by William Shaw
‘Any news about Mrs Fletchet?’
‘Not that I heard.’
Breen went upstairs and looked around again. He had been sure the photograph had been on his bed.
‘Helen?’ he called down. ‘Do you have the photograph?’
Helen emerged from the kitchen. ‘I only saw the drawing. Mum? Did you move a photograph from Paddy’s bedroom?’
‘What photograph?’
He searched his bedroom a second time. He turned out each envelope, flicked through every book. He pulled out the bed and looked behind it, under it. No. It wasn’t there. He went downstairs again.
Helen’s father emerged from the front room dressed in trousers and a vest. ‘Have they found her?’
‘Did you take a photograph from Paddy’s room?’
‘I thought the policeman had come because they’d found her.’
‘Dad? The photograph.’
‘What you on about? Didn’t see no picture.’
Breen said, ‘It must have been Hibou. She was in my bedroom when I was looking at it.’
Helen barged past her mother to run upstairs now. She was down again within a few seconds. ‘Where’s Hibou?’
‘I thought she was in her room,’ said Breen.
‘No, she’s not. Mum?’
‘Bloody waste of time,’ said the copper. ‘You got the photo or not?’
‘Maybe she’s out milking,’ said Mrs Tozer. ‘I saw her getting her boots on a while ago.’
‘We’ll find the photo. Wait,’ said Breen.
‘The milking’s already done,’ said Helen. ‘Can’t be that.’
‘Why would she take the photo?’ said Breen.
‘Hibou!’ shouted Helen, hands up to her mouth.
She walked a few yards, to the edge of the fields. ‘Hibou!’
‘I should head back,’ said the copper.
‘Please wait,’ said Breen. ‘We’ll find the photo. It’s important.’
The policeman stood awkwardly at the front door. Breen understood his unease. The copper would be thinking he should be out there looking for the kidnapped woman. And Breen felt exactly the same.
‘Hibou!’ Mrs Tozer was shouting now, too.
No answer. Just the caw of crows above the cow fields.
They were still shouting when the police car drove back up the rutted road.
By seven there was still no sign of Hibou. Mrs Tozer hadn’t made supper, so Helen cut some sandwiches. She was hopeless with a bread knife so the slices were thick and uneven. Breen didn’t feel like eating anyway. None of them did.
‘Could have just gone off for a walk, of course. She does that sometimes,’ said Breen.
‘Maybe she’s gone to visit her young man,’ said Mrs Tozer, hands still wringing.
‘How bloody irresponsible,’ said Helen.
‘Language,’ said her mother.
‘But she knows what will be going through our heads. Especially with what’s happening. I’ll kill Spud when I see him.’
Breen thought back over the first time Helen had told him about her dead sister. It had been in a pub in Stoke Newington. As he fed her rum-and-blacks, she had told the story about how Alex had disappeared, how her dad had roamed the local pubs demanding information. How Helen had been in school when her headmistress had taken her out of class to break the news.
‘Stupid bloody cow,’ said Helen.
‘Helen,’ said her mother quietly, as if she didn’t have the energy to scold her any more.
The sky was almost black. If he was going to look for her there wouldn’t be much time before the last light went.
He went round to the back of the house and started picking through the box of boots before he found a pair his size.
Helen came around the house. ‘You going to go and look for her?’
‘Better than sitting here.’
‘Paddy. It was the photograph,’ she said. ‘It has to be. Hibou recognised him.’
‘Jesus.’
With horror, Breen realised Helen was right. She must have seen the photograph he had left out and recognised Doyle. The thought chilled him.
‘It was never Spud.’
‘My God.’
Doyle, he thought. He said the name aloud.
‘It’s like he planned all this,’ she said. ‘He’s been here, watching us all along. That’s how he met Hibou.’
‘We have to tell Sharman.’
Nobody had put the chickens in the coop yet. A pair of hens walked around the yard, as if looking for somewhere to roost.
