Beast of Robbers Wood

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “You will form volunteer search parties,” Ravyn said. “Each will be led by a uniformed officer. You will keep two canvassing.”

  Vainglory nodded.

  “Two search parties will concentrate on the quarry, the farms and marshes north of the village,” Ravyn continued. “Another will search along the Orm. The largest will begin a search of Robbers Wood, sweeping west from Flintlock Lane.”

  “Robbers Wood?”

  Ravyn’s mild gaze pierced the constable like a laser. Vainglory stared back as a prey animal might when confronted by a cobra.

  “Yes, sir,” Vainglory finally whispered. “But it will be difficult finding people willing to traipse the woods.”

  “Take whatever steps are necessary to get it done, but you will carry out my orders,” Ravyn said. “Do you understand?”

  Vainglory nodded, even as he bit down hard on his lip.

  “I am not entirely sure you do understand, PC Vainglory,” the chief inspector said. “If, within a half-hour, searches are not being conducted in the areas specified, I will instruct Sergeant Stark to arrest you for wasting police time, perverting the course of justice, gross insubordination and incompetence, and whatever else we can bloody well think of. Your job will be forfeit as will any hope of a pension, and when we have finished with you we will fling you back into your village lacking any shred of honour, bereft of respect, a poor sinful being. Now do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Vainglory said, throat so constricted he could barely form the words. “Yes, sir, I do. If you will excuse me.”

  Stark watched with no small amount of satisfaction as the put-upon constable scarpered. He was already sputtering instructions into his radio.

  “Would you really have done all that, sir?”

  “I want you to contact the senior constable of those sent up from Deeping Well,” Ravyn said. “Put him in the picture, though he probably has an idea already. I want at least one panda car down on Flintlock and the others highly visible. They will put people on high alert, make them watch, if they are not already doing so. After you ensure everything is running smoothly, join me at Oak Cottage on Autumn Lane.”

  “Yes, sir,” Stark said. “I’ll get it sorted out.”

  “I’ll give you a bell if you’re to meet me elsewhere,” Ravyn said. “So keep your mobile turned on.”

  “That’s no longer an issue, sir,” Stark said, thinking of the texts he used to avoid from Aeronwy.

  “Glad to hear it, Stark.”

  The sergeant started up the road where he could see Vainglory speaking animatedly to a uniformed constable.

  “Stark.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Even if Vainglory accomplishes all he has been tasked, he will not have dug himself completely out of the bog,” Ravyn said.

  Stark grinned.

  Ravyn left their vehicle in the pub’s car park. In less than five minutes he was on Autumn Lane, pushing open the garden gate of Oak Cottage. Before he could close it behind him, a woman rushed out the door of the cottage.

  “Are you from the police?”

  “Helspeth Martin?” When she nodded he showed her his warrant card. “I’m DCI Arthur Ravyn, Stafford CID.”

  “Have you found her?” she asked. “Have you found my Lisa?”

  “No, not yet, but searches are being conducted.”

  “By that stupid wanker Delbert Vainglory?” She said his name as she might spit out an insect that had flown into her mouth. She heaved a great sigh. “I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, it’s just that I am so worried, so…”

  “Perhaps we could go inside and talk,” Ravyn said. “I have a few questions.”

  “Ask them.”

  Ravyn glanced at the cottages right and left, moving only his eyes. She followed his gaze.

  “Yes, of course, please come in.” She let him pass, then held a moment, defiantly staring at eyes hidden behind swaying curtains and shifting blinds. “This damn village,” she said as she pulled the door behind them. “My business is everybody’s, ain’t it?”

  He smiled sympathetically.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “That would be lovely.” He followed her into the tiny kitchen and sat at the table. “Do you have reason to suspect anything has happened to Lisa?”

  “Well, she didn’t come home,” she said. “Ain’t that enough?”

  “Could she be out with some of her mates?”

