Guilty Waters

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘Oui,’ she said. ‘Je comprends cela, mais … ’

  ‘I suggest you contact Scotland Yard …’ Joanna repeated. She didn’t envy the Met their job. She could just imagine how many missing teenagers were reported to Scotland Yard – it must be hundreds a week. And where would they start in such a huge, cosmopolitan city where it would be so easy to disappear if one wanted to? And yet. And yet.

  She felt the familiar twitch in her toes. There was something here that she wasn’t happy about. Something wasn’t right and she knew what it was. A text? Anybody in possession of Dorothée’s mobile phone could have pressed the keys and sent that text. And how anxious had they all been to believe it? Even Jo, in spite of her reservations. She had not tried to keep the investigation going. She and Mike and the mothers too. They had all believed what they had wanted to believe, Joanna because it would save her a major case, the mothers because they wanted their daughters to be alive and well.

  More than ever, she wished Colclough was still around. It was the sort of situation she would have talked over with him and together they would have decided what to do. As it was, having a superior who would question her every move, calculate how much a wrong move would cost the public, wait for her to make a mistake and then pounce, she felt as though she was dancing on thin ice. She would either fall over or crack the ice and fall under. Neither was an attractive idea.

  ‘We’ve been thinking.’ Madame Bellange’s voice filled the silence and echoed Joanna’s thoughts. ‘Perhaps it was not Dorothée who sent the text message. We have heard nothing since and they do not answer. Why not?’

  Joanna didn’t have a response.

  When Madame Bellange spoke again she sounded upset. ‘Please, help us.’

  Joanna shot an appealing look in Korpanski’s direction. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll make a few more enquiries from around here. I’ll be in touch.’

  Mentally she allowed herself one week and a couple of desk side investigations. She took the distressed woman’s contact details and hung up. Mike was watching her.

  ‘Let’s start with that text message,’ she said. ‘Run a check through. See where it came from.’

  At the back of her mind was the little niggle. She could have done this before. But the fact that argued with was that the two mothers had accepted the text without question. So why shouldn’t she have? Answer – because she was a cop.

  Minutes later Korpanski straightened lowly. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘Would you take a look at that?’ And then the door opened.

  FOURTEEN

  What a sense of timing.

  It would have to be Rush, wouldn’t it? He would have to get involved at this particular point. Perhaps one of these days he might think of knocking before he barged into their office? Joanna winced at his heavy footfall. He stood looking over her shoulder.

  ‘Piercy.’

  ‘Sir?’

  He peered past her at Korpanski’s screen. ‘You’re still working on …?’ His eyebrows arched to ask the question.

  ‘The two French girls.’

  Rush’s mouth grew even more thin – if that was possible. Any thinner and he’d have no bloody mouth at all. ‘But I understood that they’d decamped to London.’

  She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t look like it, sir.’ She knew, without him rubbing it in, that this was sloppy police work. She should have checked on the origin of the text. It was easy, and would only have taken minutes.

  Rush’s thick eyebrows moved together. ‘But I thought,’ he said, with ice in his voice, ‘that you reported that you had had a phone call from one of the girl’s mothers.’ He scratched around in his memory, ‘A Madame Cécile Bellange, who said that Dorothée had texted her mother to say they were heading for London.’

  ‘Except the text didn’t come from London, sir.’ She resisted the temptation to hang her head like a naughty schoolgirl.

  The eyebrows moved again. Korpanski had swung around in his chair, his bland expression and troubled eyes giving her tacit support. Which didn’t blot out her sinking feeling.

  ‘Explain yourself, Piercy.’

  ‘Madame Bellange telephoned here about an hour ago, sir. She expressed doubt that the text had come from Dorothée. They’ve had no contact since and have been unable to speak to either girl.’

  She gave a deep sigh and continued.

  ‘Although initially they were convinced that the text was from Dorothée, as time went on and they heard nothing more and Madame Caron failed to make further contact with her daughter, she and Madame Bellange began to wonder. And then they rang us. Again.’

