Far Cry

by John Harvey

  Bus drivers, neighbours—no one had apparently seen anything.

  'Finally heard back from Devon and Cornwall Police,' Helen said, catching Will ten minutes before the press conference was due to start. 'The other daughter, Heather. It was an accident, right enough. Got lost on the coast path in heavy mist, fell down the shaft inside this old engine house. Two days before she was found.'

  'Poor kid.'

  'Poor mum.'

  Will nodded agreement, straightened his tie. 'How do I look?'

  'You really want me to tell you?'

  'Wish me luck.'

  47

  Cordon walked up from the harbour, the last ragged echoes of sun setting, soft-edged, over his shoulder. Recognising his steps on the cobbled street, the dog barked in lazy anticipation, then was quiet. When Cordon opened the door, she was sprawled along the sofa, barely raising her head towards his hand.

  'Good to see you, too,' Cordon said.

  In a short while he would take her for a walk, out across the fields and then down on to the coast path towards Mousehole, the pair of them shadows in the near-full dark. Before that he needed to change out of his work clothes, sit a while and clear his head, relax. When Jimmy Lambert had finally thrown in the towel and buggered off to Portugal and an apartment complex where he could play golf and swap lies with the other ex-pats, the organisation and personnel of his CID squad had fallen prey to a strategic review and Cordon had found himself being rationalised sideways into the glories of Neighbourhood Policing; his duties to oversee the activities of the one uniformed sergeant, two young PCs and a brace of eager community support officers who made up his team, their role to address low-level crime and disorder issues and respond to the changing needs of the local rural community.

  Cordon's first instinct had been to say balls to that and walk away, but the same stubborn streak that had set him so many times against his senior officers wouldn't now allow them the satisfaction.

  He stuck.

  Did his job and to hell with what anyone thought, those officers, younger and less experienced, building their careers working high-profile cases and skewering him with smug glances on those rare occasions their paths crossed, sad old geezer put out to grass.

  Cordon poured himself a small glass of Scotch and pressed Play on the stereo and, as he sat back, the sound of Eric Dolphy's saxophone, rising and falling through a set of loops and spirals as he reinvented 'Tenderly', rebounded round the room. The evening breeze, Cordon thought, more than caressing the trees; the whisky warm against his throat, harsh and slightly sweet to the taste.

  As the track changed and snare drum and cymbal launched Dolphy and Booker Little into the album's title tune, 'Far Cry', and first Little's trumpet then Dolphy's piercing saxophone soloed, Kia shifting uneasily on the sofa, Cordon caught himself remembering Letitia's What the fuck d'you call that?, distaste registering on her face.

  Letitia.

  At four in the morning, on the way home from a night's clubbing and buoyed up by too many pills and too much alcohol, she had let herself into his flat and slipped into his bed, and it had been with great difficulty that, after a brief tussle, he had pushed her back out; Cordon, like most men, especially at this hour, ruled by his dick more than he'd like to admit.

  He knew there were others who would have called him a fool, after all she was not a child any more, far from it, but knew also that, by his own lights, he had been right; just as he knew, somewhere at the back of his mind and in his groin, he'd always regret an opportunity not taken, little enough love in his life, little enough abandon.

  That morning, when he'd been making coffee, and she'd come in from the bathroom after spending the rest of the night on the floor, towel wrapped round her, hair wet from the shower, he knew that it had changed between them, irrevocably.

  'Last night,' he said, 'what was all that about?'

  No reply. She drank her coffee, said no to toast, and when she stood up to go, she left his keys beside her cup.

  For a short while after that, Kia's replacement walker was a scrawny fifteen-year-old lad who'd been shooting up since he was twelve, sharing needles with his elder brother, mugging middle-aged men cruising the car park toilets on their way home from work.

  'Bum boys now, is it?' a DS from Penzance station said to him one day in the police canteen. 'Bit of a change from drugged-up tarts.'

