An Unsafe Pair of Hands

by Chris Dolley

  “What about your car?”

  “It’s better where it is. I want Gabriel Marchant to see it every time he looks out the window.”

  The call to Marcus brought more bad news. The financial checks on the two Gabriels had just been faxed through. Both were clean, and both were solvent. Gabriel Marchant especially so. He had a substantial portfolio of investments.

  Shand could see another motive sliding the way of the others. The two Gabriels didn’t need money – so why extort it?

  Shand answered his own question – greed and stupidity – but with a diminishing conviction. Maybe they were both innocent? Maybe there was no plan to extort money from George’s bank, and Annabel had been killed by someone else?

  He refused to believe it. Something was going on at George’s bank. It was the only theory that made sense. And there was always money laundering. Maybe that was the source of the two Gabriels’ wealth? They’d pressured George into helping them, he’d got cold feet and needed to be taught a lesson.

  But…

  There was still the question of Annabel and the Midnight Caller. And where was the evidence against Marsh and Marchant? Something he could go to court with, something other than supposition and gut feeling.

  Which brought him back to the missing boy and the horrendous possibility that Kevin Tresco had found an important lead that Shand hadn’t even bothered to look for.

  ~

  They found a newsagents in the next village. Shand stayed in the car, praying that Kevin Tresco wouldn’t suddenly appear with a camera team in tow, while Taylor went inside to buy the paper.

  For once, Fortune left the brave to their own devices and favoured the man sliding down the front seat of his car.

  It would be but a brief accommodation.

  Shand read the paper again and culled the facts from the purple chaff. The parents. He had to interview the parents.

  Reporters were already gathered outside the Perkins family home, a brick-built Victorian mid-terrace. He ignored the bevy of questions thrown at him and led Taylor through the gate and up the short garden path.

  There was no answer to his first knock, so he tried again. Louder.

  “Go away!” shouted a woman from inside. “I’ve already told you. I’ve got nothing to say.”

  “It’s the police,” said Shand. “We’d like a word.”

  The door opened a crack, through which Mrs. Perkins squinted suspiciously at the two warrant cards.

  “About bloody time,” she said, unlatching the chain. “You should’ve been here a year ago.”

  They were shown through to the kitchen and a table covered in flour and mixing bowls. “Sit yourselves down and keep your hands off the table. I’m in the middle of baking.”

  The two policemen sat down, Shand drawing his chair as far away from the table as he could.

  “I’d like to go through the circumstances surrounding your son’s disappearance, if that’s okay, Mrs. Perkins,” said Shand.

  “Where were you a year ago? That’s what I’d like to know,” said the woman.

  “I was in London,” said Shand. “Now, it says here that your son left home on the evening of September 16th and you never saw him again. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice softening. “He got up from that table there – we’d just had tea – grabbed his coat and left.”

  She turned away, her voice breaking, and rubbed her eyes.

  Shand gave her a few seconds. “Did he say where he was going?”

  She sniffed back the tears. “’Out,’ that’s all he said. You know what kids are like.”

  Shand didn’t. But he could imagine.

  “Did he have much money with him?”

  “I don’t think so. He didn’t have a bank account or anything like that. Just a few pounds he got from his gardening jobs.”

  “It says here that he worked for Annabel Marchant.”

  “Yes, three days a week.” Her voice hardened. “Until she sacked him.”

  “Did he say why she sacked him?”

  “No, he left before he could tell me. I only found out through Ruthie. She works for the Marchants – cleaning and such.”

  “Did Ruthie say why he’d been sacked?”

  “She thought it was something to do with the girl – Pippa. From stuff she overheard. Reckoned the Marchants thought he was getting too friendly, so they sacked him and shipped the girl off to some expensive boarding school.”

  “Would Davy have tried to follow her?”

  She shook her head. “I thought he might have. I even wrote to Pippa. I got Ruthie to get me her address. But she hadn’t seen or heard from him. Nice letter.”

  She stared vacantly into space.

  “It says here that Davy was sacked the day before he left. Is that right?”

  She shrugged. “You’d have to ask Gabriel Marchant, but it sounds about right.”

  “Did he have other gardening jobs?” asked Taylor.

  “Oh, yes. He mowed most of the incomer’s lawns. And some of the holiday cottages. He wasn’t short of work. Not over the summer.”

  “Not much gardening work over the winter though,” said Taylor.

  “No. That’s why we didn’t contact the police straight away. He’d been talking about going to London to look for work. We thought he might have just upped on the spur of the moment and gone to stay with his brother.”

  “His brother?” asked Shand.

  “Jason. He’s got a bed-sit up there. Davy was talking about staying with him for a few days until he got himself sorted out. He’s the first person I rang. But you know those bed-sits – one pay phone at the bottom of the stairs and twenty flats sharing. And most of them don’t understand English. It wasn’t easy getting hold of him.”

  “I can imagine,” said Shand. “So Jason hadn’t heard from Davy?”

  “No, and then my birthday came around – November 4th – Davy never misses my birthday. Always a card. But not last year. Or a Christmas card. Which is not like him.” Her voice started to crack again. “Something must have happened.”

