by Malcolm Rose
‘No. But if Richard and Alyssa were having an affair, it explains what they did with their phones. And why.’
‘Does it?’
‘They would’ve called each other or texted, arranging their get-togethers. There’d be a record of it on their mobiles. I guess they both decided to hide it from their families when they got sick, not wanting to stir up even more hurt. They took their secret to the grave. Richard wiped his and Alyssa …’
‘Yes?’
‘Imagine you’re sick,’ Troy said. ‘The only thing you can do is lie on a bed or struggle to the bathroom now and again. You want to get rid of your phone to save your family from knowing what you’ve been up to. What do you do?’
‘Okay. I’m onto it,’ Lexi replied.
‘Onto what?’
‘The water authority.’
Troy nodded. ‘You agree, then. She’d have flushed it down the toilet.’
‘If they find it in the sewer, I’ll ask Terabyte to see if he can get any data out of it.’
Wincing, Troy said, ‘As long as you don’t give it to me, I don’t mind.’
‘His sense of smell is less than yours. And he’ll know how to clean it up without ruining it.’
‘If it’s not already ruined.’
‘Right. We’ve placed two of our victims up near Loose End and Tight End before they became ill. Probably together. Keaton Hathaway’s got a connection to the same area through the hair stuck on his last diary. Perhaps he went up there as well. But what about Miley?’
Troy shrugged. ‘Her father said she’d been swimming. That’s not much to go on. Hang on …’
‘What?’
‘He saw her washing her swimming costume, but that’s not all. He said she cleaned mud off her trainers.’
Lexi jumped up. ‘Let’s go. And hope she wasn’t too thorough. I want some of that mud.’
Back in the laboratory, Lexi extracted a small amount of caked soil from deep in the tread of Miley Quist’s trainers. She examined it under a microscope, logging in particular the quartz grains and other minerals.
When she’d finished, she looked up at Troy and smiled. ‘You won’t find this combination of minerals anywhere around Shepford,’ she told him. Consulting a database of soil types, she added, ‘But you would in the north.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Could it only have come from there?’
‘Realistically, yes. There are a couple of other similar mixes in other places, but they’re outside the error limits. I can’t be a hundred-per-cent certain, though. If I’m analysing layers of mud from different places she’s been to, that’d blur the result. We need supporting evidence.’ She hesitated. ‘But I’m thinking about that. I can put it in for organic analysis and I’m wondering about doing a DNA profile on it. That’d identify any soil bacteria and fungi. Maybe that would narrow it down a bit more.’
‘Good idea.’
‘We’ll see.’
Troy sighed. ‘I just wish we had more of a handle on Keaton Hathaway’s travels.’
‘The team looked into all the obvious stuff.’ Lexi shrugged helplessly. ‘No tickets or anything useful.’
‘I’m sure I’m missing something.’
‘You’ve been distracted. Probably still distracted.’
Troy wasn’t going to admit it, but his partner was right. After years without his dad, Troy might have been on the verge of accepting him back into his life when a pest and an electric cable intervened. What he got was a shell of a father. And for less than two hours. Not a single word. Not a single reaction. Nothing. Troy felt cheated. Now, he needed the investigation to push resentment to the back of his mind, to occupy his troubled brain. But sometimes it failed and the image of his dying father and distressed grandmother slipped without warning into his head.
Unconvincingly, he said, ‘I’m fine. When a case gets its tentacles around you, it’s hard to escape.’
‘You’re a sucker for a wacky series of murders,’ Lexi replied.
Troy put his forehead in his hands and groaned. When he looked up again, after a few seconds, he said, ‘Alyssa Bending was in Tight End on Friday the twenty-fifth and in Loose End on the morning of Sunday the twenty-seventh. Richard was probably with her as well. So, where did they go exactly? What did they do and where did they stay?’
‘I’ve already checked all the lodgings in the area. Alyssa wasn’t booked in at any of them.’
