Cherringham--The Vanishing Tourist

by Neil Richards

  Now, he was glad to get off the busy Oxford ring road, looking forward to being back in this beautiful city.

  He knew he wasn’t going to get much time to sightsee. But just to be amongst all the old buildings, the colleges, churches — and to walk on those buzzing pavements full of students and tourists was more than worth the drive.

  But as the GPS took him through run-down terraced streets and graffiti-covered estates, he realised — of course — that the headquarters of Babcock’s Coaches wasn’t going to be anywhere near the tourist areas it served.

  At last, after being stuck in grinding traffic for twenty minutes, he saw a patch of rough ground behind a shuttered factory and a sign on the gate: Babcock’s Coaches’.

  He pulled off the road and drove through the gate.

  A couple of coaches were parked up next to a trailer: a portly man with lanky hair and a cigarette in his mouth stood on a chair cleaning the windshield of one of the coaches with a mop.

  Jack parked next to the trailer. Through the window, he could see a young guy head down at a computer. He walked over to the man on cleaning duty.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Bookings in the trailer, mate,” said the man without looking round.

  “Thanks,” said Jack. “But I’m not here for a booking. Was hoping to have a chat with Mr. Babcock, the owner.”

  “You’re looking at him,” said Babcock, still swabbing the windshield with soapy water. “But you won’t be for long. I’m supposed to be in bloody Swindon twenty minutes ago.”

  “Well then, I won’t keep you,” said Jack. “I’m trying to get some information on a gentleman who took one of your tours and appears to have gone missing.”

  Jack watched as the man spun round, then climbed down off the chair, and propped the mop up against the front of the coach.

  Well, that got his attention, Jack thought.

  “And just who the hell are you?”

  “Name’s Brennan. Jack Brennan.”

  “You’re no cop.”

  “No.” Then, thinking it useful: “Not anymore.”

  “So what are you?”

  “Friend of the missing man’s sister.”

  “That bloody woman, eh?” said Babcock. “With all her questions? Well, I can’t tell you anything I didn’t tell her already on the phone.”

  Jack sensed this was a sensitive subject.

  Which usually meant he was onto something.

  “Could be. Still — if you don’t mind — she believes her brother got off the coach in Cherringham and didn’t get back on.”

  “She believes wrong. We picked up the tour group that day in London and we took the whole tour group back to London. Every single one of them.”

  “Not what she says,” said Jack adding a bit of edge to his voice.

  “She’s upset, confused. She’s not thinking straight. Americans, you know.” Then the man squinted, grinning at his own dig. “Oops …”

  Jack didn’t react. “Maybe,” he said, as if he didn’t believe a word of it. “How about I talk to the driver that day?”

  “You’re lucky day. You’re talking to him. I was at the wheel that day. Can’t get enough drivers. People don’t like hard work any more.”

  “Okay — so you counted the tourists on and off at each stop?”

  “Always do,” said Babcock. “Golden rule.”

  “And the numbers added up?”

  “If they didn’t I wouldn’t have left, now would I?”

  “Suppose not,” said Jack. “You keep some kind of a log?”

  “Don’t need one,” said Babcock, tapping the side of his head. “It’s all up here mate.”

  Jack nodded.

  He knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere with this guy. The shutters were down and the man's guard was up for some reason — so he was going to have to find a way around them.

  “I guess that answers it,” he said, smiling. “Had to ask you know? Sorry I’ve held you up.”

  He watched Babcock break into a toothy grin and wipe his hair back.

  “No problem,” said the driver. “Customer care — it’s what we’re about.”

  “Sure,” said Jack. “I’d better be off. Oh — anywhere round here I can grab a sandwich?”

  “Yeah,” said Babcock, wiping his hands with a handkerchief. “Tesco’s — down the Cowley Road there.”

  “Mind if I leave the car?”

  “No problem. Parking in this city’s a pain in the arse. I’d lock it up if I were you though. Can’t be too careful round here.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Babcock.”

