In The Presence Of The Enemy (62 page)

Dusty cogs lay near the tools, as did two wooden pulleys and a coil of rope. Above them, the brick wall was speckled white with lichen, and damp seemed to cling to the air.

At the height of the ceiling not far above their heads, an enormous notched wheel was suspended on its side. Part of the mechanism for running the mill, this was the great spur wheel and it was centred between two matching gears. Running through a hole in this wheel, from the floor they stood upon up through the ceiling and presumably to the very top of the windmill, was a fat iron pillar that was knobby with rust.

“Charlotte’s maypole,” Barbara said as she shone her beam along its length.

“That’s what I thought,” Robin said. “It’s called the main shaft. Here. Look up.”

He took her arm and led her to stand directly beneath the great spur wheel. He closed his hand over hers and steadied the torchlight onto one of the wheel’s cogs. Barbara could see that the cog bore a coating of a gelatinous-looking substance that had the appearance of cold honey.

“Grease,” Robin said. After making sure she had seen it, he lowered her arm and directed the light onto the spot where the main shaft was attached to the floor. The same substance lacquered this joining point. As Robin squatted by it and indicated a section, Barbara saw what had made him come racing home to fi nd her, what had made him ignore his mother’s meaningful dialogue about his future bride.

This was more important than a future bride.

There were fingerprints in the old axle grease at the main shaft’s base. And they belonged to a child.

“Bloody hell,” Barbara murmured.

Robin got to his feet. His eyes were anxiously fastened on her face.

She said, “I think you may have done it, Robin.” And she felt herself smiling for the fi rst time all day. She said, “Sod it all. I think you’ve gone and bloody
done
it, you twit.”

Robin smiled but looked abashed by the compliment. Still, he said eagerly, “Have I?

You think?”

“I definitely think.” She squeezed his arm and allowed herself a quick hoot of excitement. “Okay, London,” she exulted. “This is it.” Robin laughed at her exhilaration and she joined him in laughing and shot a fist into the air. Then she sobered and guided herself back to her role as head of the team. She said, “We’ll need the crime scene boys out here. Tonight.”

“Three times in one day? They’re not going to be happy with that, Barbara.”

“Bugger them. I’m happy as hell. What about you?”

“Bugger them,” Robin agreed.

They descended the stairs. Beneath them, Barbara saw a crumpled blue blanket. She inspected this. She drew it out from beneath the stairs, and as she pulled upon it, something rattled from it onto the floor. She said,

“Hang on,” and bent to inspect the small object that lay in a trough of mortar between two bricks. It was a fi gurine, a tiny hedgehog, ridged on the back, with a pointed snout. It was one-sixth the size of her palm, perfect to be clutched in a child’s small hand.

Barbara picked it up and showed it to Robin. “We’ll need to see if the mother can ID this.”

She went back to the blanket. The coarse material was damp, she noted, damper than the room’s moisture might have produced.

And the idea of damp, of moisture, of water, quelled her spirits and reminded her of the manner in which Charlotte Bowen had died.

There was a piece to the puzzle that remained elusive.

She turned back to Robin. “Water.”

“What about it?”

“She was drowned. Is there water nearby?”

“The canal’s not far and the river’s—”

“She drowned in tap water, Robin. A bathtub. A basin. A toilet. We’re looking for tap water.” Barbara thought of what they’d seen so far. “What about the cottage? The one near the road. How ruined is it? Is there water there?”

“I expect it’s long been turned off.”

“But it had running water when someone lived there, didn’t it?”

“That was years ago.” He removed his work gloves and stowed them in the pocket of his jacket.

“So it could have been turned on—even for a short time—if someone found the main valve on the property.”

“Could have been. But it’s probably well water, this far from the village. Wouldn’t that show up different to water from the tap?”

It would, of course it would. And the fact of that flaming tap water in Charlotte Bowen’s body just complicated matters another degree.

“There’s no tap in here, then?”

“In the mill?” He shook his head.

“Sod,” Barbara muttered. What had the kidnapper actually done? she wondered. If this was the site where Charlotte Bowen had been held, then surely she’d been held here alive.

