Flesh And Blood (30 page)

It was an out-of-work roofer who made the first discovery, a pink sandal with a single band of leather, slightly worn down sole and heel. It was nestling amidst a thick clump of thistles towards the southern edge of a meadow that had been left for pasture, the sun catching it just at the moment that the volunteer searcher made his slow way across the field, right to left, head down. Even in the adrenaline rush of his discovery, he had known enough, had watched enough TV –
Taggart
,
Dalziel and Pascoe
,
Frost
– to know better than to pick it up, handle it, obscure whatever prints might be importantly in place. Instead he marked the spot carefully with the small rucksack he was carrying and hurried to the nearest uniformed officer, a young constable from Ollerton pacing in his shirtsleeves, the tips of his ears and the back of his neck reddening from the sun.

A quick, uncomfortable task to confirm the sandal as Emma’s, one of a pair bought early that spring.

A line on the map connecting the two finds, cardigan and sandal, suggested the direction that had been taken. A path that led through one more swathe of meadow, dipping at its furthest edge towards a stream running meagrely along the hedge bottom; fifty metres more and the hedge was halted abruptly by a length of fencing, mostly broken down. An overgrown track led towards what had once been a farm, a smallholding, little more. The main building had been boarded up and, at some later date, set fire to, blackened timbers meshed with crumbling brick. The second of two barns was sturdy, its door secured by a padlock that was easy to break. The stink brought tears to the eyes, phlegm to the back of the throat. Blood, dried vomit, human excrement. At first the officer feared the bundle by the far wall might be a body, but it was straw and sacking filtered through with ash. A length of chain bolted to an upright; rope hanging from the roof. Discarded in one corner, wadded into a ball and also stained with blood, lay Emma Harrison’s halter top.

By the time Maureen Prior arrived, shortly after Gerry Clarke, and only a little in advance of the media, the immediate area had been sealed off. Forensic experts and Scene of Crime were gathering to perform their tasks. Generators were already in position to provide the extra lighting that would be necessary. Bottles of water, flasks of tea.

Plastic covering on her shoes, Maureen stood alone in the centre of the barn, looking at the chain, the rope, the stains darkening the already dark floor. Thinking about a fifteen-year-old girl. Imagining.

Later, she would be sick; later when she was alone and unobserved.

Now she turned and stepped back out into the sun.

‘Okay, Gerry,’ she said. ‘Let them get started.’

♦

‘Do we know how long she was held there?’ Elder asked.

‘Best guess is two days,’ Maureen said. ‘Three at most.’

For a long moment Elder closed his eyes. ‘Days and nights,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

They were walking alongside the Trent, following the broad curve of the Victoria Embankment past the Memorial Gardens and towards the old viaduct, the worn expanse of the recreation ground to their right, dog walkers and the sporadic shouts of casual footballers. Along the river, a narrow boat eased through the water with an even rise and fall of oars.

‘There are tyre tracks leading in and out,’ Maureen said. ‘It’s been so dry lately, they’re not clear and it’s difficult to know how long they’ve been there. It’s going to be tomorrow at the earliest before we know if there’s anything distinct enough to be of use.’

‘The lane into the farm,’ Elder said. ‘In the other direction, where does it lead?’

‘Left and you’re back on the A46, then it’s south towards Newark, north to Lincoln.’

‘And if you go right?’

‘Lincoln again. Or skirt the city and finagle your way east.’

‘To the coast.’

‘Yes.’

Elder was silent for some little time.

‘What are you thinking?’ Maureen eventually asked.

Elder shook his head as if to clear the thoughts from his mind. They walked on a little further, level with the bowling green, and then Elder paused.

‘If we assume whoever’s keeping Emma prisoner has a vehicle, then why all this traipsing across fields?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that, too. Suppose the barn wasn’t his first choice. He takes her somewhere else, then, for whatever reason, has to move on.’

‘On foot, though. Why on foot?’

‘It would make sense, wouldn’t it, if, having abducted her, he wanted to get rid of the vehicle in case it had been seen.’

