She caught up with Mike. Good job he couldn’t read her thoughts.
Barker had heard the car crunch over the gravel. He’d seen them through the window and, like Sarah Gratton had, recognized them instantly as police.
That was when he panicked. The evidence was here. He locked the door of the cellar behind them just as he heard the bell ring at the front door. He opened it with his landlord’s smile.
‘Ye-es?’ Feign ignorance.
He looked at the big guy with black hair, half smiling, then at the woman at his side whom he instantly recognized as being the boss, even though she too was smiling at him. But it was a tight, sharply appraising smile. Suspicious, too.
‘Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy,’ she said brightly. ‘Leek police. May we come in?’
He tried to look innocently enquiring, as though he was simply curious as to what all this was about. They stepped into the hall, noted the encaustic Victorian tiles polished till they gleamed, breathed in the universal scent of the bed and breakfast – the scent of the full English mixed with furniture polish.
Barker forced his eyes to open wide in enquiry. ‘How can I help you?’
‘We’re trying to find the whereabouts of two French girls,’ Joanna said, ‘who haven’t been in contact with their families since July.’
‘That’s a very long time to stay incognito,’ Barker said steadily, in what he hoped was a sympathetic tone.
‘We believe they stayed here.’
Barker tried to head them off at the pass. ‘I don’t remember two French girls.’
The big guy spoke. ‘I expect you have a lot of people staying here.’ He had a local accent. Leek born and bred at a guess. Barker narrowed his eyes.
‘Do you keep a visitors’ book?’ It was the woman who was pursuing the point. Barker eyed her. Trouble, he thought. There lies the trouble.
‘I do,’ he said carefully, ‘but of course not everyone bothers to sign it. Only the people who want to.’ He waited, the smile pasted on his face. ‘Those who wish to make a comment.’
‘Yeah. Quite.’ The big guy was grinning chummily at him but the woman was sticking to her purpose. Like a tube of bloody glue. ‘May we take a look at it, please?’
Barker wasn’t sure whether they should have a warrant to take a look at the visitors’ book but he thought it would look more suspicious if he said no. He should have hidden that, too. He sighed. When would he learn? He harrumphed out of the room, returning with it a minute later.
Joanna flipped back through the pages. Lovely place came up a few times. Delicious breakfast a few more times. Beautiful view. We so love being here. We’ll be back. Rudyard is so beautiful. Tranquil. Great rooms. Great breakfast.
And here it was.
Annabelle et Dorothée, 18 Juillet, 2014. Merci. C’est Magnifique. Nous aimons le lac et son lien avec Rudyard Kipling, le plus grand de tous les poètes.
Written the day before the date on the postcard. And after that – nothing. No more contact.
Joanna took a good look at the landlord. Bowed shoulders, nervous eyes, pale skin, clean fingernails – and Mandalay itself looked so well run. An above average bed and breakfast in a great location. And he’d had the savviness to exploit the Kipling connection with the name. She’d also noted a framed copy of ‘If’ in the front hall. Barker had a bit more about him than first appeared.
‘These are the girls we’re looking for,’ she said, trying to make the connection. ‘Do you remember them now, Mr …?’
‘Barker.’ He supplied his surname only. He wasn’t going to allow the humour his first names usually evoked.
Korpanski spoke. ‘Mr Barker, do you remember the girls? They were hitchhiking?’
‘Not really,’ he lied. ‘I don’t really remember them at all. I’m so busy in July, you see, what with it being the school holidays and always busy here.’
‘But you don’t get many foreign girls?’
‘You’d be surprised.’ He tried to inject a little innuendo into his voice.
Joanna interjected. ‘Would they have pre-booked?’
‘Some do,’ he said firmly, ‘but I wouldn’t have the documentation. Not now. Not any more.’
‘Do you have the passport numbers of foreign visitors?’
He drew in a deep breath. ‘To be honest, Inspector,’ he tried a smile on her, but soon realized it was a waste of time as her frown deepened, ‘I don’t always bother,’ he said lamely.
