Dead Lock

by Damien Boyd

  ‘Has Hatty ever gone missing before? Gone somewhere she shouldn’t have and not told anyone, perhaps?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How about over to Stawell?’

  ‘Maybe when she’s older. She’s too young to be crossing the main road on her own.’

  Jane watched Ros sit down at the dining table with her back to the window. ‘Can I make a note of your name, please?’ she asked.

  ‘Ros Hicks. I live at Gable Cottage, three doors down. I’m just here to see if there’s anything I can do, really.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Not sure there is, though, apart from making the tea.’

  Jane wondered whether she had ladled on her make-up before or after she’d got the call. She settled on before, giving Ros the benefit of the doubt. Those highlights would have taken several hours in the hairdressers too.

  ‘Was she christened Hatty?’ asked Potter, turning back to Geraldine.

  A scream of ‘I know, I bloody know’ echoed along the short passageway from the kitchen followed by the sound of plastic smashing on a tiled floor.

  ‘Harriet,’ said Geraldine, grimacing. ‘They’ve got another phone upstairs.’

  ‘Is there anything we should know?’ Potter gestured towards the kitchen.

  ‘They’d only just started letting Hatty walk to school on her own.’

  Potter nodded. ‘Any brothers or sisters then?’

  ‘She’s an only child.’

  ‘Can you think of any connection between Hatty and Alesha?’

  ‘No.’ Geraldine shook her head.

  ‘A sports team perhaps?’ asked Potter.

  ‘No, she’s—’

  The sound of wood being dragged across a stone floor stopped her mid-sentence. ‘He’s on his way.’ Adele was pulling a chair out from under the large oval dining table. She sat down opposite Ros, her head in her hands. Ros reached across the table and rubbed the side of her arm.

  ‘We’re doing everything we can,’ said Potter.

  ‘We know,’ said Geraldine.

  ‘We’re going to have some more questions. Difficult ones, I’m afraid, but we’ll wait till your husband gets here, if you prefer.’

  Adele looked up, tears trickling down her cheeks. ‘He was in the Plymouth office, so he’s going to be an hour and a half.’

  ‘At least,’ said Geraldine.

  ‘Well, let’s hope we’ve found her before then,’ said Potter. She looked at Jane and nodded towards the door. ‘We’ll come back later. I’ve asked Detective Constable Willmott to come and sit with you. She’ll be here in a minute and will be able to answer any questions. All right?’

  ‘Fine.’ Geraldine was standing behind her daughter with her hand on her shoulder.

  The rain had stopped by the time they were back out into the lane, Louise parking in the lay-by behind Potter’s car.

  ‘You’re going to have to fill in for Family Liaison, Louise. All right?’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘The husband’s on his way from Plymouth. In the meantime, find out what you can, but be subtle about it.’

  Louise nodded.

  ‘C’mon, Jane, we’ll follow Hatty’s route down to the school.’

  A leafy lane, trees overhanging, no pavement and four houses set back in their own grounds, but far too close to home perhaps; then out on to Manor Road, the main road through the village – wide, pavements on either side, houses, other children going to school, parents going to work. It would have been a bold move snatching her here, thought Jane. She frowned.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked Potter.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘It must’ve been in the lane.’

  ‘Was it raining this morning?’

  ‘We’ll find out. The road’s dry, though.’

  ‘It’s too open here.’

  ‘Unless she knew him?’ Potter looked up and down Manor Road, watching uniformed officers going from house to house, others stopping traffic. ‘Someone must have seen something.’

  Jane nodded.

  ‘Get everyone together for a briefing at two,’ continued Potter. ‘Full team. The press officer had better be there as well.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘Right then.’ Potter clapped her hands. ‘Everybody!’

  DCI Chard slammed his mug down on his workstation. ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Thank you, Simon.’

  Jane sat down on an empty swivel chair at the front of the room and glanced at her phone. One text message – from Lucy.

