down when she climbed over it.’
Smudge’s brother frowned and opened his mouth.
Singh said, ‘Why would she have climbed over?’
‘To get to the other side.’
‘What’s on the other side?’
‘The path.’
Smudge’s brother looked in bewilderment from one to the other. ‘Listen—’ he began anxiously.
‘You can see the worn line in the grass as well as I can,’ Garvie said to Singh, who looked back across the lawn.
‘So you think she came this way often? Why?’
‘’Cause it’s quiet. ’Cause it’s better than having the bother of going through that securitized gate down there. ’Cause it’s where she was heading.’
Singh nodded. He looked across the fallen panel at the dark woodland, dense and faintly steaming beyond. As soon as he saw it, he felt a sensation of foreboding.
‘Where does the path go?’ he asked.
Smudge’s brother said, ‘I don’t know.’
Garvie said, ‘Somewhere she wanted to get to. She must have been pissed off to find someone had put a fence up here. Especially,’ he added, ‘such a sturdy one.’
Singh reflected on this. ‘Your post holes aren’t deep enough,’ he said at last.
Garvie shrugged. He looked at Smudge’s brother, who was furiously smoking a Marlboro as he looked from one to the other. ‘Anyway,’ Garvie went on, ‘I can’t stop to help you, I’ve got to get on, mate. We’re all busting a gut to get a job done here.’
Singh gave him a look, nodded briefly and moved off. Smudge’s brother, who had remained in an attitude of confusion all this time, gave Garvie a long and hostile stare, then went the other way. And Garvie stopped work, leaned against the one upright fence post and lit up another Benson & Hedges.
He was joined a few moments later by Smudge. Together, they watched Singh intercepted at the bottom of the lawn by Dr Roecastle.
She seemed to be giving him a hard time.
‘Posh girl gone missing then,’ Smudge said, as they watched.
‘Not before flattening my fence.’
‘I think your post holes could have been deeper.’
‘Don’t start.’
They watched Singh take out a notebook and make a note.
‘Couldn’t help overhearing on my toilet break,’ Smudge said. ‘She took the dog. Bit of a monster, seems like. Went off to one of them funny hotels that cater for pets.’
‘Is that right?’
‘That’s the rumour. Could be something else.’
‘Got any ideas?’
‘I’m toying with terrorism. It’s an angle. Posh girls go for terrorists. What do you think?’
‘I’d keep working on it.’
Smudge looked at him. ‘Hey, Sherlock. You really ought to give plod a hand. You know, like last time.’
‘Not sure he’d appreciate that, Smudge.’
‘What I’m saying is, he needs it. With these coppers it’s always one step forward one step back. Or sideways,’ he added after a moment’s reflection. ‘One minute they’ve worked it out, next minute they’ve lost their bicycle clips.’
Garvie looked at his piece of fallen fence and sighed.
‘Tell you what,’ Smudge said, ‘I’ll give you a hand getting it back up, then you can show me those things in the house you told me about. You know the ones I mean.’ He winked.
Garvie sighed. ‘They’re not actually sex toys, Smudge. You know that, right? They’re art. Sculpture.’
‘I just want a look,’ Smudge said in an injured voice.
‘OK. Later. But no touching. And you’ll have to keep your voice down. We don’t want that woman on our backs.’
‘You don’t have to worry about that, mate. I’m good with people.’
‘You’re not good with her. Trust me.’
Down by the driveway Dr Roecastle said something sharply, turned abruptly with a gesture of impatience and marched into the house, leaving Singh to walk thoughtfully back to his car. Garvie stubbed out his Benson & Hedges and looked up at the shimmering blue sky. It was, unfortunately, a glorious day for fencing. Smudge handed him a hammer and they got to work.
6
Location: large, comfortable kitchen, farmhouse-style.
Aspect of interviewer: calm, neat, careful.
Aspect of interviewee: blonde, nervous, defiant.
Aspect of interviewee’s mother: face carved out of wax.
DI SINGH: Thank you both for agreeing to talk to me at such short notice. You know why I’m here?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: You say Amy’s gone missing.
DI SINGH: I’m afraid that’s the case.
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: But I don’t understand what that’s got to do with me.
DI SINGH: I’d just like to ask you some questions about last night.
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: But nothing happened last night.
DI SINGH: You went into town?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Market Square. We didn’t stay there long. We had a drink in Chi-Chi, on the corner of Well Street, and then we went over to The Wicker and got in at Wild Mouse, the underground place. We weren’t there that long. An hour, an hour and a half. They started playing all that psychedelic stuff so we left and came home. That was it.
DI SINGH: And how did you get home?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Cab. We always get cabs – that’s part of the deal. Amy got out at hers, and I came on here.