‘What about camping? What if they just put a tent up in a field? Maybe they wanted a get-away-from-it-all, back-to-nature weekend.’
‘In that case …’ She shrugged. ‘We could go back and take a look.’
‘Okay. But not yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘There’s something I’ve got to do here in the morning.’
‘Oh?’
‘Something very important.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Mark the next stage of my dad’s journey.’
‘You mean his funeral,’ said Lexi.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s a short journey.’
Troy disagreed. ‘Believing in something beyond life helps. That way, death’s not the end. There’s the hope of a meeting of souls afterwards. Maybe we can make it up to each other.’
‘That’s sweet, but …’ For once, Lexi decided not to pursue the topic. ‘We go north afterwards, then?’
‘Yes.’
SCENE 21
Monday 12th May, Midday
As the car powered past Pickling, Lexi glanced at her partner and said, ‘I haven’t asked. How are you feeling?’
Troy took a deep breath. ‘Funerals help. You can think back to the good times. But they were a long time ago. I kept thinking about me not getting in touch.’ He shook his head. ‘I feel like I’ve just sat the most important exam of my life and when the bell went for the end, I realized I’ve made a complete mess of it. I got the whole thing wrong. But it’s too late. I feel sick to my stomach and I’ve got to live with the fact that I’ve failed. Know what I mean?’
Lexi shook her head. ‘Never had a less than perfect exam performance.’ Then, trying to cheer him up, she smiled cheekily.
‘Yeah. Right.’
‘The more people are educated, the less they believe in religion. Outers are cleverer, so we’re good at exams and we don’t believe in all that business about souls and the afterlife. No evidence for either.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, going on for ever sounds boring to me. I’m happy that, when I die, that’s my lot. Gone. Finished. Done.’
‘Believing in heaven – a reward for living a good life – gives us a reason to behave.’
‘Huh. You majors set yourselves up for guilt, shame and self-loathing, don’t you? Hey. We all make mistakes. Get over it.’ She hesitated, realizing that, despite trying, she wasn’t being sympathetic. ‘I’m sorry. But I can’t change my opinion because you’re feeling bad. I’m still me.’
‘I know,’ Troy replied. ‘I don’t want you to change – or say things you don’t believe – for my sake. It’s done. Dad’s moved on. I just want to get on with the case.’
She looked at the road ahead and said, ‘Well, we’re going in the right direction. Perhaps.’
They drew a blank at the only campsite near Loose End but, knowing that Alyssa and Richard would have needed to hire camping equipment, they also tried an outdoor shop in Tight End. Surrounded by climbing, camping and skiing equipment, sturdy clothing and footwear, Troy showed a collection of photographs to two assistants who seemed to stick together like glue. ‘Oh, yes,’ the first one said. ‘Him and her.’ He pointed at the images of Richard Featherstone and Alyssa Bending.
‘Really?’ the other one replied, as she looked more closely at the images.
‘Don’t you remember?’
‘Maybe,’ she muttered.
‘They looked very cosy together. Like they were going to have a good weekend.’ He nudged his colleague.
She nodded. ‘Th
at’s right. They asked about somewhere.’
‘Yes. Somewhere to go walking and fishing.’
Troy simply stood there and listened to the two of them. He saw no need to interrupt with questions.
‘Where was it?’
‘He – the man – had an ancient map. It wasn’t downloaded. Really old and tatty.’
‘That’s right. It was something about wild walks.’
‘We’d never seen it before, had we?’
‘That’s right,’ she agreed. ‘I hadn’t heard of the path they asked about either.’
‘That’s how wild it was.’
They both laughed. Then they looked at Troy and the male major said, ‘So, it looks like we can’t help you on where they went.’
‘But it was off the beaten track,’ Troy replied.
‘No doubt about it.’
‘Did they hire – or buy – anything other than a tent?’
‘No. Just the tent.’
‘The map Richard was holding. You must have got an idea about the area it covered.’
The man replied, ‘It was between Loose End and the sea.’
