Flesh And Blood (38 page)

‘And did you see her again after that?’

‘Not really. Once or twice, perhaps, in passing. Nottingham’s not really such a big place, after all.’

‘When was this? These one or two occasions?’

‘It must have been the same month, June. I’ve been down here since the end of term.’

‘And how much contact have you had with Katherine since you came down?’

‘None. None at all.’

‘Phone calls, letters? Text messages, emails?’

‘As I said, none at all.’

A few minutes later, the two officers were back in their car and heading towards Winchester.

‘What d’you think?’ the first one said.

‘Of him? He’s an arrogant little prick who’ll be a barrister before you or I get to inspector and he’ll earn more in a month than we’ll take home after tax in a year, but I believe him, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think he’s involved at all.’

‘Shame.’

‘Yeah.’

♦

An hour, more or less, after Hampshire police had reported back on their interview with Gavin Salter, Elder took two calls on his mobile. The first was from Helen Blacklock, who had tried several times earlier, enquiring in a concerned voice if there were any news, asking Elder how he was holding up; the second was from Maureen Prior, there’d been what seemed a reliable sighting of Adam Keach in Cleethorpes, some twenty or so miles up the coast from where Emma Harrison’s body had been found.

Elder’s blood seemed to clot in his veins; the upper part of his left leg felt suddenly numb and he rubbed at it hard to get the circulation moving again. If Keach had taken Katherine within an hour of her leaving training, he could have easily have reached the coast with her by nightfall.

Colin Sherbourne had officers talking to the bus company, checking the times they would have passed along that route, talking to drivers and showing them photographs: do you remember seeing this girl?

What else was there to do? What could he do himself?

♦

As Elder pulled up outside the house, he checked his watch. While the day seemed to be lasting interminably, time was racing away. Alerted by the sound of his car, Joanne met him, anxious, at the door; from the expression on Elder’s face she knew there was neither good news nor yet the worst.

She held him quickly and then stepped back.

‘Martyn’s inside. He just got back twenty minutes ago.’

Martyn Miles was out on the patio, vodka tonic in hand; he was wearing a pale lavender shirt and olive-green moleskin trousers and he removed his dark glasses when Joanne led Elder through from the living-room towards him.

‘Frank, I’m sorry,’ Martyn said. ‘You must be worried sick. Is there any news?’

‘No, not really.’

‘She’s not a stupid girl, she wouldn’t have just gone off without telling someone.’

‘No.’

‘She had her mobile, she’d have phoned.’

‘Her phone’s switched off,’ Joanne said. ‘It has been since I first tried last night.’

‘Isn’t there some way you can trace it anyway?’ Martyn asked.

‘Not without a signal, no.’

‘There must be something can be done.’

‘The police are checking with all of Katherine’s friends, anyone who might have seen her or spoken to her in the last few days, anyone who knew her well.’

‘That student she was seeing…’ Martyn began.

‘Gavin Salter. Down in Hampshire with his parents. Last night he was out getting drunk at someone’s twenty-first, witnesses galore.’

‘What about a search?’

‘The area around Harvey Hadden’s was checked over once first thing; there’s a fingertip search going on now to see if there’s any clue as to what might have happened. There’ll be posters up all over the city by the end of the day, the railway station, everywhere. Bulletins on the local news, TV and radio.’

‘And that’s it? We sit and wait?’

‘Until there’s a break, it’s difficult to know what else to do.’

‘There must be something?’ Flinging his arm wide, Martyn caught Joanne’s arm with his hand and the glass went flying from his hand.

‘Fuck it!’

‘Are you okay?’ Elder asked Joanne.

‘I’m fine. But you could ask Martyn what all the sudden histrionics are about.’

Crouching down to pick up the pieces of glass, Martyn looked up at her. ‘Meaning what, exactly?’

‘Meaning the first thing you did when you walked in and I started telling you Katherine was missing was to ask me to calm down and get you a drink.’

‘It was what I needed. And you were so agitated you weren’t making any sense.’

‘Now Frank’s here you’re making out you’re really worried. As if you really cared.’

‘Of course I care.’

‘Do you?’

He stood abruptly, his face close to hers. ‘Fuck you, Joanne.’

