by James Raven
Hilary looked awful, Temple thought when she opened the door to them. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, and she wasn’t wearing make-up. There were broken veins around her cheeks and a nervous sweat sparkled above her top lip.
She had on a yellow cardigan and black corduroy skirt, and her greying hair was gathered up and pinned.
Temple hugged her on the doorstep before introducing her to DC Marsh. She managed a smile, one that flickered on her face and was gone in a flash.
‘We’re on our way back to the station,’ he said. ‘So I’m afraid we can’t stay long.’
‘That’s all right,’ Hilary said, ushering them inside. ‘I really didn’t expect to see you until much later.’
She took them into the living room and Temple was surprised to see that she wasn’t alone in the house. A man in a crumpled grey suit was standing with his back to the open fireplace. He was of medium height, about forty, with dark brown hair that was spiky and quiffed. His shirt was unbuttoned and his tie hung loose at the collar. Temple assumed he’d come here from the office.
‘This is Tom Fowler,’ Hilary said. ‘He was a friend of Grant’s.’
Fowler shook their hands and when he smiled, Temple saw that he had small, sharp teeth.
‘Had you known Mr Mason long?’ Temple asked him.
‘Couple of years,’ he said. ‘I live close to his house in the forest. We used to drink and hike together. He was a good guy.’
‘His death must have come as a shock.’
‘It did. As far as I know, he didn’t have a history of heart trouble. All that walking seemed to keep him healthy.’
Hilary invited them to sit down and offered to make some tea. This time, Temple accepted and said he’d join her in the kitchen. He motioned with his eyes for Marsh to stay in the living room with Tom Fowler.
When he and Hilary were alone, he asked her if she was all right.
‘Not really,’ she said, as she put the kettle on. ‘My phone hasn’t stopped ringing and I feel a bit overwhelmed. Thankfully, Tom has offered to help out with the funeral arrangements.’
Her voice was dry and hoarse, and he sensed that she was struggling to keep the emotion at bay.
‘Did he go with you to Mason’s house this morning?’ he asked.
‘No. I went before I told anyone what had happened. Tom arrived here about an hour ago. He’s not staying.’
Temple watched her take cups and saucers out of one of the cupboards. She looked weak and fragile, and he noticed that her hands were trembling slightly.
‘So what is it you want to tell me, Hilary?’ he said. ‘You sounded really anxious about it on the phone.’
She turned to face him, leaning her back against the sink. Tears sprang into the corners of her eyes as she spoke.
‘In the ambulance Grant told me that if he died there was something he wanted me to do for him,’ she said. ‘He made me promise that I’d do it, but when he told me what it was it freaked me out.’
‘So what did he ask you to do?’
She stared at him, her gaze intent. After a few beats, she said, ‘He told me he wanted me to burn down his house.’
For a split second Temple thought she was joking, but as she began to blink back tears he realized that she wasn’t.
‘Was he being serious?’ he asked.
Hilary nodded. ‘There’s no question in my mind that he was. It was really strange – and unsettling.’
‘I’m not surprised. Tell me exactly what he said.’
She rubbed her eyes with her fingers and gave a little cough to clear her throat.
‘His actual words went something like – you have to burn my house down – along with everything in it. I asked him why he’d want me to do such a thing and he said that I didn’t need to know, but that it had to be done. He then said I should go to his house before anyone else did, and that no one would have to know that I’d been there.’
Temple felt his chest expand as he took a breath. He had no idea what to make of it, but Hilary was right – it was a strange thing for Mason to say.
‘And before you ask, I didn’t go to his house this morning to do what he asked,’ she said. ‘I needed to pick up some documents, but I also wanted to see if everything was in order there.’
‘And was it?’
‘It seemed to be. I checked all the rooms and nothing was out of place. I even went through his drawers and filing cabinets, and I didn’t come across anything even remotely suspicious. Grant was a very tidy person.’
‘So can you think of any reason why he’d want you to burn the place down?’
Her eyebrows made a dart in the middle of her forehead. ‘It makes no sense to me. Absolutely none.’
‘Well, I suppose he could have been spouting rubbish because he was having a heart attack,’ Temple said.
‘That’s what I thought, and I told him that he was confused and in shock. But the truth is he was fully conscious and seemed to know exactly what he was saying. And he sounded desperate, like he knew he wasn’t going to make it and wanted to express his dying wish before it was too late.’
Temple twisted his lower jaw as he thought about it. He wasn’t quite sure how to react.
‘I was careful not to make a mess at the house,’ Hilary said. ‘I left everything as I found it just in case the police wanted to go out there and have a look.’
Temple knew that he couldn’t simply ignore it. What if Mason had been desperate to cover something up – something that he feared would come to light in the event of his death? He might have realized that burning down the house was the only way to destroy whatever it was.
‘Why don’t you give me the key to his house and I’ll pop over there after work?’ Temple said.
Hilary was clearly relieved and grateful. She pinched her face into a tight smile. ‘I knew I could count on you, Jeff. Thank you so much.’
