Lane: A Case For Willows And Lane

by Peter Grainger

  Keeping low, Lane got to her feet and pointed into the wood, away from the path. The undergrowth seemed to be clearer in the direction of the open ground beyond, and as the one who had the torch was no longer in direct sight – there was just a flickering glow some sixty or seventy yards away – Lane took Emily’s arm and began to move. There would be noise, inevitably, but the man behind would have to take decisions as to how he responded; she would prefer to have him running after them and making plenty of noise to him creeping up on them in silence. And if she could reach the open ground where the light was better, she would have the chance of a shot, if the worst came to the worst. Emily Willows would just have to look away…

  Robert Willows had never been into the office of anyone higher up the food-chain than a detective superintendent, and so when he went with Harley to ACC Russell’s room, he was, despite the extraordinary circumstances, still somewhat apprehensive. He knew already about the folder and it didn’t bother him in the least; what angered him was that Marie would have been frightened by all that. A part of him suspected that his career might be over by now anyway, and so it would make little difference if he assaulted the two internal investigations officers before he was escorted from the building.

  ‘Sit down, Sergeant Willows.’

  He did as he was told, and Jack Harley took another seat to the side of the large desk, as if he expected to be acting as a tennis umpire.

  Russell said, ‘We haven’t found them yet, in case you are wondering why you’re here. Let’s assume that no news is good news.’

  Willows was already experienced enough as a detective to know that that was often not the case, but rather than saying so, he simply nodded.

  ‘But we might have got a lead. Superintendent Harley?’

  ‘Just a few minutes ago we learned that the county communications centre took a routine call about half an hour ago. Someone who lives on the Ravens’ Tor road up on the moor reported a disturbance near their house – a car parked outside and two women standing in the road. It looked like they were going towards the house and then they got back into the car and drove off. Another vehicle went by a few seconds later. The occupant of the house thought that the second vehicle might have been following or pursuing the first one.’

  Willows had to choose then – be the worried son or the policeman? Which would be of the most use?

  He said, ‘Did the person who made the report say anything about the vehicles, sir?’

  ‘Not that I know of – too dark, I expect. Communications had noted it as no immediate action required, but someone here spotted it and we sent a car to the address several minutes ago. We also have people working on maps of the area. The helicopter has been instructed to follow the A38 east but they’re on standby to turn around. That brings you fully up to speed, sergeant.’

  They were humouring him to an extent, trying to make him feel a part of the operation, but there was nothing practical that they would allow him to do. He understood the reasons why but said anyway, ‘Ravens’ Tor. I know that area vaguely. It’s pretty remote, lots of one-track roads. It’s mostly sheep and forestry. I could take a look at the maps, sir.’

  Russell didn’t want to refuse him directly, so he tried to head him off.

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking, Willows, what sort of a person is your mother?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘How will she be coping in a situation like this? I’m sorry to ask but if this report did concern her and the Lane woman, her likely state of mind might be pertinent as to how we handle things.’

  It was tenuous, of course, and Russell caught the glance from Superintendent Harley that said as much. But Willows was willing to answer the question.

  ‘Tougher than she looks, sir. When my father died quite unexpectedly a few years ago, we all imagined she would sort of, well, go to pieces… But she didn’t at all. She grieved like anyone else but she never let it throw her off balance, not even for a moment as far as I could tell. What about the neighbour, though? Do we know any more about her, sir?’

  Willows was looking at Harley now, remembering what had been said earlier – that she was a woman who would be able to take care of herself and his mother. They must know something more by now. Why weren’t they telling him?

  There was a pause in the conversation, as if the two senior officers were both waiting for the other either to tell Willows the truth or find another way of evading it, and then the internal phone on ACC Russell’s desk buzzed. Russell seized it quickly, said his surname and then listened.

  ‘Yes, he is. I’ll hand over – give him the details.’

  Harley took the receiver, and Willows could see a change in the expression on the assistant chief constable’s face. Harley meanwhile was asking short questions and then noting down the answers. ‘How long ago now?’ ‘Double check the direction they left in, please.’ ‘Roughly how many more houses that way before they reach the top of the moor?’ and ending with ‘Stay on the line.’

  Harley looked up at Willows and said, ‘Two women, one older and more heavily built, probably with permed hair – it was a lady who called this in. The other woman was younger, taller and looked skinny in comparison, with short, dark hair. She was the one who got back in and drove the car. Neither had a coat or jacket which the witness thought was odd. The lady could not distinguish the colour of the car but her daughter has a Skoda Fabia and she thought it looked similar to that. The other car, the one that seemed to be following them, was bigger, and was being driven quickly, too quickly to get any detail.’

  Robert Willows said, ‘It’s them, sir.’

  ACC Russell snapped his fingers to get Harley’s attention.

  ‘Jack, tell that car to get up the road now – tell the witness to lock her doors and await another visit from us. Then get every other vehicle involved into that area – I want them all showing up on the interactive map in five minutes. Go and do that now, and take Willows with you. We don’t have time to bugger about, this has gone on long enough. I’ll get the chopper turned around before I come down. Go!’