‘Nice, Martyn,’ she said, and turned aside.

Martyn let the glass he’d been collecting fall from his hands.

‘Where were you last night, Martyn?’ Elder asked.

‘What possible business is it of yours?’

‘Just asking, that’s all.’

‘Am I a suspect or something?’

‘Everyone close to Katherine will be being asked the same questions.’

‘But not by you.’

‘Martyn was down in London on business, weren’t you, Martyn? Staying at the Waldorf Meridien. Except that you weren’t at the Waldorf because when I phoned there after twelve when Kate hadn’t come home, they said they’d no record of you.’

‘The night clerk on the desk made a mistake.’

‘They’d had a reservation, but it had been cancelled.’

‘All right, sweetheart,’ Martyn said, ‘I was with a woman in her flat in Notting Hill and we were up all night, the best part of it, fucking one another silly. There, now are you satisfied?’

His voice was exultant and loud and directed straight at Joanne’s face.

She swung her open hand to slap him and he caught her wrist.

‘Let her go,’ Elder said.

Martyn relinquished his grip and stepped towards the door. ‘Look at you,’ he said with a sneer. ‘You sorry pair. You deserve each other.’

Fist clenched, Elder started towards him but Joanne stepped in the way. ‘Don’t, Frank.’

Martyn laughed and took his time sauntering across the living-room floor; moments later they heard the front door slam.

‘How long has it been like this?’ Elder asked.

Joanne looked at him. ‘How long hasn’t it?’

Elder woke just short of five and was keying in Maureen’s number on his mobile before his feet touched the floor. If Keach had Katherine and he were following the same pattern as before, he would have had somewhere secluded picked out in advance, no more than an hour’s drive away.

Maureen answered on the fourth ring.

‘The girl McKeirnan released,’ Elder said. ‘Michelle Guest. She was held north of Retford. And the car that was used in Emma Harrison’s abduction was stolen from Retford station car park.’

‘Frank, stop,’ Maureen said. ‘We’ve already made the connection. There’ll be a search team on the ground at first light. A police helicopter. Dogs, everything.’

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

‘I’m telling you now.’

Elder held his breath.

‘Come in to the station,’ Maureen said. ‘We can go over things together on the map.’

There was a pause and then Maureen said, ‘Frank – are you holding up all right?’

‘I’ll see you in an hour,’ Elder said and broke the connection.

♦

The Ordnance Survey map was detailed and clear on screen: farms, roads, electricity transmission lines, field boundaries, streams, public rights of way. Sunrise was at twelve minutes past five and on the ground the search was due to commence at six thirty; the police helicopter, equipped with thermal imaging equipment, would make its first pass some twenty minutes later. Elder and Maureen would be on site by a little after seven.

‘Michelle Guest was held here,’ Maureen said, ‘is that right?’ She was pointing to a spot on the old Roman road that linked North Wheatley and Clayworth.

‘Yes,’ Elder said. ‘McKeirnan parked the caravan at this point where the road meets up with the Chesterfield Canal. Held her the best part of two days, then pushed her out here, just short of Bole Fields.’

Maureen nodded. ‘The plan is to use North Wheatley as a centre point and spread out in an arc from there.’

‘And if we find nothing?’

‘Unless there’s something else concrete to go on, we enlarge the area of the search.’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘Meantime Colin Sherbourne’s running a check on all vehicles stolen in the Retford area.’

‘The sighting of Keach in Cleethorpes?’

‘We’re still checking it, of course. But it looks less likely all the time.’

♦

As they headed north-east out of the city, the roads were mostly clear; Elder’s driver mumbled a few quiet words of sympathy and thereafter the journey passed in silence. The search was well under way by the time Elder arrived and he waited, watched and walked the edges of fields, all the while shutting certain images out from his mind. Almost succeeding.

By early afternoon, dispirited and close to exhaustion, Elder signalled that he was ready to call it a day. Just short of the Ollerton roundabout, a call to the car turned them back again. The thermal imaging scan in the helicopter had pinpointed something in a field near Oswald Beck, close to the power lines. Headlights and siren full on, they travelled back at speeds close to a hundred and ten. Alongside the driver, Elder breathed loudly, open-mouthed, sweat gathering in the palms of his hands.

