A Thoughtful Woman

by K T Findlay

  ‘Then it must be yet another false trail. Ye gods. How many does she think she needs?’ Peregrin moaned.

  ‘At least one more sir, if we’re still on her trail!’ laughed Tony.

  ‘Okay, okay. There’s another car coming up from Ipington who can take over watching that trail exit. There’s just a possibility she’s still down the Widow Maker somewhere, hiding. I want you to carry on east down Bleak Road and check that all the other roads and trail exits have someone guarding them now.’

  ‘Yes sir. On my way.’

  At that moment a blue Ford Transit van pulled up behind Tony’s car which was stopped in the middle of the narrow road, and parped it’s horn. The driver stuck his head out and called to Tony. ‘Excuse me, any chance of getting past?’

  Tony hopped out of his car, approached the driver’s window and flashed his identification. ‘Sorry sir, but there’s a dangerous fugitive loose on the moor. You have to leave immediately.’

  ‘But I’m only going to Throcking!’ complained the man.

  ‘Then you’ll have to go via Dalton if it’s an urgent matter.’

  ‘Dalton!’ the man exploded. ‘That’s miles away!’

  Tony gave him his best attempt at sincere regret. ‘Sorry sir, but that’s your only option at the moment. All the roads between here and the sea are sealed off.’

  The man shook his head in disgust and then appeared to accept the inevitable. ‘Okay. Then can I at least use that little road to turn around?’ he asked, indicating the Widow Maker.

  ‘Tony shook his head. ‘Sorry sir. There’s evidence on the road surface and we can’t have it disturbed. You’ll have to do a three point turn here.’

  The man’s eyes bulged in disbelief. ‘You’re having a laugh!’

  Tony shook his head again. ‘Sorry.’ he repeated.

  James did a good impression of an angry man taking out his frustrations on the van’s controls, making the unfortunate vehicle jerk and bounce on its springs as he clumsily executed the required manoeuvre. ‘Well, that’s that!’ he muttered to himself as he saw the flashing lights of another police car coming towards him from the Ipington end of the road. He gave up and headed back to the house, where he could at least have a cup of tea.

  Tony watched him disappear around the corner, just to make sure he’d gone, before he himself returned to his car and drove on. It took him another ten minutes to confirm officers had arrived and were guarding Heaven’s Spur, Drunkard’s Lane and the Headwater Track, then five more to reach the end of Bleak Road which was closed off with two cars.

  He radioed Peregrin. ‘All the Bleak Road exits are blocked off sir. Is someone else checking all the other exits?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. All the trail exits on the Throcking side are confirmed watched, and so is the Little Throcking exit.’ confirmed Peregrin. ‘We just need to draw in the net.’

  ‘I’m going to go back and talk to each of these guys up here.’ said Tony.

  ‘Okay Tony. Keep me informed, and check in regularly by radio when you can.’ said Peregrin.

  The officer at the Headwaters Track confirmed he’d seen nobody through. ‘I don’t expect to though.’ he said. ‘I’m a walker myself, and there’s no way she could bring a bike up here, let alone a four wheel drive. So if she’s on her way, it’s on foot, and she won’t arrive for ages yet.’

  ‘Good to know.’ said Tony, and moved up to Drunkard’s Lane.

  The officer there looked bored and uninterested, as is often the way when guarding something in the middle of nowhere.

  ‘Anything to report constable?’ asked Tony from his car window.

  ‘No sir.’ replied the man, flinging his arms around in a feeble attempt to fight the cold wind.

  ‘Have we got anyone at the other end, do you know?’

  ‘I don’t think so sir. We were running short of cars when they told me to come up here. The despatcher didn’t think we needed both ends guarded because the suspect couldn’t have got here by then.’

  ‘Does McEwan know that?’ asked Tony.

  ‘Don’t know sir. I guess so.’

  Tony tried his radio, but he was in another dead spot.

  ‘Okay,’ he told the constable, ‘I’m off to Heaven’s Spur in the hope that I can get better reception there. See if you can find a spot here where your radio works, and keep up the good work!’

