Detective Mike Croft Series Box Set

by Jane Adams

  ‘Mrs Hart,’ Mike prompted again, but the woman seemed unable to hold together long enough to answer him. It was Janice Cassidy who spoke for her.

  ‘She went to wake Julie up as usual and she wasn’t there. She went up and down the street calling for her, came running to us, she hasn’t got a phone, you see.’

  Mike nodded. ‘Had her bed been slept in?’

  The mother managed a nod, then burst out, ‘She’s a good girl, my Julie, a good girl.’

  ‘I’m sure she is, Mrs Hart, I’m sure she is.’ He paused for a moment, addressed his next question to Janice Cassidy. ‘You’ve checked that she’s not with friends?’

  The woman nodded. ‘First thing we did was phone round all we could think of’. She hugged the distraught woman closer, finding strength to fight her own tears by dealing with someone else’s need.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Jim and me, we’ll take her back to our place. Could you get someone to leave a note for Denny?’

  ‘Denny?’

  ‘Her boy. Helps Ben Fields do the milk round. He’ll be back any time now and wonder what the hell’s going on.’

  ‘Right,’ Mike told her. ‘You take her home with you and I’ll get the doctor sent out, give her something to calm her down. All right to tell Denny to come to you, is it?’

  Janice Cassidy nodded, helped Mrs Hart to her feet and began to lead her away. Mike instructed two of his officers to escort them home and relay the message to Denny. He was about to leave when Bill called him aside.

  ‘You ought to see this.’

  He dumped the morning editions on the table. Mike looked. Most carried the image of the dream woman with some variation on the who is this mystery woman? theme.

  ‘It’s this one, Mike.’

  Croft looked; cursed loudly. It had to happen, he knew that, but why now?

  ‘Seems they tracked down Cassie’s mother, Mrs Junor. Seems she told them every damn thing.’

  Mike was reading. It was all there. Cassie’s illness, the symptoms, the inferences, the insinuations: all the things Mike and Fergus had so dreaded.

  ‘I want someone up at the caravan — nowl Tell the Malthams to stay put.’

  ‘Right.’

  Resolutely, Mike tensed himself for the questions that would be fired at him the moment he left the hall. He wondered just how long it would be before the entire village had read Mrs Junor’s hysterical account of her daughter’s sickness, of the voices she heard, the so-called visions. The writer of this particular ‘exclusive’ had been careful not to make any suggestion that Cassie was violent, a threat to anyone. The account had been sympathetic, a look-what-this-poor-woman-has-had-to-endure angle. The destructive part. The part that made Mike go cold was the juxtaposition on the same page of a brief résumé of famous cases. Murders. Kidnappings. Ritual mutilations. All, of course, carried out by those with some form of mental illness. By those who heard voices, saw visions, had episodes of selective amnesia. The inference was clear and it scared Mike to death.

  The phone began to ring. Some intuition told Mike that his superior had just been presented with the same colourful résumé of the ‘facts’. He hurried towards the door, yelling back over his shoulder, ‘I’ve already gone.’ He left the hall and began to push his way through those crowded outside and towards his car, beckoning Tynan to follow.

  * * *

  ‘I have to go, Fergus. Look, just indulge me. I don’t expect you to understand, just go with me.’

  He looked anxiously at her. ‘All right, we’ll go. But, Cassie, they probably won’t even let us through the cordon and unless you can remember how you got through last time . . .’

  She gave him an exasperated look. ‘It’ll be all right, Fergus. Trust me, I have this feeling about it.’ She saw him frown again, shook her head and began to pull on her clothes. This time she remembered her shoes.

  Reluctantly, Fergus followed suit. It was Cassie’s ‘feelings’ that worried him so much. Still looking for signs?

  Before, she had done things, said things because she had a ‘feeling’ about them. Then, it had been symptomatic of her illness. Now? He just didn’t know what to think any more.

  ‘We’ll take the car,’ he said flatly. He was willing to go with her, but felt like walking nowhere this time of the morning.

  They took the back road away from the village. The police car Mike Croft had sent to them arrived via the other road five minutes after they had gone.