  “That worthless Delbert Vainglory already done checked in all those places, or said he did.” She switched on the electric kettle, then flopped into the chair across from him. “He also said he talked to some of Lisa’s mates and her teacher, Miss Mitchell, but I’d bet he did no such thing.”

  Her brittle blonde hair was pulled back into a short pony. She wore a cotton print dress, green with brown piping. Her makeup was thick, her lipstick bright red, and her eyes rimmed with purplish mascara. He estimated her age at thirty-seven, despite her best efforts to cling to twenty-nine.

  “Who else lives here, Mrs Martin?”

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  “A simple one,” he replied. “A routine one.”

  Hostility vanished from her face as quickly as it had appeared. “I’m sorry. I get so tired of the people here trying to…”

  “The quicker we move along, the sooner we might find your daughter,” Ravyn said, gently. “The other occupants?”

  “Except for me and Lisa, there’s only Roger, my boyfriend, Roger Pym,” she said. “He moved in about three months ago, but I’ve known him almost a year.”

  “Where is Mr Pym now?”

  “At work,” she said. “He’s a builder. Well, he works for Latten Builders in Stafford, not regular, you understand, just when they need him, but it’s been constant for more than a month now.”

  “What is the relationship between Mr Pym and Lisa?” Before she could voice the protest in her eyes, he added: “Is it cordial or strained or apathetic? How would you characterise it?”

  “Well, Roger and Lisa don’t fight, but I wouldn’t say they was friendly,” she said. “I guess you might say they don’t pay much attention to each other. He goes his way and she hers, like ships in the night, if you know what I mean.” She was quite pleased with herself, working in a phrase she had heard in the cinema. “They’re civil, but they don’t have much in common.”

  “Where is Lisa’s father?”

  “Dead,” she said with a small sigh. “Lorry accident ‘bout two years ago. Didn’t leave me with much. Been hard.”

  “You’re not from around here.”

  She laughed. “Lord no, and don’t you think people never let me forget that. I wanted to get Lisa out of Manchester, bad influences and all, and we ended up here.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “Cleaner.” The kettle whistled and she got up to turn it off and pour out. “I do for about a dozen houses and pick up a little now and then when Morrie—that’s Morris Teype at the Ned Bly—needs extra help on a Friday or Saturday.”

  “Has Lisa ever been late getting home from school before?”

  She set their cups down. “Sometimes.”

  “Why is this time different?” He glanced at the cracked cup and indifferent tea. “What made you knock up the resident constable? I understand you rather badgered him into calling us.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “She has been tardy from school before, but you did not report the incidents,” Ravyn said. “I am trying to understand what is different this time. What is it about this particular situation that causes you alarm?”

  “She didn’t give me a bell,” Helspeth said. “I’m sure that idiot constable has given you an earful about how bad my Lisa is, how bad I am, and how worthless we both are because we haven’t lived here since Adam was a nipper. But, let me tell you, my Lisa is as good as any of those what was born here. Sure, she has a wild streak in her, but what teen hasn’t? Point is, she may give a lo
ad of snark to others, but she never fails to call me if she’s going to be late. She knows I worry. When she didn’t call, I knew something was wrong. I called that Miss Mitchell and she said Lisa was long gone. She blathered on about something that happened in class, but she was wasting my time. That was when I went to that git of a constable and got up his nose. Yes, I badgered him, if he wants to call it that, but it got him to do his job, didn’t it?”

  Ravyn nodded at her outpouring of words. “You did the correct thing, Mrs Martin. Always trust your instincts.”

  She brightened at his unexpected reaction. She wiped away the moisture forming under her eyes. This Ravyn seemed a sympathetic man, but she never let anyone see her cry. Never.

  “Does Lisa carry a mobile?”

  She shook her head. “She wants one. Most of her mates have one, the whole my-phone-is-my-life obsession, so she wants one too. But we can’t afford it and she knows it, so there you are.”

  “Do you have a picture of Lisa?”

  “Yes, I’ll get it.”