The faeces, the urine, the blood, and the fi ngerprints all gave mute testimony to that. And even if that putative evidence of her presence could be explained away through another means, even if the child had been dead when she was brought to this site, what would have been the point of risking being seen in the act of carrying her body into the mill to stow it for a few days? No, no. She was alive when she was here. Perhaps for days, perhaps only for hours.

But she was alive. And if that was the case, then somewhere close by was a source of tap water that had been used to drown the girl.

Barbara said, “Go back to the village, Robin. There was a call box outside the pub, wasn’t there? Phone for the scene-of-crime team. Tell them to bring lights, torches, the works. I’ll wait here.”

He looked to the door, to the darkness beyond it. He said, “I’m not keen on that plan.

I don’t like your being here by yourself. If there’s a killer round—”

“I can cope,” she said. “Go on. Make the call.”

“Come with me.”

“I need to secure the scene. That door was open. Anyone can come along and—”

“My point exactly. It’s not safe. And you’ve not come out here armed, have you?”

He knew she wasn’t armed. No detective was armed. He wasn’t armed himself. She said, “I’ll be fine. Whoever took Charlotte has Leo Luxford right now. And since Leo isn’t here, I think it’s safe to assume that Charlotte’s killer isn’t here either. So go make that phone call and come right back.”

He mulled this over. She was about to give him a helpful shove towards the door, when he said, “Right, then. Keep the lantern lit. Give me the torch. If you hear anyone—”

“I’ll get one of the dressing tools and pound him a good one. And I’ll keep him pounded till you get back.”

He grinned. He headed for the door. He paused for a moment before turning back to her. He said, “This sounds a bit out of line, I suppose, but—”

“What?” She was immediately wary. Having Sergeant Stanley out of line was enough.

She didn’t need Robin Payne to join him. But the constable’s words—and the way he said them—surprised her.

“It’s just that…You’re not exactly like other women, are you?”

She’d known for some time that she wasn’t like other women. She’d also known that what she
was
like wasn’t particularly attractive to men. So she looked him over, wondering what he was getting at and not completely certain she wanted the point clarifi ed.

“What I mean is, you’re rather special, aren’t you?”

Not as special as Celia
popped into Barbara’s mind. But what dropped off her tongue was

“Yeah. So are you.”

He watched her across the width of the windmill. She swallowed against a sudden lump of dread. She didn’t want to think of what she suddenly feared. She didn’t want to think of why she feared it. She said, “Go make that call. It’s getting late and we’ve hours of work ahead of us here.”

Robin said, “Right.” Still, he hesitated a long moment in the door way before he turned away and headed back towards his car.

The cold swept in. With Robin’s departure it seemed to seep outward from the walls. Barbara wrapped her arms round herself and slapped her hands against her shoulders. She found that her breathing had become erratic and she stepped outside the door to take in the night air.

Forget it, she told herself. Maintain a grip.

Get to the bottom of this case, tie up loose ends, and head back to London as soon as possible. But don’t—do
not—
engage in idle fantasy.

The point was water. Ordinary water. Tap water. In Charlotte Bowen’s lungs. That’s what she ought to be considering at the moment and that’s what she was determined to do.

Where had the girl been drowned? Bathtub, wash basin, kitchen sink, toilet. But which sink?

What toilet? Which bathtub? Where? If every clue they’d uncovered was tied to London, then the tap water was somehow tied to London as well, if not geographically then personally.

Whoever had used tap water to drown Charlotte was someone who was also associated with London where she had been taken. The principals were her mother—with her prison site in Wiltshire—and Alistair Harvie—with his constituency here. But Harvie was a blind road; he had to be. As for her mother…What kind of monster would arrange the kidnapping and the murder of her only child? Besides, according to Lynley, Eve Bowen was poised on the brink of losing everything now that Luxford was going to run the story. And Luxford—

Barbara drew in a quick breath at the sudden recollection of a single fact from among the many which Lynley had given her over the phone a few hours before. She strode away from the windmill, into the paddock. She moved out of the carpet of light that poured forth from the windmill’s door. Of course, she thought. Dennis Luxford.

