The Drowning Ground

by James Marrison

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Where’s your van? You lent it to some friend maybe? Or left it in a lock-up somewhere? They tell me there was no van when they went to pick you up just now.’

  It seemed to take a moment for Gardner to gather his thoughts, as if the question surprised him. ‘Van?’ Gardner said.

  ‘The one you use for work. Why isn’t it out front, where it normally is?’

  ‘A busted brake light. It’s in the shop. You can –’

  ‘Shut up,’ I snapped wearily. ‘You were seen and you damned well know it. And that’s why you tried to run just now, and that’s why you got rid of the van. A couple saw it and then you up on Meon Hill. Lanky fellow, they said. Spiky black hair – just like yours. They said you and Frank Hurst were arguing about something. Couldn’t make out what it was, though. Two hours later, and Hurst’s staring at the sky with a pitchfork rammed into his throat.’

  ‘I don’t know what he’s on about,’ Gardner said to Baxter, and crossed his arms. ‘I don’t even know who this … who this Hurst bloke is.’

  I watched him very closely. I smiled and held the smile a little while. Up close, Gardner’s attempt to appear youthful looked absurd. His hair was styled so that sculpted rows of it jutted out from the front and from the sides. He leant further back in his chair so that it was sitting on its back legs.

  ‘I think you were doing a job nearby, and somehow you found out that Frank Hurst was up on Meon Hill. You hadn’t been able to see him before, because he’d locked himself up in that big house of his, but you needed to talk to him in person. So the moment you heard he was out there, you got in your van, and you drove to Quinton. You had it out with him on that hill, and then you went back to work. But you were still angry about something. So you went back when no one else was there, just after dark. Maybe things got out of hand,’ I said reasonably. ‘I can understand that. Maybe Hurst attacked you. His temper had got him into trouble before.’

  ‘Mr Gardner,’ Baxter said in prim tones, ‘has already informed you that he does not know this … this Frank Hurst and denies he was ever there. And there are lots of vans around, and plenty of people who could just as easily fit Mr Gardner’s description. Have you even bothered to check, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘You needed to talk to him about the girls, didn’t you, Gardner?’ I said, ignoring Baxter.

  ‘Girls?’ Gardner said. ‘What girls?’

  ‘The two girls who went missing seven years ago. Gail Foster and Elise Pennington.’

  At the mention of the girls, Gardner visibly tensed. He gulped and seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words.

  I pushed on as quickly as I could. ‘You were in the village when Gail went missing. Gail’s mother remembered seeing you out there. You know what I think happened. Somehow you found out that Hurst was having you followed and keeping tabs on you. And you didn’t like it. Was he a threat to you? Had he wanted you to stop following around young girls, because if you were caught he’d also be exposed? Still quite a hobby for you, though.’

  Baxter put his hand on Gardner’s forearm, urging him not to answer. But Gardner was making a very good attempt at seeming indignant and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not like that. Never have been. It’s just bloody gossip, that’s all it is. People have got it in for me. They always have. And that bitch who got me sent to prison – she was lying. I never had anything to do with all that.’

  ‘Jealous of your youthful good looks no doubt,’ I said, before changing tack. ‘Or perhaps he was the one loose end that could tie you to their disappearance.’

  Gardner opened his mouth and then shut it when Baxter, stirring eagerly into life, intervened on his behalf. ‘Now that’s enough, Downes. Quite enough. You’re beyond belief sometimes, you really are.’ Baxter raised his hands in the air and then let them fall, so that his fingers hit the edge of the table. ‘We’ve been through this a thousand times. My client had already served his sentence well before you dragged his name through the mud a second time and tried to link him to those two missing girls. Tell me you’re not digging all that up again. Because if you are,’ he said, and let the words hang in the air, ‘if you are, Mr Gardner needs to be formally read the police caution. That’s a separate case. I suppose you think that it’s perfectly all right to blindside us like this.’

