Flesh And Blood (27 page)

Photographs of Emma Harrison were pinned to one wall, together with copies of the poster which had been printed in its thousands and widely circulated. On the adjacent wall were a general map of the area in which Emma had gone missing, and a plan, blown-up and more detailed, of Rufford Abbey and Country Park, areas marked in different colours to indicate the progress of the search.

The initial supposition had been that, having missed her bus, Emma would have attempted to hitch a lift or had befriended and accepted shelter from someone she had met at the concert. Either way, she would turn up the following morning, a little shamefaced and bedraggled, but safe. When this didn’t happen, the scale of the incident was raised to that of a fully-fledged missing persons inquiry. Something Emma’s father was angry had not been done initially. ‘She’s not stupid,’ he said. ‘If all that had happened was that she’d missed the bus, she’d have phoned.’

Though Emma’s mobile had recently been taken from her, after numerous rows about excessive use and spiralling costs, and she was waiting to exchange it for another model which allowed her to pay for calls as they were made, there was no shortage of regular telephones in the central area of the park.

The senior of the detectives, a worried-looking detective inspector with shirtsleeves rolled back and rimless spectacles, got to his feet as Maureen Price entered, Elder in her wake.

‘Gerry.’

‘Maureen.’

‘Gerry, this is Frank Elder, he retired a couple of years back. Frank, Gerry Clarke.’

‘Frank. I’ve heard of you.’

Elder shook the proffered hand. ‘All good, I hope.’

‘Frank was involved in a similar disappearance quite a few years ago,’ Maureen said.

‘You’ll know what a bastard it is,’ Clarke said. ‘The parents at home, twitching every time the phone rings, tearing out their hair, fearing the worse and not wanting to admit it. And us here, every hour as passes… well, you do know.’

Elder knew all too well.

‘There’s still no sign?’ Maureen said.

‘Not as much as a sighting, not one we’d take seriously, and that’s strange in itself. You could look at it as a blessing, in a way. Half your personnel running about all over the county, else. Folk getting in touch just to break the monotony a lot of the time. Get their name in the paper, face on the telly. Not that we haven’t had our fair share of calls, but up to yet it’s manageable.’

‘Which way are you thinking?’ Elder asked.

Gerry Clarke shifted his balance right to left. ‘No big rows at home, undue pressure at school, boyfriends, usual things you’re looking for, this kind of scenario. My betting she’s either gone off with someone she met at the concert – and we’re appealing to everyone who was there to get in touch – or she’s still somewhere here.’

He led them across to the map of Rufford Park on the far wall.

‘How big?’ Elder asked.

‘Couple of hundred acres, give or take.’

Elder whistled softly.

‘Lot of ground to cover,’ Maureen said.

Clarke nodded. ‘We’ve pulled in officers from across the county. Plus volunteers, local. At first we concentrated on these areas here, the old stable block and the gardens that run down behind this sort of orangery affair. Lots of walls criss-crossing, quite thick shrubbery and this stream running down to one side. Then you’ve got the old abbey off to one side, most of that’s empty inside now, pretty much a shell and not the safest of places to be clambering around. We’ve got people going back through there now.’

‘This area,’ Maureen said, ‘over here?’

‘The Broad Ride, that’s what it’s called. It’s a track leading down past these trees to the lake. There’s a path that runs right round the water, you can see there, but it’s narrow and in places pretty overgrown, that far side especially, not easy to penetrate.’ He took off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. ‘You could hide a body there for a long time without it ever being found.’

‘And the lake?’ Elder asked.

‘We’ve got 3D scanners due on site later today. Any unusual objects or air pockets under the surface of the water, they should show them up. And there’s a team of divers standing by.’ He sighed and slid his glasses back into place. ‘We’ll drag it if we have to.’

Maureen thanked him and said that if and when he had any news she would like to be informed. They all knew that after forty-eight hours with no sign the chances of finding Emma Harrison were slipping away. And any clear indication that what they were dealing with was abduction, then the Major Crime Unit would be officially involved. The next time she spoke with Detective Inspector Gerry Clarke her interest could be more than casual.