  Rush gave a tut of disapproval, rolling his eyes as if to say, Women! while Joanna risked a swift glare at Korpanski. Tacit support was all very fine but she would have liked a word or two of vocal support from her sergeant, preferably loud vocal support. She turned her attention back to the chief superintendent. He was standing still, hardly blinking, neither encouraging nor discouraging her from continuing. She took a risk and ploughed on.

  ‘So we checked up on the phone details. According to GPS there was no signal from the phone in question from two p.m. on the twenty-first of July except for a very brief time on the eleventh of September, the time the text came through.’ She paused. ‘The signal came from Rudyard, which makes me wonder whether the girls ever left the area.’

  She wished Rush would display at least some response but his face was impassive apart from a slight narrowing of his nostrils, which seemed to echo even more disapproval.

  She put the least likely theory forward first. ‘So the text purporting to be from Dorothée saying they were going to London was either a deliberate red herring from the girls themselves who had decided to play truant and mislead their mothers, or from someone else pretending to be them.’ She wouldn’t insult him by pointing out the implication behind this scenario.

  Rush’s eyes narrowed further but he still said nothing so she carried on, digging herself in right up to her neck. She gave the silent Korpanski a swift, meaningful look. She wouldn’t have minded him speaking out – at least say something. Take joint responsibility but no, he was letting her ride this storm alone. She directed a scowl at him but his face remained impassive, his features schooled into blandness. Patently he was going to leave her to muddle her way through the maze of possible theories.

  ‘Needless to say, Mandalay, the bed and breakfast the girls had been staying in, would be included in the area,’ she added.

  Rush’s pale eyes widened now. ‘And the other girl’s phone?’

  ‘There has been no signal from Annabelle’s phone since Saturday, twentieth of July, sir.’

  Rush’s voice was silky smooth as he spoke the next sentence. ‘Then I suggest the pair of you get back down to the bed and breakfast in Rudyard and start finding out what really has happened to the two girls.’ His voice was heavy with sarcasm. His parting expression left a chill in the room even after he’d stalked out.

  Joanna was tempted to stick her tongue out at his receding narrow back until she caught Korpanski’s eye. His face was contorted with the effort of not laughing and after a minute she gave a chuckle. ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘They couldn’t have appointed anybody worse than him, could they? Sense of humour? Nil. He’s …’ She couldn’t find the words and what made it worse was the fact that he had come into this job already disliking her. She knew that. What she didn’t know was why. Where had that prejudice come from?

  Then the reality of the situation hit her. She dropped her face into her hands. ‘You realize this puts us right in the shithouse, Mike? We should have checked that one simple point.’

  Korpanski crossed the room in two steps and rested his large hand on Joanna’s shoulder. ‘Not necessarily, Jo,’ he said. ‘We had good reason for believing the girls had left this area safe. The girls’ mothers were initially convinced the text was from Dorothée. Even now we don’t know that that isn’t the case. And think of the hoo hah if we’d spent public money searching for two
French girls who were living it up in London. But if this development does mean that something has happened to them on our patch and we do end up in the shit then it’s up to us to dig ourselves out, isn’t it? At least we have a good idea where to start.’ He took two strides across the room. ‘And we already have a chief suspect.’

  ‘In a possible disappearance, Mike,’ Joanna said slowly. She was dubious. Cases which initially appeared simple and obvious usually proved to be anything but. Barker had appeared creepy – yes – but she couldn’t quite see him as a murderer of two healthy girls. How would he have done it? Why? He didn’t have a criminal record. There had been no complaints against him. He appeared to be a hardworking, capable man running a successful guest house.

  She continued with her reasoning. They had nothing on him except the fact that girls had stayed there. And Mike was right. They still couldn’t say for sure that the text wasn’t from Dorothée, or that the girls had gone missing from Rudyard. But the one incontrovertible fact was that someone – be it the girls or not – had texted from this area in September before switching the phone off again. Someone had been on the end of that phone. Maybe Dorothée. Possibly Annabelle, or somebody else.