  They made it out of the forest and onto the open ground quickly and with surprisingly little noise, but the man behind must have heard something. Twenty yards away from the trees, Lane brought them both to stop and spent ten valuable seconds listening. Maybe she detected more snapping twigs or a rustle of leaves on jeans but she could not be certain; what was certain was that he had not set off after them in a headlong chase. Why not, Lane? In another three or four seconds she had a possible answer. They will both have phones – whoever finds the women lets the other one know, and carries on following them until both men are back together.

  The ground beneath their feet was a mixture of rank grass and old heather. Here and there was the stump of a tree, sawn off close to the surface; not long ago this too had been forested. Lane looked up as she began to move again, heading uphill. The stars told her that they were still going north, too, but she had only a rudimentary grasp of the local geography. It was instinct alone that was telling her to go to higher ground – from there she would be able to see any approaching lights.

  Emily was puffing again but she had shrugged off Lane’s hand from her arm, saying that she was alright, that she could see where she was going well enough. She even found the time and breath to mutter to herself, ‘Of course, this is all my fault…’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Only this morning I was complaining to Robert that I was bored. Now look what’s happened… Hostages to fortune… I should know better at my age.’

  ‘You’re doing fine, Mrs Willows. Just keep moving. They’ve been trying to catch us for a couple of hours and they haven’t managed it yet. Girl power!’

  Against the starry sky, Emily saw Lane raise a fist in mock triumph. It was ludicrous and she had to smile a little.

  ‘Emily, my dear – not Mrs Willows any more. Can we stop this name nonsense? I don’t want to die not knowing yours. If it’s too embarrassing, just make
one up. It isn’t Cynthia or something, is it?’

  Lane was moving forward and upwards but looking back and down every few seconds – and still there was no sign. Why couldn’t she see the torch heading back this way?

  ‘We’re not going to die. And it’s Summer.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s something to be cheerful about, I suppose. This would all be worse if we were cold and wet.’

  ‘That’s my name – Summer.’

  Emily Willows stumbled a little as if it had taken her by surprise, and Lane stopped and waited for her.

  ‘Oh, I see! Summer Lane. That’s a very beautiful name.’

  ‘Just a name. A rose by any other, and all that.’

  ‘No. You do it a disservice. It’s unusual and…’

  She was losing her breath again, and Lane wondered whether there would be anywhere they could rest. They were three hundred feet above the woods now, with a panoramic, dimly lit view of the open ground they had crossed.

  ‘It’s unusual and beautiful, and you should be proud of it, not embarrassed by it. I expect I sound like your mother now, don’t I?’

  Lane thought, even up here with a couple of psychos on our tail, she’s still digging away; I’ve had less determined DCs working for me than Emily Willows. Now she’s after a bit of family background.

  ‘My parents were the last of the New Age Travellers. I say ‘were’ but the really tragic thing is that they still are. They live in a yurt somewhere in north Wales. My father grows organic vegetables and my mother makes organic pottery. I’m a great disappointment to them, thank goodness. But I suppose it could have been worse – they might have christened me Star.’

  Emily was quiet for a moment, acknowledging the most sustained contribution that Lane had yet made to their conversations, and no doubt also processing the new information. Below them, emptiness, darkness and silence. Lane allowed for the possibility, nothing more, that the men had given up the chase. Standing here and watching made as much sense as anything else for now.

  ‘In what way do you think you are a disappointment – Summer?’

  The name was added on intentionally and with a little up-speak flourish, as if Emily took a particular delight in saying it.

  ‘How long have we got? Maybe all night, I suppose. I’ll just select a few highlights.’

  Emily was looking up at the face surrounded by stars. In this cold but kindly light it was a much younger face, and she realised then that the lines she had first thought were those of age were not – they were the lines of pain.

  ‘When I was seven I insisted on wearing school uniform, even though my parents had deliberately moved the caravan into the catchment of a primary school that didn’t require one. They explained to me that they didn’t want me to become institutionalised. I was seven, remember. So I was the only kid wearing a skirt, a blouse, white socks and black shoes. Everyone else was in jeans and T shirts.

  ‘When I was twelve and realised that they really did believe that crystals had magic powers, I did my best to become a Roman Catholic. I’d met a girl who was and I persuaded her parents to let me go with her to some of the classes. I told them I wanted to be a nun, my parents, and they couldn’t say no you are not because, well, that would be against their principles, but I expect it really pissed them off for a while.’

  Emily Willows tutted, and Lane wondered whether it was at the stories of such an ungrateful child before remembering that her use of the colloquial was the most likely cause.

  ‘So they didn’t know whether to be pleased or not when I did well at A level and said I would go to university to study accountancy. I did, and when they sort of came round to the idea, I dropped out. All I needed then was the job that they would find most horrifying of all.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘I joined the Metropolitan police. Got in at the first attempt. I must have been part of the latest diversity-in-recruitment programme. Someone liked my wacky background and the fact that my grandmother was Armenian. They probably assumed I was a lesbian as well. They must have been able to tick no end of boxes.’