  “Name’s Ray. Any time.”

  Jack gave the guy a brief wave and headed back towards the Sprite.

  Behind him, he heard the whoosh of the pneumatic door as Babcock climbed into his coach.

  He took his time pulling the roof back on the little sports car and when he saw the big bus draw away and head for the gate, Jack gave its driver a friendly wave.

  He waited for it to disappear down the Cowley Road, then left his car, and headed for the trailer.

  *

  The young guy Jack had seen working at the computer in the trailer-office couldn’t have been more helpful.

  Jack explained that he needed to see some old CCTV footage from one of the coaches and that Ray had okayed it.

  “You saw us chatting outside, right?”

  The guy, Jimmy, was just a student working part-time to earn some extra cash.

  “Soon as Mr. Babcock knew I was doing computer science he was all over me,” he said proudly, as he made Jack a cup of instant coffee. “The network was a bit of a mess, but I’ve got it well sorted now.”

  “Ray said you were quite a wizard, Jimmy,” said Jack.

  So, it’s a white lie, he thought. No big deal …

  Certainly not the first time.

  “Don’t know about that,” said Jimmy. “But if I can’t find what you’re looking for — it ain’t here.”

  “I’m in good hands then,” said Jack. “Let me tell you what I need …”

  *

  Ten minutes later and Jack had all the CCTV footage from the Cotswolds Heritage Coach Tour loaded into a folder on a separate computer and was scrolling through the camera feeds one by one.

  There were eight cameras in all on the coach: four exterior and four interior.

  Jack was amazed at how the quality had improved since the days back in NYPD when he’d had to sit through hours of grainy subway footage trying to identify a perp or look for pickpockets.

  Now he could fast forward through a day’s data in just minutes.

  The hardest thing was identifying Mary’s brother Patrick. He found an interior camera that looked directly onto the faces of the tourists as they climbed onto the coach — all 48 of them.

  But when he ran through the morning pickup at the hotel in London, he didn’t see the New Yorker.

  He rewound the footage and started again.

  The last man onto the coach was old, with white hair and a stoop.

  Jack saw his frail hand grab onto a rail as he pulled himself up the steps. It was only when he seemed to stare into the camera that Jack recognised him as the once-cheery father from the photo.

  Unbelievable.

  In fifteen years the man had aged thirty.

  Whatever had happened to him — illness, loss, grief — there was no doubt it was Patrick O’Connor.

  Jack looked over at the student who was catching up with his friends on Facebook.

  “Got a favour to ask …”

  “Sure.”

  “You see this guy I’ve got on the screen? Any chance you can print that for me?”

  The student got up and came over to Jack’s computer, then peered in.

  “Can do better than that,” he said. “Should be able to crop it, sharpen it.”

  “Terrific,” said Jack. “Maybe do me some extra copies?”

  “Like a missing person notice?”

  Smart kid indeed …


  “Something like that,” said Jack, turning back to the screen.

  Jack now raced through the footage, recognising landmarks in the Cotswolds that he himself had visited, until the tour reached Cherringham.

  He picked the exterior door camera — and watched the tourists emerge. Patrick appeared at the top of the steps and seemed to pause, to take in the village.

  Another of the tourists appeared behind him, took him by the arm, and helped him down the steps to join the crowd out on the pavement.

  Then a surprise — Jack saw a figure he recognised with the crowd: Will Goodchild, the local historian.

  Whaddya know, he thought. So Will makes a few quid as a tour guide.

  Will gathered up the crowd and they shuffled away.

  For two hours of real time all the camera showed was the empty bus, Babcock grabbing his thermos for a hot tea or coffee, outside, the occasional local passing by.

  Then the crowd returned and one by one filed back onto the coach.

  Jack noted Babcock chatting by the door. He certainly wasn’t counting his passengers — in spite of his insistence that he had.

  So Jack counted them aboard: Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven …

  Forty-seven.

