The Mechanical Devil

by Kate Ellis

  Wesley knew that Gerry was all too familiar with daughters and their problems. He had one daughter, Rosie, who’d been far from easy since her mother’s sudden death and he’d recently discovered the existence of another called Alison, who lived up in Liverpool. And if anything happened to either of them Wesley knew he’d react exactly like Jeremy Ovorard MP.

  Dr Neil Watson of the County Archaeological Unit ended the call, intrigued by what he’d just been told.

  As Neil had been supervising a survey of medieval graffiti at Lower Torworthy’s ancient parish church he was the first person the vicar, Oliver Grayling, had thought to contact regarding a problem of a historical nature.

  Grayling had begun with the usual pleasantries before revealing the reason for his call. Workmen mending a water main near the boundary of the old churchyard had made a strange discovery. A lead box; very heavy and probably ancient. Would Neil like to see it?

  It was mid-September and Neil had a pile of post-excavation reports to write up. But the vicar’s mention of an ancient lead box tempted him away from his paperwork and, without hesitation, he made the half-hour journey down the lonely Dartmoor roads to the church where he found Grayling waiting for him in the porch. He was a fresh-faced man in his forties, clean-shaven with neat brown hair and the look of an ageing choirboy.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Neil. Hope I haven’t dragged you away from anything important.’

  ‘What have you found?’

  Without answering, Grayling led the way into the church where several large arrangements of fresh flowers brightened the gloom and the pervading scent of lilies mingled with the smell of wax polish. Neil followed the vicar into the vestry tucked away at the side of the building, a small, north-facing room lined with wooden cupboards the colour of dark toffee.

  The box lay on the desk in the centre of the room where many a happy bride and groom had signed the marriage register. It was made of lead, battered and misshapen, and it was the size of a small child’s coffin. Neil’s heart sank.

  ‘It was found just beyond the boundary of the churchyard. Unconsecrated ground. My first thought was that it might be an unbaptised baby but it seems too big and…’

  ‘There’s only one way to find out and that’s to open it. But I’d like to do that at the university if that’s OK. If there are human remains inside…’

  A look of indecision passed across Grayling’s face before he told Neil to do whatever he had to. But as Neil made the necessary phone calls he saw the vicar staring at the strange box as though something about it was worrying him.

  3

  ‘Jocasta Ovorard definitely hasn’t used her phone since she disappeared. Or her bank card. I’ve double-checked.’

  Wesley sat himself down on the chair by Gerry’s desk, which was strewn with files and paperwork in no particular order.

  Gerry took off his reading glasses and peered at his colleague. ‘And it’s a whole week since she was last seen.’ He paused. ‘A lot can happen in a week.’

  Wesley studied the photograph of the missing girl Uniform had provided. She was pretty… and young. She probably wouldn’t have thought of herself as vulnerable but Wesley had been a policeman long enough to know that youthful confidence was no protection against the bad people out there.

  ‘According to the missing persons report, she was last seen by her fellow students on her drama course. We need to speak to them.’

  ‘No time like the present,’ Gerry said, looking at his watch. ‘And if we get nowhere there’s always that TV appeal.’

  ‘You’d be better at it, Gerry.’

  ‘You heard Aunty Noreen, Wes.’ Gerry always gave the chief super that homely title, as though it rendered her less formidable. ‘She wants you. You can’t wriggle out of it.’

  ‘If the girl’s friends can shed some light on the matter it might not be necessary.’

  Gerry grinned revealing a wide gap between his front teeth. ‘They’re studying drama. Learning how to lie for a living.’

  ‘If they’re only studying they might not be too good at it yet.’ Wesley was confident he could pick out a liar. He’d had plenty of practice.

  The Tradington Barn Centre for the Performing Arts, part of the Tradington Hall Arts Complex, provided courses for aspiring actors, singers and dancers and had a reputation locally for catering for those unable to find a place at more conventional drama schools or music colleges. From what he’d already learned about Jocasta Ovorard, he suspected she’d been dabbling in the world of drama rather than nursing any burning ambition to take to the stage.

  After driving through the pretty Elizabethan town of Neston eight miles upstream from their base in Tradmouth, Wesley reached the grounds of Tradington Hall a mile out of town, glad that the Barn Centre was well signposted. As he drew up outside, he guessed the place had been the main storage barn for the extensive Tradington Hall estate in centuries gone by. The interior was cavernous, fully modernised and smelled of new timber.

