by Danny Miller
‘One other thing, sir,’ said Frost, ‘can we get Desk Sergeant Johnson back where he belongs, on the desk? He plays a blinder getting the right info out of people on the phone, and we need all hands on deck.’
Mullett assented with barely a second thought, and Frost and Clarke left the super’s office and made their way through to the incident room.
It was busy, very busy. Phones were ringing off the hook, the map of Denton and the surrounding area was dotted with red pins indicating where there had been various unverified sightings. Photocopies of a police artist’s drawing were plastered around the room, showing Ruby in the outfit she was wearing when she got snatched, along with photos of the same clothing: a red woollen coat with big black buttons manufactured by Ladybird with matching red shoes, also made by Ladybird. She had carried a blue rucksack featuring the characters from the TV show Cockleshell Bay. There were also photos of items identical to those in her rucksack: her pink dance leotard and pumps; a paperback copy of Black Beauty; a Mountview Juniors exercise book; a Kermit the Frog pencil case; and her beloved Little Miss Lucy Cabbage Patch Kid doll.
‘Shall we tell the Hansons we got a letter?’ asked Clarke.
‘No, not yet. They’ll want to see it, or know what was written in it, and I don’t want to do it over the phone. We’ll visit them later when we get the results back from Forensics. Meanwhile, gather up some troops and we’ll go knock on some tent doors.’
‘Do tents have doors?’
‘Flaps?’
Clarke peeled away to check the rota. Frost went to make a phone call, but quickly stopped when he clocked PC Simms’s latest outfit.
Like an overgrown Boy Scout, he was obviously prepared to enter the wilds of Denton Woods, in camouflage army trousers tucked into wellington boots, a green cagoule and a waxed flat cap.
‘What the hell are you wearing now, you little tart?’
Waters laughed, more at Frost’s reaction than Simms’s outfit, though that must have accounted for some of it.
Simms, baffled by their reaction, looked down and inspected himself. ‘I’m in plain clothes.’
‘Every time I see you, you’re wearing something different.’
Waters agreed. ‘You should be like Jack, the same clobber day in, day out.’
‘Exactly,’ said Frost proudly.
‘I’m just trying to be professional. It helps me blend in, not stick out like a sore thumb, or a copper.’
‘Got news for you, son, plain clothes isn’t an opportunity for you to raid the fancy-dress shop, you’re not Mr Benn.’
Frost scoped the room, looking for Clarke. He saw she was on the phone, raking a hand through her hair like she wanted to pull it out in frustration. Her voice kept rising above the urgent whisper she was trying to maintain.
‘… Look, Mum, just do as I say, I don’t want you taking Philip out today, just wait till I get home … No, I’m not being silly, just …’
Clarke turned and saw Frost behind her. She quickly wrapped up the conversation, pacified by the promises from her mother to do as she said.
‘We ready?’ said Clarke, forcing a smile on her face.
‘I don’t know, are you?’
She bit her lip. ‘Sorry, I was just on the phone—’
‘To your mum, telling her not to take Philip to the park today. I understand.’
‘It’s every parent’s nightmare. Sounds trite, sounds obvious, but it’s not until you have to deal with it … and that letter and the lack of confirmed sightings. And now we have civilian volunteers about to search the parks and wastelands …’
‘I’ve never been a parent, but I’ve been through this before. It’s important we don’t get emotionally involved. As harsh as that sounds, it’s not what Gail and Richard Hanson want from us. They want to see stone-cold professionalism. Especially from you, as you’ll mostly be dealing with Gail. She can’t see your fear. She doesn’t want to. She wants to see you efficient, determined and capable of getting her daughter back. OK?’
Clarke took a deep calming breath, and nodded in agreement.
‘Right, let’s go and do that, then.’ Frost headed out of the incident room with Clarke at his heels, and they picked up Simms along the way. ‘And anyway, Sue, I wouldn’t worry about little Philip. No one would dare go near him with your mother about, Attila the Hun’s got nothing on—’
‘Jack! You were doing so well until then.’
‘Where’s the painting?’
