Far Cry

by John Harvey

  'Yes.'

  'While Roberts was still back against the wall, holding his face?'

  'I suppose so, yes.'

  'He wasn't attacking you at that time?'

  'No.'

  'But you took the knife?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why?'

  'Why do you think? To protect myself, of course.'

  'But you've said, at that moment, he was standing back against the wall with his hands up to his injured face?'

  'Yes, and the next he was coming for me again.'

  'He attacked you?'

  'Yes.'

  'In what manner?'

  'What manner? He rushed at me, swinging his arms, striking out.'

  'Striking out or trying to grab the knife?'

  'I don't know. No. I think he was aiming at my face.'

  'And that was when you stabbed him?'

  'Yes.'

  'In self-defence?'

  'Yes.'

  'I think,' Fincham said, half-turning towards the detective sergeant, 'Mrs Grayson might appreciate a short break.'

  'There's more?' Lorraine said. 'More questioning?'

  Fincham nodded. 'Not too much now, I don't think.'

  'Then let's get it over.'

  'Very well.' He leaned back again in his chair.

  'When you were upstairs, Mrs Grayson,' Pearson said, 'with the children, even though you knew Roberts to be injured and, temporarily at least, incapacitated, would it be true to say you still felt yourself to be in danger?'

  'Yes.'

  'And the children?'

  'Yes, of course, my children.'

  'Roberts had made threats against them?'

  'Yes. And I knew ... I knew what he'd done. In the past.'

  'So when you heard him on the stairs, it's accurate to say you were in fear for their lives as well as your own?'

  'Yes. Yes, it is.'

  'In what you did, you were protecting them?'

  'Yes.'

  'And that was why you acted as you did?'

  'Yes.'

  'Thank you. Thank you very much.' Pearson glanced across at her superior. 'I don't think I have any more questions.'

  Lorraine collapsed backwards in tears.

  'Mrs Grayson, Mrs Grayson,' Fincham said, resting a consoling hand on her shoulder. 'It's all right. We can stop there. Here.' He took a clean tissue from his pocket. 'You've done well. Brilliantly.'

  Lorraine wiped her face and drank from the glass of water he held out towards her. She felt exhausted, drained.

  'The law,' Fincham said, sitting back down, 'dictates an individual has the right to use only such force as is reasonably necessary to protect him or herself and their children. I'm satisfied that in this instance, that was the case. And I shall be very surprised if the CPS fail to agree. But that, we shall have to wait and see. Now please, take your time, when you're fit and ready, I'll have someone drive you home.'

  Pearson stopped alongside her chair. 'I'm sorry to have to put you through all that. But I thought, anyone who did what you did, could stand up to the likes of me. You're a very brave woman.'

  She held out her hand and, after a long moment, Lorraine took it in her own.

  72

  Will drove out to the cottages on Padnal Fen in a state of no little excitement. According to the text on his mobile, the search had proved positive, discoveries had been made. Beatrice Lawson, was that where she had been hastily buried, killed and buried? At the same time as he wanted, almost more than anything, that not to be the case, but for her to be found somewhere still alive, he knew that with every day the chances of her having been murdered increased.

  The crime scene manager stood smoking a cigarette at the edge of the site.

  'You've found something,' Will said. 'A body?'

  'Not so fast.'

  'What do you mean, not so fast? Is it a body or not?'

  'Bones, Will. Bones.'

  'Go on.'

  The manager looked back towards the centre of the site. 'The first location. Inside, if you can call it that. There were signs of an animal—more than one—digging round the edges of that pile of bricks and masonry where a section of wall had recently collapsed. Obviously trying to get at what was buried beneath. We sifted through everything as carefully as we could. Cat bones were all we came up with. Could have been a young fox, there's probably some way of determining for sure if it's of consequence, which I assume it's not. So, it's not your girl, not there, we're certain of that.'

  'And the other site?'

  'More bones. A skeleton, to be precise. Human this time. Buried a good six foot deep.'

  'A girl?'