  The door closed and the coach pulled away, out onto the high street, heading toward the highway.

  Babcock said he counted all forty-eight passengers.

  Just as his sister suspected, Patrick O’Connor had vanished in Cherringham.

  6. The Way out of the Village

  “Oh gosh I feel dreadful!” said Will Goodchild. “It’s all my doing — you know. I lost him, didn’t I? The police will have to be involved, in fact I should probably turn myself in and face the music!"

  Sarah put a reassuring hand on Will’s shoulder.

  “Will, it’s not your fault.”

  “No? He just happened to go missing on my watch and it’s not my fault? Have you chaps not heard of in loco parentis?”

  Sarah saw Jack emerge from behind the Remembrance Altar and walk over to the pew where she and Will were sitting. The stained glass window behind him glowed in the dying light of the sun.

  “Will, he was a grown man, not a child,” said Jack. “He was responsible for himself.”

  “I knew I should have said something to that dreadful driver.”

  “Counting them back on the bus wasn’t your job, Will,” said Sarah.

  But she knew he would never see it that way.

  From the moment she and Jack had contacted the historian and asked him to walk them through his tour itinerary — and despite their reassurances — he’d been in a state of heightened anxiety.

  First Jack had shown him the printed screen-grab of Patrick from the coach.

  Then they’d speed-walked the tour route in the last dregs of the evening light, with Jack asking questions along the way, trying to jog Will’s memory of the day when Patrick went missing.

  And where he might have gone missing.

  Finally, it had worked.

  Fragment by fragment, Will’s memories of the lone tourist had emerged: Patrick at the back of the crowd at the stocks; Patrick by the Civil War cross; Patrick in the church standing at the Memorial Altar …

  But gazing at the stones, thinking deeply Will finally turned, “I don't remember seeing him in the graveyard. And I’m not certain he was at Huffington's either.”

  In fact, Will remembered that the waitress in the café had queried the numbers for afternoon tea. They didn’t add up.

  There was one cream tea left over.

  “Something must have happened to him when the tour left the church,” Jack said.

  “But what?” said Will.

  Sarah looked up at Jack, who now stood in front of the pew, with the altar behind him. The soft lights of the church had come on and the place had a reassuring stillness.

  She only ever came in here for weddings and funerals.

  But now that most of the pews had been replaced by comfortable chairs, it seemed less stuffy and old-fashioned — more like a meeting place.

  It was somewhere that many in the village used to reflect, to find peace.

  “I don’t know,” said Jack.

  “You must have some ideas — some theories?”

  “None that make much sense, Will,” said Jack. “We know he disappeared here. But it hardly seems planned. He left his bag and passport in London, so we know he wasn’t going anywhere — not running off to France or something. Did he head back to London on his own somehow and vanish there? Or …”

  “Did something happen to him here?”

  “That's what we’d like to find out, Will,” Sarah said.

  “Maybe he wanted to disappear?” Will said. “I mean, you said he looked way older than his years. Maybe …” Will hesitated at the implications of his words, “he wanted to disappear. Forever.”

  Jack looked at Sarah, and she guessed that he was likely thinking the same thing.

  If that was possibly true then she had a question.

  “Why pick Cherringham?”

  “Good point,” Jack said. “Why here, this stop on the tour?”

  “I’ve done a lot of cross-checking of databases online,” said Sarah. “And I can’t find anything that remotely connects him with this area.”

  “Yes and — sorry — if he committed suicide then surely somebody would have stumbled across the …” said Will.

  Funny, Sarah thought watching Will so fully engaged in this little game of speculation that she and Jack often played.

  At least it seemed to have nudged Will away from worrying about his responsibility in the matter.

  Nothing like a good mystery to distract someone, she thought.

  “You’d expect so,” said Jack. “I mean, even if he went down to the river — someone would have found him by now.”

  “Even if he somehow just wandered down there and fell in,” said Sarah.

  Will rubbed his chin.