  I waited and glanced at the plastic clock with a bland look in my eye. It was almost 5.00. It would be dark outside by now.

  ‘All you had back then was a very tenuous connection between my client and your case. All you could ever prove was that he was somewhere in the general vicinity when one of the girls went missing.’ Baxter went on, ‘And let me say, Chief Inspector, this is a case that should have been cleared up years ago by this department. By you, in fact.’

  ‘She’s been found,’ I said in a neutral voice, watching Gardner closely.

  ‘Who?’ Gardner said and laughed. ‘Who’s been found? What’re you talking about, Downes?’

  ‘The fire was a mistake,’ I said. ‘You wanted to destroy what was left of them for good and to make sure that anything linking you to Hurst was gone as well. Things like videotapes.’ Again, I looked very closely across the table. There was no reaction at all. Gardner didn’t even blink. He had been a pretty cool customer back then, if I remembered rightly. He hadn’t changed.

  ‘Now listen, I –’ Baxter said.

  I moved forward in my chair. ‘One of the girls was down there. We don’t know which one yet, but when we find the other one we’ll tie them both right back to you and Hurst.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Baxter said. ‘I won’t sit here and let you ambush my client like this.’

  Gardner looked boldly right back at me with his arms crossed like a belligerent teenager. He put the front legs of his chair back on the floor and stared at the ceiling.

  ‘Are you going to charge my client or not?’ Baxter said.

  Gardner was grinning at me. I was sorely tempted to outline the contents of the videotape and very nearly did so just to wipe the grin off his face. But it was much too soon for that. For now, Gardner looked pleased. He reached for his jacket on the back of his chair.

  For a few moments longer, I watched him, collecting my thoughts. The room was silent. The other two men looked at me, impatient to leave. The interview had gone pretty much exactly as I had expected. Of course, Baxter was right. I had no case against Gardner.

  I stood up finally and informed them that Gardner would have to make himself available for a police line-up as soon as one could be arranged. I also asked for the make and model of Gardner’s van along with the registration number. I looked at the clock, read the time and date into the tape recorder and switched it off.

  26

  There was only one B & B in Moreton-in-Marsh, and I walked to it through town. I’d called ahead, so I knew that Emily Foster would be waiting for me in the small lobby. A lot of the villagers had moved away after Gail disappeared, but Emily had stayed as long as she could stand it. I had admired her a great deal at the time. Still did. I remembered passing her house much later, when all the trails leading to Gail had finally run cold – when the summer was almost over, and the first traces of autumn were making their presence felt, and frustration and despair were starting to reach out for me.

  The last time I had been to her house the street had looked cold and dark, almost uninhabited, although there were cars in the driveways on both sides of the street. Now I wondered how many of her neighbours – the ones who had been crowding outside her house during that seemingly endless night – were still in the village, perhaps sitting even now in their front rooms, their own children grown up and gone away. I wondered, with Hurst dead, whether they were talking about Gail and that hot, dry summer when she had disappeared.

  I remembered Emily Foster staring at the road from her daughter’s window. She had still been waiting for her to come home; she had still half expected Gail to turn round the bend in the road with her schoolb
ag slung over her shoulder as if nothing had happened. She had not seen me watching her. Her eyes had been vacant and glazed. Pop stars on the walls had been grinning at her in the half-darkness of Gail’s room. But of course Gail was never coming back.

  Now Emily was waiting for me in a quiet corner of the B & B with a pot of tea getting cold in front of her. She had to be in her mid-forties. But she looked much older. Frail, nervous and diminished, as if only there at all by sheer force of will. She smiled faintly when she saw me and stood up and we shook hands.

  I had made it my business over the years to keep both families personally informed. Elise’s parents had moved to London a long time ago. They were still together. But Emily lived alone in Redditch near Birmingham. She had divorced her husband just before Gail went missing and had not remarried.

  ‘So,’ I said, sitting down, ‘you saw it in the paper, then.’

