Hold My Hand

by M. J. Ford

  ‘That’s our man,’ he said.

  Chapter 7

  Jo was hoping to get a call into Bath when they got back to the station. Rob Bridges had said she wasn’t on the Dylan Jones case, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t show an interest. Anyone in Bath CID would give her the basics, unless directly ordered not to. She didn’t want to put them in a tight spot though. She wondered, if it came to it, whether Ferman might be a better way to keep informed. She thought that she had earned his trust during their brief time together, but of course she hadn’t got his number. Carrick would have it, probably, if he was the one who’d asked the old-timer to tag along when Dylan’s body was discovered.

  Heidi Tan and Andy Carrick were at their desks at St Aldates, but as soon as Jo and Dimitriou came through the door, DCI Stratton summoned everyone for a debrief in his office. They all compared the sketch with the catalogue and agreed it was the most promising lead. The links to known drug dealers idea was drawing a blank.

  ‘Almost none of that fraternity is aged over thirty-five,’ said Tan.

  ‘What about releases?’ asked Carrick. ‘Someone coming back into the fold?’

  ‘We had one,’ said Tan, checking her book. ‘Nigel Merryn, fifty-two. Previous for dealing amphetamines and GBH. But he’s wearing a tag and checks out.’

  ‘An addict then?’ said Stratton. ‘They get some hopeless junkie to lift Niall, payment in kind?’

  ‘I think that’s unlikely, sir,’ said Jo, drawing a couple of glances.

  ‘You do?’ said Stratton, with a cock of the head.

  Jo persevered. He wasn’t her super, after all. ‘It was reckless, I’ll give you that, sir. Desperate even. A lot could have gone wrong. But to buy the mask a few days in advance, to take on two kids, to drive away, all that takes planning, and, dare I say it, guts. There are so many variables – things that could go wrong. He was careful and precise.’

  ‘Not if he crashed into that gate,’ said Stratton. ‘That was your theory, if I remember?’

  ‘Just a theory, sir,’ said Jo. ‘And why take the risk at all? If this is drugs – if it was just a message – they could have cut one of the kids. Chances are we might not even have heard about it. Now they’ve got half of Thames Valley resources out looking.’

  Stratton crossed his arms and looked at her hard. She didn’t break eye contact.

  Someone’s phone was ringing, and Carrick fished in his pocket. Looking at the screen, he said, ‘About time. We’ve got the phone placement.’

  He left the office, headed to his desk. After a second or two the rest of them followed. Before he started clicking, Jo saw on his monitor a brief screensaver of his family at the beach. Three mixed-race kids, a wife who looked like a supermodel. She knew it was only a snapshot – an edited highlight – but the sheer joy and colour of the photo made her feel suddenly monochrome and worthless.

  ‘Hold on a second,’ he said. ‘Bingo.’

  They crowded round. The screen showed a satellite map, placing the final three texts Niall had sent, according to triangulation from phone masts, as small circles radiating pale green to red. They formed pretty much a line along the road west from Port Meadow, a track leading to a village called Swinford. The last, labelled with the time 21.29, was far from any main road. Carrick read the accompanying message.

  ‘They lost the phone at 21.31,’ he said. ‘Switched off, one way or another.’

  ‘Andy, get out there,’ said Stratton. ‘Take Jo with you. Heidi, George – follow up with Securitex and get the CCTV from the Market.’

  As Carrick and Jo jogged to his car, she tried not to think about what they might find. She thought of the McDonaghs, brittle, unhappy and in denial, and wondered how they might cope with the news she might soon have to deliver. She prayed for a different outcome.

  Carrick switched on the lights as soon as they pulled out of the station car park, and cut through the traffic expertly, almost brushing a couple of slowing cars. She recognised an ADQ when she saw one, having only passed the Initial Pursuit certificate herself. Advance Driver Qualified involved hours on a skidpan in powerful vehicles, and travel in excess of 130mph with commentary. Ben had failed twice then given up.

  And while she marvelled at Carrick’s deft acceleration and manoeuvring, she didn’t share the optimism his speed implied. Whatever was waiting on that lonely farm track in the middle of the Oxfordshire countryside, it probably wasn’t going anywhere.

