by Val McDermid
When Paula joined her, Jan was leaning against the wall, rolling a cigarette. ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ Paula said.
‘Only when I need to take the taste out of my mouth,’ Jan said.
‘I thought you were having a laugh in there.’
Jan licked the paper and efficiently finished the job. ‘Did you? Whistling in the dark, Paula. That’s what that was.’ Her expression was unreadable, but her voice was softer than Paula had ever heard it. ‘You’re putting yourself on the line tonight. That’s probably the scariest thing a cop can ever do.’
Paula sighed. ‘Thanks, skip. And there was me trying to convince myself you lot would take care of me.’
Jan’s smile looked forced. ‘We will. Don’t doubt it. But there are times, Paula, when it’s sensible to be scared. And tonight is one of them.’
The day ticked relentlessly on. There was a ziggurat of paperwork in the incident room that Carol could have skimmed, but there were other officers to do that. Teams reading statements and reports, filling in slips for actions that needed to be pursued, detectives working their way through the actions in their in-trays, officers producing more paperwork for the statement readers to plough through. And Don Merrick to pull out the crucial stuff she needed to know about. The overwhelming volume of material in a case like this was terrifying, all the more so because it seemed to be taking them nowhere.
The undercover operation preyed on her like a fox on chickens. Every tiny intimation of what might go wrong multiplied in her mind, stirring up the silted memories of her own botched operation. Then there was Sam Evans. She couldn’t figure out whether he was simply a glory-hunter or whether he was deliberately trying to undermine her. Either way, he must have planted doubts in Brandon’s head at a time when she could least afford that. She didn’t want him wondering if her own experience was going to affect Paula’s undercover. Carol tried to force the poisonous thoughts away, but they wouldn’t be ignored. Eventually, she gave in. If she couldn’t evade the past, perhaps she should try confronting it. She took the book Jonathan had given her from the desk and gingerly opened it. She’d never been much of a reader outside her own very specific areas of interest, and since the rape she’d deliberately shied away from anything that smacked of self-help. But this seemed to be different. In spite of her reservations, Carol found herself drawn into a narrative that, while it had few parallels with her own experience, nevertheless seemed to speak to her at a level nothing and no one had touched before.
After forty pages, she had to put the book down. Her hands were trembling and she felt on the verge of tears. Her body craved a drink, but she was determined not to give in. For the first time in months, she understood that she had travelled so far down the route of survival that there was no longer any question but that she was going to make it. The Carol Jordan who emerged on the far side of what had happened to her would be very different, but she would be herself again. Damaged but not destroyed. Cracked but not broken. She wished Tony was there, not because she wanted to talk about it, but because she knew he would see the change in her and perhaps feel the beginnings of release.
As if in response to her wish, a knock sounded at her door. ‘Come in,’ she said, hastily shoving the book out of sight under some papers. But it wasn’t Tony who appeared. Jonathan France was back again, clutching a folder under one arm. ‘Twice in one day,’ Carol said. ‘People will talk.’ She was idiotically pleased to see him, far more so than she expected to be.
He sat down, leaning back in the chair and stretching his long legs out. ‘Much as I enjoy your company, this is a purely professional visit,’ he said. ‘I have some news for you.’ He looked pleased with himself, a retriever carrying the soggy newspaper he knows will make somebody’s day.
Carol’s interest quickened. However much she might want to see Jonathan for personal reasons, that desire was always going to be trumped by her professional objectives. ‘You’ve identified the location?’
He nodded. ‘As soon as I saw the photograph, I thought I knew where it was. Not specifically, not down to pinpoint. But when I blew up the details on my computer, I realized I recognized it.’ He opened the folder and drew out a couple of printed enlargements of sections of rock, passing them over to Carol.
She stared blankly at the photographs. To her, they looked like a couple of slabs of rock, grey with a faint reddish tinge, traced with what looked like dribbles and blobs of pale grey. ‘What am I looking at?’ she asked, almost immediately regretting the question. She knew only too well the perils of inviting experts to hold forth on their areas of specialism.