8
‘So what do you intend to do about it, guv?’ Marsh said in the car after Temple had told her about his conversation with Hilary.
‘I’ll go out to Mason’s house and have a look around,’ he said. ‘I don’t imagine I’ll find anything, but you never know.’
‘I’ll come with you if you like. I’m more than a little intrigued by all this.’
‘I’m sure you are, but there’s no need. I want you to concentrate on the Hamilton case. I don’t want you distracted.’
But he was a fine one to talk. He couldn’t get the Mason thing out of his mind. Why the hell would the man have pleaded with Hilary to burn down his house? It was a bizarre request, and if at the time he truly believed he might die, then it was unlikely to have been a frivolous remark.
‘Has she told anyone else about it?’ Marsh said.
Temple shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I should have asked her. Did Tom Fowler allude to it before he left?’
‘No, but then talking to him was like getting blood out of a stone.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, after you went into the kitchen he just stood there staring at me. I asked him a few questions, but it was as though he couldn’t be bothered to answer them. Then he suddenly said he had to go and walked out.’
Temple had been surprised to find Fowler gone when he and Hilary emerged from the kitchen. He’d wanted to pick the guy’s brain about Mason and to get the low-down on the author’s personal life. Hilary’s knowledge of what her boss had got up to when she wasn’t around was pretty limited.
But to be fair to Fowler, he hadn’t been asked to hang around and Hilary hadn’t been fazed by his sudden departure, which suggested that it wasn’t out of character for him to leave without saying goodbye.
‘If it becomes necessary, I’ll get his number from Hilary and give him a call,’ Temple said.
Back at the station, they both grabbed sandwiches from the canteen before going up to the office. There was no time for a leisurely break so Temple ate his quickly as the team gathered for a meeting. He washed it down with
stewed coffee from the machine as he relayed the information they’d gleaned from the pub landlady.
‘There’s no doubt the Hamiltons visited the King’s Tavern,’ he said. ‘Mrs Keenan gave a positive ID on the photo and the couple told her they were going to Christchurch for a dinner-dance. She gave them directions to the Knightwood Oak, which for those who don’t know is one of the oldest trees in the forest and a popular spot with sightseers. It’s worth noting that they took photos of each other outside the pub, and were presumably planning to take more. But there was no sign of a camera in their car.’
A detective who’d been liaising with DS Vaughan gave an update on the situation in Paget Street.
‘There’s nothing so far from the door-to-door interviews,’ he said. ‘Most of the residents in the flats are out and those we’ve spoken to had nothing to tell us. There are a few CCTV cameras on the industrial units around there, but none of them facing onto Paget Street. We’re seizing all the footage anyway.’
‘What about traffic cameras in the area?’ Temple said.
‘Tapes from Saturday night are being downloaded as we speak from a whole bunch of cameras. We’ve already started viewing them.’
Not for the first time, it occurred to Temple that the police had become over-reliant on surveillance cameras. He wondered how they’d ever managed to catch criminals before Big Brother took over the streets. There was no question, it made their job a lot easier, even though it had failed to reduce the number of crimes in towns and cities. He was therefore anxious to know what the traffic camera tapes would show in this case, so he assigned more officers to the task of going through them.
‘Start with the cameras in the southern section of the city,’ he said. ‘There’s a good chance the car emerged from the forest on the A35 and entered Southampton along the A33. It might have kept going in more or less a straight line to Paget Street.’
That would have taken them past the police station and the cruise line terminals, a route with plenty of traffic lights and road junctions. So with any luck…
After winding up the meeting, Temple got another coffee and went to his office. He spent a while on some general paperwork and returned a few calls. Then he opened the file on the Hamiltons and felt a clutch of apprehension. The longer they were missing, the more concerned he became. He stared at their photographs and wondered what could possibly have happened to them.
Why had they not gone to the dinner-dance in Christchurch?
Why had they abandoned their car in Paget Street?
Why had they not bothered to check up on their 2-year-old son?
He was still churning the questions over in his head half an hour later when he got a call from Beresford.
‘You and me are fronting a press conference in half an hour,’ the Chief Super said. ‘So I need you to come up right away to give me an update.’
The press conference was a small affair attended by the local media. The national newspapers and broadcasters hadn’t yet picked up the story, but Temple was sure that they soon would. It wasn’t every day that a young married couple disappeared in mysterious circumstances, leaving behind a 2-year-old child.
Flashbulbs popped and stuttered as Beresford kicked off the meeting with a summary of the situation. As he spoke, one of the uniforms passed around photographs of the abandoned Honda in Paget Street. They wanted them printed in the papers and shown on television.
Then Temple went into more detail about where the car was found and when it was left there. He said officers were trawling through traffic camera footage from Saturday night in the hope of spotting the Hamiltons. Meanwhile, the last known sighting of the couple was at the King’s Tavern near Lyndhurst in the New Forest. It was believed they went on to visit the Knightwood Oak before driving to other forest landmarks.
