Evil Valley (24 page)

They were an odd pair, thought Dan. She was older, in her mid 50s, wore a navy cardigan and flowing floral skirt. Her hair had turned silver, but her face was still soft and fine, remarkably unwrinkled, with strong cheekbones and lips, and large, brown eyes. She would have been beautiful once he imagined, and not so long ago either. She still had an alluring quality.

He was much younger, probably in his late twenties, wore ripped jeans, trainers and a black T-shirt. A Celtic band of ornate green tattoo peeked out from under his left sleeve. His hair was spiky and black, looked dyed, and he smiled continually and with a hint of nerves.

‘I believe he’s telling you the truth,’ said Eleanor, and her voice was gentle and warm, like a favourite aunt reading a bedtime story. ‘He wants to be caught. That’s the whole point of this. His being caught is the final act in his drama. But I don’t think he’s ready for that yet. He’ll tell us when he is.’ She looked down at the cassette player, thought for a moment. ‘You said he was armed?’ Adam nodded. ‘Then I’d say he was looking for a showdown. He’s probably preparing for it now.’

‘We’ve gone through the letters in detail,’ added Michael, whose voice was surprisingly deep for his thin frame. ‘There’s nothing obvious in there. I’ve got a computer program that looks for acrostics – you know, patterns in the words, or sentences made up from the first or second letters of the words, or things like that – and it came up with nothing. It checks for anagrams too and didn’t find anything there either. So it’s more subtle than that.’

Adam stared at them. ‘What do you think he means when he talks about not taking a plane?’

‘He’s telling you to check the airports,’ said Eleanor. ‘You’ve got two within your range of an hour, haven’t you? Exeter and Plymouth?’

‘Yep.’

‘I’d look there. I don’t think he’d be hiding there as they’d be too busy and noisy, but you might find a clue.’

Adam scribbled a note. ‘Any other ideas? He’s keen to talk about Manchester isn’t he? But he’s not there, we know that now. So why’s he still talking about it?’

‘Beats me,’ said Michael with a nervous smile. ‘But I’ll look at it again. There might be something in the place names up north that could relate to names down here. I’ll go over the maps.’

‘That band of gold reference in one of the earlier letters was odd,’ added Eleanor, rolling up the sleeve of her cardigan as if about to go to work. ‘I’d like to look at that some more. It didn’t fit into the flow. I’ve no idea what it means, but it may be something.’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Dan. ‘It’s about the rose thing he mentioned, or the names in other words. You know how he’s gone for women whose Christian names make up the Chief Constable’s? It’s been Sarah Jane Nicola. Well, the Chief Con’s surname is Hill. So I reckon he’s on or beside a hill somewhere. And I’m guessing now, but given his desire for a showdown, I bet it’ll be a well-known hill and that’s where this will all end.’

‘Good thought,’ said Adam slowly. ‘But how many hills are there in Devon and Cornwall?’

‘Hundreds. But at least it’s an idea.’

‘I agree. I’ll get the search teams working on what we’ve come up with.’

‘What’s that?’ snapped Whiting, as Suzanne placed the letter on his desk. He looked tired, hunched over his work, his eyes ringed a dull red, a sheen of oily sweat shining on the bald strip over his crown.

Suzanne kept her voice neutral. ‘I think it’s better if you read it, sir. As one of the officers seconded to your investigation I’ve been asked by the Police Federation to deliver it to you.’

Carefully he opened the stark white envelope and read, then sat back on his chair and read it again.

‘It is a vote of no confidence in me,’ he hissed, looking up at her. ‘And more importantly it is a notice of withdrawal of cooperation with our investigation. The Police Federation say I have no evidence whatsoever to justify the continued suspension of PC Crouch and that he should be immediately reinstated. It adds that I have demonstrated my ineptitude by allowing his name to leak to the press and wrongly accusing a fellow officer of facilitating that. As such, a motion of no confidence has been passed by the officers of Greater Wessex Police in the investigation and my stewardship of it.

‘The only way I can force anyone to submit to my inquiries now, it notes, is if I arrest them. It goes on to say the lack of any evidence denies me that option. As far as the Federation are concerned, the inquiry is at an end. I have been given all reasonable cooperation. To continue now, they say, would be tantamount to a witch hunt, carried out only to placate the hysterical baying of the media and the unwarranted suspicions of senior police officers who have never been presented with the acute dilemma of whether to open fire in the course of their duty.’