  She left the room. He stood, took his cup to the sink and poured three-quarters of the tan water down the drain. When she returned, he was in his chair, putting down his cup.

  “It’s from last year,” she said, handing him the snap. “She’s a bit thinner now—you know how girls are, diets and all from those magazines they read—and her hair is longer. She’s taken to wearing more makeup, you know, like the older girls do, but essentially that’s her.”

  Ravyn studied the photograph. It was a full-length study. A head-and-shoulders would have been better for identification, but her nature was better revealed in this. She wore a too-short sheath dress three years out of style, large buttons down the front. Her left hand rested on a cocked hip. Her head was inclined the opposite direction as the hip. Her long hair hung straight, like a yellow curtain, bangs cut dead even just above pencil-thin, perfectly arched eyebrows. Her eyes were so thickly covered by mascara she might have been wearing a domino masque. Her lips were canted, almost a smirk that seemed to beckon even as they denied. Looking at her, he did not see a victim, at least not a willing one.

  “I’ll see this is returned.” He slipped the photo into his inside coat pocket. “If I may, I’d like to have a look at her room.”

  “Of course.” She looked at his cup. “Would you like another?”

  He smiled. “No thank you. It was delicious.”

  “Her room’s here.” She pushed the door partway open, then hesitated. “It’s rather a sty. I’ve tried to get her…”

  “That’s quite all right, Mrs Martin.” He eased past her. “I’ll let you know when I’ve finished looking around.”

  “You won’t…” she started to say.

  “Merely trying to understand Lisa’s nature.”

  She laughed and let the door slip from her grasp. “If you can figure that out, clue me in.”

  Alone, Ravyn stood in the centre of the room and made a slow, full-circle sweep. The walls were papered with posters taken from issues of Bliss, Shout, Mizz and the like, split between singers with snarky sneers, cinema idols with smouldering sneers, and super-models and fashionistas with haughty sneers. Stacks of teen magazines were by the unmade bed, some romances and teen angst novels on a shelf above. Her nightstand held scents, creams and powders, most unavailable in Midriven, some obviously out of the price range of a girl who could not afford a mobile. Once the layout and contents of Lisa’s room were set in his mind, he looked through drawers and the wardrobe, behind the desk and other furniture. He found nothing raising the spectre of drug use, but the photograph of the girl had told him not to expect any. He did, however, find a cello-wrapper from a pack of gaspers behind the litter bin.

  Holding the cellophane by a jagged edge, he pulled an evidence bag from his coat pocket and inserted the wrapper. He wrote a note for the fingerprint technician. The find surprised him. Abstinence from a carton of cigarettes would have paid for a mobile.

  Other than the wrapper and toiletry items, the room was devoid of interest. Nothing led him to think Lisa might be leading a self-destructive lifestyle. She was obviously a dreamy girl, but he saw no indication of desperation, a desire to escape. If anything, her room told the story of a girl determined to create a space in which she could survive the tedious and often mind-numbing pace of life in a village far from bright lights and busy streets.

  He left the room and found Helspeth Martin still at the kitchen table. She carefully daubed under her eyes with a tissue hidden in her fist, then forced a hopeful smile.

  “Did you find anything useful, Mr Ravyn?”

  “How has Lisa been since you moved house?” he asked. “Has she asked about moving back to Manchester? Has she mentioned any friends she might miss in particular?”

  She shook her head. “She keeps touch with a couple of girls she knew, but she was glad as me to be out. We had a room in Rochdale. Crime was all around us and toms prowled the streets even by day. It was a gutter life after Alec died. I had to get Lisa out of it.”

  “Did she talk about leaving Midriven at all?” he asked. “Did she suggest living somewhere larger? Stafford perhaps?”

  “She liked to go to Stafford, shopping with me and Roger when we could afford it, or on the bus with a friend,” Helspeth said. “Shops here don’t carry much in the way of what’s fashionable for a young girl tying to look her best.”

  “I noticed Lisa seems very fashion conscious.”