  A new addition to our little detective business, Sarah thought.

  “But what if he had an accident somewhere else in the village, somewhere remote?”

  “Will, I can’t think of anywhere in Cherringham that is that dangerous or remote. Proper paths everywhere, right?” Sarah said.

  She watched Will nod and shrug.

  “Which leaves two options,” said Jack. “One — he wandered well out of the village, deep into the countryside and had an accident there …”

  “Very possible,” said Will. “Quite the walk, though. And again you’d think somebody would have seen him. People do notice things in Cherringham!”

  Jack laughed at that, “You are right there, Will. Okay, another idea. Somebody carried out some kind of attack — or abduction.”

  “But why?” said Sarah. “He was just a tourist on a day trip — wasn’t he?”

  “Far as we know,” said Jack. “Sarah, maybe tomorrow you should see what you can dig up about him online? No connection to the village. But what was his story back home, back in Brooklyn?”

  “Now you’ve got me thinking, Jack. What if he was mugged?” said Will. “You know there were a couple of attacks on tourists last year over towards Chipping Norton.”

  “True,” said Sarah. “But they were on people who were carrying serious pieces of kit — cameras, iPads, you know?”

  “Patrick’s sister said he didn’t even have a phone,” said Jack. “Don’t know about a camera …”

  Sarah watched as Will’s face seemed to sag again. “God, it’s all my fault,” said Will, shaking his head.

  Sarah watched Jack lean forward, so close to the historian.

  “Will — I promise you — this is not your fault. Sarah and I are going to prove that. Okay?”

  “I’d like to believe you, Jack, but I don’t see how.”

  Sarah saw Jack looking at her as he addressed Will.

  “Somebody in this village must have seen Patrick O’Connor that day. He was white-haired, frail. He di
dn’t know his way around. He would have looked like he didn’t belong. He will have stood out. And if we have to talk to everyone in Cherringham, we’ll get that sighting, Will. And then we’ll know what happened. Won’t we, Sarah?”

  When Jack said those words, Sarah knew why he had led major investigations back in New York.

  His determination. Commitment.

  Sheer doggedness.

  She also knew why she liked and trusted him so much. Jack would solve this, if for no other reason than to ease Will’s worry.

  “We will, Jack,” she said, believing it 100 percent.

  She watched Jack straighten up.

  “And you know what?” he said. “If we don’t let Sarah get home to her kids, there’ll be another missing person alert around here.”

  “Oh, I’m not sure about that, Jack,” said Sarah. “I think they’d only raise the alarm when the pizza supply in the freezer ran out.”

  “Well, if you do solve this,” said Will, getting up, “I shall certainly buy you both dinner. And maybe you’d like your own free tour. Bet there are amazing things about our little village that you two don't know!”

  “Dinner — and the tour — it is,” said Jack quickly. “Though something tells me Sarah and I are going to be wearing out plenty of shoe leather finding our missing tourist.”

  Sarah led the way out of the church, turning out the lights behind them as they left.

  *

  “Mr. Brennan! Mr. Brennan!! Come on now, it’s seven o’clock!”

  Jack woke instantly as Riley scrambled over the bed and raced through to the wheelhouse.

  He got up and, grabbing his dressing gown, followed the dog.

  “Get that kettle on, Jack. I haven’t got all day,” came a female voice from up top.

  Jack recognised it as Joan Buckland. Or possibly Jen Buckland.

  Whatever.

  They were twin ladies of a certain age who owned the toll bridge downriver, and who now counted Jack as one of their oldest friends, by virtue of having helped him solve a crime way back when he first came to Cherringham.

  Neither of the Bucklands were ones to stand on ceremony — quite obviously.

  “Ms. Buckland,” he said, climbing the stairs to the wheelhouse door and opening it. “Bit early to be inviting me to one of your murder mystery dinners, isn’t it?”

  “You know perfectly well I’m Jen,” said the woman, bustling in. “I hope you’re decent!”