by John Harvey
With what result?
Noble knew, of course, about the disappearance of the young girl, Beatrice Lawson, in Ely; he had liaised already with officers working on the inquiry, providing them with the necessary information about individuals on the local sex offenders' register. Will Grayson had asked to see him personally, nonetheless.
Noble thought he knew why.
Will surprised him by smiling broadly as they shook hands, asking after Noble's family, cracking a few caustic remarks about the soccer team he had supported since a child. A cheerfulness Noble didn't quite trust.
'The list you sent across,'Will said. 'Possibles in this Beatrice Lawson business. Four or five we're checking into. Worth a look. Anything there, we'll be sure to let you know, keep you in the loop.'
Noble nodded his thanks. 'How's it going anyway?'
'One positive sighting so far. Getting into a car at the end of the street the evening she disappeared.'
'Planned? Someone she knew?'
'Doubtful. Nothing we've turned up suggests she intended to run away. No clothes taken, money, nothing of the kind.'
'Stranger then?'
'Looks like.'
'She'd get into a stranger's car?'
'Her father says not. Says he and her mother drummed it into her practically since she could walk. Everything else we've learned says sensible girl, head on her shoulders.'
'Even so,' Noble said, 'it happens.'
'Christine Fell,' Will said, 'she got into a car. Got fed up with waiting for her mother to collect her from a friend's house after a party and walked down the road to meet her. Not unlike Beatrice Lawson. Next time anyone saw her she was trussed up, near-naked, in a barn out in the middle of nowhere, somebody's sex toy for three nights and days.'
'Eight years ago,' Noble said. 'I've read the file.'
'Then you know.'
Noble held his gaze, returned his stare. 'Nobody was convicted, Will, not even charged. Case is still open. I don't know any more than anyone else. Precious little.'
'I talked to her. Christine. Showed her the photographs. Saw the look in her eyes. It was him, no doubt.'
'Roberts?'
'Roberts.'
'You don't know that.'
'I do.' Tapping his fist against his chest, above the heart. 'In here I do.'
'That's not enough.'
'It is for me.'
'This man in the car—did anyone recognise him? D'you have a description?'
'Not really, no.'
'Not really or not at all?'
'Middle-aged, not young certainly. Probably fair-haired.'
'Could be a million people.'
'Could be Roberts.'
'You've traced the car?'
'We're working on it.'
Noble threw up his arms. 'Damn it, Will, you've got nothing.'
'He's in breach, right, Roberts? Moved and failed to tell the police where he is. Worse, given a false address.'
'That doesn't tie him into this.'
'He's slipped under the radar. Gone AWOL. Ask yourself why. And Beatrice Lawson or not, while he's at large he's a potential danger. So let's get on top of that. Our duty to the public, surely, let it be known he's at large. Our responsibility. Mine. Yours. Yours especially. Nothing breaks in the next couple of days, get the press office to talk to the media. Something like this, they'll lap it up for sure.'
'All that'll do,' Noble said, 'is drive him further underground.'
'Maybe. Then again, maybe not. If he has taken the girl, it just might get him rattled, smoke him out.'
'Dangerous tactics, Will. What if it misfires?'
'Forty-eight hours' time, it might be all we've got.'
Ruth Lawson left the hospital leaning on her husband's shoulder, one hand gripping his, Anita Chandra walking anxiously a step behind. As they slowly neared the car, the liaison officer shooed off an opportunistic photographer, knowing others were even then milling around the Lawson family home, joking, laughing, talking into mobiles, leaving their empty Styrofoam cups to blossom in the shrubbery.
Ruth looked drained of all life, her skin like unprimed canvas; all trace of colour gone, save for an ill-judged attempt to apply lipstick to her mouth. Once inside the car, strapped in, she closed her eyes and pressed her finger ends, nails bitten down, hard into the palms of her hands.
Andrew leaned across and kissed the top of her head and her hair was like wire wound tight.