  Shand looked down at his notes and waited for her to compose herself.

  “Did Davy have any friends that he confided in?”

  “Not many. He was a quiet boy. I asked around. No one knew anything.”

  “What about Lee Molland? It says here that he saw Davy arguing with two men on the evening of the 16th – after Davy left here. Did he tell you that?”

  Her face hardened. “No, he didn’t. I wish he had. It might have made your lot take a bit more notice.”

  “Can we have a look at his room?” asked Shand.

  “Yes, I’ve kept it exactly the same as it was.”

  The room may have not been a shrine, but it was close – a space, frozen in time, awaiting the prodigal’s return. Though probably a good deal tidier than it had been in real life. Shand couldn’t imagine a seventeen year-old boy with such neatly stacked possessions.

  “Do you think this missing boy has anything to do with the case?” asked Taylor as soon as Mrs. Perkins had left the room.

  “It’s an avenue we can’t be seen to ignore.”

  A sentiment reinforced by two phone calls in three minutes. The first from the Press Office, the second from Chief Superintendent Wiggins. Both began, ‘About this missing boy…’

  Apparently, the other papers had picked up the story and were catching up fast. Shand oozed a practised confidence – everything was in hand, he was at the boy’s house now. If there was a link, he’d find it. A politician couldn’t have projected a rosier picture.

  Back in the real world, Shand and Taylor picked through the missing boy’s life. The CDs, the books, the clothes, the magazines and posters. And found nothing. No hidden notes, no job application forms, no informative letters. Whatever caused the boy’s disappearance, its answer was not there.

  They thanked Mrs. Perkins and left.

  ~

  Lee Molland was not at home. “He’s out
somewhere,” said his mother with as much interest as if Shand had enquired about a stranger. His follow-up question of, “When will he be back?” was met with a shrug and a swiftly closing door.

  “Drive,” said Shand to his sergeant. “Circle the village. He won’t be far.”

  They found him by the stone circle, talking to a group of journalists. He seemed to be enjoying himself. Something that Shand was determined to stop.

  “Do you want to join us, chief inspector?” said Lee as Shand strode towards him. “I’m giving a guided re-enactment of what happened here a year ago.”

  Shand smiled for the journalists before turning, grasping Lee by the upper arm and pulling him close. “Do you want me to tell them about the time you were arrested wearing women’s clothing?” whispered Shand into the boy’s ear.

  “I was never!” said Lee, trying to pull away.

  “You think they care?” hissed Shand, nodding towards the journalists. “All they want is a story.”

  Lee stopped struggling. “What do you want?” he said sullenly.

  “A private tour, Mr. Molland. You’re going to walk me through this story of yours. No embellishments ... and no audience.”

  He turned to Taylor. “Tell our friends over there there’s been an unexpected intermission. Young Lee here needs a ten-minute break. Don’t you, Lee?”

  Lee mumbled a grudging acceptance and led the two policemen back to the mouth of the chalk track.

  “I was here,” said Lee. “Walking down the lane towards the village.”

  “Where had you come from?” asked Shand, looking up the lane towards open fields and woods.

  “There’s a pub at Nethercombe.”

  “That’s a fair walk,” said Taylor. “Must be close on three miles.”

  “I like walking. Besides you’re not supposed to drink and drive, are you?” he added with a smirk.

  “How old are you, Lee? Seventeen?” asked Taylor.

  “Nineteen. You can check. Which means I was eighteen last year and legal.”

  “How much had you had to drink that night?” asked Shand.

  “A couple of pints. I was perfectly sober. You can’t walk three miles drunk, can you?”

  “So what time did you reach here?”

  Lee shrugged. “Late. I’d say about eleven, eleven thirty.”

  “And you say the moon was full?”

  “A proper hunter’s moon. You can check that too.”

  There was something of Kevin Tresco in the way the boy smirked. The same twisted smile, the same lank hair, the same smug confidence. Shand wondered if they were related. Or worse, that there was some recessive gene at large populating Wessex with hundreds of Kevin Tresco smirk-alikes.

  “So what did you see?” asked Shand.

  “Two men, like I told the papers. They were arguing with Davy inside the stone circle.”

  “You sure it was Davy?” asked Taylor.

  “Positive.”

  Shand looked back towards the stone circle. What was it? About a hundred and fifty yards away?

  “How could you be sure?” he asked.

  “I recognised his voice. It was a still night. Sound travelled.”

  “What about the two men? Did their voices travel?”

  “Of course. They were shouting. That’s how I recognised their accents. They were both Londoners.”

  Shand glanced down at his notes. “That’s not in the paper, Lee. There’s nothing about the men coming from London.”

  “Isn’t there?” He looked surprised. “There should be. I’m sure I told him.”

  Shand looked at the boy closely, trying to gauge whether he was lying. Without the smirk, the boy looked quite plausible.

  “So what were they arguing about, Lee?” asked Shand. “With the air so still you must have heard everything they said.”

  “I wish I had. But they stopped almost as soon as I got here. Maybe they saw me. The hedge would have blocked their view until I reached the track here.”

  Convenient, thought Shand, though – he had to admit – not implausible.

