It was a long shot, and the nonsensical clue could mean nothing at all, but they were all nonsensical, and she had to question it.
‘Broad car needs assistance,’ she read slowly. ‘Four letters. Such as Help, do you think? If you turn the words around, it could be Caroline needing aid. And this other clue about ‘not exactly onshore’, — maybe there is a connection after all.’
She gasped, turning to Gary. ‘I think I know where she is. It’s no fancy cruise ship in the Caribbean, more’s the pity; my guess is she’s on a boat on the Norfolk Broads.’
Chapter 11
The dizzy fantasy that she might have been able to combine a luxury cruise with finding Caroline fizzled out with the speed of light. The Norfolk Broads had to be the place, and finding her was the important thing.
‘Are you crazy?’ Gary said.
‘Well, do you have any better ideas? We’ve eliminated every other bit of the crossword, and these three clues are the only ones that make any kind of sense. It has to be right. So what’s the problem?’
‘When you’ve come down from your mountain-top,’ Gary said sarcastically, ‘have you got any idea how many miles of waterways there are on the Broads, and how many boats are hired out at this time of year?’
‘I should think there’d be hundreds—’ Alex said, and then stopped as she saw what he was getting at.
‘Exactly. And you’re looking for somebody you don’t know, who’s kidnapped a woman who can’t hear, and who’s probably got her tied up and gagged inside one particular boat that could be anywhere in any one of dozens of inlets hidden by reeds. Simple, isn’t it?’
She stared at him, unwilling to let the old suspicions creep into her mind. But all the same—
‘You seem to know a lot about it!’
‘I do, but I’m not about to confess that I kidnapped Caroline Price, if that’s what you’re thinking. I had a week’s holiday on the Broads with my parents and sister a couple of times when I was a kid. It was great.’
‘Good Lord. It’s not often you mention your parents. Sometimes I wondered if you had any,’ she added, since talking about something else momentarily took away her acute sense of deflation at his description of the Broads. As far as she knew, it was just a section of England she knew nothing about, and her education was obviously lacking in that department.
‘Thanks,’ he retorted. ‘I’ve been called a bastard in my time, but never quite so classily.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that, but we’re getting away from the subject, and you’ve really given me a downer now.’
‘Why? By saying the Broads is no picnic when it comes to searching for a single boat? You must know that.’
‘I don’t know anything about it. I was born on a farm. We didn’t have boats in the Dales,’ she said abruptly.
He eyed her thoughtfully now. ‘It’s hardly like braving the Amazon, but if you want company, I might be willing to come with you.’
‘What about work?’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘I really would appreciate it, though. God knows what I’d find when I got there — if I ever got there.’
She was more jittery now than she had believed she would be. The end might be almost in sight, but there was still a long way to go before she could locate Caroline, and if Gary knew some-thing about the Broads he could be very useful.
The knowledge that she could be in danger herself didn’t escape her, either. She had no idea how many people might be holding Caroline captive, and she was pretty sure Gary could get tough when it was needed. It was always an advantage to have a strong arm around, and she revised every bad thing she had ever thought about him.
‘I’ll need to get a few days off work,’ he told her. ‘But I fancy seeing this through now. So how about it?’
‘If you mean it, Gary, then I really would be grateful,’ Alex said huskily.
He leaned closer, his intention clear in his eyes, his fingers making a sensuous trail around her cheek.
‘No, darlin’. I mean how about it?’
***
‘There’s something I have to do before we leave,’ Alex said over breakfast the following morning.
‘Again?’ he grinned.
‘I must phone Mrs Selby-Jones and ask her to look at Caroline’s latest envelope. There would have been a postmark on it, and it may confirm that whoever posted it was somewhere in Norfolk.’
‘Hey, I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘That’s why I’m a private investigator and you’re a delivery boy,’ she said sweetly.
It came to nothing, though. The envelope had the familiar Bishop’s Stortford postmark on it, so whoever had posted it had been canny enough to send it from the usual place.
‘Oh well, it was worth a try,’ Alex said, hiding her disappointment at not having Norfolk confirmed. ‘So let’s start planning. You’d better arrange for your time off, and we’ll need a detailed map of the area. What then?’
She looked at him helplessly. They hadn’t had much sleep last night, and she had wakened early, desperate not to disturb Gary — sprawled across her bed and taking up far too much room — since she knew what his morning reaction would be. And she hadn’t needed that.
‘I’m thinking,’ he said. ‘The bike will be an asset since it’ll reach the parts that a car can’t, but I doubt that you’d want to ride pillion all that way, and in any case we’ll need a car to bring the girl back when we find her.’
‘Good God, you’re making it sound very complicated!’
‘It is bloody complicated. The hardest part will be to find out where the mooring is, since we don’t know the name of the boat or the guy who’s hired it. You’ll need to ask some very delicate questions at the boatyards. But I definitely think we should travel separately. We’ll arrange where to meet up, park your car and use the bike for the last part. There are umpteen narrow lanes and flatlands where we can cut across country to reach the mooring.’
