by Jo Bannister
His manner made it impossible to take that as a compliment. Ash gave a surprisingly predatory grin. ‘That should save time, then. When did you last see Miss Best?’
‘I haven’t seen her,’ said Fisher.
‘She was here yesterday evening.’
‘Yes? I wasn’t here.’
‘Because you were …?’
Fisher frowned. ‘If it’s any of your business, I was picking up some vermiculite.’
‘The agricultural suppliers are open at seven in the evening?’
‘A friend picked it up for me earlier in the day. He needed fertiliser. He picked me up a sack of vermiculite while he was there, and I collected it from him. You want to talk to him? We discussed football and milk prices – I’m sure he’ll remember.’
Ash ignored the insolence of his tone. ‘And you didn’t come back here afterwards?’
‘No, I went home.’
‘So where’s the vermiculite?’
Fisher stared at him. ‘In the back of the pick-up. Do you want to see it?’
Which meant it was certainly in the back of his vehicle. It proved nothing. ‘No, thank you,’ Ash said politely. ‘Can you explain why, when my dog picked up Hazel’s scent, it brought her to your van?’
Fisher’s mother had been following the exchange from the kitchen steps. ‘Now I come to think of it,’ she offered, ‘I don’t think she did park at the front. The policewoman. She parked her car on the corner, just about where John’s pick-up is. Maybe that’s what the dog can smell.’
‘That could explain it,’ conceded Ash. He turned to Jocelyn Harbinger. ‘Do you mind if I take her out into the grounds? She might be able to find the trail again where there have been fewer people tramping around.’
Jocelyn looked deeply unconvinced. But she nodded. ‘If you think it’ll help. Is there anything I can do?’
‘Not at the moment. Unless … are there any outbuildings we should check? Barns, byres, chemical stores?’ He watched Fisher for a reaction; there was none. ‘If any of them are locked, and you have keys …?’
Jocelyn had to think. ‘There’s a derelict barn over in the north-east corner.’ She pointed. ‘We’ve never used it, but a previous owner used to dip his sheep there. There’s no lock on the door. By now, there may be no door. Apart from that, all the outbuildings are here, behind the house.’
‘Including the one where I store chemicals.’ A shade theatrically, Fisher reached into the back of the brown pick-up and carried two sacks, one under each arm, across the yard. Ash didn’t even glance into the outbuilding where he deposited them. Patience had already checked inside.
‘How much land do you have?’ asked Ash.
Jocelyn looked momentarily perplexed. ‘About half a mile in every direction. There was more once, but we aren’t farmers.’ That was clear: any farmer’s daughter would have known to the nearest half-acre. ‘The previous owner sold some off, and we sold some more. Most of what’s left is let out to the neighbours.’
‘Neighbours with sheep,’ Fisher said pointedly. ‘Don’t let that dog worry them.’
Worry them! said Patience indignantly. What does he think I’m going to do – sneak up and whisper Mint sauce, mint sauce in their ears?
‘We won’t do any damage,’ said Ash, his expression a careful blank. ‘I’m just looking for my friend.’
‘I hope you find her safe,’ said Jocelyn.
‘She’s probably just chilling out,’ suggested Fisher, closing the stable door. ‘She’ll bob up sooner or later.’
‘From your mouth to dog’s ear,’ said Ash; and with that he and Patience turned down the drive towards the road.
Jocelyn Harbinger and her gardener watched them go. After a moment, hesitantly, Jocelyn said, ‘Did he just say …?’
Fisher nodded. ‘’Fraid so. I said I’d heard of him, didn’t I? Do you want to hear what I’ve heard?’
‘Ooh yes,’ said Jocelyn.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Hazel had no way to measure the passage of time, even approximately. At one point she’d tried counting, but either she’d got bored or perhaps she’d nodded off. It seemed absurd that anyone in her position could indulge in a little nap, but there was time since she regained consciousness that she couldn’t account for. Perhaps the concussion was still affecting her. Perhaps it was the absolute darkness telling her body it should sleep.