  Sorry about earlier x

  Jane smiled. She had her back to the glass balustrade and turned to look down into the atrium below. The CID area on the first floor was all but deserted – everyone seconded to the MIT, probably. Several uniformed officers were milling about on the ground floor, but the workstations were empty. Still, that meant more boots on the ground in Catcott, as Bateman had put it.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ shouted Potter. She was standing at the front of the room, which was now only marginally fuller than it had been at the last briefing. Jane had been sitting in Potter’s car when she took the call from the Assistant Chief Constable. ‘Five more officers? Is that it? How the hell am I supposed—?’ The call ended abruptly, the closed windows saving Potter’s phone from the ditch at the side of the road.

  ‘You’ll see some new faces. Not many, but we’ll have to make do. Bob, I want you and your team to stay on Alesha.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘Superintendent Guthrie, where are you?’

  ‘Here, Ma’am.’ Never heard of her, thought Jane. Guthrie stood up at the back of the room; tall, short dark hair and a two piece trouser suit – pinstripe. Jane smiled. Dixon had been right about pinstripe suits and promotion.

  ‘Sally has brought her team down from Bristol. I want you to focus on Sailes. Find him.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘That leaves my team on Harriet Renner, otherwise known as Hatty. She lives in Catcott – it’s a small village just off the Glastonbury road, the A39 – and walks to school. It’s not far and her route takes her right through the middle of the village at a busy time in the morning. Lots of people around, you’d have thought, but today she never arrived. There’s a photo somewhere.’

  ‘Here,’ said Jane, holding it up.

  ‘Dave, can you get that copied for everyone?’

  Jane leaned forward and handed the picture, still in its frame, to Harding.

  ‘She’s similar in appearance to Alesha, and was last seen wearing the school uniform you see in the photo. But that’s where the similarities end. Her parents are well-heeled. The father works for Svenskabanken AB as their area sales director. The mother doesn’t work.’

  ‘Is she an only child, Ma’am?’ asked Bob. He was sitting at the front this time, but still slumped in his chair.

  ‘Yes. And on the face of it her situation couldn’t be more different to Alesha, but there must be a connection between them somewhere. Find it.’

  Bob nodded.

  ‘We’ve got a Child Rescue Alert press conference lined up for later today and we can follow that up with a reconstruction in forty-eight hours. Let’s hope we don’t need to.’

  ‘Any news on Sailes?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Nothing on the traffic cameras,’ replied Harding, shrugging his shoulders. ‘He leaves Tanya’s and disappears off the face of the earth.’

  ‘Let’s get the helicopter to have a look. And a thorough search along the main road. That’s the route he’d have taken. Sally?’

  ‘I can organise that with uniform, Ma’am.’

  ‘Get ’em to do it on foot.’

  Sally Guthrie nodded.

  ‘We had surveillance on his friend, Darryl. Josh, where are you?’

  ‘Here, Ma’am.’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nothing. He stayed in the whole time. Billy-no-mates too, by the looks of things.’

  ‘What about his phone?’

  ‘We’re wa
iting for the call log now, Ma’am.’

  ‘Keep on him.’

  Josh nodded and sat down.

  ‘Anything on the white van?’ asked Potter.

  ‘We’ve got one on the traffic camera at junction twenty-two,’ replied Bob. ‘Saturday afternoon at three twenty-four p.m.’

  ‘What about the number plate?’

  ‘False.’

  ‘Would be, wouldn’t it?’ Potter sucked her teeth. ‘Get the photo over to the house to house team at Catcott.’

  ‘It’s done, Ma’am.’

  ‘What is it, do we know?’

  ‘It looks like an old Volkswagen LT31. Most of them left these days have been converted into camper vans. This one hasn’t, so it should be quite distinctive.’ Bob sat up. ‘Well, as much as any white van is.’

  Jane was distracted by a door slamming below her on the first floor. She looked down through the glass balustrade, her attention drawn by raised voices coming from meeting room 2, where DCI Lewis was sitting with his back to the glass partition. One of the receptionists appeared at the top of the stairs from the ground floor, ran along the landing and opened the door. Lewis raised his arm, then she backed out of the room.