  Cordon punched him hard enough to drop him to his knees, then hard enough again to break his nose.

  Now, night and morning, time hanging on his hands, he walked the dog himself. And returning this particular evening, he refilled her bowl with water, drank a glassful himself, pulled off his boots and switched on the TV to watch the news.

  The disappearance of young Beatrice Lawson in Ely was third item on the news, behind the newly released unemployment figures and the deaths of two British soldiers, killed when their armoured vehicle hit a mine in Afghanistan. Cordon recognised Ruth Lawson instantly, though to him she was Ruth Pierce. Older now, of course, but happy and smiling alongside her daughter in the photograph on the screen.

  Cordon remembered talking to her last on the park bench in St Just, the grey walls of the surrounding buildings echoing the grey of the day. Ruth still struggling to come to terms with what had happened, struggling to understand.

  The girl, it seemed, had gone missing in the middle of the town, still daylight, early evening, no otherwise suspicious circumstances, no sightings, no clues. Other than the fact that the girls were the same age, there were no obvious comparisons with Heather Pierce's disappearance and death save one.

  Cordon muted the television sound and reached for the phone. Detective Inspector Grayson was not currently available; if he would care to leave a number, someone would get back to him first thing.

  'It's the DI I need to speak to,' Cordon said.

  'Of course, sir,' said the duty officer. 'I'll see your message is passed along. Priority.'

  And pigs, Cordon thought, might fly. By rights, he shouldn't have had another drink, but who was to tell him no?

  48

  Frank Nicholson worked nights: security officer at a small industrial estate on the outskirts, seven p.m. until six the following morning. Forty-nine years old, he'd been doing the same job now for twelve years. Signing in, signing out. When he'd started, there had been two of them, his co-worker a paunchy ex-policeman whose breath smelt of onions and cheap Scotch and whose clothes gave off an odour of cigarette smoke and alcohol from the far side of a room. The one time there had been a serious attempt to break into the site, the former copper had been asleep and snoring in front of a small bank of CCTV screens and it had been Nicholson who had contacted the police and then disabled the intruders' van so that, when the sirens sounded, they had to make off, virtually empty-handed, on foot. Two were caught, one escaped; Nicholson was praised and his admittedly meagre salary raised, his colleague sacked.

  Now, save for Saturday nights and holidays, when one or other student took his place, the site was his. His domain. He'd had jobs before, more than a dozen, and none had stuck, but this was different; he liked being alone, the chance to read and think and regulate his own life, the routine.

  Every morning, when he arrived home, he would change out of his uniform, put on the kettle for some tea, get himself a bowl of cereal and switch on the TV. He was watching the local news when the picture of Beatrice Lawson in her school uniform came up on the screen. Nicholson waited until that segment had finished, set his cereal bowl aside and reached for his phone.

  The response to the broadcast the previous evening—Will, at the press conference talking earnestly to camera, Andrew Lawson, distressed and brokenly articulate, at his side—had been immediate and confused. Sightings of someone who looked like Beatrice as far away as Lincoln or Newcastle upon Tyne; a woman who swore she had seen her getting on to a bus in the town centre a little after seven o'clock; two motorists who thought they might have driven past her on their way home, both of these within ha
lf a mile of where her music lesson had taken place. Then there were the usual crazies, the mystics and soothsayers, the same sad and dismal crew who hoped to piggyback into the limelight on someone else's misfortune.

  All calls, all information, however suspect, was logged, prioritised and checked. The lead about the bus, which had initially seemed the most promising, already looked to be a false trail; the driver remembered a schoolgirl well enough—some query about her travel pass—but the uniform, as he described it, was different, the girl older and with reddish hair. One of the other local sightings, however—someone answering Beatrice's description walking quickly along the next street to the music teacher's house—stood up under questioning. Admittedly, the driver hadn't seen the girl's face, and nor could he describe what she was wearing in any detail, but both place and timing made sense.