  She sat drumming her fingers on her desk, knowing it would annoy Korpanski. Any minute now he was going to clear his throat and ask her to stop. Sharing an office can be more claustrophobic than sharing a marriage.

  She looked across at him. He was watching her, his face very alert, his meaty thighs tensed, ready to spring. He was leaning forward. Ready for action. She smiled at him then, on instinct, she accessed her file on the Stuart brothers and found the mobile number of Martin Stuart. He picked up on the third ring.

  ‘Yes?’ He was shouting – probably speaking from outside or from a noisy workshop.

  She shouted back. ‘It’s Detective Inspector Piercy here. Leek police.’

  ‘Yes?’ he repeated, sounding impatient.

  ‘I could do with having a quick word with you.’

  ‘What about?’ Still shouting.

  So was she. ‘The French girls.’

  ‘I wish we’d never got involved.’ And now his voice had dropped and the background noise had filtered away. He must have found somewhere quiet. ‘Have you found them yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I thought you said they’d rung their mums from London.’

  ‘That appears not to have been reliable information. And it was a text, not a conversation.’ She was anxious not to give too much away.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Tell me,’ she prompted slowly. ‘Mandalay.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Was there anything strange about Mr Barker?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Anything unusual?’

  There was a long pause. Martin Stuart was patently thinking about it. ‘Yeah,’ he said finally. ‘There was.’

  Joanna waited.

  ‘He was a peeping Tom.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He used to spy on people. You remember the garish picture on the wall of the twin-bed room?’

  ‘Yes.’ Joanna smothered a smirk. Who could forget it? It was a picture with impact. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’d cut one of the eyes out. I think he watched people through there.’ Martin gave a snort of laughter. ‘Not boys. I think he probably preferred girls. But then you never can tell.’

  ‘I see.’

  Martin badly wanted to mention the rucksacks he’d stumbled on in Barker’s kitchen but the police would ask why they hadn’t mentioned it earlier when it was patently obvious that they might have something to do with the two girls, and he desperately wanted to divert attention away from himself and his brother. He waited for the inspector’s next words, knowing he and James had already tied themselves up in knots.

  Martin shivered. Maybe they should have stuck to the truth from the start. It was too late now to backtrack, trying to find it. It would make them look suspicious and he knew that when the police had suspicions they often found the evidence to support them. He wasn’t sure either he or James could remember exactly what story they had told. And he had a feeling that Inspector Piercy and her sidekick were pretty tenacious.

  Put it this way, Martin, he thought. You’re fucked either way.

  Joanna thanked him and put the phone down. She’d just found Barker’s possible motive.

  Korpanski was on his feet now. He smirked when she gave him the content of the conversation. Joanna gave a private prayer up to whoever had sent her Detective Sergeant Michael Korpanski, half Polish, half Staffordshire. As loyal as a dog, as energetic as a puppy. She too stood up, slipped a jacket on and the pair of them headed off back to Rudyard.

  The lake was peaceful and quiet today, weekends being its busy period this time of year.

  ‘Let’s stop for a coffee,’ Joanna said. ‘We’re not in a rush.’

  They walked to the small lakeside café, where the ice-cream boy served them. He grinned. ‘Them French girls turned up yet?’

  ‘Not in Europe they haven’t.’

  ‘Not gone home then? I heard they was in London.’

  ‘You heard that?’

  ‘Yeah. Someone told me.’ The jungle drums of the Staffordshire Moorlands. The information made Joanna curious. ‘Do you remember them, er …?’ She didn’t know his name.

  ‘Will,’ he supplied. ‘Will Murdoch – at your service.’ He had a pleasant manner. ‘Not sure if I remember them. I don’t think I remember serving two French girls. Maybe I did.’ He changed the subject. ‘Not much call for ice cream today,’ he said, ‘so I’m in here instead. It’s a bit too chilly. Running our stocks down, we are. What about a nice hot chocolate instead?’

  ‘Good idea.’