‘That’s right,’ his friend added. ‘It’s kind of wild up there. Parts of Loose End Edge used to be popular with climbers and hang-gliders.’
The first shopkeeper chipped in, ‘Caving and potholing as well, but not any more. There was an accident. It’s not safe. Landslips and the like. You’d have to be crazy to go along the edge now.’
‘Richard mentioned fishing …’ Troy began.
‘There’s the river – and lots of streams that feed into it.’
‘And two remote bays. Very hard to get to. One would be a long walk. They’d have to scramble down to the other or go by boat.’
‘And if we wanted to go there now?’ asked Troy.
‘Take the road north from Loose End.’
‘That’s right,’ the woman said. ‘The road ends at the chemical factory. You’re on foot from there.’
‘What’s this factory?’ said Lexi.
The shop assistants looked at each other blankly and shrugged. ‘It makes chemicals. That’s all we know. It’s out of the way because it’s not very pretty.’
‘And it smells.’
‘Okay. Thanks,’ Troy said.
On the way out, Lexi elbowed Troy and said, ‘Not a very funny comedy double act.’
‘Quite useful, though,’ Troy replied.
Ethyl Products was the most northerly industry in the country. It sat in a remote spot in the river valley, about five kilometres from the estuary and open sea. It was a tangle of tanks, scaffolding and pipes thicker than tree trunks. And downwind there was a faint sweetness in the air.
The factory made some simple substances for the chemical trade. Other factories took those basic building blocks and turned them into useful products like plastics, medicines, perfumes and dyes. Online, Lexi discovered that Ethyl Products had been notorious. A few years earlier, the factory had switched to making acetaldehyde with a new process involving mercury sulphate. An unexpected and unwanted reaction resulted in a small amount of methylmercury. This, the most feared of the toxic compounds of mercury, was released into the river. It killed all the fish and most of the other local wildlife.
‘Do you still use mercury sulphate?’ Troy asked the Head of Operations.
‘No. Not any more. As soon as we realized what was going on, we discontinued that process.’
‘But do you still keep mercury sulphate?’
‘Er … No.’
‘Why hesitate?’
‘I haven’t been asked about it for years.’
‘Is the river still poisoned?’ Troy queried.
‘No. We test it to make sure. I’d happily swim in it – or drink it. The habitat’s fully recovered.’
Lexi and Troy left Ethyl Products and made their way towards the estuary. To either side and behind them, hills rose up and, in places, water gushed down into the valley. There was no clear path. Dragging their boots through the scrubland, they battled alongside the river. They saw no evidence that any other human beings had trodden the same route and no evidence of a pitched tent.
‘It’s a bit of a coincidence about Ethyl Products,’ said Troy as they trudged shoulder-to-shoulder, all the time scanning ahead and to the sides.
‘Yeah. But maybe not as much as you think. A lot of people used mercury till everyone realized how nasty it could be. There’s probably a story like theirs almost everywhere.’
Troy gazed at the quiet countryside and said, ‘It’s nice out here.’
‘Huh. Too much empty space.’ She grinned and shielded her eyes with her left hand, ‘Too much sunshine and fresh air.’
Troy stopped walking. ‘What’s that noise?’
‘What noise?’
‘That.’
There was a definite scrabbling in the bushes a few paces in front of them.
Lexi shrugged. ‘A rabbit? I don’t know.’
‘It could be a person. Hiding.’
‘Too quiet.’
A couple of frightened blackbirds flew high into the air, issuing loud warning cries.
Troy sighed. ‘Okay. Not a person.’
‘I’ll tell you what else there’s too much of.’
‘What?’
‘Ground. There’s too much for us to cover.’
Troy nodded. ‘I feel like I’m treading water. Not getting anywhere.’
‘What are we going to do about it?’
Mentally drained, Troy shrugged.
Lexi pointed upwards. ‘We’d be able to see a lot more – and finer detail – from up there.’
‘Like blackbirds.’
