Deadly Thyme

by R. L. Nolen

  Having had some setbacks on the job recently, Jon was determined to find answers here. He had to recover his reputation, especially with fellow Detective Inspector Bennet. Their two desks shared proximity at the London office. He could picture Bennet’s sneer. “Couldn’t find the source of the money could you? Worthless prat. Screw around on the job. Screw around on women. You never could stick with anything. Pun intended!”

  Jon had chatted up the wrong girl, as it turned out—Bennet’s cousin.

  Nobody’s perfect.

  Another gulp of coffee, and he turned at the signpost. The narrow lane turned tricky with sudden twists, and what was left of his coffee sloshed across his shirtfront. He set the coffee in a holder.

  A wooden stake in front of a gray cottage read “Frog’s Turn.” This was it. Yellow flowers edged the front of Sergeant Perstow’s home. Sergeant Perstow and Constable Stark manned the tiny Perrin’s Point Police station. Working through intermediaries, DS Thomas Browne had driven a caravan down from Bristol and parked it in Perstow’s rear garden. The tiny home on wheels contained everything required for living and a huge bank of flat-screen monitors required for watching. With his sergeant in hospital with food poisoning, Jon would stay here. He hated confined spaces, so this would be no picnic. He’d have to think positive thoughts to be able to sleep in such a stuffy, cramped, closed-up space.

  Positive thoughts, Jon thought. Boy Scouts, camping, adventure. Right!

  He swung the Mini round the house to the rear and his tires crunched on the gravel drive. At the bottom of the garden next to a dilapidated garage sat the caravan, white and dented in places like a discarded tissue box, a tiny, enclosed box of a place. So much for positive thoughts.

  TREBORWICK, POLICE STATION AND CID OFFICE

  Sunday, midmorning

  DCI Trewe possessed the scariest eyes Ruth had ever seen. They were ice-blue and predatory, a wolf’s eyes. The detective chief inspector’s skin stretched thin across his prominent cheekbones and angular chin. From a distance, Ruth had imagined his face rakishly handsome, not the cadaverous aspect in front of her.

  Ruth refused another offer of tea from Sergeant Perstow. She was shaky enough. She could not absorb the fact that her daughter was missing. Missing meant disappeared. Gone. Things like this didn’t happen to people like her.

  “This is bad.” The sturdy, unsmiling Sergeant Perstow sat very still next to Ruth. He seemed as wary of Detective Chief Inspector Trewe as she was.

  “Perstow, you’re upsetting Mrs. Butler.” Trewe angled his chair around to rifle some sheets of paper on a nearby file cabinet.

  “Sorry, lass.” A deep shade of red flushed up from Perstow’s neck.

  “Please.” Ruth shook her head. Nothing could upset her worse than she was already.

  Trewe nodded. “I’m very sorry. Do you feel up to a few questions?”

  “Of course. I want her back. Safe.”

  “A little girl called Dot was with your daughter this morning?”

  Ruth stared at the red pen Trewe twisted between the fingers of one hand. “They often take walks.”

  “Does she often disappear?”

  “No! Nothing like this has ever happened. She wouldn’t worry me like this.”

  “Does she carry a mobile?”

  “She isn’t responding. I’ve called dozens of times; it goes to voice mail. I’ve texted her. Nothing. Now I’ve resorted to texting her friends and their moms. They’ve put out a bulletin with their social media. They’re out looking for her.” Ruth heard her hysteria rising with each word. I want to snap out of thinking that he found us. Dear Lord, what am I doing here? Should I tell the police? No, I’m panicking. Dear God, bring Annie back. Make this go away.

  “There has been an attempt to locate your daughter’s mobile signal, Mrs. Butler. But they believe the mobile’s been turned off. You’re on the telephone at your house?”

  “Yes. I have a land line.”

  “We’ll post a constable to listen in the event she rings your house. You have your neighbor—”

  “Sally. Her name is Sally. Look, I’m sorry. I don’t want to sound like a panicked … a panicked … you know … I want to help. I do. I want to help. I …” Ruth suddenly realized she could not stop repeating herself.

  Trewe swung around. His chair hit the wall.

  Ruth jumped into the immediate present.

  He asked for details of every activity Annie had been involved with in the past three weeks. He had Perstow take notes and write a more detailed description of Annie than Ruth had given Constable Stark earlier. Ruth concentrated on getting every detail that she could think of. He wanted a list of Annie’s friends. She had brought a recent photo.

  Trewe looked at the photo. “What kind of friends does she have?”

  “Good friends. I like them. I like their parents. They’re great.”

  “Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “What?” Ruth tried to understand exactly what he meant. “A boyfriend? She’s only ten. Yes, yes, I know she knows about things.”

  “Things?” Trewe’s eyes betrayed nothing but ice.

  “The facts of life, but she isn’t interested in the opposite sex, from what I can tell. She wants to play soccer—I mean, football. You call it football, sorry, I should know that by now. Boys are the farthest thing from her mind, except as friends. She has a lot of friends.”

  “Does she have any close friends who are boys?”

  Ruth shook her head. Why does he go on like this?