‘Not that he’ll believe anything we say any more.’
‘He’ll listen to you, won’t he?’ said Breen. ‘Where would he have met her? In the pub?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘If we knew where…’
‘She might have caught the bus. She might have gone anywhere.’
‘She ever talk to you about him?’
‘No,’ said Helen. ‘We haven’t been getting along that well, be honest.’ The same as with Alexandra. ‘Christ. It’s all my fault, isn’t it? I should never have gone to see her mum and dad. You were right. Now I’ve gone and scared her off and she’s gone running into his arms. Oh, shit.’
‘What about your mum? Would she have talked to her?’
They went round to the front of the house to find Mrs Tozer.
‘She ever tell you about her boyfriend?’
‘No. She didn’t say nothing. She knew Dad wouldn’t like it, I suppose.’
They went into the front room. Mr Tozer had the TV on, loud. He was staring at it but Breen didn’t think he was actually watching. Helen went to the telly and turned down the volume button.
Mr Tozer lifted his eyes off the screen and looked at his daughter. His eyes were mournful.
‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ he said.
For a second, Breen wasn’t sure if he was talking about his youngest daughter, Hibou or Mrs Fletchet.
‘You don’t know that, Dad,’ said Helen.
‘I do. I know it. Have you looked in the copse yet?’
‘Listen, Dad. Did Hibou ever tell you about her boyfriend?’
‘She didn’t talk to us about him. Scared what I’d have said, I suppose. My fault.’
‘I’m talking about Hibou, not Alex. Please, Dad.’
He blinked. ‘Hibou. Yes. Boyfriend. I could tell. She had that same thing Alex had. That look. Oh, God,’ he groaned.
‘Did she say anything about him?’
‘She won’t leave the farm, will she?’ said Mr Tozer. His lip was trembling.
Breen backed out of the room.
He hadn’t thought to check the copse before the light was completely gone. There was no reason she should be there, was there?
He ran across the drive, fumbling with the gate latch.
‘Wait,’ said Helen.
But Breen didn’t. He pushed through the gate, past the fallen ash, and then squeezed his way under the barbed wire. His sweater caught, pulling a thread. He didn’t stop, though he could feel it unravelling behind him.
Branches flapped into his face. Spring had made the copse denser. New tendrils of dog rose scratched at his hands and tore at his clothes.
Breen paused, tried to make out shapes in the gloom, but he could see nothing. More gingerly now, he moved forward again. He was getting to the place where he had slipped last time.
His feet began to slide again. He reached out a hand and grasped for anything, hand wrapping around a stem.
He cried out in pain. Thorns were digging into his palm. He must have grabbed hold of a bramble.
But it had steadied him, at least. He let go slowly, feeling the curve of the thorns still clutching at his flesh, reluctant to let him go.
The hand tore free and he stumbled down towards the bottom of the hollow, half expecting to fall over a body.
Nothing. He leaned down to feel in the blackness in the place where Alex’s body had been discovered.
His hand
felt only earth at first, a few pieces of vegetation, slimy with rot. And then there was something harder. A stick? He picked it up, palm still stinging from the bramble cuts.
It was smooth, cylindrical, about eight inches long. Plastic? A piece of discarded farm equipment perhaps? He was about to throw it away when the new leaves above him were lit by torchlight.
‘Paddy?’
Helen’s voice, pushing through the undergrowth.
‘Careful. It’s steep.’
‘I know.’
Then the torchlight was on him, blinding. He looked down at what he was holding. It took him a second to realise it was a candle, plain and white.
‘Shine the light down here,’ he called.
The light moved down to his feet.
The red earth was covered in dead daffodils. They hadn’t grown here; somebody had brought them. And half a dozen candles, two still forced into the soil, half burned. He knelt lower and felt in the ground around where the two remaining candles still stood.
There had been a circle of them, roughly where Alexandra’s head would have lain.
‘Like some shrine,’ said Helen. ‘Hibou?’