♦

Salim Ratra was busy selling one of the new Philips DVD machines that records as well as plays, something of a bargain at a fraction under five hundred pounds.

‘Do you understand all this stuff?’ Maureen asked.

Elder laughed. ‘In our house the only one who could work the VCR was Katherine. I think she first got the hang of recording
EastEnders
when she was four.’

In our house, he thought, not a phrase he used much these days.

As soon as Salim had put through the paperwork on his sale he came over to where they were waiting. Maureen took the printout of Shane Donald’s photograph from her bag. ‘It’s not a great copy, I’m afraid.’

It was good enough.

‘That’s him,’ Salim said, an edge of excitement lifting his voice. ‘Him, innit?’

‘You’re sure?’ Elder asked.

Salim smiled. It was a winning smile, Maureen recognised. ‘See that bloke was just here, right, with his wife. Buying the Philips, yeah? Two weeks ago he come in on his own, sniffin’ round, askin’ all these questions, right, should he go for the Samsung, multi-region playback with the handset hack, or maybe, push up to the Denon ASV-700 with the surround sound? Come back in an hour ago, less, recognised him the minute he walked through the door. My customer, my sale, right? Faces, names, it’s my job. How I make it work. And that, that’s the one was in here Friday with the dodgy card, you can take my word.’

♦

Elder and Maureen stood on the broad pavement outside the Victoria Centre, people hurrying past on either side. Buses waiting three in line for the lights to change at the corner of Milton Street. Elder’s shirt was sticking to his back and it wasn’t just the temperature, though it was still in the high twenties and the air was thickening with all the hallmarks of a coming storm.

‘There doesn’t have to be a connection,’ Maureen said, cautiously.

‘I know.’

‘Shane Donald shows up in the city on Friday and the day after a girl disappears a bus ride from the centre. Coincidence.’

‘Emma Harrison,’ Elder said. ‘She’s the same age as Susan Blacklock when she went missing, the same age as Lucy Padmore when they killed her, Donald and McKeirnan. And you’ve seen the photographs: Emma, she’s got fair hair, long fair hair. The same as the others.’

‘Frank, a lot of sixteen-year-olds go missing, statistically I’ll bet half of them have got fair hair. Maybe more. There’s nothing to link Emma Harrison to Shane Donald, nothing.’

‘Aside from the fact that he was here.’

‘If it’s true.’

Elder took a pace forward, out of the path of a young woman pushing a double buggy. ‘You’ll talk to Gerry Clarke?’ he said.

‘Both of us, eh?’

As they crossed towards Trinity Square the first drops of rain could already be felt.

It was Harold Edge who found the cardigan. Harold, seventy-two years old and a founder member of the East Notts. Senior Ramblers, straight-backed still and eyes like a hawk. Wednesday morning he had set out with Jess, his border collie–labrador cross, and caught the bus from Newark towards Lincoln, alighting some five or six miles out of the town and setting off on a route that would take him, via a series of footpaths and old, unmarked lanes through Norton Disney and back around to town. A good day’s hike.

The rucksack on his back held an Ordnance Survey map, compass and binoculars, a bar of Kendal Mint Cake, two cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, an apple and an individual size Melton Mowbray pie. There were chocolate drops for Jess, a bottle of water for them both and a fraying copy of the
RSPB Book of British Birds
. Only recently had he taken to using the German-designed anti-shock walking pole one of his nieces had bought him three years before.

Harold had been walking for close on an hour and had paused at a field edge to check directions. There was supposed to be a path leading off from the far side, but could he see a gap in the hedge, could he buggery? Then there it was, more than a little overgrown with hawthorn but large enough for a man to squeeze through single file, a narrow stile to climb and then once down on the other side the way was clear.

It was Jess, in truth, who found it, the cardigan that is. Sniffing around in the bracken that had grown up around the hedge bottom, tossing her head and barking so loud that Harold thought she had unearthed a rabbit hole or something, maybe even a badger set, but instead it was a dash of colour, something purple. ‘Here, girl, here. Good girl.’