Suzanne wondered whether to say she thought the language in the letter rather overblown, but that it had some reasonable points to make. She decided against it, stood upright, waiting, hands behind her back, readied herself for the explosion. But it didn’t come. Whiting wiped his brow.

‘I don’t care about this, Suzanne,’ he said, and his voice had lost its usual hiss. He sounded vulnerable and disillusioned. Even, remarkably – almost human?

‘I don’t care about unpopularity,’ he went on. ‘That is part of the job. You expect it and accept it. But I do care about doing my duty. The naming of Crouch – and the picture that’s been published – is unforgivable. However much I am aware it was not me who caused it, nevertheless it is me who is in charge of the investigation and so I bear responsibility. The Police Federation are entirely correct in that, as they are in another matter. There is no evidence whatsoever against PC Crouch. All we have is suspicion about what may easily turn out to have been coincidence. I cannot justify the continued suspension and intrusive investigation of a police officer on the basis of that alone.’

Whiting adjusted the pile of change on his desk, taking the tower of pennies and two pences down and forming them into a square. ‘Where have we left to go in our investigation, Suzanne?’

She thought for a moment. ‘Nowhere obvious, sir.’

‘Indeed. There is no forensic or ballistics evidence to give us suspicion?’

‘No, sir.’

‘And the virtual reconstructions give us no grounds for suspicion?’

‘No, sir.’

‘And the accounts of all the witnesses and the police officers involved tally?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And there’s no hint of some grand conspiracy so beloved by the media? No calls between Crouch and Gardener and the two women, no communications to plot and plan the shootings?’

Suzanne shook her head. She almost felt sorry for Whiting. ‘No, sir.’

He stared at her. ‘Then I’d say this investigation was at an end, wouldn’t you?’

‘That’s a matter for you, sir,’ she replied, controlling her voice to hide her surprise.

He sat back in his chair and adjusted a cufflink. ‘Yes.’ The hiss was back. ‘Yes, I’d say we’ve reached the end. I shall take a couple more days to reflect on all the evidence we have gathered and then I shall submit my initial report. In the meantime, you can inform the Police Federation that their letter and its contents have been noted. No further interviews will be required of anyone and I will give them a decision on the reinstatement of PC Crouch by the end of the week. But we must be fair, as I know PC Crouch has been under considerable pressure, not least from having his picture published. You can tell the Federation that my interim opinion is to recommend no charges be brought, either criminal or disciplinary, and that he be reinstated.’

It was the first time Dan had been driven in a police car on an emergency call and he couldn’t help enjoying it. Initially, he’d just been pleased not to have to use his throbbing ankle to drive himself. Now the pain had been largely forgotten in the thrill of the violent cornering and squealing tyres. He hung on to a handle above the door and tried not to smile. It reminded him of fairground rides of younger days.

The wailing siren bullied the traffic aside as they sped along the main road north out of Plymouth, towards Dartmoor. They were heading for the airport. Gibson’s car had been found in one of its extensive car parks.

A white van that had been doing far more than forty in the thirty limit suddenly slowed and slewed out of their path. They accelerated around it, the car’s tyres screeching in protest. The van driver watched nervously as they passed, then relaxed in relief as they sped on. Another line of traffic darted aside, like young fish desperately avoiding the snapping jaws of a hungry predator. Adam didn’t even look up from his notes. ‘This could be our break,’ he kept muttering to himself.

The lights on the Derriford roundabout turned green, but the line of traffic approaching froze at their wailing assault. The driver shrieked around the corner towards the airport. Dan gripped the door handle tighter and fought back a temptation to wave to the line of gawping motorists.

Just a couple of minutes and they’d be there. He had to ask Adam now. There’d be no time when they got to Gibson’s car. He’d go mad, but it had to be now. He felt a shot of adrenaline pulse its shocking way into his system, the thought of Nicola sobbing helplessly, cold, alone, terrified suddenly back in his mind. He blinked it away and cleared his throat.

‘Adam, before we get there …’

‘Yes, what?’ he snapped, not looking up from his notes.

‘Can I get a cameraman to come and film the car?’

‘No. I won’t want Gibson to know we’ve found it yet.’