The photograph of Alexandra’s body had shown the roots of trees. He tried to remember the details.
Helen was lowering herself down the slope. Now the torch was no longer shining from above but from the same level as Breen, he could see the bottom of the dip more clearly. That hand-like root had been in the photograph, he remembered, close to her head. The position of the candles was exact.
‘I don’t think it was Hibou. It was someone who knew precisely where your sister’s body had been left.’
‘He’s been here,’ said Helen. ‘The fucking bastard has been here, hasn’t he?’
She switched off the torch and under the canopy of leaves they were in total darkness now. Her voice was oddly calm. ‘Doyle is alive. He has been here. He has been talking to Hibou.’
‘He faked his own death,’ said Breen, panting. He was thinking: he may even have killed those young men in Spain, or maybe he just came across the reports of their murder and used them to construct his story.
He reached out his hand in the darkness and found hers. ‘He’s a monster. He persuaded Milkwood to collude in the story of his own disappearance. And then he bloody tortured Milkwood to death anyway.’
Helen pulled at Breen. She was moving now, climbing back up the muddy slope. Together, they scrambled out of the dip, Breen pushing Helen, then Helen reaching down to tug him up.
The consequences of Doyle being alive, being close by, being the person who had killed Alexandra and dumped her body here, spun around his head. Until that meeting at Pratt’s, Fletchet may have even thought Doyle dead too. It was when he had mentioned Doyle’s name that Fletchet had panicked and fled the country. Fletchet had understand the truth of it long before Breen had. He had known what a monster Doyle was all along, but had said nothing.
‘He’s close. He would have to have been close to bring Alex’s body here. He has always been here.’
‘I know,’ said Helen. ‘She’s close too, isn’t she? Christ. Do you think he’s got Hibou too?’
‘I’ll phone,’ Breen said.
‘It’s my fault. I brought her down here. I’ll do it. Sharman doesn’t trust you. I know how to talk to him.’
Breen had to agree. They stood in the hallway while Helen dialled the station. The call was answered almost instantly.
‘I think the person who kidnapped Eloisa Fletchet has been on my farm.’
Mrs Tozer was there now, eyes wide.
‘I’ll hold,’ said Helen.
‘You need something for those cuts,’ Mrs Tozer told Breen, and she scurried off to the bathroom for TCP and plasters.
Helen was speaking. ‘No. I haven’t seen her. We found some signs that the person who murdered my sister has been on the farm again. If so, it’s almost certainly the same person that kidnapped Mrs Fletchet…’
‘Come in the kitchen, dear,’ said Mrs Tozer, tugging at Breen’s coat. ‘The light’s better there.’
He sat on the bench in the kitchen while Helen’s mother dabbed his stinging hand.
‘What did you find?’ she asked.
‘It was like a shrine,’ he said. ‘Where Alexandra’s body was found.’
‘Hold still,’ she said.
In the hallway, Helen’s voice was louder now, frustrated, urgent. ‘No, it’s not a woman you should be looking for, it’s a man. Name of Nicholas Doyle. Didn’t you get our message? It’s a bloody man. Where’s Sergeant Sharman? Please.’
‘Let me clean that. It’ll get infected else,’ said Mrs Tozer quietly.
‘Fuck sake, listen to me,’ Helen was saying. ‘Please. Listen. Get Freddie Sharman, please. He has another woman with him. A girl. No. Listen.’
‘I’ll just fetch the scissors for the plaster,’ said Mrs Tozer. ‘Tell me, Cathal. Is he here? The man who killed Alex?’
‘I think so.’
Hibou had barely left the farm since she arrived here. It must have been somebody she had met nearby.
Jesus. The tramp, thought Breen.
Helen was struggling on the phone. ‘I know he’s busy. Of course he is. But this is important. Can’t you raise him on the radio? Or get a message?’
Breen tried to recall the hermit’s face, but hadn’t he turned his head away when Breen had tried to talk to him?