In the darkness she could just make out the downward slope of fields to the south of the windmill and beyond them the distant rise of land again, above which hung a speckled-bright mantle of stars. To the west the scattered lights of the nearby village sequinned the darkness. To the north lay the weed-knotted fields they’d driven along to arrive at this place. And somewhere nearby—she knew it, she believed it, and she would prove it to herself as soon as Robin returned—sat Baverstock School for Boys.

This was the connection she was looking for. This was the tie that bound London to Wiltshire. And this was the unbreakable bond between Dennis Luxford and the death of his child.

LYNLEY HADN’T REALIZED
how much Helen had become part of the fabric of his life until he had breakfast alone the next morning.

He’d skipped breakfast entirely on the previous day, thereby avoiding a prolonged and solitary engagement over eggs and toast. But since he’d skipped dinner as well, he was feeling lightheaded by midnight. He could have done with a snack at that point, but he wasn’t up to rustling round the kitchen. He decided instead just to pass out in bed and take care of his need for sustenance in the morning. So he left a note in the kitchen—“Breakfast. For one.”—and Denton had complied with his usual dedication to Lynley’s nutrition.

Half a dozen serving dishes were lined up on the sideboard in the dining room. Two kinds of juice stood ready in jugs. Cornfl akes, Weetabix, and muesli were arranged next to a bowl and another jug of milk. Denton’s strong suit was that he always followed directions.

His weakness was not knowing when to stop.

Lynley could never decide if the younger man was a frustrated actor or an even more frustrated set designer.

After a bowl of cereal—he chose the Weetabix—he dipped into the serving dishes and helped himself to eggs, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and bangers. It was not until he sat down with this second course that he became aware of how uncomfortably silent the entire house was. He ignored the illusion of claustrophobia that the silence produced. He gave his attention to
The Times
. He was wend-ing his way through the editorial page—two columns and seven letters on the hypocrisy of the Tory Party’s Recommitment to Basic British Values as reflected in the recent actions of the East Norfolk MP and his Paddington rent boy—when he realised he’d read the same cas-tigatory paragraph three times without the slightest idea of its contents.

He pushed the newspaper away. There’d be plenty more to read when he got his hands on this morning’s edition of
The Source
. He raised his head and looked at what he’d been avoiding since he’d entered the dining room: Helen’s empty chair.

He hadn’t phoned her last night. He could have done. He might have used as an excuse the fact that he’d seen St. James and made his apologies for the row he’d provoked among them on Monday afternoon. But there had been a strong emotion underlying the activity Helen had been engaged in on Monday night—that winnowing of utterly useless clothing for the poor of Africa—and if he spoke to her, he was fairly certain that he’d learn exactly what the emotion was. Since her current frame of mind and heart had obviously arisen from his lashing out at her and at his friends, Lynley knew that to approach her now was to run the risk of hearing something he didn’t wish to hear.

Avoiding her was sheer emotional coward-ice, and he knew it. He was attempting to pretend all was right with his world in the hope that pretending would make it so. Skipping breakfast yesterday had been part of the pretence. Better to rush off with his mind fully occupied by details of the investigation than to find his heart clouded by the fear that through his bullheaded stupidity, he may have lost or at least irreparably damaged what he prized most. Giving His human creations the ability to love had to be the Divinity’s most ingenious act of self-amusement, Lynley thought. Let them fall for each other and then drive each other mad, He must have schemed.

What a bloody good laugh it will be to watch the chaos that ensues when I get the man-woman chemistry just right.

Chaos had certainly ensued in his life, Lynley admitted. From the moment eighteen months ago when he’d realised he’d come to love Helen, he’d felt like Crane’s man in pursuit of the horizon. The more he tried to reach his destination, the endlessly farther it seemed to recede.

He pushed away from the dining table and crumpled up the linen napkin as Denton came into the room. “Were you expecting the Micawbers for breakfast?” Lynley enquired pleasantly.

Typically the allusion was lost on the younger man. If it hadn’t been created by Andrew Lloyd Webber for consumption in the West End, it simply didn’t exist. “Pardon?” Denton said.