  ‘Yes sir.’ said the man as Tony drove off. ‘No sir, three bags bloody full sir! You smug, warm git!’ he muttered crossly.

  When Tony arrived at the entrance to Heaven’s Spur, the officer had his car parked completely across it.

  ‘It’s a dead end, and nobody comes in, nobody comes out without me knowing about it sir. That way I can sit inside the car and not freeze me whatnots off.’ the man said happily.

  Tony laughed. ‘Understood. It’s a bit bracing up here isn’t it? Look, I need to get through to try and radio McEwan.’

  ‘Your radio will work here sir, just, if you’re in a real hurry. But it’s much better up the end with line of sight to the coast.’

  Tony chose the better signal, drove to the end so he could admire the view, and called in.

  ‘Sir, are you aware that we apparently don’t have anyone at the northern end of Drunkard’s Lane?’ he asked.

  ‘Why the hell not?!’ bellowed Peregrin.

  ‘The officer at this end says they were running out of cars, and the despatcher instructed them to just block the Bleak Road end. The thinking seems to have been that she couldn’t have got there by then.’

  ‘That woman’s capable of anything Tony! She’s been ahead of us every step of the way so far, so why couldn’t she have done it again? We need to block it off now!’

  ‘With respect sir.’ said Tony cautiously. ‘It really would be too late now, if she’s got past I mean. She’ll be out the other end and gone.’ He paused. ‘But everyone with any experience up here thinks she has to be still in there somewhere.’

  Peregrin scratched his chin. ‘I’m not so sure. This was incredibly well planned. She must have figured out how long each bit of her route would take, and she’d have estimated how long we’d take to respond. I’ll see if we can get anyone to come up Drunkard’s Lane from the Little Dimpton end, just to check.’

  Tony sighed and got out of the car to stretch his legs. The view really was magnificent, so much better without the windscreen in the way, and the air was crisp and refreshing.

  ‘What a beautiful place.’ he thought.

  Then he spotted the writing on the edge of the seal.

  ‘Bloody vandals! Graffiti, even out here. Animals!’ he muttered to himself. Then, as is the way with written words, he couldn’t stop himself from reading what it said. He blinked. That was more erudite than the average vandal!

  ‘Where the hell is that from?’ he wondered out loud. ‘I know that, surely?’

  He looked over the edge of the bluff. And then he looked again.

  ‘Sir?’ he asked over the radio.

  ‘Yes Tony. What have you got now?’ answered Peregrin.

  ‘Can you tell me the next line after “My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time”?’

  ‘”To let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime.”’ sang Peregrin. ‘It’s from The Mikado, where he goes on about executing people in humorous ways. Why do you ask?’

  Tony sighed. ‘I think I might have found Terry Walker.’

  ◆◆◆

  ‘Hello. Hamish? It’s Miss Helen calling.

  Helen was working her way through her client list, telling them of her imminent six month closure.

  ‘That’s right Hamish, for the next six months at least. Trust me. You won’t want to risk it.’

  She paused, her face screwed up in concern.

  ‘That’s a lovely offer Hamish, but I’m still trying to figure out a way to make ends meet, so I can continue to pay rent for the studio and my cottage. I can’t do that up in Scotland.’

  She paused again to li
sten.

  ‘Hamish, that would cost you a fortune! I can’t owe anyone a debt like that.’

  There was another pause, much longer this time.

  ‘You do know that a 24/7 arrangement is nothing like a session? I’ve never done that before. It could be a disaster. Even if I can pull it off, you might very well hate it, and where would that leave us?’

  The stream of words rattled out of the phone at her, the tone ever more persuasive. Finally, she smiled.

  ‘Okay Hamish. You’ve convinced me, but we need to establish a few ground rules first…’

  ◆◆◆

  From the moment Tony called in his report, Peregrin and Susan were off the search team. They joined him at a quarter past two, followed shortly after by the mountain rescue team, once they’d finished extracting Eric.

  The first thing the abseilers retrieved was the cycle helmet that Tony had spotted on a ledge half way down the cliff, in front of the painted message.