Parker slammed the car door shut, hard enough for it to feel like the little Citroën 2CV would collapse around them. But in all fairness, the ‘Tin Snail’, as it was known, always did that; even rolling the window down made it feel like bits were falling off. Once the car had settled and stopped shaking, he turned towards Banes, sat expectantly in the passenger seat, a seat which was little more than a deck chair.
‘She’s sold it.’
‘Sold it? Who has she sold it to? It’s worthless to anyone not in the know!’
‘At a jumble sale.’
Banes buried his hands deep into the pockets of his duffel coat, one of them gripping the hammer. He looked around him, there was no one in sight. They were in Parker’s pale-blue 2CV. They had agreed not to look at each other’s painting until they had all three together. That was Banes’ idea; he didn’t trust Stephen Parker, but only because he didn’t trust anyone. And he suspected that Parker didn’t trust him. And with all those letters after his name, he can’t be a complete idiot, thought Banes. So he believed that the suggestion would lull the lecturer into a nice false sense of security, give him the impression that they were equal partners in this exciting little venture, as he was sure Parker viewed it. Nothing could be further from the truth as far as Banes was concerned.
But now all that had changed. Now there was no third painting. Just the two. Maybe Kevin Wheaton was right, thought Banes, maybe it’s all pointless? As simple-minded as Kevin seemed at times, his criminal acumen was gleaned from the best of them. And going after something that may or may not exist might not be the best use of his time …
He turned to Parker, who had just finished lighting up that pipe of his. Like some stinking old compost heap in a barrel. As Parker gripped the briar shank of his pipe for a long draw, Banes gripped the hickory haft of his hammer and was about to draw it out of his coat pocket—
‘Lucky for us I know who she sold it to.’
‘What?’
Parker stopped inspecting the burning embers of his pipe, and turned towards his passenger, who was now breathing heavily.
‘Oh yes, I managed to get that out of her. Charles Wilkes. He’s an artist, or certainly professes to be. He has a gallery and craft shop in Gisborough, the next village up from Ivan’s. He sells his paintings there, mainly local scenery.’
‘If he’s an artist, what would he want it for … You don’t think he knows about it?’
‘No, why would he?’
‘You said he lives near Ivan. Maybe they were friends, maybe they used to meet up for a drink? Maybe Ivan got drunk one night and told him about the paintings?’
‘That’s an awful lot of maybes. In academic terms, one needs more solid empirical evidence to consider it a thesis.’
Banes ran his tongue around his gums on hearing this. ‘This isn’t an academic exercise. And what I’ve discovered in life, real life, not books, is that it’s the “maybes” that can get you what you want, and the “maybes” that can get you hanged.’
Parker considered this. It didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to him, but he wasn’t about to debate the point. ‘Sally sold the painting to him for ten pence.’
‘Then if we offer him twenty, he’s made a profit, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes. Although he might put it in his shop. Though I can’t imagine he’ll sell it to anyone else.’
‘That could be another maybe he will, maybe he won’t. But we need to stop that happening.’
The urgency in Banes’ voice alerted Parker to the dan
ger, so he turned the key in the ignition and the 2CV rattled into action.
Friday (3)
Denton CID had a list of hardcore activists who were to be brought to Eagle Lane station and questioned immediately. Some had a criminal record, others had affiliations to groups known to advocate the violent overthrow of the system. These ranged from the Red Hammer socialist group to Anarchy in the UK Today!
Frost was without political prejudice, apart from the politics that traded on people’s prejudice, but he still wasn’t happy about Operation Country Mile. It seemed to be persecuting people for their beliefs, not their actions. This lot were protesting because of something they believed in – and the powers that be were collecting their personal information for what? Frost didn’t quite know. Subversive? Hardly, he thought. There were some bad apples who would get agitated at the opening of an envelope if they thought they could get in a fight with the police. But most were just ordinary decent middle-class citizens imbued with the very English spirit of protest, from the Levellers of the 1640s, through the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass of 1932, to Ban the Bomb more recently. Not a lot had changed. But right now, even he had to admit, he was more than happy to have a list of names in front of him. It gave them a good starting point.