A track just wide enough for farm vehicles to drive along led south and then west. Officers in coveralls were converging on a corner of the field. Blood racing, Elder ran between them, feet sliding on dry earth. Close by the hedgerow, near the broken chassis of an abandoned farm trailer, lay several sheets of heavy black plastic, humped at the point where they came closest to the hedge itself. Elder watched as gloved hands eased back a sheet at a time. Beneath and rotting into the ground lay the decomposing body of a dead sheep.

Elder held his face in his hands and wept.

♦

Back in the city, Elder checked in with Colin Sherbourne. Of fourteen vehicles reported as stolen in the Retford area, all but three – an almost new Ford Fiesta, a Mini Cooper and a Fiat van – had been traced.

The media, having feasted already on Shane and Angel, thought Christmas had come round again early.
DAUGHTER OF SPECIAL POLICE INVESTIGATOR MISSING
.
EX-SUPER COP’S KATE KIDNAPPED
.
COPYCAT KILLER ON THE LOOSE
. Files were ransacked for stories about Elder’s more sensational cases. A photograph of Katherine crossing the finishing line at Harvey Hadden Stadium was sold and syndicated widely. Reporters laid siege to Joanne’s house, begging her fruitlessly for an interview, sneaking shots through the upstairs windows of Martyn and herself in the bedroom, clearly arguing; Joanne alone in the garden, distraught. When Martyn Miles left the house that morning he had to push his way between half a dozen reporters and almost got into an altercation with a freelance photographer, threatening to take his camera and smash it on the ground. Returning, forty minutes later, with three large bunches of flowers, he was captured on video mouthing ‘Fuck off the lot of you’ before turning the key in the front door.

Reporters or not, Elder needed to talk to Joanne.

He hurried through the small posse of cameramen head down.

Joanne was sitting at a stained-wood table in the dining-room, albums open, photographs of Katherine scattered everywhere: Katherine on her own, squinting against the sun as she stared up into the camera on the beach at St Ives; Katherine nestled back against her father’s upper arm, red faced and three days old; the three of them, mother, father, daughter, seated on a bench in a West London park, the camera set to remote.

‘Is that what you should be doing?’ Elder asked.

‘Look at her here,’ Joanne said as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘That bike – her fourth birthday, remember?’

He remembered everything and nothing; as if she were already slipping from his grasp.

‘I’m sorry, Frank,’ Martyn said, coming hushed into the room. ‘Yesterday. I was being an arsehole.’

‘What’s changed?’ Joanne said, without looking round.

Martyn went away and left them alone.

Joanne’s skin was bleached of colour, close to translucent, her eyes unnaturally large. Her fingers were never still. Despite his better judgement, Elder sat with her and looked at the photographs. When his head had slumped forward and Joanne realised his eyes had closed, she nudged him awake and led him upstairs to the guest room, pulled off his shoes and closed the blinds. He fell asleep before she had left the room and slept for six hours straight.

When Joanne shook him gently she had his mobile phone in her hand.

‘This was in your coat downstairs. There’s a call. Someone named Helen?’

She withdrew and left him to it, and Elder talked with Helen Blacklock for some minutes, a halting awkward conversation, both aware of the minefields through which they were treading.

At a decent interval Joanne returned with soup and toast.

‘I’m not an invalid, you know,’ Elder said. ‘You don’t have to wait on me.’

‘It’s something to do.’

He thanked her and she sat with him, talking sporadically, while he ate.

‘You don’t think there’s any news?’ she asked.

Elder shook his head. ‘Maureen would have phoned.’

Later he surprised himself by sleeping again, finally waking a little after three and going barefooted downstairs. The house was silent save for those small unattributable noises all houses, even new ones, make in the stillness of night. He made tea in the kitchen and sat leafing through back issues of Joanne’s magazines,
Vogue
and
Vanity Fair
. Picking up a paperback by Anita Shreve Joanne had been reading, he carried it into the living-room and read several chapters before casting it aside. On his feet, he switched out the light and stood close against the glassed wall, staring out. He was still standing there when Joanne came down the spiral stairs in a long pink robe that swished silkily as she crossed the floor.