  ‘It looked just like the one Walker was supposed to be wearing when he disappeared.’ explained Tony. ‘I can’t see a body down there because of all the pine branches, but seeing this thing placed there, and the freshly painted message, I just thought…’

  Peregrin nodded. ‘It was a good call Tony. It’s an exact match, right down to the day glow orange paint squares at the front and back that Walker himself added.’

  He held it up, and examined it carefully.

  ‘The plastic surface shows no sign of weathering. The straps are clean. There’s no way this has been on that ledge for three and a half years.’

  Susan looked up from where she was kneeling by the paint. ‘And this is very new too sir. It’s all shiny for a start, but when you gently push these tiny stones in the edge of the paint, they just fall away. They’d have been long gone if the paint had been done a while ago.’

  Peregrin frowned. ‘So what we’re saying is that some people, or someone, both placed the helmet, and wrote that message in the last day or so. The question is, why?’

  Their deliberations were interrupted by a call from the bottom of the cliff, a hundred feet below.

  ‘We’ve found a body sir! Or at least what’s left of one.’

  Peregrin knelt on the edge of the cliff and looked down. ‘What condition is it in Jimmy?’

  ‘Just bones, in the remains of his clothes sir. The cliff here ends in a slope of loose rock. I reckon he hit the bottom and tumbled into the trees, just out of sight from the road. They’re thick evergreen branches, so you’d never see him, even in the winter.’

  Susan tapped Peregrin on the shoulder. ‘Why didn’t we look here when he went missing sir?’

  Peregrin was silent for a moment as he thought for the most diplomatic answer. ‘There are two reasons we might have missed him. First of all, he’d never been known to come out here on his bike before. He had a racing bike and tended to stick to the more clement areas around the coast. In that context, there’s a limit to how much effort you can put in to search every single inch of countryside. I mean, do you search the countryside around Shrewsbury, for someone who’s gone missing in Dover? You have to draw a line somewhere between the two.’

  ‘I reckon the person who got given this patch to search, simply looked at the edge of the road here for any signs of anything being dragged, and then had a look down there. From up here you can see enough of the bottom of the cliff to assume you’d be able to spot anyone who fell over. You need to use ropes to actually go down and check, so as he wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near here anyway…’

  ‘Do you remember who it was sir?’ asked Tony.

  ‘Thomlinson.’ smiled Peregrin. ‘So I guess that gives us three possible reasons. Anyway, we’d best get Fliss out here.’

  By the time Felicity had arrived and reached the bottom of the cliff, it was close to 4 PM, and very cold. Felicity got just an hour’s investigation done before it got too dark for her to work safely anymore.

  ◆◆◆

  Sally arrived home just after five. She closed the garage door and immediately ripped into action.

  The bike came out of the back of the Range Rover, its own wheels put back on, and its Selina wheels stored in the secret cupboard. The chunky Range Rover wheels soon followed suit, along with the neatly folded tarps.

  Then Sally stripped off completely, including her bra and pants. She’d worked hard today, and didn’t want any of the fabrics from her Selina clothes to be found on them. She hung up the two wigs in the cupboard, along with the day’s clothes on hangers to air. She could attend to them in a day or so.

  Then she checked the whole house to make sure that every single item that could be associated with Selina or Mia was tucked safely away in the cupboard. Finally satisfied, she locked it, put its camouflage back on, and went off to have the most thorough shower she’d ever had in her life.

  ◆◆◆

  Freddy hung about the castle until Sally returned and it began to get dark. The police were still crawling all over the place, and while he didn’t think they’d care about a minor matter like riding without lights at this particular moment, it didn’t do to attract unnecessary attention to himself. He buttoned up his coat, tucked his hat down around his ears and pedalled off home.

  ◆◆◆

  By six o’clock Sally was dressed again, completely in her own clothes, with her sketch pad and pencils sitting on the passenger seat, and heading for the McEwan’s.

  ‘Do you and Peregrin want to join me for a drink at the golf club?’ she asked when Hilary answered her knock. ‘I want to celebrate getting back into my pencil drawings. I did some great stuff today.’