  “So what did you hear them say?”

  “Something about a sacrifice. One of them was shouting that a sacrifice had to be made. The other was going on about how Davy had no choice and it was all for his own good anyway.”

  “What do you think they meant?”

  Lee shrugged. “Don’t really know. At the time most of us thought he’d got Pippa pregnant and legged it.”

  Shand was torn – again – this time between a natural suspicion of everything Lee Molland said, and the dot-joining portion of his brain that saw Gabriel Marchant and two men from London. Were they the ones he turned to whenever he needed a problem removed – an unsuitable boyfriend or a troublesome wife?

  Or was he being spoon-fed connections by a meddlesome teenager?

  “Why didn’t you mention any of this before?”

  Lee shrugged again. “Like I said. I thought he’d legged it. And if he didn’t want to talk about it, I didn’t see why I should. Course, now I see it all differently. I don’t think he ever left the village.”

  Shand could see what was coming next. “I suppose you think he’s buried up there in the stone circle, don’t you?”

  Lee glanced back towards the stones. “Yes, I really do.”

  Yes, thought Shand, and you’d have us digging the whole lot up again just like yesterday. The boy was obsessed.

  “How long did it take to think up this story of yours, Lee?” snapped Shand.

  “It’s not a story. It’s true. As the Goddess is my witness.”

  He held his right hand over his heart, his face moulded into an expression of angelic probity

  Shand shook his head. “What Goddess is that, Lee? Are you telling me you’re one of those pagans that Kevin Tresco writes about?”

  “I’m not a Satanist. I’m Wiccan. It’s a recognised religion.”

  “And that stone circle’s your church, is it?”

  “The whole world’s our church.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “Did you believe any of that?” Shand asked his sergeant on the way back to the car.

  “I don’t know,” said Taylor. “Sometimes I think teenagers belong to a different species.”

  Sometimes Shand thought the whole human race was an alien species.

  “Come on, Bob,” he said. “I want to have another word with Helena.”

  They found Helena in the front garden, pruning. She carried a pair of secateurs in one hand and a wicker basket in the other. She looked up when the car stopped.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Benson,” said Shand, racing through the pleasantries. “You were going to talk to your husband yesterday evening.”

  Helena put down her basket. “Yes, chief inspector, I did.”

  Shand waited, fighting back the urge to say, ‘and?’ He could tell Helena was uncomfortable.

  “I … I think something is wrong,” she said slowly. “No, I’m sure something is wrong.” She looked away, her eyes following her left hand as it brushed distractedly through the flowering tops of a bed of phlox. “He said there wasn’t, but I know there must. He can’t fool me after all these years.”

  “Did he say–”

  She cut Shand off as though she hadn’t been listening, suddenly lifting her head and almost pleading. “You have to understand my husband, chief inspector. He’s ... he can be very stubborn. Especially when he thinks he’s being boxed in. If he digs his feet in, no one can shift him. And … and this audit has made things worse. He’s clammed up entirely. If you could stop the audit, I’m certain I could get him to talk.”

  Her eyes had filled, making Shand feel even worse. He needed that audit. It was his best hope of finding a motive for Helena’s abduction. He’d given George chance after chance to tell what he knew. He’d offered protection, amnesty. What more could he do?

  Helena must have read Shand’s answer in his eyes. She looked away, appearing to age ten years in the process.<
br />
  “There might be a way of making the audit unnecessary,” said Shand. “If we could have a look through your husband’s things?”

  Helena brightened. “Yes, of course. I’ll show you where everything is.”

  Shand and Taylor spent the rest of the morning taking George’s study apart. No one had checked the contents of the room during the forensic search. Then they’d been more concerned with fingerprints and fibres.

  Now everything counted.

  Luckily George was an inveterate record-keeper. He kept everything. All of it neatly organised and filed. Every bill and bank statement for eight years. Shand hadn’t needed to run a financial check – he could have just asked. It was all there. Building Society passbooks, premium bonds, share certificates, bank statements.

  But no unusual payments or withdrawals. George’s salary went in every month, interest and dividends were paid annually. They saved regularly and lived frugally. No debts, no expensive habits, and no unexplained windfalls.

  They extended the search. Every cabinet and drawer. Piles of correspondence, guarantees, catalogues and brochures. Every page was read, scrutinised and discarded. Every book was held up by its spine and unfurled. No cryptic notes, no letters to or from the two Gabriels. Nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” he told Helena after they’d finished. “There’s nothing here. Is there anywhere else where your husband might keep things?”

  “No,” said Helena, her voice barely audible. “He’s very particular. He keeps everything in the one place.”

  Shand could barely look at her. She looked so frail, so despondent, standing there rubbing her forehead. Three days ago two men had buried her alive and now he – Shand – was torturing her again by pressurising her husband. And yet what else could he do?

  “You’ll continue with the audit?” she said, her voice devoid of hope.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Shand, feeling like an ogre.

  ~

  He almost threw himself into Taylor’s car. “Drive,” he snapped, reaching for his mobile.

  After what seemed to Shand like an age, George Benson answered the phone. There was a small but noticeable intake of breath from the other end of the line the moment Shand introduced himself.