  Trewe kept on. “Is there any reason to believe she may have been experimenting with anything?”

  “What do you mean by anything?”

  “Drugs.”

  “Of course not! She is ten, not seventeen!”

  Trewe’s expression didn’t change.

  Ruth took a deep breath and started over. “I know kids are at an iffy age at ten, but Annie is different. She’s … How to describe it? … She’s transparent. I can tell when she’s lying.”

  “So she lies occasionally, does she?” Trewe tapped his pen on the desk.

  “Don’t all kids?”

  “I’m sure. But you think you could tell if she were doing something she shouldn’t?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  Ruth stared at Trewe’s hands. What were the police saying? Do they think she ran away? That she was involved with drugs and boys? Were they crazy?

  A glance passed between Perstow and Trewe. He nodded and looked at Ruth. “Mrs. Butler, we’ll do everything in our power to get your daughter back to you. You must allow us to do our job.”

  “She did not run away, she does not do drugs, she has no boyfriend and no enemies. Does that answer all your questions?”

  “Sergeant Perstow will take you home, Mrs. Butler.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I want to know what you’re doing to find my daughter.” She heard the breathless panic in her own voice.

  “Mrs. Butler …” Trewe hesitated, watching her. At last, he turned to Perstow. “The area’s been secured?”

  “Yes, sar.”

  “Scenes of Crime Office came immediately?”

  “The whole area’d been trampled by the time they arrived but SOCO worked as fast as the tide would allow.” Perstow bobbed his head as he spoke. His accent was thick. His “sir” sounded like “sar” and while his “s” sounded like a “z”, he pronounced his “th” like a “d.”

  A huge weight was crushing Ruth inside. Her breath came in gasps. She coughed to clear her throat. Don’t fall apart now, missy. “You suspect foul play. You suspect someone’s taken her.”

  “We take every precaution in situations such as this, Mrs. Butler,” Trewe said. “When a young girl goes missing, it is important we do what we do quickly. I can reassure you, usually there’s a logical explanation. I don’t want you to worry overmuch. We are doing everything possible.”

  Ruth swallowed. Get a hold of yourself. He won’t
listen if you fall apart. The two police officers were staring at her. Did her presence constrain them?

  As if he had read her mind, the ice-eyed man said, “It’d be best if you were home.”

  Ruth took a moment to stand, and even then, she was not sure her legs would support her. She wanted to sink to the floor right there, but she jerked herself upright, chin up. “Fine. I’ll be at home.”

  Trewe looked at the clock on the wall. Several hours had passed since the child’s disappearance. So many things can happen in a moment. He didn’t like to think of it.

  Perstow came back into the office and picked up another stack of files. “I’ll have these sorted soon enough, sar.”

  “Perstow, what do you think happened to the girl?”

  “Heaven forbid someone took her, sar.”

  “I’m going to tell you something that no one else is to hear for gossip’s sake. But for the record, I was at that beach this morning.”

  Perstow’s broad face registered shock. “You were there?”

  “But I saw nothing, as God is my witness, of this girl, Annie. I recall thinking that it was strange that the little girl, Dot, was there alone. I often stop for a moment at the top of the wall before I come to work. Today was not much different than any other day. That is, until I received the call about the missing girl.”

  “I see, sar.”

  “If it comes up, I won’t hide the fact. I simply don’t see any relevance.” Trewe laid a chart across the district map on his desk. He studied it for a moment, then looked up at Perstow. “It was hard getting the mother to listen, wasn’t it?”

  “Annie is a good girl, sar.”

  “You know her?”

  “She would speak if we passed.”

  Trewe shook his head. “Tell me what you know of the mother.”

  “Well, she lived here for some years before anyone knew her a-tall.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kept herself to herself. Save for sending the girl for school, no one ever saw Mrs. Butler until a few years ago, when she began volunteering at the church.”

  “So you haven’t spoken to her before today?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, sar. She sort of came out of her shell, you might say, here about a year ago. I don’t know that I’d noticed her before then. We would speak after church services. A few months ago, she helped run one of the booths at the fete. And I saw her at the hall later. She was dancing.”

  “Who with?”

  “Well, if ye must know, me, for one. She was only being friendly, not picking anyone in particular.”

  “Flirting?”

  “No, definitely not. I asked her to dance.”

  Trewe pursed his lips, thinking, then said, “She’s American. There’s something she’s holding back, Perstow. Knowing the villagers as you do, do you have any idea about what she might be hiding?”

  “I have no idea, sar.”

  “I don’t either, but I intend to find out. Perstow, prepare a team. Alert the coast guard. Put out an Amber Alert. Let’s jack this thing up!”

  4

  Sunday night

  Jon Graham turned away from the live feed of the beachfront. His heart heavy, he fiddled with his cup. When he followed his sergeant’s written instructions as to where all the cameras were, he had seen the blue flyers. What he had heard this morning had been no celebration on the beach. They had been searching for a missing girl.

  His super would have to know right away, though he wondered if perhaps he should hold off. The girl might turn up. Offering help with this missing girl situation would jeopardize his undercover work. To make matters worse, the officer in charge of finding the missing girl was the officer he was investigating.