  'Could be. I'd say almost certainly yes, though you'll need the pathologist to be sure. Young anyway, small frame. Barely pubescent would be my guess. Somewhere between nine or ten and twelve, thirteen.'

  'How long had she been down there?'

  'Again, I'm guessing, but I'd say a goodly length of time. Fifteen, possibly twenty years.'

  The same nerve was beginning to pulse at the side of Will's head. ''93?'

  'Could be. Could well be.'

  Rose Howard, last seen climbing up into the cab of a small, open-backed lorry on the outskirts of Peterborough, with two Polly Pocket dolls and a Take That CD in her rucksack. 1993.

  Just for a moment, Will closed his eyes.

  With Helen's return, Ellie Chapin had gone back to more mundane things: the tedious but necessary business of check and countercheck, of days spent working computers and telephones. In the days since Beatrice Lawson had disappeared, close to a thousand motorists had been stopped and questioned, more than one hundred and thirty Vauxhall Corsa owners tracked down, seventy-five reported sightings followed up and twenty of those checked out in detail.

  Needle, Ellie thought. Haystack.

  If she sat at her desk with only her computer as company for very much longer, she thought she might take off her shoe and put the heel right through the screen.

  A click of the cursor and the name Walters blinked back at her. Walters, Bernard. An address in Ely, the outskirts actually, north beyond the hospital. Corsa GLS, green, 1196 cc. Two previous attempts to contact the owner made, no response, not at home, flagged for a follow-up call.

  What more excuse did she need?

  For once the road north was reasonably clear; the sky above a faint blue, barely distinguishable from grey; the temperature a not unreasonable nine degrees. Ellie plugged her iPod into the car's stereo and thumbed the wheel round to Artists and then to Laura Marling—something about her songs, the single 'New Romantic' especially, that caught just the right blend of naivety and determination. Just because I'm young and still maybe just a little bit foolish, doesn't mean you can piss me around. She liked that.

  The house, when she came to it, was a surprise. Situated at the end of a street of perfectly normal thirties houses, bungalows some of them, it was an elongated cube of glass and steel with a shallow rectangular pond at the front surrounded by pale grey stones.

  The door was at the side, the sign alongside it, so discreet as to be almost unnoticed, read Bernard Walters, Architect.

  More in hope than expectation, Ellie rang the bell.

  The voice, asking the nature of her business, came from a speaker she couldn't see.

  'Detective Constable Chapin, Cambridgeshire police.'

  'I'll be right down.'

  The door swung open on a man wearing a white shirt and pale drawstring chinos, leather moccasins on his feet. Forty? Forty-five? Blue-grey eyes.

  'Bernard Walters?'

  'Yes.'

  'Are you the owner of a green Vauxhall Corsa?'

  'Yes, why? Is there a problem?'

  'Not necessarily.'

  'Then come in, please.' He nodded in the direction of the adjacent house. 'Give the curtain twitchers something to mull over other than stair lifts and Complan. Attractive young woman calling in the middle of the day.' He grinned. 'Lots of scope for addled minds.'

  Ellie
followed him along a narrow corridor, up a flight of spiral stairs and into a room that took up the whole floor and was part living space, part studio: architectural models on two long tables, blueprints on the walls, computers, green plants, neat piles of magazines, leather and chrome chairs. Choral music was coming from a pair of speakers attached to the wall.

  'Coffee?'

  'No, thanks, it's fine.'

  'Easy to make two as one.'

  'All right, then. Thanks.'

  While she was waiting, Ellie looked at one of the models, a seemingly large building on several levels, with smaller buildings close by, all surrounded by green space and avenues of tiny trees, matchstick people wandering pleasantly between.

  'What's this?'

  'A new school.'

  'Where for?'

  'The Netherlands. I've just come back from yet another series of consultations. Inspecting sites. Money, of course, that's the problem, though not as much as if I were building it here.'

  He brought over the coffee in tiny espresso cups, white china with a gold rim.

  'And this?' Ellie asked as she sat. 'The music?'

  'Pergolesi. You like it?'

  Ellie smiled. 'Not very much.'