  * * *

  As they drove, Jo checked the map. The road where the messages had come from ended a good mile from Port Meadow as the crow flew, but with its twists and turns through the fields, it was maybe a mile and a half. Still, with the head start he had, the kidnapper had had plenty of time to make his getaway. Again, she was struck by the planning. Instinct told her he was no addict.

  They turned into a single-width track, and the Toyota started to bounce along the uneven ground. Carrick slowed down and switched off the sirens, but he was still driving more quickly than seemed sensible, and she heard the stones pinging off the chassis. There were no street lights off the beaten track, but after dark, the perp would have been very unlikely to meet anything coming the other way. Dust rose around the tyres as they made their way between overgrown hedges either side. They passed a couple of gates leading to distant farms and outbuildings.

  ‘We’re getting close,’ said Jo, comparing the phone company printout with the car’s satnav.

  Suddenly she was thrown forward in the seat and caught by the belt as Carrick hit the brakes. A tractor loomed ahead. Carrick beeped the horn impatiently, but the driver looked over his shoulder, shrugged, and waved them back.

  With a growl, Carrick put the car into reverse. Jo held her breath as he shot back at speed for about fifty metres and curled into a layby.

  ‘Come on!’ he said. ‘Get a flippin’ move on!’

  The tractor rumbled past, and the farmer gave them a salute.

  Carrick’s wheels skidded as he set off again at breakneck speed. After another minute, Jo told him to pull over.

  ‘We’re here,’ she said.

  He edged the car up a bank, leaving it on a tilt. Jo climbed out, and Carrick had to clamber from her side too, to avoid exiting straight into a bush. He straightened his jacket and looked around. The smell of sun-baked earth filled Jo with a sudden pang of nostalgia for simpler times, of walking with her dad through the fields.

  The spot couldn’t have been more innocuous. Hills in the distance, hedges six foot high on either side, with fields beyond. No footpaths, no gates, no turn-offs. Jo scanned the track for tyre marks, but there was nothing amiss.

  ‘Let’s split up,’ she said.

  They took opposite directions. The phone company said the signal data was accurate to about a hundred feet, but Jo walked twice that far before turning back. She peered under the hedgerows, but apart from a bag of dog shit (she checked) and a prehistoric crisp packet, there was nothing. Gradually, all the adrenalin she’d felt back at the station drained away.

  Finding nothing is better than finding a body.

  ‘Masters!’ called Carrick.

  She broke into a run, and spotted him crouched thirty yards up from the car. ‘Bring an evidence bag,’ he said. ‘In the door compartment.’

  She fetched a bundle, and two pairs of latex gloves from the same place.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘Not really sure. I think it might be a phone screen.’

  And when she saw what he was looking at, she was inclined to agree. There were three small fragments of glass, thin, with curved sides leading to a point. But the edges were clean. It looked recent.

  ‘So where’s the rest?’ said Carrick, scanning the area.

  Jo approached the hedge.

  ‘Give me a boost,’ she said. He frowned. ‘So I can look over,’ she added.

  ‘Oh, right.’ He cupped his hands, close to the hedge, and Jo checked her shoes before placing a foot on them. He heaved, and she h
ad to hold one shoulder to stop herself toppling. She supported her other hand on top of the hedge. The far side was a field of maize, two feet tall, green and wispy.

  ‘See anything?’

  ‘Nope. Let’s find a gate and get in.’

  The roar of an engine made them both look over; the tractor was making its way back down the track in their direction.

  Jo let Carrick lower her partway, then his hands were on her waist and helping her down. Their bodies slid together, just for a moment. Was he actually blushing?

  The farmer stopped, leaned out of the tractor’s open side, and took the pipe from his mouth. ‘I’ve told you lot,’ he said. ‘You can take your business elsewhere.’

  ‘We’re police,’ said Carrick. ‘We need to have a look in this field.’

  The farmer eyed them. ‘Now I’ve heard it all. Look, what’s wrong with a bed like normal folk?’