‘It’s called stromatactis,’ Jonathan said eagerly. ‘One of the persistent enigmas of the Devonian period. In lay terms, what you’ve got there is a flat-bottomed cavity with an irregular top filled with fibrous calcite. In geological terms, it’s an autochthonous formation caused by the partial winnowing of unlithified sediment. Opinions differ as to how it was formed and what it represents. You see how it mimics the fabric of a coral reef? Some geologists say what you’re looking at is the result of reef organisms, stromato-poroids, being piled up. Water filled the interstices and, under pressure, stromatactis was formed. Others believe they’re essentially the fossils of soft-bodied organisms such as sponges. Yet others think they’re the product of marine algae or cyanobacteria.’ He grinned. ‘And the creationists think they were thrown up from the deep ocean during Noah’s flood.’
‘All of which is fascinating, but…’ Carol tried for an amused but quizzical expression.
‘I know, I know–cut to the chase, that’s what you want, right?’ Jonathan said ruefully. ‘OK. You get these formations in limestone. The Peak District has some remarkable examples. They tend to show up in clusters. And there are a few places in the White Peak that sad rockies like me positively salivate over. When I saw the blow-ups, I thought I could narrow it down to one place in particular. But I wanted to check it out first. So after I left here this morning, I went out there. And I was right. This is a piece of limestone reef in a spur off Chee Dale.’
Carol couldn’t hide her excitement. ‘You’ve identified it? Positively?’
Jonathan nodded. ‘It’s quite distinctive…’
Whatever he’d intended to say next was cut off by the opening of the door. Tony started speaking as he walked in, initially oblivious to the fact that Carol had company. ‘Carol, I think he works in Temple Fields. Maybe a security guard or a bouncer in one of the bars or clubs.’
‘Tony,’ Carol said, her voice a warning, her head indicating Jonathan, half-hidden behind the open door.
Tony craned his head round. His voice was friendly enough but his face seemed to lose all animation. ‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize…I’ll come back later.’
She knew from his reaction that he’d seen something the night before. And she knew him well enough to understand he wasn’t going to make allusion to it. Not here, not now. Probably not ever, knowing Tony’s capacity for avoidance of the life emotional. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Come on in. This is Dr Jonathan France. He’s a geologist. Jonathan, this is Dr Tony Hill.’ Jonathan eased out of his chair and shook hands, towering over Tony. ‘Tony’s a clinical psychologist. We do a lot of work together.’
‘A geologist,’ Tony said, moving quickly away from Jonathan. He perched on the corner of Carol’s desk. She suspected his move was completely deliberate, putting himself alongside her, demonstrating their allegiance, making Jonathan the outsider. ‘It must be relaxing to work with something that moves as slowly as a tectonic plate.’
Jonathan lowered himself back into his chair. ‘It gets me out of the house.’
Tony smiled. ‘That’s what some of my patients say about their psychiatric conditions.’
Jonathan looked faintly puzzled, as if unsure whether he was being disparaged. ‘Not the agoraphobics, though,’ he said.
Tony conceded the point. Before he could throw down the next verbal challenge, Carol intervened. ‘Jonathan h
as identified the site where Tim Golding was photographed.’
Tony’s professional instincts leapt to life. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘Tell me more.’
‘As I was just explaining when you came in, the geological features in the background of the picture are quite distinctive. I’ve visited the site on field trips more than once. It’s a particularly striking example of stromatactis.’
‘What kind of a place is it?’ Tony asked. ‘Isolated? Somewhere walkers go?’
Jonathan pulled another sheet from his folder. ‘I photocopied the relevant section of the map.’ He laid it on the desk and leaned forward to illustrate his comments. ‘This is Chee Dale. Carved out of the limestone by the River Wye.’ He traced the winding ribbon on the map. ‘As you can see, there’s a public footpath goes down the dale. It’s a popular walk. So much so that the National Park has built stepping stones where the river breaks its banks and covers the path.’ He stabbed the map with a long finger. ‘And this little spur up here is called Swindale. The entrance is very narrow–it’s easy to miss it. But the dale opens out once you’re through that narrow neck and climbs up for about quarter of a mile. There’s no footpath as such, and I’d bet that ninety-nine people out of a hundred wouldn’t even notice the way in.’