  They sat down and waited. Mike leaned across. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘We’ll go to Mandalay,’ she said, determined and directed now, ‘and take a look around. Check out that painting. If Martin’s right we have enough to hold Barker. And I can’t deny it gives him a motive. The girls might have discovered the peephole and threatened to report him to us. He might have panicked and …’

  Korpanski was making a face.

  ‘Have you got a better suggestion?’

  ‘No – but it seems a weak motive for murder.’

  ‘Think about it, Mike,’ she said. ‘Just think about it. That text,’ she said, ‘was designed to send Madame Bellange scurrying back to France, convinced the girls were safe, take the heat off the search and, if their parents were still convinced the girls were missing, divert attention to London. It isn’t a weak motive at all but a very strong one.’

  ‘How do you work that one out?’

  ‘Mandalay is his life,’ Joanna said. ‘The fact that he was spying on his guests would have made for some tacky reading in the Leek Post & Times. He would have been branded a pervert. His business would go down the pan. No one would stay there. The scandal would close him down. So let’s consider the options,’ she said carefully. ‘Option one, he nicked the phone and sent the text; option two, somebody else did; option three, it was the girls trying to send their mothers a message that they’d decamped to London when they were still here, though why they’d do that beats me.’

  Korpanski nodded and she continued in her thoughts aloud.

  ‘Option one is the most sinister, isn’t it? Particularly now we know that Mr Barker has a motive.’ She sat still, puzzling. ‘But I’m still not sure I can see Barker killing them. He seems so ineffectual.’

  ‘But we know, Jo, that quite a few murderers are ineffectual,’ Korpanski offered gruffly.

  ‘You mean they often aren’t the big, strong, beefy boys …’ Joanna couldn’t resist a smirk in his direction. Korpanski had the build of a man who spent hours in the gym pumping iron, ‘… but inadequate wimps,’ she finished.

  He was right. She recalled some of the killers she and he had uncovered.

  ‘Well, we’ll bring him in for questioning at the very least.’
r />   Korpanski nodded and slipped the car into gear.

  As they took the road upwards towards Mandalay they couldn’t miss the fact that the water level was still low and dropping. In fact, the level was the lowest Joanna ever remembered seeing. But then she’d been brought up in Stone, twenty miles to the south. She had arrived in Leek well after the drought of ’seventy-six. She turned to Mike. He was a local lad. ‘Do you remember the water level being as low as that before?’

  ‘In ’seventy-six,’ he answered, almost without thinking. ‘If it hadn’t been for the mud, which I can tell you is quite treacherous, you could probably have walked right across it then.’

  A few minutes later, ‘Carver Doone,’ Joanna said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Lorna Doone?’ She looked at him. ‘The villain of the piece, Carver Doone, sinks into the mud.’

  ‘Nasty end,’ Mike said, prosaic as ever. ‘Well, as the water level fell and there was more of the mud quite a few dead cats and dogs turned up.’

  ‘No humans?’

  ‘No. No humans. Just old shoes, bits of fishing tackle, a few lead weights and animal skeletons. Even a cow’s skull.’

  ‘Nice thought.’ And now they’d arrived.

  FIFTEEN

  They got the impression that Barker wasn’t even surprised to see them. As they crunched across the gravel drive the front door opened and he stood there, peering round it, motionless, as though Nemesis herself was getting out of the car rather than DI Piercy and her sergeant. He showed no curiosity even when Joanna asked politely if they could come in, and that they had some questions they needed to ask him. Instead he looked defeated. Deflated as he backed into the house. Defeated and rather guilty.

  Afterwards Joanna would puzzle and ponder that point. On the face of it, it looked bad. Barker had motive and, presumably, opportunity. Guilty of what? Two girls were apparently missing and they were linked to here. If they had been killed here there should be some evidence. And bodies.

  They followed him into the sitting room, the bay window affording a wide view of the lake as a stunning backdrop. He was opposite the Boathouse which stretched right out into the lake. Barker perched on the edge of his armchair, his face practically twitching in anticipation.