The questions that followed were all straightforward and easy to answer. Did the police believe the couple had run off? Did either of them have a criminal record? Had they ever gone missing before? What were the police doing to find them?
Finally Beresford made a direct appeal to Bob and Rosemary Hamilton.
‘If you are in a position to contact us then I urge you to do so,’ he said. ‘Just let us know that you are both OK. Your family are desperate for news.’
Back in the office, Temple was told they’d had a result with the traffic cameras. He hurried over to the side-room where detectives were gathered around computer monitors.
It transpired that the couple’s car had been picked up by several cameras on Saturday. The first had been at 10 p.m. where it could be seen entering the city along the A33 from the direction of the New Forest. Next it appeared on a camera as it drove past the waterfront cruise terminals before turning left into the city centre. It was captured on yet another camera on one of the roads close to Paget Street.
‘This is helpful in that we now know what time the car was driven back into town,’ Temple said. ‘But we can’t see the ruddy occupants.’
Even when they went through it frame by frame and enhanced the images, there wasn’t much of an improvement. The lighting was poor and there was too much reflection on the windscreen. All they could determine was a blurred figure at the wheel and an empty passenger seat. It was impossible to tell if there was someone sitting in the back.
There was more disappointment after the surveillance tapes from the commercial properties around Paget Street were examined. A few people were seen walking around on Saturday evening, but none of them were Bob or Rosemary Hamilton.
‘So who the bloody hell was driving the car?’ Temple said when the team assembled again for the shift changeover. ‘Was it Bob or Rosemary? Or was it someone else entirely? We need to find out.’
The detectives were given their assignments and Temple asked to be informed if there were any developments. Some of the team were going for a quick after-work drink and they asked him if he wanted to join them. He was up for it until he remembered that for him the day wasn’t quite over.
He’d promised Hilary that he would go and check out Grant Mason’s house.
9
Temple called Angel as he drove back into the forest. He said he’d be late home and told her why.
‘That’s strange, I agree,’ she said. ‘But what do you expect to find at the house?’
‘I don’t know, probably nothing. But what Mason said can’t just be ignored.’
‘I can see that, but I don’t understand why you’re going there. Why not pass it on to uniform?’
‘Because I told Hilary I’d look into it and because it’s not an official visit. No point making it official if Mason was talking complete bollocks because he was having a heart attack at the time.’
He heard Angel tut into the phone.
‘Are you OK?’ he said. ‘You sound a bit off with me.’
She gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘It’s just that you said you’d try to be home early. I’ve made dinner and there’s something I want to talk to you about.’
‘Oh? What is it?’
She started to tell him, but changed her mind. ‘Look, it’s not urgent so it can wait.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course. Just text me when you’re on your way back.’
‘Will do.’
After the call ended he started to wonder what Angel wanted to chat about. He felt slightly uneasy because it had been obvious to him for several days that she’d had something on her mind. She’d been moody and detached and that wasn’t like her. When he’d asked her if there was anything wrong, she’d said she was just tired. But he suspected there was more to it than that.
Perhaps it had something to do with the prospect of returning to work in MIT. Before the crash she’d been planning a career change, and had started studying forensics with a view to moving to the Scientific Services Department. But that had been put on hold while she concentrated on getting better.
Now that she was looking to the future again, she probably wanted to talk to him about
her options. After all, he was still her boss as well as her boyfriend. He couldn’t think what else might be bothering her, and he knew that if he dwelt on it he’d start to worry.
So he made a conscious effort to push it from his mind as he drove through the forest towards Grant Mason’s house.
The New Forest is a very dark place at night. Most of the roads are unlit and communities are few and far between. You can travel for miles without seeing a single light.
Eight o’clock and there was hardly any traffic. The moon was hiding behind a canopy of cloud and the darkness seemed impenetrable.
Temple kept well within the speed limit, wary of encountering one of the New Forest ponies that are a major hazard. Every year, more than a few are hit by cars because drivers see them too late to brake.
Hilary had given him Mason’s address and he’d located it on the map before setting out. The house was just outside the tiny village of East Boldre, about nine miles south-east of Lyndhurst. It was detached, but not exactly remote. There were other properties close by.
Temple knew the forest well enough not to get lost, but even so he drove past the narrow track leading to the house and had to double back. Tyres crunched over gravel as he followed the track through a small wood. Through the trees on his right, he could see the lights from the village only a few hundred yards away.
The house stood at the end of the track, surrounded by tall trees. The headlights revealed a two-storey brick building that was probably only about twenty or thirty years old. There was a detached garage and a paved area at the front.
He stopped the car and when the lights went out, it was almost as dark as the inside of an eyelid. He took a torch from the glove compartment, undid his seatbelt and got out.
There was an ominous stillness about the place and it was eerily quiet, save for the chatter of insects in the surrounding foliage. Above the house a slice of moon appeared, silent and pale in the sky.
Temple switched on the torch and walked up to the front door. But as soon as he reached it, he felt a flare of unease when he saw that it was ajar. Had Hilary forgotten to close it after her visit this morning? Or had someone been here since then, someone with a spare key?