‘And that’s where this stroma-whatsit is?’ Tony asked, gazing intently at the map.
‘Yes. About halfway up on the left,’ Jonathan said.
‘So it’s pretty secluded? Not somewhere people would go for a picnic?’
Jonathan shook his head. ‘Not unless you like mud and brambles and no view. That’s the thing about the Peak District, there’s a lot of hidden space. You get a quarter of a million people there on a Bank Holiday and still you can lose yourself.’
‘So who would go there?’ Carol asked.
‘Geologists, professional and amateur. I did once see three guys climbing there, but it’s not a great pitch, and there are a lot better rock routes nearby. But that’s about it. Like I said, it’s not got much to commend it in terms of scenery.’
‘So whoever took Tim Golding there could be pretty sure they weren’t going to be disturbed,’ Tony mused. ‘Which means they knew the terrain.’ He glanced up. ‘How near can you get a car to here?’
‘There’s a car park about a mile away at the old Miller’s Dale station.’
‘That’s a tall order with an unwilling victim,’ Tony said softly. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any way of telling what time of day this picture was taken?’
Jonathan took the original print from his folder. ‘That depends on the time of year. When did the boy go missing?’
‘The second week of August,’ Carol said without having to check.
Jonathan studied the photograph. ‘That part of the dale is east-facing. It takes a while for the sun to climb high enough to clear the opposite cliff. I’d guess around nine or ten in the morning.’
Tony stood up abruptly and turned away, pressing his hands to the sides of his head as if suffering a headache. ‘Take a full team of SOCOs with you when you go, Carol. You’re looking for a grave. Maybe even two.’
‘You think Guy might be there too?’
Tony dropped his hands. ‘Balance of probabilities? Yes. The overwhelming odds are that both Tim and Guy were taken by the same man. We both know that. If he’s confident enough to put that picture out there, I’d say it’s because he’s already used that as his killing ground at least once.’
Carol caught Jonathan’s dismayed expression. It was all too easy to forget how the horrors cops took in their stride could rip into the hearts of outsiders. Confronted with the uninflected reality that she and Tony had dealt with more times than they could count, the non-combatants in the war against chaos had no defences. ‘It’s too early to say,’ she said, knowing in her heart Tony was right.
Tony whirled round, his face pale and drawn. Oblivious to Jonathan, he leaned his fists on Carol’s desk and gazed into her eyes. ‘He’ll have got to the car park soon after first light. Tim was almost certainly lightly sedated. Enough to make him spaced out, docile, so he wouldn’t put up a struggle. In that state, it will have taken a while to get him to Swindale. Then he’ll have done his thing. Taken his time over it too. And taken his trophy pictures. So what does he do then? He’s not going to risk walking back on a popular footpath with a messed-up kid on his hands. He’s killed him, Carol. He’s killed him there and disposed of the body in situ. A shallow grave under Jonathan’s brambles.’ He closed his eyes and muttered something she didn’t catch.
‘What?’
‘I said, at least you can bring him home now.’
A long silence. Jonathan’s face had sunk in on itself, his eyes slitted as if he was trying to block out the image Tony’s words had conjured up. Too much information for him, Carol thought. She cleared her throat. ‘We don’t know that till we get there.’ She pushed her chair back and stood up.
‘Jonathan, there’s nothing we can do today. The light is already going. But we need to get moving on your information as soon as we can. I know we’re imposing a great deal on your time, but is there any possibility that you can take some of my officers to Swindale tomorrow and show them where this photograph was taken?’
His eyes widened, the implications of what he’d heard still reverberating in his head. ‘I…I don’t know,’ he said.
‘You wouldn’t have to stick around,’ Carol said gently. She moved to his side and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘It would simply be a matter of leading us there, showing us the geological formation that corresponds to the picture. Then you’d be free to go. I promise you.’
‘Will you be there?’ His voice was neutral, but she sensed his need. It wasn’t such a big thing to ask, not after what he had already done for her.