Joanna frowned. ‘If they were hitchhiking,’ she said, ‘how would they get to the main road from here? It’s about four miles.’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’ He knew he was sounding flustered. ‘Walk, I guess. Sometimes other guests, if they see girls hitchhiking with those big rucksacks …’
Rucksacks. Why on earth had he mentioned rucksacks?
And the two police had picked up on it. Antennae were quivering.
‘So you do remember them.’
He wished she wouldn’t fix her eyes quite so unblinkingly on him. They seemed to be looking right through him. Skewering him to the wall.
He gave a little laugh that even to him sounded nervous. ‘I was assuming,’ he said, ‘when you mentioned hitchhiking … they wouldn’t have had suitcases, would they?’
Neither of them responded to this except by both continuing to fix their eyes on him. Perhaps it was a police trick.
Help.
Then they stopped looking at him and instead exchanged glances with each other, as though they could communicate without speaking. Both gave a little nod. What the hell did that mean?
He tried to convince them by repeating, ‘I get so many comings and goings, you see.’
Joanna nodded. Could this guy have anything to do with the girls’ disappearance? On the surface he seemed too … ineffectual.
Barker put his head on one side. ‘I do apologize,’ he said. ‘I’m not being much help here, am I?’
Joanna heaved out a big sigh and felt a splash of sympathy for the guy. Gosh – they weren’t going to close him down just for not taking the passport numbers of a couple of French girls.
‘It’s OK,’ she said kindly. ‘We can’t expect you to remember everything and everybody who stays here. It was a little while ago – and in your busy season.’
Her response made Barker want to help. ‘I suppose,’ he said, conceding, ‘that most people sign the visitors’ book when they’re leaving so that’s probably when they left Rudyard and moved to another location.’
Without their rucksacks?
‘OK,’ Korpanski said kindly. ‘OK, Mr Barker. You’ve been a great help. Thank you very much.’
‘Do you think we might have a quick look at their room?’ Joanna didn’t even know why she’d asked it but it seemed to make Barker nervous.
A small bead of sweat squeezed out of a pore on his upper lip. ‘Of course,’ he said politely and led them upstairs. The stair carpet was pale beige and Joanna almost felt she should have removed her shoes, the place was so clean.
‘You manage this place yourself?’
Barker turned. ‘I do,’ he said solemnly.
‘You make a great job of it.’
For the first time she saw his smile, tentative and proud. ‘Thank you,’ he said simply. ‘It seems to come naturally to me. Here …’ He unlocked a door and pushed it open.
The room was neutral with only one note that jarred: a garish picture on the wall. Barker followed her gaze and misinterpreted her opinion. ‘Lovely, isn’t she? I like to think she’s the girl from Kipling’s poem, “Mandalay”.’
‘Yeah.’ Behind her Korpanski’s eyes had widened and the suspicion of a smirk was making his mouth wobble. She turned and glared at him. Whatever their opinion, the owner of Mandalay obviously loved this print. Still, there was nothing to be gleaned from here. The room was characterless. The French girls had well and truly gone, apart from the vaguest smell of perfume. She breathed it in. Or maybe it wafted in, riding on the breeze from
the open window.
‘Thank you, Mr Barker,’ she said. ‘That’s all. Thank you for your cooperation.’
‘My pleasure.’
He returned them to the front door, his relief so intense that when the detective held out her hand he practically kissed it instead of simply shaking it. But she hesitated on the doorstep. ‘I don’t suppose,’ she said, ‘as you don’t seem to remember them well, you won’t recall seeing them with a couple of male climbers, or if they mentioned where they were going next?’
The question gave Barker the worm of an idea, but he also had to be careful. ‘No, and I have no idea. Probably somewhere on the tourist trail,’ he said, wafting his hands around. ‘Stratford? London. Edinburgh, maybe. Somewhere like that, I expect.’
She turned away from him then. He watched them go with initial relief. But it was soon followed by worry flooding back and a conviction that he and the detectives would be meeting up again sometime in the future.
