With every sentence, Sergeant Singh seemed to grow taller and stricter. ‘You’re telling me that you suspected Ramon could have met with an accident or been the victim of foul play at noon yesterday, and you have waited until now to raise the alarm?’
‘Harper says that when adults go missing the police don’t lift a finger until they’ve been gone for at least twenty-four hours. So here I am, twenty-four hours later.’
His brow scrunched. ‘The American professor’s daughter? What does she have to do with anything?’
‘I’m taking care of her horse.’
‘The infamous Charming Outlaw?’ Sergeant Singh’s fingers strayed to his handcuffs as if the racehorse was an actual outlaw, not just in name. ‘I hope you’re insured.’
‘Why is everyone so mean about him?’ demanded Kat. ‘Don’t you know that if you tell animals they’re bad all the time, they begin to believe it?’
Sergeant Singh examined her thoughtfully. ‘The same is true of humans. All right, young lady, I’ll accompany you to Avalon Heights. Doubtless there’s an innocent explanation, but it’ll do no harm to put both of our minds at ease.’
‘Wait for me,’ puffed Kat as Sergeant Singh’s long strides ate up the cliff path to Avalon Heights. He wore black trainers rather than polished police boots.
‘The better to catch criminals,’ he’d told her. ‘A policeman’s most effective weapon is his fitness, not his truncheon. If he can’t run after burglars or run away from knife-wielding maniacs, what use is he?’
One day ago, Kat would have laughed out loud at the notion of Sergeant Singh sprinting after the nonexistent burglars and knife-wielding maniacs of Bluebell Bay. Now anything seemed possible.
She was glad he was with her. She wasn’t sure she’d have had the courage to walk into Avalon Heights again alone. The cliff path was also made easier by fine weather. The icy wind kept pulling her off balance, but the view was worth it, and Toby insisted on walking between her and the crumbling edge.
At last, the trio reached Avalon Heights. The retriever flopped down on the doorstep, panting and drooling. Sergeant Singh held out his hand for the keys.
‘There aren’t any,’ Kat told him. ‘Ramon gave me the security code. If you turn your back, I’ll enter it.’
He was incredulous. ‘I’m a policeman.’
‘I gave Ramon my word I wouldn’t tell a soul. A promise is a promise.’
A smile tweaked his mouth. ‘It is indeed.’
When his back was turned, Kat entered the code, remembering to move the fourth number one digit forward. It didn’t work. She tried again, this time changing the fourth digit from a six to an eight. There was a beep as the alarm was deactivated.
‘Let me take a look around – make sure it’s safe,’ said Sergeant Singh. ‘Was this the door you found unlocked?’
Kat nodded, and he disappeared inside.
He was back in moments. ‘As far as I can see, all is in order on this level. If you notice anything unusual, tell me at once.’
It was strange going into the house she’d departed from in a state of near-terror just yesterday, especially in sunny weather. Light flooded in, making a nonsense of her fears. The bay was bluebell blue. Dahlias swayed in their pots on the deck.
‘What made you think that something was amiss?’ asked Sergeant Singh. He grimaced at his watch as if he’d already decided that the entire expedition was a monumental waste of time.
If she were him, Kat would have felt the same way. Back in Ramon’s luxurious living room, she struggled to recall what had sent her stumbling from Avalon Heights as if the hounds of hell were after her. She literally had to dredge the memory of the half-packed suitcase from the pondweed at the bottom of her brain.
‘It’s in the main bedroom at the end of the passage,’ she told Sergeant Singh. ‘On the other side of the bed.’
‘I’ll check the others first. Stay down here until I give the all-clear.’ He was at the top of the stairs in three bounds, truncheon in hand.
In the kitchen, Kat filled a bowl with water for Toby. She could hear the policeman opening and closing cupboards. Suddenly she could think of 101 innocent reasons why a suitcase – perhaps a spare, or one belonging to a friend – had been on the floor of Ramon’s bedroom.
Was it even his room? She’d just assumed . . .
And yet there was something about the air in the house that felt different. She was sure she’d returned As Kingfishers Catch Fire to its slot among the recipe books. Now it was on the breakfast bar.