DI SINGH: And what time did Amy get out?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Around midnight. Just before.
DI SINGH: That’s late to be getting home, isn’t it? How old are you, Sophie? Sixteen?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: I’ve got my own key so it’s not a problem. I’m allowed out twice a week so long as my grades don’t drop.
MRS BRIGHOUSE: [drily] This is an arrangement that’s currently under review, Inspector.
DI SINGH: You didn’t go to the rave that was taking place in The Wicker?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Of course not.
DI SINGH: You weren’t in Market Square during the riot?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: No.
DI SINGH: OK. Did you meet anyone at Chi-Chi or Wild Mouse?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: No. I mean, we talked to some guys, but we didn’t know them or anything.
DI SINGH: You don’t know who they were?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: [shakes her head] Just guys.
DI SINGH: Did Amy talk to anyone on the phone?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Not that I remember.
DI SINGH: How much alcohol did you both drink?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: [hesitates]
MRS BRIGHOUSE: Sophie. The inspector needs to know exactly what happened.
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: We had a margarita at Chi-Chi. They were so expensive. At Wild Mouse we just had water.
DI SINGH: Was Amy inebriated?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: No way. Neither of us was.
DI SINGH: Did she take any illegal substances?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Of course not. We’re not stupid.
DI SINGH: So, at the end of the evening, would you describe her as sober?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Completely.
DI SINGH: Was she behaving normally?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Of course.
DI SINGH: Did anything happen during the evening to upset her?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Nothing.
DI SINGH: Are you sure?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Nothing happened. That’s why …
DI SINGH: That’s why what?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: [pause] That’s why all these questions are pointless.
DI SINGH: [pause] OK. Just a few more things now. After the taxi dropped her off, did you see her again that night?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: No.
DI SINGH: [pause] Did you speak to her?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Why would I speak to her?
DI SINGH: Did you?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Course not.
DI SINGH: OK. Can you answer some more general questions about Amy now? What sort of girl is she, would you say?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Well, she’s really, really smart. You know her dad has, like, two brains, and her mum’s this top surgeon, well, she’s like them. But she’s really cool too. I mean, she’s completely her own person. And she’s loyal. If you’re her friend, she’ll stick with you, no matter what.
DI SINGH: OK, that’s interesting. Is there anything particular that’s been on Amy’s mind recently?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Not really.
DI SINGH: Anything you can think of will be helpful.
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Well. [pause] She’s in a bit of an angry phase.
DI SINGH: Angry? About what?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: She argues with her mum.
DI SINGH: Anything else?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Not really. But she’s got this whole guerrilla girl thing going. Like, you know, protest.
DI SINGH: What does she protest against?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Injustice, poverty, repression, stuff like that.
DI SINGH: I see. [makes notes] Has anything in particular upset her? Her mother said Amy was distressed by her divorce.
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Frankly, I think she’s glad her dad’s out of the picture. He’s a bit of a nut. He went abroad, I think.
DI SINGH: What about Amy’s friends? Does she have many?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Everyone likes Amy.
DI SINGH: What about boyfriends?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Boys especially like Amy. Boys are, like, queuing up. She doesn’t date, though.
DI SINGH: No one she’s close to?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: No.
DI SINGH: OK. Just before I go, let me ask again if you can think of anything – anything at all – that might have upset Amy last night. It needn’t be an obvious thing. Something she might have seen or overheard. Something that might have come up in your conversations.
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: I’ve told you. Nothing happened. It was a completely normal evening.
DI SINGH: Thank you then, Sophie. I’ll give your mother my contact details in case you remember anything else later.
Sophie Brighouse got up quickly from the kitchen table and hesitated with her hands on the back of the chair. In the light from the kitchen window she was quite startlingly blonde, with small features, creased mauve eyes and pale lashes. Her eyes were full of tears. She bit her pale pink bottom lip.
‘You’re going to find her, right?’ She had a lisp.
Singh said, ‘That’s our aim.’
‘I mean, she’s going to be all right?’
Singh made no response, and Sophie turned and went across the room with rapid, self-conscious steps.
Singh turned to her mother sat at the end of the table. ‘Before I go, can I ask if you share your daughter’s view of Amy Roecastle?’
Mrs Brighouse was one of those people who always pause before they speak. She kept her heavy-lidded eyes on Singh while she pursed her lips slowly. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she said at last. ‘Amy’s a bright girl. A bit wayward at the moment. I will say one thing, though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’ve always thought she’s a girl who has her secrets. Although they’re all a bit like that at her age.’
Singh nodded, made a note. ‘And what’s your opinion of her mother?’
Mrs Brighouse blinked slowly, paused. ‘I think she’s an appalling woman,’ she said at last.
