Her Airwave burst into life and Addison shouted at her.
‘We’ve picked them up near Drymen using number plate recognition. The camera showed two people in the front seats. We’re trying to get road blocks in place but Bradley’s got a head start on us and a number of routes he can take.’
Damn it, she thought. Why did Tony and Danny have to be down south? Going to visit the Channings suddenly seemed a wild-goose chase and she’d much rather have had them with her. They were part of this, not Addison and certainly not the rest of Strathclyde. It was their case, their capture, their kill. She reminded herself it was just as much about finding Barbie as it was about catching her killer. The difference was that her killer was on the run while Barbie, sadly, was going nowhere.
Every car that slowed her down or flashed their lights as she performed an overtaking manoeuvre was cursed or occasionally gestured at – frequently both. She hit an open section of road and kicked the car past eighty miles an hour, swinging it round bends, praying there wasn’t another maniac coming in the opposite direction or a patch of black ice lying unseen with her name on it.
The road was lined on both sides with frozen trees and the fields were oceans of white. It seemed the further she went, the more desolate and arctic the surroundings became. The frost was thicker, the snow deeper and the temperatures lower as every passing mile took her further into the countryside.
Callander loomed and she was grateful that at least it wasn’t summer, when the main street would have been choked with tourists and their cars. It was busy enough though, and she caused chaos as she veered from one side of the road to another, shooting through a red light and forcing other cars to slam on their brakes. As she sped past the Waverley Hotel, she couldn’t help but think of Bobby Heneghan pulling pints inside and the battered body he’d found on Inchmahome. Was the body of Greg Deans going to be waiting for her when she got to the Lake of Menteith?
The traffic lights at Cross Street were at red where she needed to turn left and a queue of six cars was in front of her but Narey switched again to the wrong side of the road, obliging oncoming traffic to screech to a halt as she swung round the queue, onto Bridge Street and out of town. As she passed the high school, the road suddenly opened up, stretching straight as far she could see and she floored the Megane, hitting ninety, knowing that the snaking, undulating terrain of the Queen Elizabeth Forest was only minutes away.
Addison burst onto the radio again, demanding to know where she was but she used the excuse of the stuttering line to shout that she couldn’t hear him and switched it off before he could say anything else. All she wanted was to get to the lake and Bradley. Nothing else and no one else mattered.
The forest was a bleak, alien landscape, its trees petrified, its surface characteristics rendered featureless by a blanket of snow. Narey hacked her way round its rally course, her right foot lurching from accelerator to brake, warily looking out for deer and ice until she roared out the other side of the park. To her left, a glimpse of the lake unexpectedly appeared between barren trees and moments later she saw the first sign pointing to Port of Menteith. There was more traffic now and she couldn’t get past; she sat simmering slowly as she progressed at tourist pace towards the lake.
She saw that cars were lined up along the side of the road and their passengers were out and walking two deep by the verge. As she finally got nearer to the corner that led down into Port of Menteith and the lake, she suddenly saw there were already Central Scotland cop cars on the scene. For a second she thought they had beaten her there in pursuit of Bradley but then she realised they were there to deal with the crowds that had turned out to go on the lake. Christ, there must have been thousands of people there and she cursed every one of them. It was going to make it all the harder to find Bradley and Deans.
Narey got to the corner and flashed her ID at the cop who had stopped her from taking the turn down towards the hotel. The cop refused to budge initially and demanded a closer look, causing Narey’s impatience to rise still higher.
‘Sorry, Sergeant,’ the cop apologised on seeing she was genuine, ‘but it’s crazy here today. They are all desperate to park as close as they can but there’s just not enough room. Some madman’s already driven right past me to get down to . . . Sergeant?’
Narey stood on the accelerator, forcing the constable to stand aside, and raced past him with a screech and plunged down the hill towards the hotel, church and lake. The narrow road was lined with people, all wrapped up in their winter finest, and a few of them had to step hurriedly to the side as Narey’s Megane hurtled by. She took the sharp right into the car park, causing another gaggle of would-be skaters and curlers to scatter at her approach.