Mrs Tozer returned with a large pair of scissors and cut off a length of pink plaster.
‘I’ll hold. I don’t care how long it takes.’
Breen stood. Mrs Tozer said, ‘I haven’t finished, love.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Breen.
‘You’ll bleed.’
But Breen was already in the hallway. Helen put her hand over the mouthpiece.
‘They don’t believe me. They think I’m some nutter.’
‘There was a a man living rough by the water, down by the path. I thought it was just a tramp. It was Doyle, I’m sure.’
‘You think she went down there to find him?’
‘Stay on the line until you get Freddie,’ he said.
‘What do you think I’m doing?’
He was here somewhere. Had he been watching them all the time?
‘What if you went along the road?’ said Helen. ‘He must have hidden the van somewhere.’
‘No time. Get them to send cars. You have to make them come. Do anything to get them here. I’m going down to the estuary. That’s where she used to walk.’
‘Wait for the police, please,’ said Mrs Tozer. ‘Don’t go out there on your own.’
‘No,’ Helen said. ‘He’s right. There’s no time to wait. Go.’
Breen said, ‘Lock the door until the police come. Get your dad’s shotgun loaded and keep it with you.’
‘OK. I’ll come as soon as I know the police are on their way. Hurry.’
He was out of the front door, striding down the hill.
‘Mr Breen,’ called Mrs Tozer. ‘You’ll need a coat, at least.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
The clouds were moving fast, occasionally making way for a half-moon. When they covered it again, the countryside vanished into blackness.
Breen walked slowly, with his hands out in front. Another few yards. Then he fell, tripping on a tussock of grass. He had been in this kind of darkness before, but that had been in a city, where there were solid walls and pavements. The countryside lacked predictable geometries. Here he stumbled on every thistle and hummock.
He had seen Hibou disappearing down the track that led to the estuary below the farm to meet the tramp.
Had Doyle persuaded her to collude with him? Had the secrecy been his idea, or hers? She was used to secrets, he knew. The idea that she had been sneaking him eggs from the henhouse made his stomach lurch.
His foot dropped suddenly and he fell forward again, into shallow, cold water. The mud stank. He recoiled, shoving himself up and staggering backwards.
&nbs
p; There was a pond, he remembered. Falling in at this time of year would be lethal. Which side of the path was it?
The cloud parted again briefly and for a few seconds he got a clear view of the land around him and the water. The dark hump of the bridge that carried the path over the railway was to the right of him.
He looked back. The lights of the farmhouse still looked close. He had not come far. Had Helen managed to get through to Sharman yet? He doubted it. The local police were in chaos. Even if she did, she had to persuade him to divert resources here. That would not be easy. They were still convinced they were looking for a woman.
He trotted now, partly to warm himself after the coldness of the water, partly because he knew the cloud would cover the moon again soon.
At the railway, the tracks shone below the bridge for a few seconds and then the thick darkness returned. But he felt more confident of his route now. The estuary below seemed to glow slightly, even when the moonlight was not there.
He could hear the lapping of the water on the land now.
He tried to think. Doyle was an ascetic. A man who lived on little and who had survived below the radar for years, living rough or in other people’s houses. He might be keeping Eloisa Fletchet in the van still, but Breen guessed he would need somewhere more remote to hide in. A Mini van would be too cramped for him to torture someone in.
Finally he reached the water’s edge. Which way would Hibou have walked? Right would be upriver, towards the town, towards where Doyle had pitched a tent. Left would be out towards the sea.
The tide was high. Helen seemed to know whether it was rising or falling just by looking at it. Breen had no idea.
Which way?
Right? Breen had walked back from the town this way once, along a muddy footpath. Doyle would know that Breen had already seen him here. Breen peered into the blackness but could see nothing. He turned around. There was just darkness between him and the lights of the town at the mouth of the estuary, three or four miles away.
The air smelt dank and rotten. The stink of mud and dead water. A tang of salt too.