The headache was better now, no more than tenderness and a kind of lurking discomfort. On the other hand – well, on both of them, and her ankles – the ropes chafed more with every passing hour. It was the closest thing she had to a timepiece.
She had tested them before; now she did it again, in case either they had grown looser or she had grown stronger as the night – or morning, or afternoon – had worn on. But the result was the same as before. The only thing with any freedom of movement was her brain.
Fisher would come for her. He would open the door, and after so long in the dark the light would blind her. But somehow – blinded, bound, and in the presence of a man whose safety required her death – she must find a way to live. To defeat him, or evade him, or raise the alarm, or something. People would be looking for her. Ash would be looking for her by now, and though he mightn’t know where to look, he also didn’t know how to stop. Maybe Dave Gorman would be looking too.
If she could do nothing else, she could yell. She could yell like a bull-moose at the peak of the rutting season. There was always the chance that someone would hear her, once that door was open. Of course, Fisher had brought her here – wherever here was – because it was quiet and out-of-the-way, and he didn’t expect to be disturbed; but all the same … When the alternative to small chance is no chance at all, you grab the small chance and try to make it bigger.
So she would yell. Not engage him in a sensible conversation and attempt to persuade him of the error of his ways. It was too late for that. His strength of purpose and fear of the consequences both required that he dispose of her. They could chat as politely as a couple of church wardens at a vicarage garden party, they could do it over a cup of tea and a plate of small iced fancies, but in the end it would be her or him. She had to die for him to live free.
Her voice was probably the best weapon she had, but there was also her poor bruised head. She didn’t relish the prospect of using it as a battering ram, but if she could find some way of propelling herself, even if these damn ropes did saw at her flesh, she would. She had nothing left to lose. Actually, that was the best weapon she had. Having nothing left to lose made her dangerous.
She wished she felt more dangerous.
Then, in the cold damp darkness, there was a sound that wasn’t her. It was the first she’d heard in all the time she’d been here. She wasn’t sure what it was, or where it was coming from. There was an odd acoustic in here: it almost sounded to be above her. As if someone was walking on her grave.
He was coming. This was it: her last chance, her only chance. She had nothing to fight him with, except the knowledge that anything she could do was better than doing nothing. If he got close enough for her to get her teeth into him …
After the long silence, the grating grinding of the door was like a scream in her ears. White light exploded in her eyes, swamping her vision. She couldn’t afford to squeeze her eyes shut, couldn’t bear to open them. Haloed by the light, almost eclipsed by it, was a dark figure. In truth it could have been anyone, but she knew who it was.
She forced the last fragment of play out of the ropes, ignoring the whines of protest from her savaged flesh, and rocked herself into a kneeling crouch that put her head more or less at groin height. All she needed was for him to come closer. One step, two steps. Close enough to kill her. He wouldn’t use a gun – however carefully he’d chosen this place, he wouldn’t risk that much noise, that distinctive a noise. A knife, then. And all that was holding her was rope. Come on, sunshine, she thought combatively – just a little bit closer, and then let’s see if you can hang onto that knife wh
en your balls are screaming for mother and trying to hide behind your kidneys …
Patience padded along with her nose on the ground. It muffled her voice slightly – which struck Ash as odd, since it didn’t actually seem to come from her mouth. Perhaps he imagined it. Perhaps he’d imagined it all. In which case there was no reason to suppose that Hazel …
He couldn’t go there. He listened to what the dog had to say, which was in the nature of a running commentary.
Too many cars; too many damn cars, comin’ an’ goin’. Oh – dat one’s ours. An’ dat one waf Hazel’s. Can’t tell if she waf innit. An’ dat one’s de pick-up.
She followed it all the way to the road and glanced in the direction of Norbold rather than the hill road to Coventry. He may have been telling the truth, she told Ash sadly. That he was calling on a friend.