If Ramon’s been kidnapped or worse, there’ll be evidence. Footprints, a threatening letter, bloodstains . . .
The CCTV! If something had happened to Ramon, it might have been caught on camera.
The floor upstairs creaked as Sergeant Singh moved along the passage. Kat scrambled on to the kitchen counter, took down the ghost owl picture, and tapped Option 12 on the control pad. The ‘Living Room’ CCTV was a square of fizzing grey. The ‘Front of House’ camera was the same.
She navigated from room to room with growing unease. Every camera in the house was down. There was nothing but grey static until 11.01 a.m. on Thursday, when she saw herself staring up at the camera with Bailey on her shoulder.
She rewound the video further, looking for Ramon or any visitors. At twelve minutes past midnight, about eleven hours before she’d arrived to find the unlocked door, the outside camera had picked up a partial view of a person on the deck. He or she was holding something sharp and triangular. A weapon?
Fog blurred the jerky movements of the silhouette, making it impossible to identify whether it was Ramon or a stranger.
She snapped a couple of shots with her phone before returning to the home page. Option 13 still gnawed at her. What was it hiding?
She couldn’t resist trying it again. When the password box came up, she entered Ramon’s birthdate, which she’d found in Bailey’s notes at the veterinary practice. It was rejected. ‘One more try remaining’ scrolled across the screen.
‘Miss Wolfe, would you come up here, please?’ Sergeant Singh’s voice boomed down the stairs.
Kat wrestled the owl picture back on to its hook. It was crooked, and she hoped the policeman wouldn’t notice it before she had time to straighten it.
He was leaning against the banister on the second floor. His expression reminded her of the time she’d tried to convince a teacher that a dog really had eaten her homework.
‘Be kind enough to show me where you found the suitcase, Miss Wolfe. I can’t see it anywhere.’
‘Sure.’ She led him to the room at the end of the passage. ‘It’s over . . .’
The words died on her lips. The carpet was bare.
She rushed into the room and peered under the bed. ‘It was here! Look, there’s even a smear of toothpaste on the carpet.’
Sergeant Singh folded his arms across his chest.
‘I think I can guess what’s happened. When you came to feed the parrot yesterday, Ramon hadn’t left yet. He’d probably nipped down to the shops for a last-minute item, or spotted some rare bird he wanted to draw. That explains why the door was open. Bluebell Bay is so safe that many residents don’t lock up. After you’d gone, he returned, finished packing and caught a train to London.’
Kat ran a hand over the carpet. ‘No. I don’t believe it. Somebody’s been here. That’s why the door code had to be moved on by an extra number. They’ve cleaned up and taken the suitcase. For all we know, they’ve snatched Ramon’s dead or bleeding body too.’
The policeman groaned. ‘You’ve read a few too many mystery novels, Kat Wolfe. You were right to notify me of your concerns, so I’m not going to tell you off, but I do have to get back to some real work.’
Kat rushed after him. ‘Sergeant Singh, you have to investigate this. Ramon’s in danger – I can feel it in my bones.’
‘Unfortunately, or fortunately, police officers can’t rely on feelings in people’s bones. We need concrete evidence.’
His radio
chirruped, and he paused to answer it. ‘Give me a moment. I need to make a call. This won’t take long.’
Kat thought quickly. If there was any evidence of where Ramon had gone or what he’d been up to before he went missing, it would be on his desk or in a filing cabinet.
Sergeant Singh had his phone between his ear and shoulder and was scribbling in his notebook. ‘You say a fight has broken out over a parking space? At the harbour?’
Kat darted into Ramon’s study. She was about to open a drawer when she noticed a light gleaming through a glass vase holding an orchid. Behind the vase was a landline and answering machine. A blue number one shone in the display.
Kat pressed play, noting the date and time: 11.26 p.m., the night before Ramon was due to leave.
The line was distorted, but there was no mistaking the menace in the caller’s voice: ‘Breathe a single word about what you think you saw, Mr Corazón, and I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth . . . Take my advice: go to darkest Peru and stay there . . . If I see you again, you’re chopped liver.’
‘Sergeant Singh!’ yelled Kat. ‘Sergeant Singh!’
He burst into the room, brandishing his truncheon. ‘What’s going on? What are you doing in here?’