As soon as she turned, she saw the agitated crowd at the far end of the car park. There were maybe a dozen people buzzing around a blue car and she knew immediately that they were excited by far more than the prospect of walking across the ice. She parked as close as she could and jumped out of her Megane.
‘Police,’ she called out, her ID in her hand. ‘Move back, please. Police. Move back.’
A few of the people on the fringes of the crowd heeded her call and, as they turned, she saw their open mouths and ashen faces and knew what they had seen. In slow motion, they moved for her one by one, in increasing states of anxiety, some pointing beyond the car. As they cleared away, she could see there was just one figure in the dark interior of the car, slumped forward in the passenger seat, head bowed. Instinctively, she put her hand on the bonnet and felt it was hot in contrast to the freezing conditions around it. It hadn’t sat there long at all.
Narey had to tug at the coats and jackets of the final few rubberneckers to get them to move and saw that they hadn’t necessarily stayed looking by choice: they’d been transfixed. As she finally got the last of them out of her way, Narey tugged at the passenger door and opened it to be met by the familiar, sickly smell of blood.
She looked inside and found herself involuntarily taking a step back at the sight that greeted her. No wonder she could smell blood – he was drenched in the stuff. It was spilling down his chest and soaking his shirt and woollen jumper, down to where his wrists were scored red with tie marks. Going against every forensic procedure she’d been taught, Narey caught him by the hair and lifted his head up.
His throat had been cut and the blood that poured from it was still warm and bright red. It struck her that Tony would call it pillar box red, meaning it hadn’t been exposed to the air for long. The man’s mouth hung open and his eyes were wide with shock. His face looked so different to how she’d seen it before, disfigured in death as opposed to being vibrant in life. All around her, she could hear the clamour of people and muffled screams of shock and murmurings of fear and prurient excitement. She should have moved them on but instead she stood rooted to the spot and looked as much a rubbernecker as any of them.
CHAPTER 53
Tony and Danny had reached Aelfleda Terrace on Whitby’s East Cliff, a spectacular spot with views high above the harbour, the marina and the town. They stared down into the ravine, snow-topped houses below them and across the harbour to the busy West Cliff. They were standing on the doorstep of a picture-book house with a wonderful view. And they were about to rip it all apart.
The petite, fair-haired woman who opened the door smiled at them expectantly over a pair of silver-rimmed glasses, tugging a heavy cardigan closer to her as she was met by the frosty air of the outside world.
‘Yes? Can I help you?’
Emily Channing’s accent wasn’t the broad Yorkshire of Barnsley or Leeds; it had more than a hint of Teesside about it and yet something different altogether. A local accent for local people, Winter thought.
‘My name is Daniel Neilson and this is Anthony Winter,’ Danny told the woman. ‘We’re investigators working in conjunction with Strathclyde Police.’ It was near enough to the truth to pass scrutiny.
‘Oh.’
This was clearly not what Mrs Channin
g had expected to be greeted with on her doorstep.
‘I . . . don’t understand. Strathclyde? That’s Glasgow, isn’t it?’
Winter felt the first puff of the icy ill wind that was going to blow through the Channing’s cosy cottage.
‘Yes, ma’am. This is a rather delicate situation. May we possibly come in? We may have some news about your daughter.’
The woman’s mouth dropped open and she reached out to catch hold of the doorframe.
‘Claire . . . Have you . . . have you found her?’
‘It would be better if we could talk inside, Mrs Channing.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course. I’m sorry. Please, do come in. I mean . . . yes, please.’
Before the woman could back away from the doorway sufficiently for the men to pass, her husband appeared, as tall and thin as she was small and plump. He had picked up on the tone in her voice and concern was written all over his lean features.
‘Ted. These men are from Scotland. From the police. They have . . . some news.’