  Walking. Walking quickly. Walking where?

  ***

  When Frank Nicholson's call came in, it was quickly shuffled to the top of the deck; by nine o'clock it was on Helen Walker's desk and thirty minutes after that a car was collecting Nicholson from his flat in Ely and bringing him to the police station in Cambridge. Helen picked him up from the waiting area downstairs and walked him to one of the empty interview rooms, having sent a young officer scurrying in search of a can of Sprite, at that hour, when asked, her visitor's drink of choice.

  The man who sat opposite her was fleshy-faced, but otherwise not noticeably overweight, medium-height, medium-aged, tiredness evident in his eyes and the way he sat, slightly slumped, against the back of the chair.

  'So, Frank,' Helen said, 'last night, tell me exactly what you saw.'

  Nicholson leaned forward and told his story. If it ever came down to it, he'd be a good witness, Helen thought.

  The nub of it was this: his route to work took him along the street where Beatrice had her flute lesson and, as he approached the junction at the end, already indicating left, he had been forced to slow down because of a car parked near the corner, the driver behind the wheel, the road sufficiently narrow that he had to wait for a space before pulling out and around. It was as he did this that he saw a girl, carrying a flute case and a blue book bag and answering Beatrice's general description, standing beside the car.

  'The parked car?'

  'Yes.'

  'But you didn't actually see her getting in?'

  'No, not exactly. Not, you know, closing the door and everything, there wasn't time, but, I mean, she must have done, I'm sure.'

  He took a quick drink of Sprite and wiped a hand across his mouth.

  Helen spun her pen around on the pad of paper before her, waiting till he'd settled. 'Tell me again,' she said.

  Nicholson cleared his throat. 'Okay, like I said, the way the car was parked, over by the kerb, a steady stream of traffic coming the other way, I had to wait for a gap until I could go past. That was when I noticed her standing on the pavement beside the car. She had a bag under her arm—blue, it was, a blue bag, I'm pretty certain—and something like an instrument case in her hand.'

  'What was she doing?'

  'Standing. Just standing.'

  'Talking to whoever was in the car?'

  'Not then. At least, I don't think so.'

  'And you saw her face?'

  'Not clearly. Not then. But as I pulled out to go past, she was leaning down towards the car. That was when I saw her.'

  'And it was the same face you saw this morning on the news?'

  'Yes.'

  'This face?'

  Helen slid a photograph out from her pad and across the desk.

  'Yes.'

  Helen could feel her stomach tensing; the adrenalin starting to flow. A tingle at her nerve endings. 'You said she was bending down towards the car?'

  'That's right.'

  'So as to speak to whoever was in the vehicle?'

  'I imagine so, yes. The driver, I think he was leaning across, across the passenger seat, you know?'

  'He?'

  'Sorry?'

  'You said, he.'

  'Yes.'

  'It was a man, you're certain of that?'

  'Yes.'

  'But you never saw his face?'

  Nicholson shook his head.

  'And the way he was talking, he could have been just asking for directions?'

  'Yes, I suppose so.'

  'What then?'

  'There was a gap in the traffic and I pulled round him.'

  'And you never saw the girl actually get into the car?'

  Nicholson hesitated; reached again for the can of Sprite but didn't drink.

  'Frank?'

  'No, I'd already gone past. But that's what she must have done.'

  'Why must?'

  'When I turned left on to the main road, I glanced back and she wasn't there.'

  'You didn't see her in the front seat of the car?'

  'No, but where else she could have gone? She couldn't have just disappeared into fresh air.'

  'He's not some fantasist?' Will said. They were in his office, some twenty minutes later, Nicholson waiting downstairs in case Will wanted to question him himself.

  'No,' Helen said. 'I don't think so, no.'

  'And the car, what kind of car?'

  'Corsa, he thinks.'

  'He thinks?'

  'Vauxhall Corsa. Dark green. Not new.'