NINE
It was an unusual evening for them. There was a long film on and they lay slumped on the sofa together. But as they hadn’t pre-recorded it they couldn’t fast forward through the adverts. It was during one of these breaks that they started talking and the film seemed to fade into the background.
‘What was it,’ Joanna was asking, her head against Matthew’s arm, ‘that made you want me?’
‘You really want to know?’ Matthew said comfortably, his hand stroking her hair.
‘Yeah.’
Moments like these were rare. Too rare. Matthew was a senior home office pathologist and his work load was awesome. He tried hard not to bring it home: studies, lecture preparation and papers, but it was a struggle. And Joanna? The life of a DI is irregular, unpredictable and never-ending, particularly when she had a new chief superintendent putting her under the microscope every second, waiting for her to make a slip. She could see it in his hard little eyes and mouth so thin it resembled a scar. Chief Superintendent Gabriel Rush had been in the post for almost four months and she had yet to see him smile. Added to his other unpleasant attributes – he had dry skin that looked flaky and lacking in vitamins or sunlight – she would have given anything, anything to have had Colclough back. But he had hopped it to a holiday home in Cyprus, so she couldn’t even pick his brains or ask for advice. Arthur Colclough was not into Facebook or even emails.
‘It was …’ Matthew said, answering her question, leaning forward and taking a sip from a glass of very cold white Chablis. He thought for a minute, smiling to himself at the memory. ‘I thought of you like a Minstrel,’ he finally came up with.
‘Uh?’ she said, turning to look at him.
‘Crisp, brittle shell and underneath such a piece of soft, sweet chocolate,’ he said, planting a kiss on her cheek.
‘Matthew.’ She wanted to scold him but he continued.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, laughing. ‘Such a stroppy, defensive exterior and there you were, as vulnerable as a new-born lamb, puking up in the sink.’ There was a silence before he asked, ‘And what about you, Jo? What was it about me? Why did you agree to have dinner with me?’
She had three options here. She could tell him the truth. Are you joking? she wanted to say. Look in the mirror, Matthew Levin, take a good look at yourself, at that wide, generous mouth and tousled, tawny hair the colour of damp sand, at those merry green eyes that are so expressive, at your six foot lean and muscular frame.
Or she could have quipped, having puked up my breakfast, I was starving hungry and you offered to buy me lunch. Instead she opted for the half-truth. ‘It was the fact that you were laughing at me. Everyone else was taking me so seriously, as though I was the bogey man – or woman. They were embarrassed at the fact that I was throwing up in the sink, standing back, awkward and not knowing what to do. And there you were, laughing at me. I warmed to you then, Matthew.’
She could have added that she had been impressed at his deft skill as a pathologist, at his meticulous examinations, the careful note-keeping, the simple yet profound explanations. Science and facts without drama. That and a certain modesty, as though the job he was doing anyone could do. Oh yes, the attraction between them had been hot and instant and, in spite of the fact that he had been married, their love had flourished. A forbidden hothouse fruit. Sweet as honey.
‘Mmm,’ he said comfortably, turning the sound back up. The film had restarted but neither was concentrating quite as hard as they had been. By the time it had ended they were both half asleep, their bodies tangled together.
The nights were drawing in towards autumn but the weather was still warm. No need to light the log burner yet.
By 8.30 p.m. the lights were being turned on in Mandalay. The brothers were changing into clean clothes having showered. They were getting ready to head back down the road and eat again at the Rudyard Hotel. They had read the board outside earlier on in the day. It had boasted home-cooked steak and kidney pie and they were already salivating after another day spent canoeing and climbing. The full English seemed weeks ago now – not twelve hours.
Martin was combing his hair, using the wall mirror next to the Chinese girl while his brother brushed his teeth. Both were dressed in rugby shirts and cargo pants.
Martin stared hard at the girl’s left eye. It was as though she was watching him. In front of his own eyes she appeared to blink. And then all was black. ‘James,’ he said softly, ‘come here.’
Barker drew back. His eye had met another. He’d known these two were a dreadful mistake.