  Hilary smiled. ‘Peregrin’s still out chasing that blonde in the hills, but come on in. I’ve got a lovely surprise to show you.’

  ‘What do you mean chasing a blonde in the hills?’ asked Sally, giving what she hoped was her best theatrical performance to date.

  Hilary laughed. ‘Selina! She’s led him a merry dance I can tell you! He managed to phone me a quarter hour ago. Apparently he picked up her car just out here as he was coming home for lunch, and she took him on a pursuit past your place to the river.’

  ‘My place?’ Sally expostulated.

  ‘So he said. You’d better have a look at your field tomorrow. It sounds like it got a bit of a work out!’

  ‘That’ll teach me to leave the gates open!’ said Sally.

  ‘Why do you do that?’ asked Hilary. ‘Isn’t it a security risk?’

  Sally shrugged. ‘Not really. The bottom gate’s invisible from the road, the top gate’s only visible when you come past my place, and there’s nothing in there at present. But you’re right. It’s not clever.’

  ‘Oh well. Your life! Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes. The rest of his story sounded like he’d had too much to drink. Something about a flying fox, Emma being used as a decoy, and the blonde escaping into the hills as a redhead, with every single available officer out there in the hills trying to track her down.’

  Sally held up her hand to her mouth in astonishment. ‘What? All of them? That’s hysterical!’

  Hilary laughed. ‘Peregrin doesn’t think so. He sounded thoroughly pissed off when he called.’

  Then she became more serious. ‘And apparently Eric’s done himself a mischief. He came off somebody else’s bike and broke his leg or some such business. Oh, and they think they might have found Terry Walker. So it’s all on up there tonight. Fliss has been called out as well.’

  Sally shook her head. ‘I’m surprised they haven’t got Alison out there, using her cats as bloodhounds!’

  ‘Ah!’ smiled Hilary. ‘Speaking of Alison, walk this way, quietly and slowly.’ she said beckoning Sally towards the lounge.

  There in a basket, peeking out from under the edge of a blanket was the little pink nose of a tiny kitten.

  ‘Meet Spice, the latest member of the McEwan household. She’s about three months old. Someone dropped her off to Alison this morning, and she was just so adora
ble I decided to take her myself.’

  Sally carefully lay herself down next to the basket and gently extended a finger tip towards the little pink nose. Spice sniffed Sally carefully, and then allowed her to first stroke the sides of her nose, and then scratch her behind the ears. Within a quarter of an hour Spice was curled up on Sally’s lap, a tiny ball of fluff with a purr like an aircraft engine.

  Sally smiled happily, her own body utterly relaxed.

  ‘Heaven can’t be much better than this.’ she said. ‘I have a happy cat on my lap, dark chocolate to nibble, burgundy to sip, a fire to warm my body, and a friend to warm my soul. Delicious! Oh, and I don’t ever have to paint that wretched sea view ever again if I don’t want to!’

  Hilary grinned. ‘Spice seems to have really taken to you. She was a bit frightened before you arrived. Perhaps she senses your gentle nature?’

  Sally’s smile deepened. ‘Perhaps.’ she said softly.

  ◆◆◆

  Emma was having a wine too.

  It had been a hard afternoon, with lots of questions from three different officers. They’d not only taken away the clothes she’d been wearing, they’d gone through her entire wardrobe.

  She had however taken comfort from the fact that the Cutty Sark Café staff had confirmed her having breakfast, and one of the officers remembered her at Jenks’.

  She just had to stick to the story, and be consistent.

  All the same, she didn’t have the best of nights.

  She wondered about Sally. Had she got away? Her house looked dark on the other side of the valley.

  ◆◆◆

  Next door, Freddy and James were comparing notes.

  ‘You’re sure?’ asked Freddy, his eyes wide.

  James’s face was grim. ‘They’re not certain yet, but it looks like they found Terry’s body up there. And she led them to it!’

  Freddy held his hand up to try and calm his friend. ‘Hang on, hang on. They can’t know that yet, surely?’

  James bunched his hands into fists, his forearms trembling in rage. ‘I’m going to kill her!’