The shout went up as the car appeared at the corner of the street and the news cameramen and photographers dropped their cigarettes to the ground, clicked shut their mobile phones and hurried out into the road, jockeying for position.
'I'll go first,' Anita Chandra said. 'Try and keep as close to me as you can.'
Questions rained on them as they stumbled forwards, Ruth loosing her footing more than once, only stopping to catch her breath as they reached the front door.
'How does it feel?' she shrieked back at them, flailing away from her husband's grasp and turning round to face the pack. 'How does it feel?'
Taking firm but careful hold of her arm, Anita Chandra ushered her inside.
'I'm all right,' Ruth said, once the door was closed. 'I'm all right. You can let me go.'
They were just quick enough to catch her as she fell.
When Will finally got to talk to Trevor Cordon it was past two o'clock. After listening to him carefully, he thanked him for his call, apologised for not having got back to him sooner, and went in search of Helen.
He found her sitting on a bench on Parker's Piece in the early afternoon sunshine, lunching on a can of Coke and a cigarette. Two cigarettes.
'Your lucky day,' Will said.
'I won the lottery? Not before time. Either that or Leonardo DiCaprio's seen my entry on Facebook and wants to meet.'
'Not exactly.'
'Then do tell.'
'You're off to Cornwall. Bit of a holiday. Tomorrow, first thing.'
'Am I, bollocks!'
'What's the matter? I thought you'd be pleased.'
'Pleased? All that bloody way.'
'It's not exactly the ends of the earth.'
'As good as.'
'Nonsense. Train from London, Paddington to Penzance. Be there in five or six hours.'
'You see what I mean. Ends of the earth.'
'Like I say, think of it as a holiday. Well-deserved break.'
'Great. Send Jim Straley, he needs it more than me.'
'Afraid not. The ACC's cleared it with their top brass. You're the one expected. Red carpet, I'd not be surprised. Open arms.'
Helen stubbed out her cigarette. 'And this is the death of the other girl? Heather, was that her name?'
'Yes.'
'I thought that was all kosher.'
'It still may be. This DII spoke to, Cordon. He was running the investigation when she disappeared. Several days before she was found.'
'Inside some mine shaft? She'd fallen?'
'Engine house, apparently. Left over from the old tin mines. It's the fallen part Cordon reckons is open to question. Never quite believed it was that simple.'
'But if he was Senior Investigating Officer ...'
'Powers that be wanted it pushed through without a fuss, at least that's what he reckons. Cordon always figured someone else was involved in the death, without ever being able to prove who it might have been. Coroner returned an open verdict, that was the best he could get.'
'And since then?'
'Pretty much nothing, as far as I can tell. Cordon himself seems to have been shunted sideways, out of the firing line.'
'This was all what? Twelve, thirteen years ago?'
'Thirteen. 1995.'
Ignoring Will's faint look of disapproval, Helen reached for another cigarette. 'I can't see what my travelling all the way down there now's going to achieve.'
'Maybe nothing. But if the same woman loses two children in suspicious circumstances, we need to make good and sure there's no connection. Just in the merest
chance there might be.'
'Covering our backs then, that's what this is?'
'How about conducting the fullest possible inquiries? You should be pleased—you're the one accusing me of concentrating too much on Mitchell Roberts, having tunnel vision.'
'Yes,' Helen said, getting to her feet. 'I'll try and think of that when I'm stuck on some train in the middle of nowhere, with no buffet car and the toilets blocked to overflowing.'
One of the IT officers who'd been examining the Lawsons' family computer waylaid Will as he was heading back into the building.
'Something you might find interesting.'
50
There were still a few journalists and photographers kicking their heels outside the Lawson house, local for the most part, stringers hoping to sell something on to one of the nationals. But without any apparent breaks in the investigation, and lacking the parents' desire to expose their grief to the cameras and talk tearily of their missing 'little angel', media interest was already waning.
One or two, recognising Will, perked up when he arrived, homing in on him for news of some dramatic development, but he hurried past with a promise that he'd be making a statement later.