‘News?’
‘News.’
‘Is it . . . um? Um. Come in.’
Winter and Danny were ushered into a floral explosion of a front room with a coal-effect gas fire burning away furiously in the centre of the far wall and invited to take a seat. Danny indicated they would rather stand but it might be better if the Channings sat. The words caused a ripple of panic in Mrs Channing but her husband seemed unruffled by the implications of Danny’s suggestion.
‘Tea?’ Ted Channing asked them.
‘No, sir. Thank you. It might be better if we just . . .’
‘Terrible cold spell, isn’t it?’ the husband continued to chatter. ‘Although it’s probably much colder and snowier than this where you gentlemen are from.’
‘Ted,’ his wife stopped him. ‘The gentlemen have come a long way. I dare say it’s important.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Channing. I’m afraid it is. We’ve been working on what is often referred to as a cold case.’
Ted looked as if he were going to make some nervous joke about cold being apt but the utter inappropriateness of it dawned on him just in time.
‘We have reason to believe the case we’re investigating is related to the disappearance of your daughter.’
Ted stroked his chin as if he were confused but behind his eyes the fuse had already been lit. His wife sat with her mouth open and hands trembling.
‘Claire didn’t disappear,’ Ted corrected him. ‘She ran away. She said she was going to but we didn’t . . . didn’t believe her.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Channing. I realise this is very difficult but if I can just explain the circumstances of our visit, then . . .’
As Danny spoke to the parents, Winter’s eyes and mind drifted to a solid oak sideboard that stood against one wall and was creaking under the burden of a family history in photographs. He moved nearer to survey them and saw Mr and Mrs Channing in various stages of their lives, from a carefree couple in their twenties through to being young parents, then the parents of a teenager. Then there were more, but considerably fewer, photographs of them in middle age and with considerably fewer smiles.
Among them all was the girl: baby, toddler, child, teenager. Winter watched her grow before his eyes, taller and fuller, freckles appearing and fading, pigtails replaced by flowing locks, braces there and then gone. The constant was the smile; wide and engaging, confident and just a little cheeky. In what he took to be her parents’ last photograph of her, she was in her mid to late teens, hair long and summery blonde, her hand shading her pale blue eyes from sunshine and the wide grin spreading across her face. She had on a bright red T-shirt, which showed off the heart-shaped rhinestone necklace that stood out against her suntanned skin. He wondered how long before she left home and fatefully journeyed north it had been taken.
For it was her. There was no doubt that the photograph of Claire Channing was an incredibly close match for Kirsten Fairweather’s reconstruction model. Winter had a printed photocopy of the image burning a hole in his jacket pocket and he both longed for and dreaded the moment when he would take it out for them to see. They could, he thought incongruously, be sisters. This lost girl in front of him and the girl found on the island on the lake – the one and the same.
His thoughts were interrupted as Danny’s tortuous explanation to the parents flooded back into his hearing.
‘Mr and Mrs Channing, I take it you were familiar with the case in Scotland in which the body of a young girl was found murdered on an island in the Lake of Menteith? This would have been around eight months after your daughter left home.’
Danny let the words hang in the room, as much a test of their reaction as it was a gentle unravelling of the unwanted truth.
‘I’m not sure,’ Ted Channing murmured, seemingly trying to remember. ‘That would have been February – no, March – 1994. Is that right?’
Winter heard the growing impatience that underlined Danny’s reply.
‘Yes, Mr Channing, March 1994. You must remember the case. It received considerable publicity. There were nationwide appeals to try to discover the victim’s identity.’
The word ‘victim’ sent another shockwave around the room and Winter saw Emily Channing shake.
‘I . . . I think I do. Terrible thing,’ Ted conceded. ‘But what does that have to do with us?’
Tears had begun to run down Emily’s face but her husband didn’t notice.
‘Did it never occur to you or your wife that the girl who was found might have been your daughter?’ Danny continued.