  '"Stabat Mater". Tend to listen to it first thing every morning. Loud. Blows away the cobwebs.'

  'And now?'

  'Just background. Helps me think.' He reached on to the table for a small remote. 'I'll turn it off.'

  'There's no need.'

  'It's okay.' The voices died on the air. 'Now, what's this about my ageing car? Crawled through its last MOT, just. Taxed, insured. Not been involved in any accidents as far as I know, not recently, although I can't be sure.'

  'How come?'

  'Um?'

  'How come you can't be sure?'

  'Oh, I lent it to a friend. Just for a few days, while I was away. My accountant, actually. He was having trouble with his own car and, living out in the middle of nowhere as he does, he'd be really stuck without one. I gave him a spare set of keys. Asked him to come in and water the plants as payment.'

  'This friend ...'

  'Simon.'

  'Simon Pierce?'

  'You know him?'

  'How long ...' Ellie could feel her mouth beginning to go dry. 'You've known him how long?'

  'Ooh, not long at all. The accountant I had before jacked it in. Went off to be a Buddhist. Nepal, somewhere. Simon was local, more or less. Seems decent enough, good at what he does. Very. Little weird, maybe. Borderline strange. Sometimes I feel like suggesting three square meals a day and a good psychotherapist, but then, you know ... other people's lives. As long as he gets the job done, that's all that matters to me.'

  Ellie was sitting forward, her espresso barely touched. 'The dates he would have borrowed the car, could you be exact?'

  'Yes. Up to a point. They'd have corresponded with the dates I was away. Monday of last week to when I got back, the day before yesterday. Just over a week. During which he could have taken it at any time. All I know is it was here when I returned.'

  'And he had used it? You're sure of that?'

  'Yes, I think so. It was parked differently and someone had clearly been in the house.' He smiled. 'None of the plants had died.'

  'You didn't check the milometer or anything?'

  'Good God, no! But listen, why is this all so important? Was it involved in an accident or something?'

  'Not exactly. Not an accident.'

  'And you're not going to tell me what.'

  Ellie shook her head. 'Not right now.'

  'Later, maybe? Some other time?'

  'Maybe.'

  'Over dinner?'

  Ellie laughed. 'I have to make a call.'

  'Go ahead.' He was quickly to his feet. 'I'll go downstairs, leave you to it.'

  When Ellie followed him down, several minutes later, he was mixing some kind of doughy mixture in a yellow bowl.

  'These keys,' she said, 'the ones you gave Pierce, could they have given him access to anywhere else?'

  'No, just the car and the house.'

  'There are no other keys hanging around?'

  'Yes. Yes, of course.'

  She followed him back upstairs. On the wall, behind where Ellie had been sitting, was a board from which several sets of labelled keys hung from plastic-covered hooks.

  'All there,' Walters said. 'All there except ... except this one here has been put back in the wrong place.'

  'You're sure?'

  He gave a little self-deprecating laugh. 'Anyone as anally retentive as I am ... Yes, I'm sure.'

  He could have taken them and put them back, Ellie thought, taken them and had them copied. 'What are they the keys to?'

  'A house for a client. At Pymoor, just outside Little Downham. Half-finished and he ran out of money.' He shrugged. 'These days, it happens more than you might think.'

  'Can you show me on a map?' Ellie said, trying, not altogether successfully, to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  73

  The house Bernard Walters had designed was on a plot a little way from the centre of the village, past the Methodist Chapel and along a narrow lane shielded by a stand of tall poplars. The basic shell had been erected, the ground floor virtually completed, a mixture of breeze-block and brick, windows now boarded over; sheets of thick polythene flapped loose around the planks and scaffolding on the upper levels.

  Will and Helen sat with Ellie Chapin in the first car. Jim Straley and two others in the car behind. An ambulance, just in case, stood round near the Cricket and Social Club on Pymoor Lane.

  Save for the wind through the trees, nothing moved.

  'You think she's in there?' Helen asked.

  Will turned in his seat. 'Ellie, you've got the keys?'