  Here were such riches that Emily Willows didn’t know where to begin. She listed all the salient details to herself for future consideration, and then decided that bringing matters up to date would be the best course for now.

  ‘But you said you are retired. What happened?’

  A pause. Lane’s eyes were scanning the distant area of greater darkness that was the edge of the forest they had left behind. Overhead, the stars seemed to have grown in brightness and number – there was a profusion of them now.

  ‘Like I said, I got injured. A broken leg. To be fair, it was badly broken. They listened to the surgeon and decided I wouldn’t be able to work again, so that was that.’

  ‘And now you’re going to run a marathon…’

  ‘Yes. And when I have, they’ll have to take me back, won’t they?’

  Emily thought it best to treat the question as a rhetorical one. But so much had been explained now, and she had to say something about that.

  ‘How fortunate that you of all people moved in next door! I mean, with regard to today and fortunate for me. You might not think so at all. It was fortunate, wasn’t it?’

  The thought that followed appeared from nowhere: ‘What I mean is, you’re not undercover or something are you?’

  Lane said, mostly to herself, ‘I wish…’

  Something had caught her eye. Something moving along the edge of the open ground directly below the hillside where they were standing. She could not see whether it was one thing or two. There was no torch but they might have turned it off. Whoever it was, they were not heading back to their car. They were still searching, still coming on.

  Lane said, ‘Rest over. Let’s keep going.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  They climbed another two hundred feet, and with each one the light seemed a little brighter. The reason eventually became apparent. Looking east along the valley whose side they had climbed, a low moon had appeared on the horizon – a low, almost full moon, orange in the narrow band of atmosphere that sustains us but soon it would be silvery and bright.

  Survival is about adaptability – those who adapt the quickest survive the longest. Lane considered the increasing light as she took Emily across the top of the ridge that lay like a plateau on the side of the hill; was the moon a help or a hindrance? Both parties would be more visible to each other. Given a choice, she would have chosen the darkness anyway, was quite comfortable moving like this, using her wits and her ears as much as her eyes, but the two men had shown themselves to be perfectly capable of matching her moves. So the moonlight would change things again, and Emily was tiring again.

  With each pause, the recovery was taking a little longer. They weren’t high enough for the air to be thinning – it was simply that she was an overweight, middle-aged woman who took no exercise. She had done well to get this far, and had not complained once, but realistically she would not be able to keep going all night. There was no chance of finding help up here, and so, somehow, she had to hide Emily Willows.

  A hand came from behind and tugged at her arm, and Lane thought, this is it, she can’t go on. She stopped, turned and saw that Emily was pointing away to her left.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Lane could see a shape, low and rectangular – some sort of building. They changed direction and made for it cautiously. It was a hut, something built by the foresters so that they could sit down and eat their lunch or take cover from wind and rain. There was no door or window, just an open entrance, but inside, as Lane felt around with her hands, she found a bench running along the rear wall. The floor was bare earth but dry.

  Neither the starlight nor the coming moonlight penetrated the little hut – it was as dark as a cave in there. Beyond and above it, bracken began to take over the hillside, bracken that was thick and impenetrable, but there was a path through it, climbing on up the slope that was steeper than before. Lane left Emily s
tanding by the hut and went a short distance on the path; broken ground here and there, rocks beginning to poke like vertebrae through the thin skin of soil, as if the hill was the hunched back of some monstrous sleeping giant. She, Lane, could climb this but Emily wouldn’t manage ten yards of it.

  Lane went back to the hut and stood outside the doorway, watching the hillside.

  ‘Well?’

  Emily could see that the next phase of the operation was being planned. So Lane had been a police officer… Probably not in Traffic or HR. She thought about Robert then and the other officers that she had come to know through him. None of them resembled even remotely the young woman at her side, who, apparently, was planning to run a marathon to prove that she was fit enough to re-join the Metropolitan Police. As career plans go, it really wasn’t very convincing, but then, Emily reminded herself, because she had reached this conclusion some time ago, I think she is a rather troubled soul.

  Lane said, ‘If they’re not coming, this is as good a place as any to wait until morning.’

  ‘And if they are?’

  ‘Depends who turns up. We’ll think of something. Go inside and have a sit down.’

  The large interactive screen on the wall of the Operations Control Centre was live and in real time. Robert Willows could see tracers for four police vehicles on the satellite image of the moor, and he knew which of them was the one that had visited the witness who had made the call. It had travelled quickly north and had just reported in; they were on the outskirts of Temple Hill and had seen no sign of either target vehicle. They were awaiting instructions.

  Two more police vehicles were heading up from the A38, one of them containing the four officers, two of them armed, who had been sent earlier to arrest the occupants of the red Golf. There was also a police Range Rover coming in from the north, covering the high road over the top of the moor; any car trying to cross to the other side that way would be intercepted by them.