‘There’s a threatening message on Ramon’s answering machine. Listen.’
Kat jabbed at the play button. Nothing happened. A blue zero now showed in the little window.
‘I must have deleted it by mistake. Don’t worry, I remember it. The man who rang was a complete psycho. He threatened to hunt Ramon to the ends of the earth if he told anyone what he thought he saw. He said that if Ramon ever returned from darkest Peru – I suppose he meant Paraguay – he’d be chopped liver.’
‘Enough!’
Sergeant Singh radiated disapproval. ‘I don’t like fibs, and I like fibbers even less. I expected more from a girl who claims to believe that a promise is a promise.’
He steered her from the study and down the stairs, ignoring her protests.
‘I’m not lying and I can prove it. Whoever made the call was near a railway or maybe a factory. In the background, there was this stamping sound with pings in between. Stamp, stamp, stamp, ping. Stamp, stamp—’
‘Are you aware that wasting police time is a criminal offence?’
Kat knew she was testing his patience but was too frustrated to care. ‘I don’t understand. You spend years sweating over a stupid stolen pumpkin, then when a real mystery lands on your lap you can’t be bothered.’
Sergeant Singh had the look of a man with many unprintable words boiling in his brain, but he managed not to say any of them.
‘Miss Wolfe, the reason police officers investigate petty crimes is that the pumpkin thieves, bullies or shoplifters who commit them often aspire to more-wicked deeds. If we can root out the seeds of crime, we can sometimes stop them growing into evil empires, with branches and roots spreading in all . . . Uh, where’s the dog?’
He was staring past Kat, into the kitchen.
‘The dog!’ Kat’s hand flew to her mouth.
She and Sergeant Singh dashed into the hallway. The door was open and chewed papers were scattered across the floor.
Outside, there was no sign of Toby. The pair gazed with horror at the cliff edge. Kat had visions of the retriever laid out like a bearskin rug on the rocks below. What would she say to Edith?
‘I’m the world’s worst pet-sitter,’ she despaired, wondering what else could possibly go wrong.
‘Maybe not the worst . . .’ mused Sergeant Singh unhelpfully.
The clang and crash of falling bins had them racing round the back of the house. Toby crawled out from beneath a colourful sea of rubbish, shedding old pizza crusts, soda bottles, carrot tops and potato peelings along the way. Something grey was clamped between his jaws.
Kat wrestled it away from him and gave a strangled cry. It was a torn T-shirt, sticky with dried blood. She thrust it at Sergeant Singh. ‘Now will you believe me that something awful has happened?’
But rather than leaping into action and calling for back-up and a forensic team, as detectives did in books, Sergeant Singh treated this revelation with a disturbing nonchalance. He sniffed the T-shirt – unscientifically. Then he sniffed it again.
Kat almost gagged. ‘Ewww!’
‘Tomato sauce,’ he said, tossing the soiled garment on to the heap of rubbish. ‘Heinz, if I’m not mistaken. Now will you believe that nothing awful has happened?’
15
Death Owl
‘Ketchup?’
Harper was unable to keep the disappointment from her tone. ‘And he’s absolutely sure?’
‘A thousand per cent,’ said Kat, who’d cycled directly to Paradise House after dropping off the retriever at Edith’s cottage. ‘On top of that, when we tidied up the papers Toby had chewed, we found Ramon’s itinerary. He was only due to fly to Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, on Thursday night. That means that Sergeant Singh’s theory about him still being in Bluebell Bay when I went to feed Bailey in the fog yesterday morning is most likely correct.’
Kat tried not to sound deflated. Of course she wanted Ramon to be safe and sound, but for nineteen hours she’d also enjoyed the adrenalin rush of being part of a team working to solve a mystery and, perhaps, to save a life.
If their missing man wasn’t really missing, she was nothing but a pet-sitter with an overactive imagination.
Harper put down her yellow pad. ‘So there’s no mystery?’
‘Not according to Sergeant Singh.’
‘What does he know!’ cried Harper in annoyance. ‘Policemen are trained to be cynical. It’s in their job description.’