‘In which case we should have found an abandoned car somewhere. Car or van.’

‘Perhaps we still will.’

They resumed walking.

‘If he takes her with him,’ Maureen said, ‘from the barn, it means she’s still alive, right?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Frank, what other reason could there be?’

‘I’m not sure.’

When they reached the viaduct they stopped again. Directly north, above the no-longer-new housing of the Meadows, they could see the outline of the castle and the rounded roof of the Council House. Ahead of them, as they turned, were the floodlights of both the Forest and County grounds, on either side of the Trent beyond the bridge.

‘You still think it could be Shane Donald?’ Maureen asked.

‘I was thinking,’ Elder said. ‘All this toing and froing across open land, then the items of clothing, the cardigan first and then the sandal, whoever it is, what if he’s leaving a trail he wants us to follow?’

‘He wants to be caught?’

‘Not necessarily. Not necessarily that at all.’

♦

At the evening press conference, Bernard Young kept as close to the facts as he could. Yes, we are assuming that the building in question is where Emma Harrison was held. No, we have no clear indication as to where she might be at this present time, but we are continuing to follow up a number of leads.

‘What specific inference,’ asked the correspondent from one of the broadsheets, ‘should we draw from the involvement of former Detective Inspector Elder with the investigation?’

‘None,’ the superintendent said, ‘other than the fact that he is an experienced professional with significant experience in similar cases. And as you well know, in cases such as this, we not infrequently call in assistance from a variety of outside agencies.’

‘Frank Elder,’ put in the local crime reporter, ‘led the hunt for McKeirnan and Donald, didn’t he?’

‘He was a member of that investigating team, yes.’ Not altogether liking which way this was heading, the detective superintendent was on his feet.

‘And Shane Donald, as I believe, having been released from prison, is still unlawfully at large, isn’t that correct?’

‘No further questions,’ the superintendent said, stepping clear.

‘There will be a press conference,’ the public relations officer announced into the microphone, ‘at eleven tomorrow morning. In the event of any major new developments, you will, of course, be informed.’

♦

‘Our daughter,’ Ronald Harrison said, ‘is she alive or dead?’

Slowly, the liaison officer shook her head. ‘We don’t know, Mr Harrison. I’m afraid we just don’t know. But we must hope for the best.’

Hope dies hard and sometimes fast. The burned-out wreck of a four-year-old Honda Civic, reported stolen from the railway station car park at Retford on the day before Emma Harrison disappeared, was found on an old travellers’ encampment between the River Trent and the A1, north of Newark. The charred remains of a sandal resembling Emma’s were discovered in the boot. The other sandal.

After careful examination of the lane leading to the barn where Emma had been held, Scene of Crime officers identified the partial tyre tracks of what they believed to be a medium-sized van moving both in and out; the tracks corresponded, as far as they could determine, to those of a white Ford van fitted with new radial tyres which had been stolen from outside a house in Newark, while the owner was inside removing the mechanism from inside a large sofa bed, prior to carrying it down stairs. The van had not, so far, been found.

At a little before ten on Saturday morning, two boys, aged twelve and fourteen, staying with their families on a camp-site near by, were riding their bikes around on the sands north of the small town of Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast. Heading back across the dunes, the older boy, showing off, sent his bike into a spectacular skid, the arc of his rear wheel gouging deep into the sand and uncovering the shallow grave in which Emma Harrison had been buried.

‘Mablethorpe,’ Maureen Price said, when she heard the news. ‘Isn’t that…’

‘It’s where Lucy Padmore’s body was found,’ Elder said. ‘Fourteen years ago.’

‘Buried on the dunes.’

Elder nodded, stone-faced. ‘On the dunes.’

The Sundays had a field-day: from broadsheet to tabloid, they filled their pages with fact and supposition, reporters filing stories rich in overelaborate detail and prurient surmise. There were diagrams showing where the body had lain, interviews with the boys who found the grave; sketch maps which traced Emma’s presumed movements through those last six days. Photographs of Emma were culled from different sources, others showed her parents shielding their faces from the cameras as they hurried into the hospital to identify their daughter. Column after column was devoted to memories of Emma by her friends. She was always so full of energy, full of life; everyone loved her, everyone. She will be remembered in our prayers, the local vicar assured anyone who cared.