‘Maybe he was,’ said Ash reluctantly. ‘But Hazel’s been missing for twelve hours. Maybe Fisher did visit his friend and then go home. But what was he doing before that?’
Patience looked at him sadly, aware that he was hurting and unable to ease his mind. At least when she lifted her long nose off the ground her voice was clear. I’m a dog, she said, not a satellite tracking system. I get the smells. Smells record a moment in time, not a video. I know that pick-up was coming from that direction – she pointed with her nose – before it turned in here. I know that was this morning. I don’t know what it was doing last night.
Ash cast around helplessly for his next move. If Patience had done all she could, and Gorman still believed Hazel was at the bottom of the dam, whatever John Fisher had done to her or done with her, the only one who could help his friend now was Ash. And he had no idea where to look. The nearest thing he had to a plan was to go back to the house and try to beat the information out of Fisher; and that was more likely to end with Ash bleeding on the lino than Fisher. After which he’d have to explain to DI Gorman why he blamed Fisher for Hazel’s disappearance, again without naming his informant. If he failed, it would be white-coat time again.
With the perspective offered by the intervening years, Ash could contemplate the mental health services with a degree of equanimity. He’d never been treated badly by them. They’d done what they could to help him. Admittedly, Philip Welbeck keeping an eye on his welfare wouldn’t have hurt, but even allowing for that, Ash was grateful for their intervention. They’d got him through times when, left to his own devices, he would have lost his last shaky grasp on reality. For four years, it had been a comfort to know that, if things got that bad again, the men in white coats would have a net ready to catch him.
Things were different now. He was no longer a lost soul, anchorless and drifting. He was the custodian of two young boys. The men in white coats couldn’t have him: his sons needed him more. Trying to beat the truth out of John Fisher wouldn’t have been a smart move even if the man had been half his size and twice his age and had to be helped out of low chairs.
As he scanned the fields and spinneys along the horizon, desperately seeking inspiration, the approximately straight lines of a man-made structure caught his eye. He glanced at the sun, orientating himself. North-east … ‘That must be the barn Miss Harbinger mentioned.’
Yes? From her level, Patience couldn’t see it.
‘It didn’t sound very promising,’ admitted Ash. ‘And Fisher didn’t seem worried when she drew attention to it, did he?’
No, said Patience. She was good at knowing when people were worried.
‘Still, we’d better check it out. I can’t think of anywhere else to look.’
Suits me. Patience thought it was never a bad time for a walk. Especially a walk in the country; especially the kind of country where there were rabbits. As they left the drive and struck out across the fields, her nose dropped again, filled with the beguiling scent that was fun and dinner combined.
Ash had no concerns about her chasing sheep, only that someone seeing her might jump to an unwarranted conclusion; but in spite of what Fisher had said, there was currently nothing in these fields except grass and the odd purple-headed thistle.
In the end, it was a rabbit that brought the breakthrough Ash so desperately needed. It wasn’t intentional, of course. Rabbits don’t take much of an interest in human affairs. In fact, the only things that interest rabbits are (a) eating, (b) not being eaten and (c) making more rabbits. It was (b) that was uppermost in the mind of the rabbit that Patience sprung in the lee of a hedge just too far from the warren for it to dive to safety underground. Instead it jinked across in front of Ash, its eyes wild with fear and the lurcher close on its scut like the blazing tail of a comet.
Ash called her name, in the doubtful tone of someone who doesn’t really expect to be obeyed; and indeed, for another three or four enormously long strides, her whole body bunching and exploding to drive her forward, there was no indication that the dog had heard – was capable of hearing – anything but the manic race of the rabbit’s heart.
And then she stopped. So abruptly that her back legs were still running after her forelegs weren’t, with the result that she turned a somersault in the long grass. Ash watched in amazement. In his household, no one fell over themselves to obey him.
‘Patience?’ But she remained rooted to the spot, her nose delicately picking apart the scents surrounding her until she had isolated the one that mattered most. The one that was important enough to have stopped her in mid-chase.
That pick-up, she said. It came this way. Last night.