She kept her eyes lowered, not wanting to betray the fact that for the life of her she couldn’t rid herself of the suspicion that Gary knew exactly what to do, and how to go about it. Despite everything, there was still the chance that he could have been in on this all along.
There was the night he had virtually picked her up on her first meeting with Norman Price at the Rainbow Club; the fact that his courier job often took him to Price Chemicals; the way he had thwarted Jeremy from questioning her too much at the cottage; his helpfulness in decoding Caroline’s diary.
Everything could make him a suspect, and yet she knew that everything could be just as feasibly innocent. She had already decided to trust him — and she must. She had to see it through now, whatever the outcome.
‘Well? Have you come to the great decision?’ he said, in a totally impassive tone.
She nodded quickly. ‘We do as you say. Go separately, and meet up wherever we arrange that I should leave my car.’
It could be a case of the spider catching the fly, maybe. But she was in it now, for good or ill, and if the end result was finding Caroline Price alive and well, she knew she had no choice at all. And Gary had better remember that she was in charge of this case. He was just coming along for the ride, she hoped.
‘I’ve got a lot of things to do, Gary, and so have you,’ she said firmly now. ‘Meet me at my office after lunch and we’ll get started then. OK? And I don’t suppose you’ve got any old maps of the Broads hanging about from your old holidays, have you?’
‘Doubt it. That would have been up to my folks, and it was a long time ago, anyway. See you later then.’
If he was involved, Alex thought, he would surely have said he was sure he could find some maps at home. The fact that he didn’t reassured her a little.
But she was glad when he left. She had a lot to think about, and not least was whether or not to inform Norman Price that she had a pretty good idea of where his daughter was. It would raise his hopes, of course, and she had learned from experience that it was often better to keep the
client at bay until there was definite news.
The other thing was whether or not to bring in DI Frobisher. It would most likely turn out to be a police matter in the end. Norman would probably come clean by then and want to press charges, if only to prove that he was a Caring Father at heart who had instigated the search for his daughter.
Despite whatever dubious reasons Norman Price had for keeping the police out, Alex knew that if she had been the one who was missing. she would have wanted her father to move heaven and earth to find her. And that would have meant bringing in the full force of the law, not a female private investigator whose name she was sure Price must have picked at random out of Yellow Pages.
The police would have been combing the countryside long before this; there would have been Missing Persons bulletins on the television; Wilsingham would have been scoured, the villagers questioned and putting their solemn views across to the world at large; massive resources would have been put into operation.
In any police hunt on TV you only had to watch the dark-blue chain of officers threading their way through the undergrowth to know what they were looking for — and half-hoping not to find. They were human, after all — well, most of them — and some discoveries could be pretty gruesome.
But single-handed, it had taken Alex weeks to get this far, and the more she thought about that, the more her self-confidence was undermined.
Added to it was the disquieting fact that if Caroline had been in captivity all this time, then the time might well have been shortened had Alex gone over Price’s head and confided in Nick. If there wasn’t a legal reason for doing so, in her opinion there was certainly a moral one.
But Caroline must still be alive and sensible, since she had sent in the crosswords — or somebody else had. There was no doubt in Alex’s mind now that she was being kept somewhere. The crossword clues had confirmed that. And she must have insisted to her captor that the grids had to be sent out. If he hadn’t posted them, and Alex hadn’t been cute enough to follow up the freebie lead, they might never have found her, she thought with a shudder.
But they hadn’t found her yet. It must be considerably more than a month that she had been away from her cottage, but since she only had confirmation of Norman’s infrequent visits down there to go on, she didn’t even know the timing of that for certain. The Wilsingham folk obviously hadn’t missed the occupant of Greenwell Cottage. If they had, they hadn’t been curious enough to bother about a recluse who preferred her own company to anyone else’s. The cloistered nosiness of village life obviously hadn’t reached as far as Wilsingham.
Alex had assumed, like Price, that Caroline had been missing for all this time, whether by choice or by force. But now that Alex had a shrewd idea of her whereabouts, she began to abandon the timing thing altogether, and think more laterally. There was a more important thought that kept recurring now, and that was from something Gary said.
He had been on a week’s holiday on the Broads several times when he was a kid. One week at a time. Presumably most people took a week’s holiday in a hire boat — maybe two at most. She didn’t know what you did on a small boat, though to Alex it sounded hideously boring. You could rule out any on-board entertainment like there was in the cruise brochures, or too much luxury. She tried to visualize it.
There would just be cabins and a kitchen — galley, she amended — and whatever else could be fitted into a confined space that must be pretty claustrophobic. It would be comparable to a caravan, Alex supposed, and she hadn’t ever fancied that, either. She wondered if Caroline did.
But that wasn’t the point. The point that was swirling around in her head now, was that surely nobody would hire a holiday boat for weeks on end? If they did, then it might make the job of finding out the name of the boat easier. And if they didn’t, then the boat they were looking for might be a privately owned one, which presumably had to be registered for use on the Broads, and would at least identify it.
In any case, long-term hire boat, or private one, it narrowed the search — slightly. For the moment she ignored the memory of Gary telling there were miles of waterways on the Broads. The first thing was to identify the boat.