James crossed the room. ‘Look at this.’ As Barker shrank, another eye took the place of the first one. Someone was staring at him.
He froze. He dare not blink but forced his eyes to stay open. Then he took two, three steps backwards and slid to the side, trying to keep his breaths shallow and noiseless. The box room was dark, deliberately so. Windowless. But he knew. He just knew that one of them had his eye pressed to the hole. And that he had been seen.
He swallowed and gulped. Instead of he and Supi-yaw-lat looking together into the room she was now regarding him with these strangers, looking backwards into herself. Why had he risked discovery by spying on them? They weren’t females. They weren’t even interesting. Why hadn’t he kept away? Because he’d needed to know how suspicious they were about the rucksacks, and if they’d recognized them as belonging to their French friends. Oh, why hadn’t he got rid of them before now?
In the next room, Martin put his finger to his lips, jogged his brother’s arm and, like Barker, they too moved to the side.
He’s been spying, James mouthed, touching his eye with his index finger and pointing to the picture to illustrate his meaning. Watching whoever was in the room. Out loud he said, ‘Time to go to the pub.’
In the car they were free to speak. ‘I bet those French girls were in that room,’ Martin said. ‘It’s a twin-bed as opposed to a double. He’d put two of the same sex in there, wouldn’t he? I bet whenever a couple of attractive women stay he keeps his eye on them.’
The brothers looked at each other, not quite sure either what this meant, whether there was any significance to it or whether they should do anything about it.
Barker had crept out of the room and on to the landing where he stood at the window and watched their car turn around and head down the drive. Tomorrow, if they wanted to stay another night he would tell them, No. No. You can’t. He practised saying it in a forceful, angry voice. No. No. You can’t. Definitely not. No possibility at all. It’s quite impossible. The room needs decorating.
It was the best he could come up with. By tomorrow he would be free.
The pub was quiet. A couple of locals sat at a table playing dominoes, and there was a family with rowdy children – two boys who appeared incapable of sitting still, even to eat their sausage and chips – who left a trail of tomato sauce everywhere they went. And in the corner sat an ancient-looking man who drank with his dog sitting obediently at his feet. It was a Collie cross, sharp, observant and wa
rily watching the two boys as though he feared they would step on his tail.
In the corner sat a slim woman, somewhere between forty and fifty, at a guess, with neat clothes and a self-possessed air. She gave the brothers a nod as they entered and caught their eye as they walked straight up to the bar. Conscious of her still watching them, they ordered their food and a couple of beers. Sarah Gratton served them, jerking her head in the direction of the woman. ‘She one of your French friends too?’
‘What?’ James’s head spun round.
‘Well, she’s French and she’s been asking about those girls as well. Thought you might know her,’ she added maliciously.
They turned slowly to observe her. Something in the quiet manner of the woman, something self-possessed, should have warned them. It should have told them that to her they could not pretend. She would know the truth. And that they were in a tricky and potentially dangerous position.
They skirted past her and sat in the opposite corner, trying not to meet her gaze. But sweet little Sarah did it for them. ‘Cécile,’ she called out, her voice sugary, ‘those are the guys who were asking about your daughter and her friend.’
The brothers looked at each other. Oh, shit.
The woman looked momentarily startled. Then she stood up, petite and slim in navy trousers and a pale blue sweater. She gave a tentative smile. ‘’Allo,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I join you for a moment?’
Unmistakably French. What could they say? They gestured towards the empty chair. ‘Merci,’ she said with a bright smile. But underneath they could see she was suffering. Her eyes beseeched them. ‘I—’ She appeared to have lost the power of speech. She glanced across at the barmaid, who was watching the scenario with a triumphant expression. She’d got her own back on the boys.
The woman tried again. ‘My name is Cécile Bellange,’ she said. ‘My daughter is Annabelle Bellange.’ She watched their faces for some response but both James and Martin looked impassive. Politely questioning. ‘I – I believe you met my daughter and her friend, Dorothée?’ Her face was schooled into brightness.
Guilty Waters Page 7