  He pulled his bowl of rice from the micro and cleared the table of Detective Sergeant Thomas Browne’s old mags, remotes, empty cello tape dispensers, and stacks of blank notepads. The monitor hooked up to the lone DVD player was the closest to him. A lot of the newer cameras recorded directly to the computer. All the VHS tapes would have to wait until he could locate a VCR. Who uses such outdated equipment anymore?

  The video would recycle itself unless he took the pertinent footage and archived it. He’d gone through and archived footage taken at the time the girl disappeared to flash drives. The only thing he could do nothing about was the VHS tapes. There were two of them. He wondered what was on them. He was that knackered. Everything was blurring together.

  He cleared his disposable dish out of the way. The flatware he tossed in the sink amongst other unwashed dishes. His predecessor was not much in the cleaning department and he’d been here two weeks. He grabbed a bin bag and began clearing away where he needed more surface.

  He wanted to replay the footage he’d seen of the two girls on the beach. One of the cameras caught the girls as they rounded a rock outcropping. Both girls had been in brighter light, but when one girl disappeared back around the rock, there was too much shadow. He couldn’t see.

  Feeling more awake, he pressed “pause” and switched his attention to another computer screen. The other camera set on the far side of the beach facing the steps the girls had taken may have caught something more. He set it to play back at the same time, then he clicked “back” on both of them and watched the camera’s clock, pressing “play” just as the girls stepped away from shadows into the light. The video from the other side of the beach made the girls look minuscule. The missing girl had gone back toward the steps as if she’d seen something there.

  The VHS tape recorders were closest to the stairs. It was dark there, but the really important things might be on them. Blast it! He pounded a fist into the table, dumping an errant paper cup. A muck of old coffee spread out and he had to grab his police notebook up. He stopped the play by play and stared at the images frozen on the monitor. He soaked up the mess and pulled out another notepad for unofficial scribbles.

  Conclusions? The girl had seen someone off-camera, against the rock wall, apparently hiding in a natural crevice where he wouldn’t be noticed. This means there was a possibility that the person had not planned the attack, that whoever had been there had arrived before dawn. The cliffs faced west. Before the sun was higher in the sky everything on the beach was dark. It wouldn’t have been difficult to remain hidden. So why had the man spoken? Unless he wanted to get the girl’s attention and so, kidnap her? An involuntary shudder took him.

  Jon turned to the other monitors, which had footage from the live CCTV cameras set up on the roads to and from the farm where Detective Chief Inspector Trewe lived with his son’s family. By special dispensation and in conjunction with the UK Highways Agency, Jon’s sergeant had been able to set up a wireless link to the traffic observing stations. In the same vein, Jon had been able to recommend that a few fixed cameras be strategically placed in the Active Traffic Management system around Perrin’s Point. Why hadn’t the local police department requested more cameras before? Answer: Money—always the issue, and damn the results. Jon had used the argument that Cornwall wasn’t as inundated with traffic cameras as were other areas and that traffic accidents did occur here.

  He wanted to check to see if the dark car that hit him was recorded. The road footage showed a lot of nothing but dark strips of pavement augmented on one side by stacked rock walls and on the other side by hedgerows. Except for the seasonal influx of sun-and-surf revelers, what was there to see? Hedgehogs, sure. Rare wild ponies would be a definite highlight. And grab your hats and hold your seats if a walker with dog happened by.

  He backtracked to the time of the girl’s disappearance, then decided if the fellow who hit him had driven out of Perrin’s Point, he had likely driven into Perrin’s Point, so he backtracked even further until he did catch the dark car enter the road to the beach. The footage was too dark to read the registration tags. He fast-forwarded through darkness, and there it was, the car leaving. Not much to go on. The driver was gripping the wheel; there were no identifying marks on his knuckles and his face
was hidden beneath a hat. Then he saw the time. The exact time the girl had gone missing. Coincidence? He thought not.

  He should get the VHS tapes to the missing girl’s investigation team. If he took the VHS tapes to the local police, the entire force would be at him about his role in it. He’d have to return to London having failed in his job. On the other hand, if he didn’t report the footage this moment, he would be accused of withholding evidence, surely a reason for dismissal.

  His boss, Detective Superintendent Bakewell, had experts that could help out with getting rid of shadows and lightening and enhancing even VHS footage. But time was of the essence with a missing girl. “A simple reporting of the facts,” he murmured, depositing the DVD he’d just created into a sleeve and labeling it “Beach Footage.”

  What would Bakewell say when he heard Jon’s story? He would say, “If you report the tapes, we’ll have no choice but to stitch up this business with Trewe, and that would put him in a position to withhold information, which would then afford him opportunity to hide the money.”

  Jon would make the argument about the missing girl and time, etc. etc.

  Bakewell would tell him to send the flash drive footage by email, copy the flash drives and keep them to hand over to DCI Trewe when the time was right, and send the VCR tapes by post first thing in the morning.

  Of course. That is exactly what he would say.

  He sent a preliminary email explaining the situation and hoped it sounded lucid, given his lack of sleep. He then packed the two VCR tapes in a big envelope and the flash drives in a separate, smaller envelope. Done and done.