  ‘You what?’ said Carrick, and then he seemed to understand. ‘Listen, that’s not … we’re not …’

  He was definitely blushing now.

  From the bemused look on the farmer’s face, Jo guessed he was probably one of the few people who hadn’t read about the missing boy. She pulled out her badge.

  ‘We can get a warrant,’ she said, ‘but it might just be quicker to show us the nearest entrance.’

  The farmer squinted. ‘A’right. Keep your hair on. Up the track – there’s a gate. It’s locked, but you two young’uns can climb over. Are you going to shift this car? Can’t get the tractor past.’

  ‘No,’ said Carrick, clearly still smarting from the embarrassment. ‘And if you so much as scratch it, I’ll take you in. This is a crime scene, by the way.’

  He set off, and Jo, grinning, followed.

  They found the gate and climbed over, then doubled back along the fallow trench between the crops and the hedge towards the spot they’d left the car. Cloying mud stuck to Jo’s shoes, making each step laboured. Carrick didn’t seem to care. Jo knew she shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but now she was forming a picture despite herself. The lack of swearing. That schoolboy blush. Regular churchgoer. Perhaps a teetotaller. She wouldn’t be surprised if he was wearing a cross under that shirt. The current beautiful wife was his first real relationship, and they must have had kids early based on the ages on the screensaver. All missionary, birthdays and Christmas.

  No, I’m being mean …

  Roughly opposite where they’d found the glass, Carrick broke off into the crops, trampling a path, and she took a parallel route a couple of metres up.

  In less than a minute, she found it, lying in the long grasses. The carcass of a mobile phone. She called Carrick across.

  ‘There could be prints,’ he said.

  ‘No doubt,’ said Jo. She took a photo with her own phone, then pulled on her gloves and began to gather all the pieces she could see into an evidence bag.

  ‘Why here?’ said Carrick, moving up and down, combing the rest of the ground. ‘He must have stopped the car, got the phone, smashed it in the lane and tossed it over.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t think of it until that point,’ said Jo. ‘From what Arthur said, he might have been panicking a bit. He wanted to get away, then remembered the kid might have a phone.’

  ‘Does that fit the profile?’ asked Carrick. ‘He took enough care with the rest of it. The phone would be the first thing you thought of.’

  ‘Not if you’re of a certain age? Perhaps he wasn’t a mobile phone user.’

  ‘We’re talking middle-aged, not Victorian.’

  Jo had to admit it didn’t make a lot of sense, but what did at the moment? A kidnapper who was meticulous in planning, but careless in execution. The drug angle was looking less likely by the second.

  After a thorough search, they found nothing more. On the way back to the car, Carrick called it in, then asked how the CCTV was coming along.

  ‘Bugger,’ Jo heard him say. ‘What about nearby businesses? There must be other cameras covering the exterior … Yes, sounds good. See you soon.’

  He hung up.

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Jo. ‘Cameras a no-go.’

  ‘Two switched off awaiting servicing.’

  ‘The one overlooking the joke-shop kiosk?’

  ‘Sadly, yes. Nothing for the time frame on the one that actually works.’

  ‘I suppose that narrows down his exit route from five possibilities to four. There are banks on two sides of the Covered Market though. They’ll be more promising.’

  ‘They’re on it already.’ He opened the car door on the passenger side, and climbed back across. ‘That was good work this morning, by the way. With George Dimitriou.’

  ‘Just lucky,’ said Jo, but she allowed herself a smile.

  As they headed back, the tractor was waiting, pulled up in front of a farm. Jo waved thanks but didn’t get anything back.

  ‘Andy, have you got a contact for Harry Ferman?’ she asked.

  Carrick looked surprised. ‘Er, yeah. Yes, on my desk at the station. I think he took a shine to you.’

  ‘What’s his story anyway?’

  ‘We only crossed over for a couple of years,’ said Carrick. ‘He was a good copper. Too good, really. Not sure he was quite ready for what the world’s become, you know?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Carrick lowered his voice. ‘Just that he held on a bit too long. Had demons he couldn’t shake.’