  'Registration?'

  Helen shook her head.

  'How about the driver?'

  'Only saw him from behind. Dark coat, maybe. Fairish hair.'

  'Young? Old?'

  'Not young, he thought. Fortyish? Just an impression. No real way to tell for sure.'

  Will looked out through the window on to an abundance of grey; the weather forecast had promised rain before midday. Running that morning, he had been aware of more than usual dampness in the air.

  'One witness,' he said, 'sees her walking away from the place where her father was meant to collect her, walking fast. Now another places her at the end of the same street, about to get into a car. Take these as gospel and we're left with this: is she striding out because she's angry with her father for being late and leaving her in the lurch, or is she hurrying off to meet someone she's arranged to see?'

  'But who?'

  'A boyfriend?'

  'Old enough to drive a car?'

  'Why not?'

  'Will, she's barely ten years old. He'd have to be seventeen at least.'

  'Someone she's met through some chat room on the Internet? She could lie about her age and so could he.'

  Helen sighed. 'It's happened before, God knows.'

  'Anyway, we're getting the home computer checked. There could be contacts she made without her parents' knowledge, some forty-year-old pretending to be less than half his age.'

  'Then surely, when she sees him, she's going to know. She's not stupid. She's not going to get into the car.'

  'Depends how persuasive he is. How well she's been groomed.'

  Helen took a cigarette from her bag and held it between her fingers, unlit. 'What if,' she said, 'she goes storming off in a huff, figures she'll make her own way home, and then this man stops her, says he's lost, asks her the way? Once they're talking, he asks her where she's going, makes out they're both heading in the same direction and offers her a lift?'

  'Like Janine Clarke,' Will said. 'That's what he did. Got her talking, offered her a lift.'

  'He? You mean Roberts?' Helen's skin ran cold.

  'Hop in, that's what he said. Only difference, he had the dog for bait.'

  'You don't really think it's him?'

  'Janine Clarke. Christine Fell. Possibly Rose Howard, too. Young girls out walking alone. It's what he thrives on, what he does.'

  'But we've no proof.'

  'Not yet.'

  Helen was shaking her head. 'Will, you can't ...'

  'Mitchell goes missing, goes underground, and then this.'

  'We still don't know...'

  'We can find out. I want to know where Mitchell is. I
f he isn't involved, then fine. Meantime, everything else goes on. Push Nicholson about the car, see if we can't get it identified, track it down. Chase IT about the Lawsons' computer while you're at it. I've got a meeting with Liam Noble in an hour, run through the sex offenders' list. Then I'm going to talk to the girl's father again, hopefully the mother, too.'

  'She's out of hospital?'

  'Later today, with any luck.'

  Will's phone rang and he picked it up. A DI Cordon from the Devon and Cornwall Police, wanting to speak to him personally, the second time he'd called. 'Tell him to leave a number,' Will said. 'Tell him I'll call him back.'

  49

  As Sex and Dangerous Offender Intelligence Officer, with a responsibility for overseeing the management of high-risk offenders in the division, statistics and figures were a part of Liam Noble's daily life.

  A total of just over fifty thousand offenders were released across the country annually, under probation or police supervision. Thirty-one thousand of these were sex offenders, who were obliged to sign the register and notify the police of any change in their circumstances. In the previous year there had been a twenty-seven per cent increase in the number of offenders who had breached those requirements—more than a quarter—and, as far as Noble could see, there was every indication that the current year's figure would be the same or worse. A figure that, as he knew Will Grayson would be quick to remind him, included Mitchell Roberts.

  To make matters worse—from the public's perception, at least—of those offenders classified on release as being of the highest risk—around a thousand—close to ten per cent had reoffended the previous year and been charged with serious crimes, up to and including rape and murder.

  Mitchell Roberts, as Will would again point out, had not even been considered dangerous enough to warrant high-risk status. Instead, he had been allowed, all too easily, to slip through the net.