We might wonder, said the archbishop, if we are not all in some way reaping the harvest of a society in which sex and commerce are ever and ever more closely linked and in which the sexualisation of our children and young people is increasingly accepted without question or rebuke.

Speculation as to the identity of her killer was rife. The usual tactic of naming and shaming paedophiles was tawdrily trumpeted. Elder’s presence as part of the investigation team compounded the interest aroused by the coincidence of two young women being buried on the same stretch of coast. The more horrific details of Lucy Padmore’s abduction and murder were refreshed for our memory. Those papers who had begun to put together pieces about Shane Donald when he absconded from the probation hostel had a head’s start on their rivals.
IS THIS THE FACE OF EMMA
’
S KILLER?
one shrieked in type three centimetres deep. Lucy Padmore’s father offered a reward leading to the killer’s capture, a sum instantly matched and improved upon by a national daily.

Elder stood on the edge of the dunes, staring out across the expanse of grey, cold sea.

‘Do you think it’s him?’ Maureen asked.

‘I don’t know.’ His voice was sharp, harsher than he’d intended. ‘I’m sorry, I…’

‘No, it’s okay.’

Neither of them spoke again for some little time. Each knew for now they were dealing with conjecture, little more: the post-mortem had still to determine the exact cause of death. Detailed forensic examination of the body and the burial site, the barn and the burned-out car might uncover DNA evidence incontrovertibly linking Donald to the crime. Other leads, other clues. Equally, officers might find a match with one of the known offenders who were still being methodically checked out as part of the ongoing investigation. Computers would cross-check information with the CATCHEM system, in which statistics from four decades of offences against children were stored. But all this took time and waiting left a vacuum into which thoughts tried repeatedly to filter down.

‘When Donald and McKeirnan took Lucy Padmore,’ Elder said eventually, ‘it was here. Mablethorpe. What they did to her they did here. Whoever took Emma, it was the best part of eighty, a hundred miles away. When he held her prisoner that was still a good way off, seventy miles, say. And yet he risks discovery driving her here when he could have left her in that barn in Nottinghamshire. Why?’

Maureen organised her thoughts. ‘It’s a question we should ask a profiler, a forensic psychologist. And will. But if there’s a pattern… I don’t know, maybe it’s something he has to recreate. A sort of fetish, I suppose.’ She looked around. ‘Something about this place.’

Elder was remembering standing there before, the same wide spread of sand, the same fall and rise of waves, the selfsame spot or so it seemed.

‘If it is Donald,’ Maureen said, her voice tugged at a little by the wind, ‘what are the chances he’ll do it again?’

‘If it is,’ Elder said, ‘as long as he’s at large, they must be high.’

♦

It’s a truism, perhaps, that prison changes everyone who passes through the system, prison officers, prisoners, probation officers, everyone; at the same time it cements within some people aspects which will never change. During his time at Gartree Alan McKeirnan seemed to Elder to have become a waxwork of his former self, a carapace of the man he had watched insolently smiling in the dock and who had been sent down for life. Forty years of age but looking older – ageless – McKeirnan walked stiffly, escorted, into the small and airless room, a tall, thin figure dressed in grey and black.

‘Gimme a cigarette.’

Elder shook one loose and lit it for him, passing him across the pack.

‘You took your time,’ McKeirnan said. ‘The boy’s been gone a while now.’ He laughed, a metallic, rusted sound. ‘Big boy now, out there on his own.’

‘You’re worried about him?’ Elder asked.

McKeirnan’s eyes seemed to have sunk back deep into his head.

‘You sound worried about him,’ Elder said.

‘Shane, no.’

‘Concerned?’

‘No concern of mine.’

‘Your boy, it’s what you said.’

‘Not any more.’

‘But you’re responsible.’

‘Me? What can I do, in here?’

‘You did it a long time ago.’