'How are they?' he asked the liaison officer when she opened the door.
'Much as you'd expect, I think.' She just managed to swallow the 'sir'. 'They seem lost. Lost in their own home.'
'The mother...?'
'Fragile. Bit out of it, really. Not saying very much at all.'
Ruth Lawson was sitting in an armchair, a thin blanket round her shoulders and another across her lap, though, to Will, the room seemed warm. Her husband, unshaven, came over from the window and shook Will's hand as he entered, then waited for Will to sit before finding a place for himself.
Anita Chandra stood close to the side wall, careful to keep out of everyone's direct eyeline, not wishing to distract from what Will had to say.
'There's been a development—how relevant, it's difficult to say—but a witness has come forward, claiming to have seen a girl resembling Beatrice getting into a car at the end of the street where her music teacher lives.' He paused, waiting for the information to settle. 'We're following this up as diligently as we can.'
'A car,' Andrew said. 'I don't understand. I mean, how could she? What car?'
'In all probability,' Will said, 'a green Vauxhall Corsa.'
'She wouldn't,' Andrew said. 'She wouldn't get into a car with someone she didn't know. She just would not.'
'And you don't, either of you, know of anyone who owns such a vehicle?'
'No,' Andrew said. 'No.'
Ruth said nothing. Will wasn't even sure if she'd heard or understood.
'Friends? Family? Neighbours, possibly. Someone who knew Beatrice and might just have been passing? Known her well enough to have stopped and offered her a lift?'
'No,' Andrew said again, his voice thickening. 'Of course not. And if it was someone we knew, they'd have told us, surely? When they heard what had happened, they'd have told us right away.'
Unless they had reasons of their own for not doing so, Will thought. Neighbours, family, friends: despite the occasional predatory figure like Mitchell Roberts, he knew that was where most child abusers were found. And the closer to the home, the more dangerous they could be. Access, opportunity. Fantasies that, all too easily sometimes, became realities. Little games that got out of hand.
'And anyway,' Andrew said, 'if that was what happened, she'd be here now. They'd have brought her home.'
'Unless she asked them to take her somewhere else.'
'Somewhere else? What somewhere else?'
Will shook his head. 'I don't know.'
'You make it sound as if she had some secret life. A life we knew nothing about.' He broke off to catch his breath. 'She was just an ordinary girl. She went to school. She played with her friends. She didn't have secrets from her mother and me. She did not.'
But children do, Will thought.
And still Ruth said nothing. Very little seemed to register on her face. Will wondered again how much she'd actually heard of what had been said; how much she'd taken in. He wondered if it was her medication keeping her in that state or something deeper.
'I wanted to let you know this,' he said, 'before the information is released to the media. We'll be asking for anyone who might have noticed a young girl getting into a green Corsa that evening to come forward. Anyone who might have seen her as a passenger. Either myself or Anita here will keep you up to date with any developments.'
'Thank you,' Andrew said, starting to stand, to show Will to the door.
'There was one other thing,' Will said.
Andrew looked back at him apprehensively, flinching as if waiting to be hit.
'Photographs,' Will said. 'There were some photographs of Beatrice on your computer, fairly recent by the look of them. You sent an email asking the sender to identify themselves. As far as we could tell, there was no reply.'
Andrew blinked and sat back down. Ruth moved her hands across her lap, pulling the blanket tighter.
'We've done our best to track down the sender ourselves, but so far without much luck. The account's been closed. We're still checking, of course, but our IT people keep getting stalled. I wondered if you could help?'
Andrew cleared his throat, coughed into the back of his hand. 'Not really, no. We don't have any idea. We did think, rather I did, it was a friend of ours—Lyle, Lyle Henderson—it's his wife who was here, sitting with Ruth, Catriona—but no, it wasn't, not at all.'
'And why,' Will asked, his pulse quickening slightly, 'did you think it was your friend Lyle?'
'He'd bought a new camera, that's all. Fancy digital SLR. I thought it was his way of trying it out, showing us how good it was, what it could do.'