At the camp around the Jarrett & Sons site they managed to find five of the ten they were after. They were summarily pulled from their tents and brought in for questioning. It was still early enough for most of them to be caught with their pants down and tucked up in their sleeping bags. None of them had time to ‘flush their stash’, and most of them were caught in possession of lumps of hash, about the same size and consistency as Oxo cubes, and sealed in clingfilm. There were also Dexies and amphetamines to be found in the pockets of punked-out and studded black leather motorcycle jackets, stencil-sprayed with CRASS, GBH, Dead Kennedys, Anti-Nowhere League, Thatcher on Acid, to name but a few.
The drugs stash proved good leverage. Those questioned all denied having anything to do with the abduction of Ruby Hanson. Most agreed it wasn’t a bad idea, the type of action that needed to happen, but they wouldn’t actually do such a thing themselves. Frost believed them, they looked like they’d have messed it up if they’d tried. But as the team expected, when threatened with some real prison time for drug possession, they all turned on each other. They may have looked like the cast of Mad Max 2, but all lacked that real apocalyptic edge, and all wanted to be back in their nice little middle-class homes when their camping trip was over.
One name kept coming up, though. One who was just a little bit more extreme than the others. He took things a little further than most. But no one knew where he was. Word was, he’d gone deep into the woods. Gone upriver, as it were. Gone native. He knew how to survive out in the open. Word was, he didn’t even need a tent, or a sleeping bag, or takeaways delivered from any of Denton’s pizza parlours, chicken joints, burger bars, or Frost’s beloved Jade Rabbit Chinese restaurant. The town’s thriving takeaway industry was doing good business with the protestors, delivery boys were run off their wheels. There was always a queue at the phone box in the woods car park, from which people hungrily placed their orders. But not this fellow; word was, he had the knowledge to survive out in nature on a diet of berries, selected mushrooms, skinned rabbit, baked hedgehog and water from the streams.
His name was Degsy.
She could hear them arguing, voices raised. They were using words that Mummy and Daddy would never use. She heard them make a phone call to someone. When she pressed her ear against the door she could hear the static crackly voice of the person at the other end of the line; he too was angry, and very loud, yelling at the men in the next room. That’s what really frightened her. It was the not knowing what she had done to make them all so angry at her.
Ruby moved away from the door and covered her ears and sat on the bed until she could hear the shouting no more. The room was small, a lot smaller than her one at home. And it was old, and a bit smelly. There were mottled black patches in the corners, and the crispy old wallpaper was coming away from the wall, and she could see the wood coming through where the plaster had crumbled away. There was a small electric fire, two blazing orange bars, but the heat didn’t travel very far. She kept her red coat on, and her mittens that Mummy had stitched into the sleeves so she wouldn’t lose them.
The single bed she sat on was hard and lumpy. Like the one in hospital when she had her appendix out. Her feet didn’t touch the ground. They’d given her a glass of milk and some biscuits. She told them she only drank milk with banana Nesquik. They didn’t say anything, they just looked at each other. Ruby couldn’t tell if they were angry because they were wearing masks, rubber masks of the same man. The face was of a man on the telly, not the good telly, but the telly that Mummy and Daddy watched in the evenings. They liked the programme, it made them laugh. It was like a Muppet Show for grown-ups with politicians instead of Kermit and Miss Piggy. She couldn’t remember his name right now … but he was the president of America, she thought. He had a nice smiling face, and the mask captured his likeness perfectly.
The two men had been in the room twice today: the first time when they left the milk and a plate of biscuits on the side table; then about an hour later, when they came back with the banana Nesquik and stirred it into the milk. Then they left, and locked the door behind them.
Mummy and Daddy never lock her bedroom door. When she was smaller she couldn’t sleep when the door was closed. They used to leave a small light on in the hallway. But now, at home, she closes the door, she closes it so she can’t hear Mummy and Daddy. It upsets her, it makes her cry.
Mummy and Daddy are like the people in the American president’s masks now. They argue. They argue a lot, and they shout, at night, when they think she’s asleep. She sneaks out of her room at night and crawls along the landing to the top of the stairs to listen to them. She gulps down her breath, trying not to cry, trying not to shout out to them to stop. Because little Ruby knows, she now knows that Daddy doesn’t love Mummy any more. And that they would soon not be living together in their house any more, the house that Daddy built for them. Mummy has been shouting at him, telling him that he’ll never see Ruby again, she’d make sure of that.