  Jo remembered Ferman’s shambling, heavy gait through the doors of the pub when she’d dropped him off the day before.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Carrick. ‘But that was probably a generational thing. The chief super hated it, of course. Spoke to him more than once. From what I heard – and this didn’t come from me – Ferman had some family problems. A daughter who died. Not sure he ever really got over it.’

  Jo thought of the look on the sonographer’s face when they couldn’t find the heartbeat. Ben squeezing her hand.

  ‘Understandable.’

  She thought of the Joneses too, with their conservatory furniture, their trimmed shrubs, the ornamental boot-scraper, their quality, functional clothes. All the accoutrements of middle-class formality. If you were their new neighbours, moving in, you’d think they were the most normal couple in the world. You might wonder if they had children who lived in another town, or country. Or you might assume they were childless by choice. There wasn’t a part of you that would suspect their only child, their dear little boy, had been snatched away, murdered, and buried under a swimming pool plot. Because if you learned what had happened to them, the most normal of suburban couples, you’d know it could happen to you as well.

  Jo hoped again, with all her heart, that the McDonaghs would have a happier ending.

  * * *

  At the station, they catalogued the phone and sent it off by courier to the lab. If the kidnapper was clever, he wouldn’t have touched it, but something told Jo that the man they were looking for wasn’t clever at all. That he was clinging on by his fingertips.

  And if that was true, it was a mixed blessing. It meant they might well find him, but it didn’t mean they would find Niall.

  ‘We’ve got four units on the likely businesses with CCTV in the vicinity of the market,’ said Tan. ‘Dimi’s co-ordinating on site. Forensics have got a paint sample from the gate near the crime scene too. They can’t confirm yet, but they’re ninety-nine per cent sure it’s enamel-based.’

  ‘And that means?’ said Carrick.

  ‘Fifteen years old at a minimum, apparently. You can still buy the stuff online, but it stopped being used for mass-production years ago.’

  Jo went over to the board. The images of Niall had been pinned up down one side where the victim’s details were collated. Under the ‘Suspect’ column, where someone had scrawled ‘Vehicle’ she wrote ‘pre-2003?’.

  ‘I’m going to read through the kids’ full statements again,’ Carrick said, sitting at his desk. ‘Oh, and Jo?’ He
ripped a Post-it off the side of his monitor, and handed it over. ‘Ferman’s contact.’

  Jo took it. An Oxford landline, and an address in Abingdon.

  ‘Be back in a second,’ she said.

  She went to one of the interview rooms and dialled, not holding any great hopes he’d be in.

  He picked up on the fourth ring. ‘Hello?’

  Was he slightly slurred? She wasn’t sure.

  ‘Mr Ferman, it’s Jo Masters. We met yesterday.’

  ‘Of course. How are you?’

  ‘Very well, thank you. I thought I’d touch base on the Dylan Jones case. I wondered if you’d heard anything?’

  ‘Read about it,’ he said. She thought she heard a hint of belligerence.

  Jo chose her words carefully. ‘I’ve been seconded to another case with Thames Valley,’ she said, ‘so I’m out of the loop a bit.’

  ‘This have something to do with, what was his name? Ah, yes. Ben.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Short answer is no. That journalist was round here though. Don’t know how she got my address.’

  Again, perhaps the slight tone of accusation.

  ‘Did you tell her anything?’

  ‘She knew a bit already. But no, I didn’t. Is there something specific you wanted?’

  ‘Ah, no. I was just seeing if they were keeping you up to date. Or, y’know, if there was anything you’d thought of … that might help.’

  ‘If you’re coming to me, you must be desperate.’ He chuckled.

  ‘A little, maybe.’ He didn’t say anything else. ‘Well, sorry to bother you.’

  With no other option, she called Bath and got DC Kevin Carter.

  ‘Hi Kev, it’s Jo. I’m in Bath on this kidnap – just following up a lead, and … well, it’s probably a waste of time. Wondered if you had anything more on a suspect for the Jones body?’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ he said, sounding bored. ‘I’ll put you through to Ben.’

  ‘Hey, no, wait—’

  Too late. The phone was already ringing, and then Ben was there.