  'Here.'

  Will took them in his hand and, after a moment's consideration, handed them back. 'No sense us all barging in at once. If she is inside, scare the life out of her.'

  'You're sure?'

  'We'll be right behind you. Now get along, before I change my mind.'

  With a broad smile, Ellie got out of the car and started to walk, slowly, towards the house.

  'Sentimentalist,' Helen said scornfully, starting to follow.

  'Good management, some might say.'

  'Some might say you were trying to earn your way into her knickers. Gratitude fuck, I think that's what it's called.'

  'Not that you'd know.'

  'Not where you're concerned.'

  By now Ellie had reached the door. A brief hesitation, a glance round to where Will and Helen were waiting, and she fitted the key into the lock, turned it, and the next moment was lost to sight inside.

  Inside it was black, almost completely dark, just a few narrow shafts of light where the window boards failed to completely fit.

  'Beatrice?' She whispered the name, once, twice, once more.

  Over by the far wall something stirred.

  'Beatrice?'

  By now her eyes had become more accustomed to the levels of light.

  'Beatrice, is that you?'

  Whatever was under the blankets moved, fell back, moved again.

  Cautiously, so as not to scare her more than was necessary, Ellie went across and knelt down. A frightened face turned towards her and then away, back beneath the blanket that had been covering her head.

  'Beatrice, it's all right. My name's Ellie. I'm with the police. You're safe now. You can come home.'

  Slowly, gradually, the blanket came down, and, as it did so, Will appeared, shadowed, in the doorway, and the girl grabbed at Ellie's arm, fingers pressing into the skin.

  'It's okay. It's another officer, that's all.'

  'You okay?' Will asked.

  'I'm fine. We're fine.'

  'Okay, then.' The shadow disappeared.

  Ellie took hold of the girl's hand. 'Come on, let's go. Let's get you out of here. You want some help to stand? There. There. That's it. Good. I've got you. That's it. Lean on me.'

&nbs
p; Seeing them step out into the light, into the middle of that quiet lane, that quiet village, Will had to turn away, lest the tears flood his eyes.

  Ruth would say afterwards that the moment she heard Anita Chandra say her name at the other end of the phone, she knew what would follow. Something about the tone.

  'Mrs Lawson, Ruth, there's good news.'

  And when, not so very much later—though, of course, it seemed an age, an eternity—she saw Beatrice for the first time in almost nine days, her daughter looking pale, nervous and surprisingly small as she walked between Helen and Ellie, holding fast to Ellie's hand, she thought something inside her would break.

  Beatrice clung to Ellie's hand almost to the point where Ruth and Andrew stood waiting, both of them with tears threatening to blind their eyes, and only, with a few paces to go, did she dare to let go and launch herself into her parents' arms. The three of them clinging to one another, sobbing, all of them sobbing, Ruth bending low, Andrew on his knees, and Beatrice lost between them, squashed, hugged, loved.

  Those were the pictures that would appear in the papers, front page, syndicated round the world, the photographer who'd received the tip-off paying for his information gladly, a nice little earner and why not, spreading joy from Reykjavik to Port Stanley. Good news, not too much of it around.

  ***

  When Will caught up to Jim Straley at Padnal Fen there was no one there: doors locked, windows latched, outbuildings empty. His first thought, somehow Pierce got wind of what had happened and made off while he could. Done a runner, flown the coop. Then Straley pointed back towards the road, a grey Toyota Corolla slowly making its way towards the house, careful driver, thirty miles an hour or less.

  They waited, out of sight, while the car came to a standstill and Pierce had got out, reaching into the rear before straightening and starting towards the house, a plastic shopping bag in each hand.

  'Terrible, that,' Straley said, 'for the environment.'

  Startled, Pierce dropped one of the bags and, for a moment, looked as if he were about to make a dash back to the car. Biscuits, bottled water, Geobars and tinned sweetcorn rolled out on to the dusty ground.

  Stooping, Will scooped up a packet of digestives. 'Stocking up?'

  'Yes, I just ... just a few things ... running low.'