  They made for the office where a helpful middle-aged woman pointed them in the direction of Drama Studio Two. She assumed a suitably worried expression and said she hoped Jocasta would turn up soon. They were all terribly concerned about her.

  Wesley thanked the woman politely but gave nothing away.

  ‘Wonder how much it costs to send a kid here,’ said Gerry quietly as they walked down the corridor towards the studio. ‘Can’t be cheap.’

  ‘You’re probably right but don’t let your prejudices show, will you.’

  ‘Me, prejudiced against kids with rich mummies and daddies who’ve got nothing better to do than cause us grief? Never.’ Gerry, who went out of his way to give second chances to young tearaways from the local council estates, had a blind spot when it came to the privileged.

  Wesley bit his tongue and said nothing. The sign beside a tall wooden door at the end of the corridor told him they’d reached their destination and when he pushed the door open he found himself in a large space, painted matt black. There was a stage at one end constructed from moveable sections where a group of young people sat in a circle: three boys and three girls dressed in uniform black. They all looked round as one when the two policemen entered the room.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said Wesley before making the introductions. ‘You’ve probably guessed we’re here about Jocasta Ovorard. Her father’s reported her missing. Anybody know where she might be?’ He tilted his head to one side expectantly and waited.

  After a few seconds of awkward silence a small, thin girl with red hair and freckles cleared her throat. ‘I share a room with her.’

  ‘Where’s that, love?’ Gerry asked.

  ‘We’re staying in the main hall during the course.’

  ‘It’s residential,’ one of the boys chipped in. He had a top knot, a wispy beard and a worried look on his face as he held out his hand. ‘Craig Carswell. We’re all worried about Jo so if there’s anything we can do to help…’ The boy had chosen all the right words but Wesley couldn’t help wondering if his concern was genuine.

  ‘Who knows Jocasta best?’ Wesley asked.

  Craig Carswell looked as if he was about to speak but thought better of it. Then the red-haired girl raised a nervous hand.

  ‘If I can speak to you first then,’ he said with a reassuring smile. ‘Then we’d like to have a word with the rest of you – and your tutor.’

  Craig Carswell rolled his eyes. ‘We don’t see much of her. She leaves us to our own devices.’

  Gerry had wondered whether to get some uniforms over there to conduct the interviews but in the end they decided to take three students each, one at a time in the adjoining common room which, as luck would have it, was empty.

  Wesley decided to save the red-haired girl whose name was Kimberley, until last. She told him in a nervous rush that this was her first encounter with the police; nothing like this had ever happened to her before. Wesley asked to see the room she’d shared with Jocasta, doing his best to put her at her ease.
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  As they walked over to the main building he asked her questions, making it sound like a friendly chat. She was soon telling him what had brought her there and what her ambitions were and by the time they’d reached the main house she seemed more relaxed.

  ‘Tell me about Jocasta,’ he said as they walked across the cobbled courtyard.

  Kimberley stopped walking and thought for a few moments before she answered. ‘I don’t think she was happy. She’d been at boarding school but she’d quit because she couldn’t stand it any more – said they treated her like a child. She’d always enjoyed drama so she thought she’d give this a try.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We’ve only been here four weeks but she’d already started skiving off workshops and rehearsals. I don’t think it suited her. Not really.’

  ‘What did she do when she skived off?’

  Kimberley shook her head. ‘She never said.’

  ‘She had a phone?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said as though she thought it a stupid question – like did she have a head?

  ‘She hasn’t used it since she disappeared.’

  Kimberley looked shocked. ‘That’s not like her. She was on it all the time.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Did she ever mention a boyfriend?’

  ‘Not to me but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have one. She didn’t give much away, if you know what I mean,’ the girl said, a note of sadness in her voice.

  Wesley suspected Kimberley had tried to befriend her room-mate but had been knocked back.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘A week ago. Around lunchtime. She didn’t turn up for the afternoon session and when I got back to the room her things had gone.’

  ‘Were you worried?’

  ‘Not really. She didn’t like it here – didn’t really fit in. And if she took her things she can’t have been abducted or anything like that, can she?’

  She led him up a narrow staircase to the student rooms. The set-up reminded Wesley of an Oxbridge college: a stone-built medieval house centred around a courtyard with doorways at regular intervals leading up to the accommodation. The room Kimberley shared with Jocasta was anything but luxurious. Perched in the eaves, it was poky and institutional.