‘Well, no. Not all,’ Channing replied. ‘I mean that was in Scotland. Claire wouldn’t have been in Scotland. She was never going to Scotland. She said she was going to France or possibly Ireland. She never mentioned Scotland.’
Danny let him bluster on, hoping it would blow itself out. It didn’t.
‘Why would we think that might have been Claire? Of course we didn’t.’ He was standing now, getting more anxious. ‘Do you think it might have been Claire? Why would you think that?’
Danny turned slowly from the man and held his hand out towards Winter, who reached inside his jacket and produced the sheet of paper Danny wanted.
‘This,’ Danny explained, ‘is a computer-generated facial reconstruction of the girl who was found murdered.’
He held the image up in front of them and Emily Channing screamed. Her husband’s gaze fell to the floor.
‘It isn’t her,’ he mumbled.
His wife screamed again, this time at him.
‘Oh Ted.’ Hot tears were streaming down Mrs Channing’s face. ‘Of course it is. We knew,’ she shouted at him. ‘We both knew. Of course we did.’
Ted turned from his wife and, for no other reason than to avoid her gaze, faced the opposite wall.
‘Every time it appeared on the news,’ his wife continued. ‘Every time it was mentioned on Crimewatch or Newsnight. Every time, we’d both blank it as if it had absolutely nothing to do with us. Never even so much as an “Oh, that girl must be about Claire’s age” or “Oh, I wonder if . . .”. Nothing. We shut it out and just refused to . . .’
Emily Channing stopped mid-sentence and hammered the heel of her hands onto her husband’s back, thumping them off him but still not achieving the desired effect. He continued to face the far wall, head bowed.
‘You’re still doing it,’ she shrieked at him. ‘Face me, Ted. Face the truth. We can’t keep hiding from this.’
She thumped her husband again and he slumped to his knees, put there more by the revelation he’d been shunning than the renewed pummelling on his back. Even when he was on the floor, she continued to hit him and he refused to acknowledge a single blow.
‘Mrs Channing,’ Danny gently chided her.
She turned quickly, as if surprised there was anyone else in the room, and looked back and forth between Danny and her husband until she realised what she’d been doing and instead cradled him, caressing his greying hair.
‘We knew and we didn’t,’ she tried to explain to Danny, her face streaked from crying, her eyes red. ‘We shut off. We shut down. The police came to the door and asked if the girl in Scotland might be Claire but we told them it couldn’t be, she wasn’t there, she didn’t own clothes like that girl did. And that was true. It was never, ever mentioned. Not between us. But we both thought it. I did. Ted . . . Ted must have too. If we didn’t mention it, then it wasn’t true and one day she would walk back through the door . . .’
‘No.’
The monosyllable was blurted out from Ted Channing in a single sob, trying to cut off his wife’s seeming acceptance of the unacceptable. She pulled his head closer to her but another muffled ‘No’ could still be heard.
‘The argument was about nothing, you see,’ Emily continued, her voice wavering and choking back fresh tears. ‘Nothing at all – just teen stuff. Claire was always a free spirit. So when she said she was leaving we didn’t pay much attention. Then when she did go we just thought she’d come back in her own time. And we thought that and thought that for . . . forever.’
Danny nodded gravely, touched by the couple’s grief.
‘What is it that you know, Mr . . . Mr . . . ?’
‘It’s Neilson, Mrs Channing. We have uncovered witnesses from the winter of 1993, when we believe Claire was in the area of the Lake of Menteith. One of them has positively identified a girl matching her description . . .’
Somewhere during the previous conversation, Winter had tuned out. He didn’t know the point at which he could no longer hear anything that was being said in the room but he slowly became aware that all he could hear was the faint bell that was ringing in the recesses of his mind. Almost un consciously, he had turned away from Danny and the Channings and had gone back to the sideboard with its assortment of photographs. He stared at it, absorbing the image and trying to join up pathways, trying to be certain.
Cold Grave Page 31