  “Tried to teach her what I could ‘bout how a girl is supposed to look, what might attract the right kind of boy, but…” She shrugged. “She has her own ideas from those magazines of hers.”

  “Does Lisa have a boyfriend?”

  “She’s quite popular, I think, but there’s no one I know of.”

  “Dating?”

  “Sometimes she goes out with her mates, but it’s with girls she knows or mixed, nothing serious,” Helspeth replied. “Despite the front she puts on, she’s really rather shy.”

  “Any friends in particular?”

  “She doesn’t bring any by.” She looked around. “Can’t say I blame her. This is miles better than what we had in Rochdale, but it’s not anything to shout about, is it?”

  Ravyn smiled. “It’s very homey.”

  She smiled appreciatively. “At least it’s not Council, is it?”

  “You were talking about Lisa’s friends.”

  “I don’t suppose any of them are really close to her, not to hear her tell it,” Helspeth said. “Course, there’s the Treadwell girl. That would be Annie Treadwell. When Lisa tells me anything, when she chooses to, it’s always Annie did this or Annie said that. Even so, Lisa never brings her by, and Lisa never visits her at home.”

  “Why no visits?” Ravyn asked. “I have no children, but I was under the impression teens enjoyed visiting, especially girls.”

  “Too good for us, aren’t they,” Helspeth explained. “Too good for most anyone in Midriven, or so I overhear in the places where I clean. They live on Water Street. Nice house. Called The Garlands. I tried to talk to Annie earlier today, but her dad sent me away with a flea in my ear. He was very full of himself.”

  “Did PC Vainglory talked to Annie?”

  She shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “Did Lisa always walk the high street home?”

  “She’s supposed to,” Helspeth said. “Even with those council houses they put in, it’s better than the alternative.”

  “Flintlock Lane?”

  She nodded. “First thing I learned was its bad reputation. Now, I’m not one to believe bugaboo tales, but there’s a lot of pensioners what live along there. Dirty old men if you ask me.”

  “Does Lisa smoke?”

  “No, absolutely not, not in my house.”

  Ravyn sniffed the air.

  “Well, yes, Roger does, but there’s nothing to do about that,” she said. “It’s a filthy habit. She knows how I feel about it.”

  “Does Lisa receive an al
lowance?”

  “I don’t always have spare cash, but I give her what I can, when I can,” she said. “It teaches her money sense. Sometimes she asks me for something extra, if there’s something she really needs, but most of the time she saves up for what she wants.”

  “Does Mr Pym contribute to the household, financially?”

  “When he can.”

  Helspeth started as a door opened. A hopeful, desperate look flitted across her features. She gripped the edge of the table and half rose out of her chair. Hope vanished from her face when a thick-set man with dark curly hair lumbered through the doorway. She fell back into her chair.

  The man regarded Ravyn with undisguised hostility. “Who’re you? What you doing here?”

  “Roger, this is…”

  The newcomer silenced her with a stare. He turned his attention back to Ravyn. “Well?”

  The chief inspector showed his warrant card. “I’m DCI Arthur Ravyn, Hammershire Constabulary. Are you Roger Pym?”

  “Yeah.” He again glanced at the woman at the table, this time as if she had betrayed some state secret. “You here about Lisa?”

  “Yes,” Ravyn said. “She hasn’t come home from school.”

  Pym glared at Helspeth. “Bloody hell! Is that all it’s about? It’s not like it’s the first time. Always running around, she is.”

  “It’s different this time, Roger. She didn’t call.”

  Pym snorted derisively, then looked at Ravyn. “Isn’t it just like a woman to get hysterical about nothing.”

  “Actually, we are treating this very seriously, Mr Pym.” Ravyn noted Pym’s belligerent stance, the clenching of his fists, the jut of his jaw, the way his feet were positioned like those of a pugilist squaring off in the ring. “Searches of the area are being conducted.”

  “Why turn the village arse over tip about nothing?”