Dan had expected that. ‘OK. But my editor’s on my back and I do need to know what I can run for a story tonight.’

‘OK. You want something new so they can have you in the studio again?’

‘Yes. Well, sort of …’

Adam’s detective’s instinct sensed the discomfort. His head span round.

‘What do you mean – sort of?’

‘I mean … well … we want to run something from the answer machine message he left.’

The detective’s eyes narrowed. ‘No chance. It’s vital evidence. I can’t allow that. Anyway it’s gone to the labs for more detailed analysis. We’ve only got transcripts left.’

Dan took a breath. ‘Well … that’s not quite true.’

‘What? What have you done?’

‘Lizzie,’ said Dan, carefully distancing himself from her, ‘decided we should take a copy of the tape.’

Adam stared at him, and Dan braced himself for the attack. ‘In fairness,’ he added quickly, remembering what he’d prepared to say, ‘Gibson did call us and the tape was our property and we did hand it over to you as soon as we knew we had it and we are helping as much as we can and …’

‘OK, that’s enough,’ cut in Adam, a finger jabbing towards Dan’s chest. ‘Let’s get something straight here. This is my inquiry, not yours. Got that? You’re here because I need your help, but what I say goes. It’s as simple as that. And whatever you might think, it’s not a bloody game either. There’s a kid’s life at stake. It doesn’t get any bigger than this. Do you want to kill a young girl because you think getting some tawdry little exclusive is more important than saving her?’

Dan gulped at the attack. The pain in his ankle stabbed at him, and the thought of Nicola was back, vivid before his eyes. He didn’t know what to say, so broke Adam’s glare to look out at the planes parked in a neat line through the fence by the side of the road. He gripped harder at the handle above the door.

‘I haven’t got time to rollock you,’ Adam continued. ‘I’ve got much more important things to think about. But consider yourself warned. Don’t do anything else without my say so. Ever. Got that?’

Dan nodded and Adam turned back to look at the road ahead, a couple of police cars guarding it.

‘Anyway, I don’t suppose I’ve got much choice as we need your help,’ he went on. ‘I’d have been surprised if you hadn’t taken a copy of the tape. I’m used to you bloody devious hacks by now. It’s worse than working with criminals. We’ll sort out what bit you can run later. But there’s going to be a price.’

‘Sure,’ said Dan trying not to let his relief show. The conversation hadn’t been anything like as fiery as he’d feared. ‘You know I’ll do whatever I can to help you find Nicola. What is it?’

‘Eleanor and Michael still haven’t come up with anything from the clues Gibson gave us. So I want you to appeal for more help on air tonight. And this time we’re going to be waiting overnight in your office to see if we can trace the call. With luck, the combination of that and finding his car might just lead us to him.’

They drew up in a corner of the car park, the rows of vehicles like a spectrum of colour, all obediently awaiting the return of their masters. Gibson’s car was surrounded by the familiar cordon of police tape, a couple of uniformed officers on sentry duty. One held up the tape and Adam ducked under it, Dan limping behind.

The driver’s door was open and a woman in a white overall was leaning inside, examining under the seat. A couple more white-clad figures worked on the other side and one was under the car at the front poking and scraping at the tyres. It was a red Ford Escort, about six years old, a couple of hints of gathering rust around its doors.

‘Any leads, Janey?’ asked Adam.

The woman didn’t turn around from inside the car and her voice was muffled. ‘Not that I can see straight away, sir. We’re checking for fibres now in case there might be something revealing, and seeing if there’s any distinctive mud on the tyres, but at first glance it doesn’t look like it. It’s definitely the car he used, though. There are traces of fibres on the passenger seat from the grey coat Nicola was wearing. They’re very distinctive and match some we took from her bedroom.’ She turned round and pointed to a sealed plastic bag on a white sheet laid out beside the car. ‘We also found a couple of long blonde hairs. I’m pretty sure they’re Nicola’s, but that’s subject to confirmation by the labs.’

‘We can take a shortcut on that, sir,’ came a familiar voice behind them.

They both turned around to see Claire walking towards them. She was holding a DVD.

‘I’ve just been checking the airport’s CCTV. It shows Gibson and Nicola driving in here, then it picks them up walking hand in hand towards the airport terminal. They don’t go in. They walk past and up that road by the side of the airfield.’