‘Alex, you’re a genius!’ she told herself triumphantly.
Ever optimistic, she refused to let herself think of anything else but the fact that she had somewhere to start.
Until she remembered that she didn’t have the faintest idea of the owner’s name.
Not knowing how long she might be away, she repacked her overnight bag and left the flat. She called into a local travel agents and got all the Norfolk Broads brochures she could find, and began asking questions. It was amazing what people told you if you asked the right ones.
‘Well, if you’re looking for a quieter holiday away from it all, there are some nice secluded inlets starting off from Brundall,’ she girl told Alex. ‘Once you get down as far as Great Yarmouth the Broads can get as busy as the M1 right now. The northern parts are much prettier, and there are plenty of good pubs along the way, but it’s very busy there too.’
‘Do you have any detailed maps here?’
‘No, but you can get one at any of the boatyards and booking offices in the area,’ she was told.
Alex thanked her, bought a packet of sandwiches and a doughnut from a snack bar and took them to her office for lunch to give herself time to study everything she had found so far. The brochures included general maps of the Broads, and detailed interiors of the boats — and some of them were really swish, she admitted, if you liked that kind of thing.
They weren’t cheap, either. Hiring one for a month or more just to keep somebody out of sight was going to cost a bomb. It revived her original idea that she could well be looking for a privately owned boat.
***
DI Nick Frobisher was up to his neck in paperwork when he heard the commotion in the outer office. Seconds later his WDC marched into his office, stiff-backed with annoyance.
‘There’s a guy outside who says he’s got to see you and nobody else, sir. He’s as drunk as a skunk and falling about all over the place. He’s given me plenty of abuse, but I’ve told him you’re busy and he’ll have to wait.’
The man pushed past her and strode across to Nick’s desk. planting both hands on it as if he intended to stand there for ever if need be. It was probably the only thing holding him up, Nick thought. He reeled back from the smell of whisky on the man’s breath. He must have had a hell of a night of it and continued his drinking binge well into the morning. Maybe to give himself Dutch courage into coming here, Nick guessed, knowing the signs. The eyes were roaming with panic, the hair wild and unkempt. But he knew him at once.
‘It’s all right, Mary. Bring us some strong black coffee, will you? Calm down, Mr Laver. Take a seat and tell me what you want to see me about. And by the way, did you drive here?’
‘Well, I sure as hell didn’t fly,’ he slurred, glaring at Nick through those bloodshot eyes. ‘But never mind all that. I want to make a statement.’
Nick was too much of an old pro to show any surprise, while making a mental note to book him for drunk driving.
‘Certainly. May I ask what it’s all about?’
Laver banged his fist on the desk. With only one hand supporting him now, he was in grave danger of crashing to the floor, and he quickly recovered his balance. He spoke loudly and aggressively, but he was quite lucid, the words formed deliberately as if he had difficulty getting his tongue around them. which Nick could well believe.
‘First of all, man, you’ve got to promise that what I’m going to tell you won’t go against me. It’s what they call a whatsit in America — a plea bargain — I b’lieve.’
He had Nick’s full attention now. ‘Well, we’re not in America now, and I’m sure you know as well as I do, Mr Lavery that if any crime has been committed and someone comes forward to give information, it will always stand the informant in good stead.’
‘That’s not what I said,’ Jeremy bawled
. ‘I want you to tell me I’ll be kept out of the picture. It wasn’t my idea, see? It was all his idea, and now it’s gone too far.’
‘I can’t give you any more assurances until I know what this is all about,’ Nick went on patiently, not wanting to push him into changing his mind. The man was in enough of a stew already. ‘Now, just stay calm, and I’ll arrange for someone to take down your statement and record it on tape.’
Jeremy’s state of panic became more acute at the mention of a tape recording. ‘Is that necessary? I didn’t come here for that.’
‘I assure you it is. It’s for your own peace of mind, Mr Laver. You wouldn’t want it said that the police tampered with the evidence now, would you? Once your statement has been recorded, you’ll be given a copy of the tape so that you’re quite sure you won’t be misrepresented in any way.’
‘Misrep—? Hey, no way, man — I’m not sure about any of this now.’
Mary arrived with two mugs of black coffee, and Nick told her coolly to take them instead to the interview-room.
‘Ask DS Warner to bring the tape recorder, please, Mary. I’ll also need somebody to take a written statement from Mr Laver, and you’d better send in a couple of the lads to escort him, since he looks rather unwell.’
He smiled encouragingly at the musician. He certainly wasn’t letting this crap merchant off the hook now. He’d known all along there was something going on that involved either him, or his Uncle Norman, or both of them.
He’d also been gut-sure that somewhere along the line, Alexandra Best had a hand in it.
By the time DS Warner had got the tape machine set up in the interview-room and ready to run, and the DC was waiting to take down the written statement, Jeremy looked even more hunted. He had been told his rights and knew what to expect, but what had seemed like a good idea that morning and sent him off to find DI Frobisher in a blind panic, was suddenly becoming all too official for comfort.
Thicker Than Water (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 1) Page 20