'You asked him?'
'Yes, of course.'
'And?'
'And he said, no. Nothing of the kind.'
'A keen photographer, though, your friend Lyle?'
'More that he likes expensive toys, I'd say. Boys' toys, isn't that what they're called? MP3 players, mobile phones, computers. Stuff for that boat of his.'
'Boat?' Will caught the flicker of interest on Anita Chandra's face as she listened.
'Motor launch, moored down at the marina.'
'Beatrice,' Will said, 'has Lyle ever shown any interest in photographing her before?'
'Not especially, no. I mean, he's taken pictures of her, pictures of us all. Out on the river, that kind of thing. Just snaps, really. Nothing out of the ordinary. You know, friends.'
'He and Beatrice, they got along?'
'Yes. Difficult not to get along with Lyle. Life and soul of the party, you know what I mean. Always wants everything to go with a swing. Now I think of it, I suppose Beatrice did find him a bit much sometimes. He'd tease her, you know, nothing malicious, but she didn't like that, being made the centre of attention.'
'This teasing, was it ever physical?'
'Not really. Oh, he'd tickle her sometimes, threaten to pick her up and throw her into the water, that kind of thing, just, you know, fooling around.'
Lagging behind his words, Andrew's face showed an understanding of what he'd been saying, the implications.
'You don't think Lyle—you can't ... you can't think he'd have had anything to do with ... with what might have happened? He's not—no, it's impossible.'
'He's not what, Mr Lawson?'
'Not, you know, interested in young girls.' Andrew shook his head vigorously. 'Not in that way. I mean, you'd know, wouldn't you? I'd know. All the time we spent together, I'd know.'
Will smiled reassuringly. 'I'm sure you're right. But we'll likely have a chat with your friend Lyle anyway. Background as much as anything else. You can let us have an address, of course?' He got to his feet. 'Just one final thing. And this is hypothetical, nothing more. But if Lyle were driving along and stopped to offer Beatrice a lift, would she be likely to accept?'
'Well, yes, in all probability,
yes. But the car you described, that's not what Lyle drives. And besides, he would have told us straight away.'
Will held out his hand. 'As I say, Mr Lawson, it's all just hypothetical. Thanks for your time. Doubtless we'll talk again.' He ducked his head towards Ruth. 'Mrs Lawson, goodbye.'
She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.
On his way out of the room, Will gave Anita Chandra enough of a glance for her to know she was meant to follow him outside.
'Lyle Henderson,' he said, once they were out in the hallway. 'Has he been here at all?'
'He came to collect his wife after Ruth Lawson was taken into hospital.'
'Not before that?'
'No. The wife, Catriona, she was here on her own.'
'She didn't happen to say anything about where her husband was, why he hadn't come with her?'
'No, not a thing. And I didn't ask ...'
'Relax. No reason you should.'
'You think he might be involved?'
Will made a face. 'I never really trust things that just fall into your lap. But we'll check him out as a matter of course.'
She nodded. 'She's gone, hasn't she?' she said quietly. 'Beatrice. She's been taken. There's no other answer.'
Will glanced back towards the room where both parents were still sitting. 'It's difficult, what you've got to do. Not encouraging them to harbour too many false hopes; not letting them despair. It's hard.'
'It's what I trained for.'
'I know. And you're doing a good job, I can tell.'
'Thank you, sir.' Blushing a little, looking away.
'See if you can find some way of being alone with the mother. Draw her out a little if you can. Get her to talk. About anything at first, it doesn't matter.'
'You think she knows more than she's saying?'
'I don't know. Possibly not. Maybe all she's suppressing is her grief. But maybe not. Maybe there's more.'
The door to the living room opened and Andrew Lawson stood there, drawn by the sound of voices. Will raised a hand in his direction and moved off to run the narrow gauntlet of reporters and cameramen waiting outside.
Brightly, Anita Chandra swivelled round. 'Shall I make us all some tea?'