Ruby wondered if they would come to collect her, or if she would never see them again.
Banes snapped away on his Olympus Trip 35. He thought he’d be needing it to take some photos of the paintings. Now he was in the academic’s Citroën 2CV taking snaps of Parker, who was on the other side of the road, talking to Charles Wilkes. Banes could see it wasn’t going well. Wilkes’ little gift shop-cum-art gallery was closed, and Parker was talking to him on the doorstep of his flint-walled cottage, attached to the shop. The road, little more than a lane, was lined with similar old cottages and a tea room, a second-hand bookstore and a bric-a-brac shop.
The village of Gisborough was picturesque and old. And so was Charles Wilkes, with his generous unnaturally auburn curls hanging down in clusters like bunches of grapes, and a paisley cravat tied around his long neck; he cut a tall, eccentric, bohemian figure, straight out of the Bloomsbury set. But for all the flamboyancy and dabbling with hair dye, he must have been in his seventies.
Old and intractable. Whatever Parker was saying to him, it was going down like a chipped cup of cold tea. Banes tutted and clicked away, as a flustered Parker gesticulated wildly, until the old man gave him a two-fingered salute and slammed the door in his face.
Well done, cracking job, you idiot, thought Banes, as he watched Parker ringing the man’s doorbell again. Banes had suspected that Parker wouldn’t handle it well, but he’d let him have a go anyway. Trouble with Parker was, at his core, he was a teacher. He was used to a bunch of snot-nosed students hanging on his every word whilst he pontificated. He seemed mild-mannered and ineffectual enough, at first glance, but take him out of his comfort zone, out into the real world away from his ivory tower, and he just sort of fell apart. Got all niggly and flustered and couldn’t con a
toddler out of a jelly baby.
Banes laughed as Parker now banged on Wilkes’ door with his fist. The door flew open and Charles Wilkes came out, with his dog, a yappy Jack Russell, straining at the leash to bite Parker. The good doctor of philosophy jumped back into the road. And the door closed on him again. Old Wilkes may have looked a bit of an intellectual old fop, but he obviously had steel running through him and wasn’t to be messed with. Banes put the camera back in his pocket.
‘Bloody hell, bloody, bloody …’
‘That went well, then,’ said Banes, his voice brimming with contempt and sarcasm as Parker got into the car and petulantly slammed the door shut, further profanities falling from his twisted mouth.
‘I went from a pound for his trouble to offering him two hundred pounds! Two hundred sodding pounds – and he said no. I begged him, said it was Vanessa’s painting, sentimental value, gift from her dead husband, you know, really laid it on thick. And he still said no. How unbelievably heartless. Do you know what he said to me?’
‘My lip-reading isn’t what it used to be, but from here I got a pretty good idea.’
‘He said it’s too late.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He agreed the painting was an abomination, but the only reason he bought it was because it was a ready-made stretched canvas and it was the perfect size. The old fool said that he’s had an artistic breakthrough. He’s entered a golden age and is producing some of his best work, and he’s already started painting over the canvas.’
‘He’s painting over … over the painting?’
‘Yes. Happens all the time with artists, he says, artists are always on the lookout for cheap paintings, they’re cheaper than buying blank canvases sometimes.’
‘So even if we get the painting, he’s painted over it? We’re fucked!’
Parker flinched, as if he’d never ecountered such fury before. Parker stopped looking at Banes, and stared ahead of him, like he didn’t want any distractions as a thought struck him: ‘No. No, we’re not. At the university we run an MA in art restoration, we could get the new paint removed. They do it all the time. They unearthed a lost series of Dutch old masters under some 1940s paintings of cats in baskets; they’d been found in a shed, covered in filth. Sometimes the back of a painting can tell you as much about it as the front: the wooden frame, the type of materials used in the canvas, the age. One of the lab guys was telling me about it the other week …’ Parker rapped his knuckles on the steering wheel in frustration and muttered some curses. ‘… But it’s all a moot point, as we can’t get it anyway.’