  She nodded. ‘Joan, my sister, rang. Told me she’d seen it.’

  ‘I wish she hadn’t. I would have liked to have waited a little longer. Until we were sure. There’s not really much that I can tell you.’

  She crouched forward in her chair. ‘But you have found something? Something in that man’s house?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘A body, that’s what the paper says. But is it … is it Gail’s body?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. You know there was a fire out there?’ I said gently.

  ‘But you think it might be her?’ She gazed desperately across the table. ‘You think that you might have found her? You think she might have been there all this time?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ I said quickly. ‘There’s no way to be sure for now.’

  ‘So the hairpin. It was Gail’s all along. The one you found in his swimming pool.’

  I sighed. ‘We don’t know that. We’re still very much in the dark. I’m sorry, but it might turn out that it’s all got nothing to do with Gail at all. So you really shouldn’t be here. It’s far too early on, and it won’t do you any good being back here. You must know that. It’s only going to make things worse.’

  ‘I can’t help that,’ she said coldly. ‘And how can things be any worse than they are already? All I want to know is what happened to Gail. And I want to know why you didn’t search his house. You had the hairpin. What else did you need?’

  ‘But we couldn’t be sure, remember. You couldn’t be sure if it was hers at the time. You know we went through all that. It was bent. And rusty. That’s all we had. And even if we had searched his house, there’s no guarantee we would have found anything. None at all.’

  ‘But you should have searched,’ Emily said. ‘You should have searched his house. Why didn’t you?’

  I didn’t say anything. I looked outside, aware that I was just making excuses. She was right, of course. Why hadn’t I ignored O’Donnell and taken the place apart? Seven years she’d been waiting for news, and it was all my fault. I couldn’t believe how badly I’d let her down. For a few moments I struggled against the enormity of my own error. Hurst was gone, and it was possible that we would never know what had happened out there. All that time under his house. And what had I done about it? Nothing.

  ‘Look,’ I said finally, turning towards her, ‘you’re right. We should have searched it. I wanted to, but … well, all I can tell you is that the fire … the fire destroyed the whole house. There’s nothing left of it at all. And if it hadn’t been for the fire, I don’t think we would ever have found … found what was out there.’ I paused. ‘There was this huge joist. It fell straight through the house and crashed down into the ground.’

  Emily didn’t say anything for a while. In fact, she didn’t even seem to be listening. Finally, she said, ‘But she’s been out there. All this time. And you did nothing. You swore to me that you would find her for me. You remember that?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ I stood up. There was nothing else to say.

  27

  In the end, I decided to take Graves along with me to Lower Slaughter to see Nancy. I let him drive. The trees and bushes rushed past us as the road uncoiled beneath our wheels. We plunged further into the growing darkness while the names of small villages whipped past us and we were enveloped by the falling snow.

  ‘What did Brewin say?’ I said. ‘Did the samples he took from the body match the missing girls?’

  ‘The results aren’t in yet. He’ll know tomorrow.’

  ‘And what about the forensics lab? He phoned them?’

  ‘Yes. They don’t want to say too much until they’re sure. But they say that they might be able to extrapolate, or at least get some idea of the age from one of the bones. They’re going to have to try to make their best guess from a single bone once the biological profile is complete. The femur is almost intact. But all they can confirm so far is that the body is female.’

  ‘That’s not much to go on, is it? Nothing else at all?’

  Graves shook his head.

  The houses looked empty and silent. There was a trampled path of frozen sludge leading towards Number 5 Patch Close, a small semi at the end of the road. A grey Nissan was in the driveway, and a woman with her back to us was lifting bags of shopping out of the boot. She whirled round when she saw us looming out of the darkness towards her.

  ‘We’re looking for Nancy,’ I said. ‘You’re her sister, right? She told me she’d be staying with you for a bit. While she was here for her old boss’s funeral. Frank Hurst.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

  She was a little older than her sister; tall but with a rounder face. She was looking at me with the bags weighing heavy in her hands, and the plastic digging into her fingers. She slumped slightly and let the bags rest on the ground in the snow.

  ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Downes,’ I said. ‘I’d like to talk to her. Do you know where she is? In the village perhaps?’

  ‘No. She’s out.’

  ‘Out where?’

  ‘She’s gone to Cheltenham. Took the bus.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh, about an hour ago.’

  ‘What for?’

  Miss Williams looked worried. ‘Well, she’s meeting someone, I think. She wouldn’t say.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A man, I think.’

  ‘A man. Okay,’ I said. ‘Do you know him? Has he ever been to the house to see her?’

  ‘No. I’ve never seen him.’

  ‘Local?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘He’s phoned the house? You ever talked to him?’

  ‘No. He always calls on her mobile or she phones him on hers. They were on the phone this morning.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Miss Williams? Are you all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been worried about it all day. Look, I don’t want to get her in any trouble, but … I don’t know. I phoned her from work and told her not to go out – not in this weather – but she was adamant about it. We had a bit of an argument. Looks like she might get stuck out there now.’ She looked up at the sky. ‘Must be serious for her to go out in this weather. Wish she hadn’t, not with all this snow forecast. She’s going to take a train home after.’

  ‘Miss Williams – what happened? You had an argument with your sister. What was it about?’

  ‘I heard her talking. I didn’t mean to,’ she said quickly. ‘This morning, before I went off to work. But I’d forgotten my purse so I had to let myself back in. And I heard her talking on the phone. She was angry with this fella. I thought it was just some man she’d met while she was down here, but they were talking about that girl, which didn’t make any sense.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘I didn’t hear all that much, because she hung up after a few minutes. And then she came running down the stairs. Asked me what I thought I was doing, eavesdropping on her like that. She’s got a terrible temper on her. And I said I hadn’t heard anything. But she was furious. I didn’t tell her what I’d heard. But she was talking about t
hat girl, the one who ran off years ago. Stuck-up bitch, that’s what Nancy always said. Hurst’s daughter.’

  ‘Rebecca Hurst?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you remember anything else at all?’

  ‘No. I just heard the name Rebecca Hurst. She was saying something about her running away or something; I couldn’t hear the rest. And then I asked her.’

  ‘Asked her what? About Rebecca Hurst?’

  ‘No. I asked her what she was really doing down here. Back home.’

  ‘But she was here for Frank Hurst’s funeral,’ I said, surprised.

  ‘But why would she go to his funeral? She couldn’t stand him. Frank Hurst sacked her. No warning, nothing, and she’d been working like a dog for him for years and years. So when he sacked her she went off to Brighton, because she’d always wanted to live by the sea. But she’s just a chambermaid now.’

  ‘A chambermaid. But when I saw her at the funeral she told me she ran a guest house.’

  ‘She doesn’t. She’s a chambermaid in a hotel.’

  ‘And so you’re worried about her because you thought she might be up to something – that she was here for a reason other than Hurst’s funeral.’

  ‘Yes. She was furious. Told me to mind my own business and keep out of it. So I said it was her life and she could do what she wanted and that was fine with me. And I went off to work. Went off in a huff. Then I phoned her to see if we could make up before she left. But I couldn’t stop her from going to Cheltenham or change her mind.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘She’s gone to meet this man before she goes home to Brighton on the train. And you think it might have something to do with Rebecca Hurst.’

  ‘I think it might. But I don’t understand what it can all be about. I don’t want to get her in any trouble,’ she said helplessly. ‘But Nancy – she’s just so damned stubborn sometimes.’

  ‘Her number,’ I said, clicking my fingers. ‘Try her number. If she knows it’s you, she might answer. Quickly.’

  She seemed uncertain in the muted light of the porch. Graves took her shopping bags and placed them gently on the doorstep. It seemed to reassure her.