  Mike stared at the radio as though he could blame the instrument for the message being transmitted.

  ‘Not there?’

  ‘No, sir, the car’s gone, and, sir, we’ve a group of journalists just arrived up here. What shall I tell them, sir?’

  Mike groaned. Didn’t these youngsters know anything?

  ‘You tell them sweet FA, Constable. Got that?’

  ‘Er, yes, sir.’

  Mike broke contact, did a U-turn in the middle of the road and began heading back the way he’d come. Only one place Cassie Maltham was likely to be headed. Well, at least it seemed she’d taken Fergus with her this time. He glanced at Tynan seated beside him. ‘Now what?’ The question was rhetorical.

  Tynan shrugged. ‘You asking me, sonny Jim? This old guy’s retired, remember?’

  He took the left turn just before the village and saw the Maltham’s car parked on the verge. Fergus Maltham was talking to the constable on duty. Bill Enfield was there too, trying to keep control of a TV crew from one of the twenty-four hour news nets.

  Of Cassie there was no sign.

  Mike passed the TV crew.

  ‘This is going out live, Inspector. If we could just have a comment?’

  Mike curbed his impatience. ‘There’s really very little I can say at the moment.’

  ‘What about this little girl, Julie Hart? Do you think her disappearance is connected to that of Sara Jane Cassidy?’

  ‘I think we have to keep an open mind at the moment. It’s still possible the child wandered off without telling anyone. Now, please excuse me.’

  The anchorwoman followed him as far as the entrance to the Greenway, cameras focused on the small group huddled there. Fergus did his best not to raise his voice though his growing impatience was evident.

  ‘Where’s Cassie?’ Tynan asked. He’d expected to find her standing beside Fergus, the only position from which they couldn’t have seen her as they drove up.

  ‘Cassie?’ Fergus turned sharply, the constable also.

  ‘She was here . . .’

  Mike gestured impatiently and led the way through the police cordon just as Bill’s radio flared into life. He paused, listening as Mike, Tynan and Fergus charged ahead.

  ‘Mike!’ Reluctantly, Croft turned back, surprised at the sudden lack of protocol in Bill’s address.

  ‘What is it?’ Fergus had paused. Impatiently, Mike gestured for him and Tynan to go ahead.

  ‘The little girl, Julie Hart. She’s been found.’ He was grinning broadly, relief and amusement beatifying his rounded features.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Kids!’ Bill waved an expansive arm. ‘Seems the little madam decided she was going with her brother this morning. Knew her mum would say no if she asked, so she didn’t ask, just told the old guy that does the milk round that it was all right. Seems her brother backed her up and the old man just accepted it.’ He grinned. ‘Bet their poor mam’s going to give ’em hell.’

  The anchorwoman stood beside them, a fact Bill had seemed to forget. Was he playing to the audience? Mike thought wryly. He nodded satisfaction, turned away once more.

  ‘Going out live, Inspector Croft!’ the woman called to him, then turned back to her crew to do the you-heard-it-here-first-folks bit. Mike left the scene in Bill Enfield’s more than capable hands and continued up the path towards Tan’s hill. There was still a child missing.

  * * *

  Fergus gazed around him, gnawing his upper lip and moustache as he did in moments of real agitation. Where the blaz
es was she?

  Tynan was walking the hill’s perimeter, looking down on the Greenway, on the fields beyond, though sense told him there was no way she could have pushed through the plashed blackthorn hedges at the bottom.

  ‘We’ll go back down,’ he said. ‘Walk through to the other end, there’s parts of the path I can’t see from here.’

  Fergus hesitated, then nodded. It was obvious Cassie wasn’t here, she must have headed straight along the path and not come up the hill this time, though how she’d got away from them in the first place was more than he could fathom.

  They met Mike half-way down the hill.

  ‘They’ve found Julie Hart,’ he told them.

  Fergus looked mystified. Stuck in the caravan on the cliff top the morning’s events had somehow passed him by. Mike explained, told them where she’d disappeared to.

  ‘Little bugger.’ Tynan grinned. ‘Well, that gives us one less to worry about.’ He frowned, looked about him again. ‘Cassie’s not up there, Mike, we figured she must have gone on up the path, not come here after all.’