Carefully Harold used the ferrule at the end of his walking pole to free the material from the thorny branch on which it had become caught and lift it up into sight. A girl’s cardigan, he thought, not in bad nick either. A mite too fancy to belong to a regular walker, he could see that. He could spread it out across the hedge, leave it in case whoever had dropped it came back, but somehow that seemed to him unlikely. With care, he folded it instead and placed it inside his rucksack. One or other of the charity shops in town would be grateful for it, he was sure.

It wasn’t until he was home that evening, watching the local news while he ran a nice relaxing bath, that he made a connection between his find and Emma Harrison. When she was last seen, the newscaster said, Emma had been wearing a halter top in a floral print, a blue denim skirt, pink open sandals and a purple cardigan.

Harold turned off the bath, refolded the cardigan inside a double sheet of newspaper, placed his parcel inside a plastic shopping bag and carried it to the local police station forthwith.

♦

The area in which Harold Edge had been walking was, for the most part, gently undulating farmland. North of the village of Norton Disney and above the narrow road, little more than a lane, which ran east from the A46, was a wood and, running close to the village itself, the River Witham, making its long arching journey towards The Wash. There was a small quarry to the east and the rest, dotted here and there with farm buildings and the occasional bungalow, was fields. There had been one quite heavy fall of rain in the past four days, otherwise it had been dry and warm; the cardigan was dry to the touch when it was delivered over, with only some small suggestion of dampness where one of the arms had twisted underneath itself. There was a clear pull – not exactly a tear – on the left side where it had snagged against the hedge and caught fast.

Ashley Foulkes immediately identified the cardigan as the one Emma had borrowed and burst into tears; her parents confirmed that it was hers. Constable Eileen Joy, who had been appointed liaison officer with the Harrison family, gave them the news.

The main focus of police attention was redirected from Rufford Park towards the area around Norton Disney. Officers from the Nottinghamshire force were joined by others from Lincolnshire, personnel from the Royal Air Force base and a significant number of civilian volunteers. The land would be searched a field at a time, moving gradually outwards: each building, every hedgerow and gully, each barn. The scanners that had been readied for use on the lake at Rufford were redeployed alongside the River Witham.

If Emma Harrison had been following the path that Harold Edge had taken, had climbed the stile, squeezed through the narrow gap in the hedge on her own, where on earth had she been going and why? And if, as seemed more likely, she had been with somebody else, was this voluntary or was she being forced? Was she, in fact, being carried? And if so, how far? The spot was some distance from the road, the nearest point a car could reach. It would take someone of considerable strength to carry her that far. That far and beyond.

Detectives were making a fingertip search close to the spot where the garment had been found, examining the ground for footprints, taking photographs, looking for evidence along the edges where the hedge overlapped the stile.

It was now four days, give or take, since Emma Harrison had last been seen.

♦

When Elder and Joanne had moved back from London in 1997 – Katherine eleven and about to start at secondary school – Bernard Young had been a detective chief inspector in the Major Crime Unit, noted for his collection of tropical fish, a certain degree of outspokenness and his penchant for high-flown literature and three-piece suits in various hairy strands of Harris tweed. Stand downwind of him on a hot day and you could imagine yourself luxuriating in the warm stench of some Highland bothy.

Now he was Detective Superintendent Young, the senior officer at the head of the unit, with a significant hike in pay and an office that afforded a view out over the car park and adjacent rooftops, a fraction of sky. On a cabinet to the side of the room, the shelves of which housed uniform editions of Shakespeare, Fielding and Smollett, fresh water hissed through a six-by-three-metre tank in which the overflow of his fish collection was currently disporting itself, small darting movements of orange and gold glimpsed through glass.

In the room that afternoon, aside from the superintendent himself, were two detective inspectors, Maureen Prior and Gerry Clarke, and, at the superintendent’s invitation, Frank Elder.

Bernard Young’s suit jacket hung from a hanger behind the office door and the buttons of his waistcoat, all but one, were undone.