  With Kimberley’s permission he conducted a search of Jocasta’s half of the room but it proved fruitless. The missing girl had clearly taken everything of interest with her when she left, leaving only a few unwanted clothes dangling sadly off hangers in her wardrobe, some dog-eared paperbacks and an assortment of half-used toiletries.

  Wesley felt that he knew no more about the missing girl now than when he’d arrived. Then Kimberley spoke. ‘I don’t know whether this means anything.’ She took a book off the shelf above her bed, pulled a sheaf of A4 sheets from between the pages and handed them to Wesley.

  It was a play script; something modern he didn’t recognise.

  ‘I’d lost mine so I borrowed hers. I was going to get it photocopied and give it back to her but she’d gone before I got the chance. She’s drawn something on the back, see.’

  Wesley turned the sheets over. Sure enough there was something on the reverse of the script: a doodled sketch of a motorcycle, hardly the work of a talented artist but recognisable.

  ‘Did she show any interest in motorbikes?’

  Kimberley shook her head. ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘Did she ever mention knowing someone who owned one?’

  ‘Like I said, she never discussed her private life.’ She glanced round, as though she was afraid of being overheard. ‘But I got the impression she had a secret.’

  4

  When Wesley and Gerry returned to the police station they made their way upstairs to CS Fitton’s office to report their findings, such as they were. Wesley had made a copy of the doodle the missing girl had drawn on the back of the script. It struck him as being an unusual thing for a girl who’d expressed no previous interest in motorbikes to do and he wondered again whether she had a secret boyfriend who owned one. But the sketch gave no clue to the make or model, or to the identity of the rider.

  When they reached the chief super’s office they found she wasn’t alone. A tall man in a grey suit was sitting in her visitor’s chair sipping tea from a china cup. He had neat silver hair and a smooth round face and his open-necked shirt suggested he was off duty. At first sight he possessed the confident demeanour of a man used to giving orders – and having them obeyed. But then Wesley saw an uncertainty in his eyes, as though for the first time in his life he was feeling vulnerable.

  The chief superintendent sprang up to make the introductions.

  ‘Mr Ovorard, this is DCI Heffernan and DI Peterson. They’ve taken over the investigation into your daughter’s disappearance. Gentlemen, this is Jeremy Ovorard, Jocasta’s father. DI Peterson will be making the TV appeal with you, Mr Ovorard.’

  As they shook hands Wesley experienced a sudden flutter of panic. They had nothing new to tell him, other than the fact his daughter hadn’t made any particular friends at the Drama Centre and was regarded as stand-offish. This wasn’t what any parent wanted to hear, let alone a parent whose child was missing.

  ‘We’ve just been speaking to her fellow drama students at Tradington,’ Wesley began. ‘I’m afraid she didn’t confide in anybody there, although the fact that she took most of her things with her suggests she left of her own accord, possibly to meet somebody.’

  ‘That’s what I was told before. That’s why this hasn’t been taken seriously.’

  ‘I assure you we are taking it seriously, sir,’ said Wesley.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure she didn’t have a boyfriend, Mr Ovorard?’ Gerry interrupted.

  ‘I would have known,’ the man answered quickly.

  Wesley and Gerry looked at each other. Surely no father could be that confident of knowing his teenage daughter’s deepest secrets.

  ‘When did you last see her?’ Wesley asked.

  ‘About a month ago when she left for the course. I called her a couple of days later to ask how she was settling in and she said she was fine.’

  ‘You haven’t spoken since then?’ Gerry’s question was sharp.

  The MP examined his fingernails. ‘I’ve been in London. Besides, girls of that age don’t want their fathers interfering, do they.’

  Gerry smiled. ‘You’re right there. How did you learn she was missing?’

  ‘The Drama Centre contacted me to say she’d gone. That’s when I notified the police.’

  ‘What about your wife? Has she spoken to her recently?’ Wesley asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Of course I am. Look, I gave you my daughter’s number. Have you traced the calls she made before she disappeared?’

  ‘It’s being dealt with but I’m afraid these things take time. Service providers aren’t always quick at getting back to us.’

  Ovorard looked sceptical, as though he suspected Wesley was making excuses. But he’d told the truth. The miraculous speed with which results appeared in cop shows gave the public a false impression of the frustrations of real investigations.

  ‘I’ve arranged for the appeal to go out on the evening news,’ Noreen Fitton said. ‘Will your wife be appearing with you, Mr Ovorard? It usually helps if both parents —’