  Mike turned with them, began to pick his way once more down the rather slippery side of Tan’s hill, the grass, dew-dampened, still not completely dried despite the already warm sun. His mind wandered, coursing around the problems he was faced with. The Ashmore child, long gone but still making her presence felt. Sara Cassidy, seeing her parents again and again over the last few days, their distress deepening every time he told them there was no more news. What could he say to them? And Cassie. What part was she playing in all this?

  Mike found his perceptions of her shifted. When he was with her he could identify her as a victim, as an innocent caught in a maelstrom of someone else’s making. Away from her, facing the biased, automatic gut reactions of his colleagues he was less sure. Men like Bill, who honestly believed that Cassie’s illness was, if not the key to all this, then at least the pointer. But he had doubts, knew how easy it would be to give in and accept the majority ruling.

  His mind went back to last night’s encounter with Flint. Mike had admitted he’d not pressed Cassie on how she’d got onto the Greenway unseen. Flint had been demanding explanations. So far as he could see there was only one way; negligence on the part of one or other of the young officers manning the cordons. He’d raged fire and brimstone at them, Mike knew, got both officers to the state where they could no longer be certain they hadn’t been looking the other way at the crucial moment.

  They were on the path itself now and Mike looked again at the close, tangled hedges. Could they be climbed? He put out a hand, pulled experimentally to see how much give there was, drew back hastily and put bloodied fingers to his mouth.

  Not possible, at least not in this section, and not without thick gloves and thorn-proof clothing. Damn it! Cassie hadn’t even been wearing shoes!

  ‘Is it like this all the way along?’

  Bill nodded. ‘You’ve looked at it often enough, Mike, you know it is.’

  Mike grimaced slightly. Bill was right.

  Yes, the hedge, well-made and well-kept, would be strong enough to accept the weight of someone Cassie’s size without breaking down, and there’d probably be little trace on the hedge of an attempt to half climb, half push through. Somehow though, looking at his sore, still bleeding hand, he doubted the person that tried it would have been left unscathed. And from what he’d seen Cassie had been without a scratch.

  No, whatever way he looked at it, it made no sense. No sense at all.

  They were approaching the other end of the path now, could see the red and white cordon, the constable manning it and the small group of press and curiosity seekers that had become a feature.

  Mike sighed. ‘Well, she’s not come down here,’ he said, glancing at Fergus.

  The man was growing more agitated by the minute, looking around him as though he expected Cassie to suddenly emerge from some gap in the hedge, to jump out at them like a child in hiding. He’d been calling at intervals, shouting her name, listening hard for some answer. He tried again now, desperation showing now in his voice.

  ‘Cassie! Caa-ssie!’

  Nothing.

  Mike cast him a sympathetic look, and was about to suggest they head back the other way when the quiet of the sheltered pathway was ripped apart.

  Just for an instant everyone froze, then Mike began to run, the others in close pursuit. The sound was terrifying. An hysterical, almost non-human screaming, and it was coming from behind and above them, from Tan’s hill.

  But there was no one up there. The thought reeled in Mike’s head. No one up there. Incomprehension. The screaming grew louder, an animal sound, wounded, unbearable pain . . . then diminishing, becoming a wrenching, heart-rending sobbing.

  A child! It had to be. Mike couldn’t have said how he knew but the cries were not adult. He was on the hill now, racing up it, slipping. His knee hit the ground and a sharp flash of pain momentarily braced it from hip to ankle. He felt Tynan reach out and grab his arm, saw Fergus just ahead of them, almost threw himself the last few feet onto the summit.

  ‘Oh, my God.’

  Cassie Maltham knelt, arms around the weeping child. The screams had exhausted themselves, become deep, painful sobs, stifled because Cassie had turned the child’s head, held her close so that her face was buried in the soft fabric of her jacket as though to protect her from seeing whatever it was that terrified her so much.

