Faraday 01 The Gigabyte Detective (23 page)

She shivered again in her thin dress and pulled her stole over her unprotected shoulders. Although he had switched on the heater to keep her warm, the car was starting to cool quickly, now they were halted. “It may be all right up here on a sunny day,” she said, “but when the weather’s like this, I don’t find it exciting at all.”

“But just think,” he grinned, “we’re surrounded by the ghosts of people thousands of years old.”

“I don’t like that idea. Is that why you brought me up here?” she demanded, “to frighten me to death with some creepy story about being lost in the fog.”

“That actually happened to me once,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“We got stuck up on the moor when the mist came down like this.” He gestured out of the window. “We had to sleep out all night. It was probably only five miles or so from here.”

“Whatever happened?” She shivered and pulled her stole closer round her shoulders.

He released his seat-belt but continued to hold on to the steering wheel and gaze out at the desolate view. “I was only about sixteen or seventeen at the time. About half a dozen of us had gone cycling for the weekend. We stayed at the Youth Hostel near Postbridge - not far from here. One day we decided to walk to Cranmere Pool. That’s special because it’s supposed to be the centre of the Moor - the centre of Devon in a way. The Taw, Tavy and Dart rivers all rise in the same boggy area. The Taw flows out to the sea at Barnstaple, the Tavy at Plymouth and the Dart at Dartmouth of course. My best friend Edward - he was a slightly odd character but he and I were very close - had worked out that Cranmere Pool was only about six miles from the Youth Hostel. He thought we could easily get there and back in a day.”

“Could you?” Susannah felt as though the telling of this story was important to him.

“The trouble was that we were a bit slow in getting moving in the morning - you know what girls are like for getting ready.” He turned to look at her and laughed at the expression on her face. “So we finally left about ten. For the first few miles we followed the course of the River Dart and the going was all right. We stopped for lunch and then pressed on. But the ground started getting boggy. It wasn’t too bad, because it was August and the bogs had partly dried out, leaving tussocks of grass which would take our weight. But one of the girls stepped on to what she thought was dry mud and sank up to her knees. She made a fuss and refused to go any further.”

He shifted in his seat and turned towards her “It was mid-afternoon and most of the others wanted to turn back. However Edward was insistent that he was going to carry on. I told you he was a bit of an queer bod. He that said he’d tried to walk to Cranmere Pool twice before and had to turn back each time, and he wasn’t going to be defeated a third time, even if he had to do it alone.” Richard moved a little closer. “Well, I didn’t really mind one way or the other, but I didn’t feel I could let him continue all on his own. So he and I said cheerio to the others, who turned back, and we carried on. I suppose we walked for another couple of hours. We got out of the boggy area and climbed up on to a long hill where we thought the ground would be drier. We were trying to work out exactly where Cranmere Pool was among the hills when, all of a sudden, it seemed to turn cold.”

He was looking straight at her. Susannah felt her hair begin to prickle against her cardigan.

“We looked round and noticed that the sun had disappeared. And there, advancing towards us across the moor, was a complete wall of mist. It seemed to roll over the rocks and swallow them up as it came. Within a few minutes we were completely surrounded. Luckily we were quite near a hill-top with a low clump of stones on it - like a little tor. So we went up there and sat in the shelter of the stones and waited for the mist to pass. The time was about six o’clock or just after.”

Now his hand was resting on the back of her seat. She held her breath.

“What happened?”

“Nothing really. We sat there and chatted We had half a loaf of bread and some chocolate and a bottle of water and we consumed all that. In due course night came on and some time after dark the mist seemed to melt away and the sky became clear again and we could see the stars. But there was no moon, so we felt it would be dangerous to start walking again. After a while we started to see strange lights up in the sky, sort of moving round in circles, wheeling around each other. We tried to make out what on earth they were. We guessed they might have been car head-lamps coming up a winding hill or something and shining up on the remains of the mist in the sky, but we never found a convincing explanation for them.”

She could imagine the scene. It seemed quite frightening to her. After all she had never been that far from the comforts of civilisation.

”
Anyway,” he continued, “after a while we felt tired and lay down, and some time later we must have drifted off to sleep.”

“What did the others do when you didn’t return to the Youth Hostel?” Why was her voice trembling. Was it because he was so close to her now?

“Oh, they didn’t worry that we weren’t back by dark. We’d already said we might be late. They knew we could look after ourselves. Little did they know.” His chuckle made a shiver run down her spine. “When we woke up at about five in the morning we were feeling very cold and damp. The funny thing was, we realised then that we had obviously chosen a sheltered spot, because we found we were surrounded by about a dozen animals - some sheep and a cow and even a couple of ponies.”

“What did they do?”

“The animals? Nothing. They eyed us a bit suspiciously but we didn’t seem to frighten them. Anyway the day was clear except for a bit of early mist which evaporated as soon as the sun came up. So we set off again. We discovered that actually we were less than a mile from the Pool. There’s a letter box there with a manual franking pad so that you can post letters or cards and wait for the next person who comes along to take them back to the nearest post office. Of course we’d forgotten to take any cards with us. So we never had any proof that we’d got there.”

Although their bodies were nearly touching it was as though his mind was miles away from her. She felt alone. She had to bring him back.

“So what happened, Richard?”

His eyes concentrated on her again. “Then - nothing much. We set off for the Youth Hostel. We chose a longer route back but keeping further from the river, and that proved to be much quicker. In fact we arrived back about nine-thirty, just as the others were having breakfast and discussing whether to report us to the authorities as missing. So,” he said, “that’s the story of how I spent a night in the open in the middle of Dartmoor with a collection of sheep and other wildlife.”