  Jane watched the officer sitting opposite Lewis close a file on the table in front of him, get up and leave the room, revealing a figure pacing up and down, his lower half all that was visible from Jane’s vantage point.

  ‘Jane?’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am. Sorry,’ she said, turning back to Potter’s briefing. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘I was telling them that Hatty is not known to Safeguarding. That’s right isn’t it?’

  ‘It is. I checked. She has no record with us or Social Services.’

  ‘Good.’

  Jane turned back to meeting room 2 just in time to see the door open and Lewis stride along the landing towards the stairs. Once at the top, he walked across the Incident Room and whispered in Potter’s ear.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’m needed downstairs. We’ve finished anyway, I think, so let’s get on with it.’ She followed Lewis back to the top of the stairs.

  ‘What about me, Ma’am?’ asked Jane, standing up.

  ‘You’d better come too,’ replied Lewis, glancing over his shoulder at Potter.

  Lewis waited until Jane closed the meeting room door behind her.

  ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Potter, this is the senior Home Office pathologist for this area, Dr Roger Poland.’

  Poland was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He looked up, his jaw clenched, breathing heavily through his nose.

  ‘Are you all right, Roger?’ asked Jane.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but the words caught in the back of his throat. He coughed, releasing the tears that had collected in the corners of his bloodshot eyes.

  ‘Take your time,’ said Jane.

  ‘That’s the one thing we haven’t got,’ muttered Lewis, shaking his head.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Potter.

  Poland took a deep breath. ‘Hatty . . .’ He swallowed hard. ‘Hatty . . . is my granddaughter.’

  ‘Oh, shit, Roger.’ Jane squatted down next to his chair and put her arm around him.

  ‘We’re doing everything we can, Dr Poland,’ said Potter.

  ‘Not everything,’ replied Poland.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  He turned to Jane and mumbled, his voice almost a whisper, ‘Where is he?’

  Chapter Ten

  Detective Inspector Nick Dixon sat down on a boulder just below the summit of Hartsop Dodd and slid his rucksack off his shoulder. He looked around at the various summits poking out of the clouds all around him while he rummaged in the bottom for a banana. There should be a bottle of water in there somewhere too.

  Two tiny dots, coats probably – one red, one blue – were visible in the distance on the summit of Caudale Moor, where he had stood less than an hour ago. And the summit of Helvellyn a few miles away to the west, where he had stood on Sunday, with Jane.

  Monty was on the end of his long lead, drinking from a small stream that trickled across the path just below them. A waterfall then took it to the bottom of a deep gully next to the path where it joined the beck that was cascading down the mountainside.

  He smiled. It had been a good day. Not as good as Sunday, though. That had been fun. Striding Edge with a large white Staffordshire terrier tucked under his arm was something he would remember on his deathbed. And Jane’s face! Shame he had been too slow with the camera.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ He could still hear her voice. ‘It didn’t help that you were reading out the mountain rescue reports in the pub last night.’

  Monty collapsed on to the grass next to him, closed his eyes and was asleep before Dixon could offer him a biscuit. He envied him that ability sometimes, but this was not one of them. It was a view to savour, not sleep through.

  Sunday had been a cold day. He thought about them arriving at the summit shelter wearing woolly hats, gloves and coats, a freezing cold easterly wind racing across the top of Helvellyn. Another walker had done the honours with the camera for the obligatory summit photographs and then it was down Swirral Edge – or, as Jane had put it, ‘the quickest way to the pub’.

  Too much gin in the Travellers’ Rest had been her undoing. She’d been asleep by the time they arrived back at the cottage in Hartsop, so Dixon carried her in and laid her on the bed in the downstairs bedroom, hoping she wouldn’t be unconscious the next time he carried her over the threshold. If there was to be a next time.

  That was a conversation he had been avoiding. After all, it was only a few weeks ago she had let rip when she thought he was dead, and the memory was still fresh. Maybe his legal training hadn’t been a complete waste of time? He smiled. Solicitors were supposed to be good at delaying things – ‘masterly inactivity’, the senior partner had called it – and putting it off reduced the risk of getting the wrong answer.