Singh did no more than raise an eyebrow. ‘And what is her relationship like with her daughter?’
‘It’s her relationship with her daughter that I’m thinking of.’
He walked across the lane outside Cross Keys House, looking around. A typical village scene: a row of cottages, a post office, a bus stop and the Royal Oak pub, all picturesque, quiet and deserted. Beyond the pub was the entrance to a path into woodland. It came to him at once.
Stopping abruptly in the middle of the lane, he turned and retraced his steps to the Brighouses’ home and banged on the front door.
Mrs Brighouse opened it and looked at him in surprise.
‘The path,’ Singh said, ‘next to the pub over there. Where does it go?’
This time she didn’t pause. ‘Through the woods,’ she said, ‘all the way to Amy’s house.’
Singh said, ‘Please call down your daughter. I have some more questions for her.’
Location: large, comfortable kitchen, farmhouse-style.
Aspect of interviewer: tense, controlled, assertive.
Aspect of interviewee: blonde, weeping.
Aspect of interviewee’s mother: face in resting mode of disapproval.
DI SINGH: So. She called you. She told you she was coming over.
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: [weeping] She told me not to tell anyone.
DI SINGH: This is important, Sophie. You should not have kept it secret. What time was it?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Half past twelve. I was already in bed.
DI SINGH: What were her exact words?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: She said, ‘I’m coming over.’ I was, like, ‘What? Now? What’s going on?’ I mean, it was totally out of the blue. I’d only just left her at hers. But she wouldn’t tell me any more. She just said, ‘No one must know this, Soph. No one.’ And then she rang off. I didn’t know what to do. I waited for her. I went downstairs and hung around the back door. But she never came. I kept calling her but she never answered. I assumed she’d changed her mind. About two o’clock I went back to bed.
DI SINGH: Where was she calling from? Inside or outside?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: Inside.
DI SINGH: What did she sound like, her tone of voice? Was she upset?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: No, but … there was something odd about the way she talked, something … [beginning to weep again] She sounded like she was trying not to panic. [sobbing] And that was the last time I heard her!
DI SINGH: I understand how painful this is for you, Sophie, but it was really important you told me this. The more information we have now, the better our chance of finding Amy. Now, someone from our tech team will come to collect your phone. We will need to examine it.
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: OK.
DI SINGH: [pause] You’ve told me that nothing happened during the evening to alarm her. Nothing at all. Yet no sooner has she left you than she calls you in a panic. How can we explain this?
SOPHIE BRIGHOUSE: I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t understand it at all.
DI SINGH: OK. I have no further questions. But, Sophie, if anything occurs to you after I’ve gone, anything at all, please get in touch straightaway.
At the front door Singh said to Mrs Brighouse, ‘I’m grateful to your daughter for her honesty. In the end.’
She looked at him in her heavy-lidded way. ‘I’ll ask you now what my daughter asked you earlier. Will you find her?’
It was Singh’s turn to pause before answering. ‘I have every confidence,’ he said carefully.
‘Oh dear,’ she said after a moment. ‘That sounds ominous.’
He made no response but turned, crossed the lane, entered the footpath by the side of the pub and walked into the woods, glancing at his watch.
It was 10:30. Amy Roecastle had been missing for ten hours.
7
Garvie and Smudge stood together in the elegant hallway of ‘Four Winds’. Smudge was looking at a bright red tubular object on a plinth, and Garvie was looking at the shopping bag on the table.
‘Know what? It’s nothing like a sex toy.’
‘Keep your voice down, Smudge.’
‘Sex toys don’t have ends like that. What would you do with an end like that? An end on a sex toy is like—’
‘Give it a rest, all right. She might be about.’
Smudge moved across the hall to another piece. He pushed his face up close and scowled.
‘Back off, Smudge. You can just look at it. You don’t have to smell it.’
‘This one here,’ Smudge said, tapping the ceramic shape with a stubby finger, ‘this one is more like a sex toy. Now, with an end like that, if you were fit enough, you could—’
There were rapid footsteps in the living room, and Dr Roecastle appeared at speed through the doorway with a fierce expression, clearly keen to shout at someone.
Smudge put his hands behind his back and stepped away from the sculpture. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said pre-emptively.
Dr Roecastle avoided looking at him. She said to Garvie, ‘I’ve told you before, that sculpture is valuable.’
Garvie looked at it. ‘Why?’
That seemed to catch her off-guard. She closed her mouth to think. ‘It’s an Emily LeClerk,’ she said. ‘One of her early pieces. Now, listen to me—’
‘Late,’ he said.
That caught her off-guard too. ‘Pardon?’
‘Done 2008. LeClerk was born in 1951. Makes her fifty-seven. I call that late.’