She laughed lightly, trying to escape from the shadow the story had cast over them. “An adventure with a happy ending.”

“Not really,” he said and his eyes had gone bleak.

“What then?”

He shook himself. “I told you Edward was an odd bod. He was annoyed with himself for not taking a postcard to post to himself. He told me the following weekend that he was going back to Cranmere Pool to post a card. He wanted me to go with him.”

Susannah had a sudden dread feeling of disaster. “What happened?”

“I refused to go with him.” He laughed bitterly. “I said he was daft and that one night on the moor was enough for me. Besides, if I’m honest, I’d arranged to go out with a girl I’d been pursuing for some time and I didn’t want to miss out on that. So he went on his own.”

He stopped and looked out of the window and the silence seeped into the car with the cold. After a while he said, “The silly bugger got lost and never came back. His body was found after a search two days later.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“Of course I do. He was my best friend and I let him down.”

“No you didn’t. It was his silly idea.”

“But I should have been with him.” There were tears in his eyes. “It’s been like that all through my life. The people that I love most have all died.” He almost whispered, “And it has always been my fault.”

She rested her hand on his. It was deathly cold. “Of course it hasn’t. You couldn’t help what happened to Edward. At least you didn’t die with him.” She desperately wanted to comfort him but she felt he was holding aloof from her, as though she was partly to blame for the tragedy.

“Come on,” she said. “Forget those miserable thoughts. You didn’t bring me up here to distress me with tales of what happened in your youth, did you?” She shook his hand. “Well, did you?”

He shook himself. “No. I’m sorry. I had no intention of telling you that old story. I don’t know why I did. It must have been the mist. I had expected it to be sunny and warm up here.”

“So why did you bring me up here.”

He was leaning over her. He seemed to have thrown off his miserable mood. He said, with a slightly ragged grin, “I brought you up here so that we could be alone together.”

“Alone?” She looked up at him, and her stomach twisted with something almost like fear, as she realised that he desired her, wanted to take possession of her, wanted to get his hands on her body.

“It’s beautiful down on the coast,” he said, “and sunny and friendly. But there are always so many people around. Up here - particularly when the weather closes in like this - we are alone together. Nobody is likely to come along and disturb us.” He smiled like a hunter confronting his victim. “Nobody is likely to interrupt us.”

His face was very slowly moving towards her. She knew what was going to happen next. She wanted him to do it, yet at the same time she felt suddenly frightened of him. His arm had slid along the top of the seat. Now his hand touched her left shoulder, turning her towards him. She jumped like a startled cat.

“What’s the matter?” His eyes were hooded, mysterious “Don’t you want me to touch you.”

She tried to smile at him warmly. “You know I do. I’ve been waiting for you to - to touch me for several days.” She shook her head. “I know it seems silly - but I find it ghostly and unworldly up here.”

He looked at her for several seconds, gazing into her face from only a few inches away. His eyes seemed so deep that she couldn’t make out what he was thinking. “OK,” he said, all of a sudden, “let’s go back to the sunshine. There’s nothing to see up here when the weather’s like this.” He pulled back and prepared to start the car.

“Richard,” she reached out and laid her hand on his arm, “thank you.”

“That’s all right.” He grinned at her. “But don’t think I’m going to let you get away from me now that we are so close.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to get away from you. And Richard -“

“What’s that?”

“Let’s go back to my place. It will be very private there.” She smiled at him. “I will cook you a meal.”

“I didn’t know you could cook.”

“Of course I can. How do you think I live?”

“Well, that sounds like a very nice idea,” he said. He turned back to the controls, started the engine and put the gear lever into reverse.

* * * * * * * *

“I’ve asked you all to come in for half an hour so that we can review where we’ve reached at the end of our first week.” Charlotte was perched on the edge of her desk regarding them. “You can also have the opportunity to make any constructive comments you want about where we should go next. All right?” She looked round challengingly, but nobody responded.

Stafford Paulson stood back watching the others. John Prendergast and Bobbie Howell seemed full of enthusiasm for the new set-up. He noticed that even Greg Mallinson seemed unwilling to raise an objection at present. He admitted there seemed to be new sense of purpose which he welcomed at the same time as he slightly resented the fact that DCI Faraday was the cause of it.

“OK,” she continued, “I suggest we examine the circumstances surrounding the deaths of each of the five women and decide if there’s anything that justifies our continuing to look at each case. First is Stella Parsons. You’d better repeat what you told me, Bobbie.”

DC Howell looked rather nervous, but she started at once. “Yes. Well ma’am, I got in touch with Mr Parsons’ company and they told me he has moved back to Nottingham to be near his business interests. However they have recently taken over a company in Australia and he has been sent there to oversee its re-organization. He’ll be back in two weeks.” She looked at her apologetically. “You said to do nothing more at the moment, ma’am.”

“That’s right,” agreed Charlotte. She smiled. “There’s nothing at present to suggest that her death was due to anything other than misadventure, so unless anyone can come up with some fantastic theory that would justify flying out to Sydney, I think we’ll wait for him to get back before we interview him. Now Greg, what’s the latest on Mariella Prince?”

Paulson watched the fellow closely, but he seemed to have himself under control at the moment. “You know it all,” he said, “we picked up the wills for both Mariella Prince and her father this morning. I’ve spent the last couple of hours entering the answers to the questions the computer asked.”

“I’ve taken the liberty of printing out the follow-up questions,” volunteered Prendergast. “We’re able to answer a lot of those as well from the information on the wills.”

“Have you indeed?” Charlotte didn’t know whether to be annoyed or impressed. She winked at Paulson. “It doesn’t take these youngsters long to start finding their way round a computer, does it, Stafford.”