She took a consoling sip of her ginger-beer float – a froth of soda and coconut ice cream whipped up by Nettie. The resulting milk moustache gave her a strangely learned air.
‘Yesterday was the best day I’ve had in ages,’ she said despondently. ‘In between searching for clues online, I even designed us a logo on my laptop, using the Chinese symbols for wolf and lamb. Want to see it?’
Kat sat beside her as Harper opened her laptop. Her martial-arts-style design included a mongoose and a 228-million-year-old fossil.
‘The ichthyosaur symbolizes the Jurassic Coast. It was a kind of prehistoric dolphin known for its speed – something we’d need if we were going to be real detectives. Nettie’s a whizz at crafts. I told her we were starting a book club, and she promised to use this to embroider us a couple of badges that we’ll be able to stitch to our jackets. Only you and I will know their true meaning.’
Glumly she closed her laptop. ‘But there’s no point in badges now. We can’t be detectives if there’s no mystery to solve.’
Kat felt downcast too. No cool badge and no Wolfe & Lamb Detective Agency.
Then she remembered the bare carpet with its smear of toothpaste. Something flamed inside her. Her mum fought injustice every day. Kat wanted to do the same.
‘Yes, we can,’ she declared. ‘What if our gut instinct is right, and Sergeant Singh’s is wrong? Ramon could be in hiding. He’s clearly witnessed something he shouldn’t have. Why else would anyone want to hunt him down and turn him into chopped liver? We owe it to Ramon to find out the truth.’
Harper rallied. ‘I agree. What harm can it do? If Ramon returns fit and well from his business trip in a couple of weeks, we’ll simply close our case and start work on the Mystery of the Missing Pumpkin.’
Kat laughed. ‘Meanwhile, we should investigate why the security cameras have crashed at Avalon Heights. It’s a bit convenient that there’s no record of the suitcase being spirited away. Oh, I nearly forgot – I have these.’
She took out her phone and showed Harper the CCTV snaps of the man on the deck.
‘Ping them over to me. I’ll blow them up on my laptop.’
Enlarged, the images were grainy and distorted. A grizzly bear could have been prowling around the deck for all they could see.
‘What’s that triangle-shaped object
the visitor is holding?’ Harper asked. ‘Either Ramon is doing some midnight gardening, or it’s a murderer clutching a weapon.’
Kat leaned closer. ‘Can you make it any clearer?’
‘No, but my friend Jasper in Connecticut might be able to boost it. He’s a Photoshop genius. I’ll ask him to try to get more detail on this.’
She pointed to a mottled patch – perhaps a logo or pattern – on the person’s shirt. The shape of it reminded Kat of something, but she couldn’t think what.
‘How did your online investigation go, Harper? Find anything?’
‘Not a lot.’
Harper logged on to Ramon’s website. ‘Our man in Paraguay seems nice but dull. No skeletons anywhere.’
Kat watched as the pictures loaded. Ramon’s bird paintings were never going to make it into the National Gallery, but they were perfect for the cards, calendars and magazine articles he showcased on his website.
The ‘About Me’ page showed him smiling on a beach with his easel, painting a puffin. Harper gave Kat a summary of his biography.
‘Born in Asunción, Paraguay. Only child of a single mum. Obsessed with birds and painting from an early age. Moved to North Carolina, USA, in his teens. Joined the army after school. Left after five years because he wanted to make the planet a better place. Spent eighteen months volunteering on a Pantanel swamp turtle project in Paraguay. It was there that he rediscovered his love of painting birds.’
‘That’s weird,’ said Kat.
Harper looked up. ‘What’s weird?’
‘Edith told me that Maria, her cleaner, spent a year before going to university in Paraguay helping the swamp turtle. When she arrived in Bluebell Bay and found out that Ramon was from Paraguay, she was dying to chat to him. He made so many excuses she gave up. Why would he do that unless . . . ?’
‘Unless it wasn’t true,’ Harper finished.
Kat looked again at the photo of Ramon’s likeable, if sad, face. ‘What kind of person lies about working for a charity?’
‘Someone who wants to seem caring so that more people buy his paintings? Or someone who’s spent time doing something he doesn’t want anyone to know about. Sitting in prison, say.’
Kat Wolfe Investigates Page 9