Ash hurried to join her, staring at the grass. He could persuade himself that it had been flattened in two continuous bands, long enough ago for the stems to have sprung up again, not quite long enough for all trace of the disturbance to have vanished. He would never have seen it, but there was a trail there. He raised his gaze, seeking its destination. But there was nothing to see in that direction. The derelict barn, now only a field away and clear enough in its knot of overgrown hawthorns and elder, was well to the east. He wondered if Fisher had come this way to find a gate. But no likely projection of the tracks in the grass approached the only gate he could see, which in any case was fastened with wire and probably hadn’t been opened for years.
But if he wasn’t heading for the barn, why come this way? There wasn’t even a cart-track across the field, and there were no animals for him to check. He must have had a reason. And right now, unless Patience had made a serious error, the thing uppermost in John Fisher’s mind, the thing that was even more important to him than (c) was to rabbits, was that nosy constable with her questions and her intuition and her bloody perseverance! He came this way because there was somewhere he could leave Hazel and know she’d still be there when he returned.
Here, said Patience. It stopped here, and then it went back.
Ash stooped to consider the sunlight falling on the lifting stems. She was right. The parallel tracks came this far and no further. He’d driven into the middle of a field, then – yes, there – done a three-point turn and driven away again.
It made no sense. There wasn’t that much grass – if Fisher had been insane enough to dump Hazel’s body a few hundred yards from where he worked, it would have been immediately obvious. And if he’d wanted somewhere quiet to interrogate her, even that decomposing barn with its defunct door would have afforded more privacy than the middle of a field.
Just chilling out, said Patience.
Ash stared distractedly at her. ‘What?’
That’s what he said. That Hazel was probably just chilling out. Wasn’t that an odd thing to say?
Ash hadn’t noticed – unless that part of his secret brain that masqueraded as his dog had, and this was its way of calling his attention to it. ‘I suppose.’
He wasn’t afraid of you. He wasn’t afraid of the police. He thought his secret was safe enough to risk playing with you.
‘It meant something?’
What do you think?
‘Chilling out,’ Ash said, thinking aloud. ‘It wasn’t very … app
ropriate, was it? With police divers searching the bottom of the dam for her, the best that can be said is that it was in pretty poor taste. Plus, is it an expression gardeners use? Isn’t it a bit … urban cool? More city lights and loft living than violets and vermiculite.’
Which means?
‘It amused him because it meant something to him and wouldn’t mean a blind thing to me. That was the joke – that he was telling me where she is, and I’d never know.’
Chilling, said Patience thoughtfully. What else can it mean?
Ash looked back towards the house. Softened by the distance, the old farmhouse was wearing well, mainly because it had been extended and remodelled time and again over half a millennium to meet the new needs of new owners. There was a modern conservatory, green oak and glass glittering in the mounting sun; the kitchen wing might have been Victorian, and much of the rest had been given a thorough make-over in Georgian times. In true Darwinian fashion, it had adapted to survive. What had begun life as a working farmhouse had ended up as a gentleman’s country residence, stables behind, wooded coverts to shelter the pheasants. Gracious living for the tweedy set.
A house that predated mains electricity.
Ash jerked as if he’d got a sudden jolt of electricity himself. He turned quickly, staring afresh at the grassland around him. After a moment he hurried over to a hummock in the ground and jumped up and down, experimentally, a couple of times. Then he strode to another hummock and did the same thing.
Er … Gabriel? ventured Patience uneasily.
‘There’s an ice-house here,’ he explained briefly. A chord of barely contained excitement thrummed in his voice. ‘Before people had fridges, people who owned country houses stored ice in stone-built crypts, half underground to insulate them. Then electricity came along, and the little stone cells weren’t big enough to be useful for anything else. So they were forgotten, and briars and nettles swarmed over the top, burying them completely.
‘That’s where she is. There must be an entrance here somewhere. But you’d need to know it was here in order to find it. Patience, don’t just stare at me like that – sniff!’