‘I can’t promise,’ she said. ‘I’m in the middle of another major inquiry. It depends on what happens tonight. If we make an arrest, I’ll be needed here. But otherwise…yes, I’ll be there. If you can be back here at eight tomorrow morning, we’ll sort it out then.’
He nodded, reading the dismissal in her voice. ‘Thanks, Carol.’ He stood up.
‘It’s us who should be grateful, Jonathan. This is the first real break we’ve had since Tim went missing. If we do bring him home to his family, it’ll be you they have to thank.’ She patted his arm. ‘See you tomorrow.’
Jonathan paused in the doorway and found a faint smile. ‘Nice to meet you, Dr Hill.’
Tony nodded acknowledgement. As the door closed behind Jonathan, he said, ‘I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard that lie.’
Carol shook her head in affectionate exasperation. ‘You really have to learn not to frighten the horses,’ she said.
‘I’ve always enjoyed a good stampede,’ he said.
‘If we find what you think we will, can you come out and take a look at the scene?’ Carol asked.
‘If you feel it will help.’
‘Thanks.’ She hesitated for a moment, wondering if and how she could raise the subject of Aidan Hart with him.
‘So how are you doing?’ he asked, returning to his perch on the end of Carol’s desk. As he settled, he knocked into the pile of papers on her desk, revealing the Alice Sebold memoir. He frowned, picking it up. ‘You reading this?’ he said.
‘No, I’m using it as a paperweight,’ she snapped. ‘What do you think?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘I think you might find it helpful.’
‘You’ve read it?’
‘Carol, I think I’ve read almost every serious work written about rape.’ As she opened her mouth to speak he lifted a finger to stop her. ‘And no, not because of you. Because of what I do.’
‘So if you thought Lucky might be helpful, why didn’t you suggest I read it?’ Carol knew she sounded aggressive, but she didn’t care.
‘You would have listened?’ Tony said mildly. ‘You wouldn’t have told me to butt out and let you deal with it in your own way?’
‘Jonathan gav
e it to me,’ she said baldly. ‘He wasn’t scared of being told to keep out.’
Tony’s head moved back, as if avoiding a blow in slow motion. ‘You told Jonathan.’
Straight to the wrong point, Carol thought bitterly. ‘Yes, I told Jonathan.’
Tony nodded. ‘Probably easier. Him being a stranger. No baggage. I’m sorry, Carol. If I’d thought you would have welcomed it, I would have suggested it. I read it wrong.’ Suddenly he stood up. ‘Right. Well, I’ll be off.’
‘You’re not coming to the briefing?’ He shook his head. ‘And you’re not going to run through the operation with Paula?’
‘What would be the point?’ he said. ‘This isn’t what I do. It’s what you do.’
‘You can give us insight,’ Carol said.
‘You’ve had my insight for the day. I think the killer works in Temple Fields. I think he’s a security guard or a bouncer or maybe even a traffic warden. Other than that, I’ve got nothing to offer you right now.’ He reached out and put the palm of his hand against the front of her shoulder.
She felt panic in her chest, a tight fist squeezing the air out of her lungs. ‘You could help Paula.’
‘I don’t think so, Carol. You don’t need me for this. This is cop business, not head business. There’s nothing more convincing than experience. And nobody has more rigorous experience of undercover than you. You really don’t need me.’
Paula found Don Merrick in the station canteen nursing a mug of tea. She slid into the seat opposite him, checking out his glum expression. ‘You look like you could give Eeyore a run for his money,’ she said.
‘I got a letter delivered here from Lindy’s solicitor. She wants a divorce.’
‘Christ, she’s not wasting any time, is she?’
Merrick sighed. ‘She’s right though, isn’t she? We both know in our hearts that it’s over. It’s supposed to be blokes that are the tough ones, but when it comes to severing the ties and moving on, you women are bloody ruthless.’
‘Not all of us,’ Paula said, thinking back over her own calamitous past. Two relationships in the past six years, both of which she’d hung on to long past the sell-by date. They reminded her of a poem she’d once read about love being a kite you couldn’t let go of till somebody gave you something better to do. Although she didn’t like to see the effect Lindy’s hard-headedness had on Merrick, she envied his wife her ability to cut herself free so readily.