Lexi took her life-logger in her hands. ‘I’ll see if our funny friends in Tight End Crime Central have got a drone they can send in our direction.’
‘Good thinking.’
‘I’ll make sure it’s fitted with a high-resolution camera.’
‘While we’re waiting, let’s carry on to the estuary and look for any signs of anyone else.’
‘Huh.’
‘We’ve got this far. We might as well carry on and see if there’s any hint of anybody fishing.’
‘Like what?’
Troy shrugged. ‘Discarded fishing line. Footprints. Anything.’
‘All right.’
In twenty minutes, they ran out of land. They arrived at a small sandy bay and the sea. The spot was mostly unspoiled. The only feet that had patterned the beach were those of seabirds. There was one drinks can, partly buried in sand.
‘It probably came down the river,’ Lexi said. ‘It’s not in good condition. Corroded. It’s been here longer than a couple of weeks.’
Troy nodded.
They went over to the only other object lying on the beach. At the high-tide mark near some rocks, there was a rotting fish.
Lexi squatted down by it and grimaced. ‘We’ve come all this way for one dead fish. It doesn’t mean anything. No hook in its mouth as far as I can see. It could have died of old age or got left behind in a pool. But …’ She sighed and pulled on a glove.
‘Because you’re methodical …’
‘Yeah. I’m going to take it back to test it for mercury.’ She slid the smelly corpse into an evidence bag and sealed it. ‘I’m going to take a sample of the river water as well – just in case Ethyl Products are still pumping out pollution.’
Troy bent down, picked up a flat stone and skimmed it across the surface of the sea. It managed three bounces before a wave lurched upward and swallowed it. Overhead, two gulls screamed at each other.
‘Ready to go back to civilization?’ Lexi asked.
‘The end of land’s always a bit magical.’
‘Magical?’
Knowing his partner wouldn’t understand, Troy smiled. ‘Yeah. I’m ready. Let’s go back.’
SCENE 22
Monday 12th May, Afternoon
At first, Lexi struggled to control the drone smoothly and, at the same time, remember the
instructions that the police technician had hastily told her. But soon she got the hang of it and, apart from an occasional blurry image, she was successfully recording a bird’s-eye view of the area.
The two detectives were sitting in a café at Loose End, surveying the rugged landscape without even moving, without breathing all that fresh air. They were able to cover far more ground far more thoroughly than when they were hiking over it. They could even zoom in on any particular area – once Lexi had mastered the software downloaded into her life-logger. But there was too much information to study in detail.
‘This is the best way to appreciate the countryside,’ Lexi said. ‘Inside, with a beer, fudge laden with crickets, and a drone doing the hard work.’
The unmanned aerial vehicle was flying parallel to Loose End Edge. On the screen of Lexi’s life-logger, they watched the movie. Vertical scars marked the positions where water cascaded down and occasional black patches were the tell-tale signs of the mouths of caves. Lexi had instructed the drone to continue its journey to the sea. That would be the limit of its range, but it would allow them to explore the second bay at a distance.
‘What’s that?’ Troy tapped the corner of the screen.
At the base of the vertical hillside, there were boulders and something dark, obscured by surrounding trees.
‘Not sure,’ Lexi said, peering at the monitor. ‘I’m zooming in but I still can’t make it out. It’s not the camera’s fault. It’s this screen. It’s too small and the resolution’s not great.’ She let out a frustrated breath and said, ‘I’ll let the drone carry on. When it’s finished the whole area, let’s collect it and go back to Tight End. We can put all the data on a large screen in Crime Central. Maybe then …’
‘Okay.’
‘What we really need to do is to narrow it down,’ Lexi said. ‘Then we stand a chance. Right now …’
‘We’re looking for the legendary needle in a haystack.’
‘Something like that.’
‘Actually, it’s harder,’ said Troy. ‘We don’t even know what we’re looking for. The needle’s a red herring. We’re chasing a small unknown in a giant haystack.’