  What it was Cassie protected her from didn’t take much discovering. Cassie’s eyes met Mike’s, she jerked her head sideways and Mike moved across to look down the hillside. A woman. No, not just any woman. The woman in Cassie’s dream. Here, for real, and very dead. Very dead, Mike repeated to himself, blackened by the most extensive bruising he had ever seen on anything, twisted limbs, broken bones protruding through bloated skin.

  Fergus vomited helplessly. Mike swallowed hard and looked away, gestured for Tynan to take Fergus Maltham down, then walked slowly over to Cassie and the child.

  ‘We should get her away from here,’ Cassie said softly. ‘I tried but she’d just frozen, I could hardly move her.’

  Mike nodded, utterly baffled. He did his best to get his mind in order. Already he could hear voices. Others must have heard the screaming, come rushing from both ends of the pathway. He could hear Tynan’s voice, calm and authoritative ordering them back, but Mike knew he couldn’t hold out long against the crowd’s concern and anger.

  He reached out towards the child, touching her hand very, very gently. ‘It’s Sara, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ The reply was more of a strangled sob than a word but at least she was responding to him.

  ‘We’re going to take you home now, darling. Home to your mum and dad.’

  He stood up, reached and helped Cassie do the same, the child clinging to her as though she’d never let go. They began to move slowly down the hill.

  ‘Where did you find her?’

  She hesitated, reluctant, then, ‘I don’t know.’ Cassie’s answer rose barely above a whisper.

  ‘Don’t know! What the hell do you mean, don’t know?’ Mike was outraged. It was, he knew, hardly a professional response, but he’d gone beyond those sorts of considerations.

  ‘Mrs Maltham, I just don’t think you appreciate the seriousness . . .’

  He didn’t get to finish, for Sara Jane was yelling at him, had broken free of Cassie’s grasp and was pounding at him with small, bony fists.

  ‘Don’t you shout at her! Don’t you shout at her! She came and found me. In the dark place. You didn’t come and get me, nobody did. Leave her alone! Leave her alone!’

  She was weeping again, anger burning itself out in exhaustion. Cassie gathered the child to her once more and led her without Mike’s help down the lower slope of the hill and onto the path. Quite a crowd had gathered, Mike noted angrily, but they parted, silently, as Cassie and the child passed through. He could hear voices softly repeating the child’s name, found himself suddenly excluded as the c
rowd drew in again behind the woman and the weeping girl.

  ‘Sir?’ It was the young constable from the village end of the cordon. ‘Sir, what’s going on, sir?’

  Mike bit down the urge to tell him that he didn’t fucking well know. Instead, he took the best grip on the situation he knew how to, began to give orders for the cordon to be reinstated and strengthened, for SOCO and the path boys to be called in. And he prepared himself for telling Flint they now had a murder enquiry on their hands.

  Chapter 13

  Mike’s head was filled with the day’s fragmented images. The morning’s events had caught everyone unprepared and found Mike short of senior personnel. Finally, it had seemed best to make use of Tynan and it had been the ex-DI and a young WPC who accompanied the overwhelmed Cassidys and Sara to the hospital for medical checks. Bill had been left to co-ordinate primary activities on site and Mike himself had escorted the Malthams to Divisional at Norwich for interviewing.

  It was at that point the day had ceased to be productive, had become instead one long frustrating grind of an anti-climax, consuming time and giving nothing back.

  Mike stared hard at the phone receiver he still held in his hand, then, remembering what he was supposed to do with it, replaced it on the cradle and prepared himself for renewed assault on Cassie Maltham’s ‘memory loss’.

  The truth was he didn’t know what to make of it, and Bill’s call to him from the hospital — where he had joined Tynan — had done nothing whatsoever to alleviate his confusion.

  ‘Well?’ Flint’s sharp enquiry jolted him back to the present.

  ‘The child claims to remember no more than Mrs Maltham does and she’s got no logical reason to lie to us.’

  Flint was glaring at him. ‘And you can’t get the Maltham woman to break her story? She sticking to her Whammy the great magician act?’ He paused, slurped at cold coffee and made a disgusted sound as the skin on it attached to his upper lip. Mike stifled the desire to smirk, looked away instead and stared hard at the blotched plasterboard of the office wall.