  He unzipped the top pocket of his rucksack and took out a small black velvet jewellery box. He opened it and looked at the diamond glinting in the afternoon sunlight.

  The time would come, but not yet perhaps?

  Then he snapped the box shut. Monty jumped up and started growling.

  ‘Sheep, matey, that’s all.’

  ‘He’s on holiday.’ Potter folded her arms.

  ‘He’ll come back,’ said Jane.

  ‘Look, we’ve got fifty officers working on it already. What difference can one more make?’

  Jane frowned at her. ‘Do we really need to answer that question?’

  Potter turned away.

  ‘Manchester?’ continued Jane.

  ‘He’s my friend and he’ll find Hatty,’ said Poland. ‘Do I have to ring David?’

  ‘Who’s David?’ asked Potter, turning to Lewis.

  ‘Charlesworth.’ Lewis raised his eyebrows.

  Jane watched her mulling it over. Another run-in with the Assistant Chief Constable, and for what? She’d already been complaining the team was short staffed for such a major investigation.

  ‘I told Dixon he’d got something that makes the rest of us nervous,’ said Potter, shaking her head.

  ‘What?’ asked Poland.

  ‘God knows,’ she replied. ‘But we could do with it now, whatever it is.’

  ‘He makes things happen,’ said Lewis.

  ‘Get him on the phone, Jane,’ snapped Potter.

  ‘He’ll have his mobile switched off. There’s no signal unless you’re up on the tops. Down in the valleys there’s nothing.’

  ‘How did we get hold of you?’

  ‘The cottage has got satellite broadband and a landline, but he’ll be out and about.’

  ‘Try them anyway.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘And get the local lot to send a patrol car if you have to.’

  Poland stood up, looked at Potter and nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Eith
er Dixon was descending faster than usual or the cloud was racing up the ridge towards him. It didn’t happen often in the Lakes, getting up above the cloud, but it was a sight to behold when it did. He sat down by the path and admired the last of the view until the cloud was swirling all around him.

  He smiled. Jane would shit herself, he thought, lost on the mountains in the clouds. Thank God it hadn’t happened when they’d been halfway along Striding Edge.

  ‘All we’ve got to do is stay on the path and we’ll be fine, old son,’ said Dixon, convinced that even Monty was frowning at him.

  A few minutes later they were below the cloud again, Dixon looking down through the drizzle at the lake off to his left, Brotherswater, and Hartsop, a tiny hamlet nestling in the valley.

  Weaver’s Cottage was clearly identifiable 1,000 feet below him, not least because of the flashing blue light in the car park.

  He unzipped his coat pocket, took out his phone and switched it on. Then he rang Jane.

  ‘Oh, thank fuck for that. Where are you?’

  ‘On the side of Hartsop Dodd looking down at the cottage. There’s a patrol car next to my Land Rover.’

  ‘They’re looking for you.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Another girl’s gone missing.’

  He sighed. ‘When?’

  ‘This morning. Listen, Nick . . . it’s Roger’s granddaughter, Hatty.’

  Dixon closed his eyes.

  ‘He’s here,’ said Jane, ‘and he won’t go until you—’

  ‘Tell him I’m on my way.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Stafford Services,’ replied Dixon, through a mouthful of tuna sandwich. ‘I had to stop for something to eat.’

  It had taken him twenty minutes to get down off Hartsop Dodd, and then another twenty minutes to clear out the cottage; open the back door of the Land Rover, bung everything in, sort it out later.

  ‘What about Monty?’

  ‘He’s had his.’

  ‘Roger’s still here, wearing a hole in the carpet in meeting room two,’ said Jane.

  ‘Tell him to go home and I’ll come and see him later.’

  ‘I tried that.’

  ‘I’m going to be another three hours or so, and that’s depending on the traffic at Birmingham. Why not take him to the pub for a bite to eat?’