Guilty Waters

by Priscilla Masters

  The brothers looked at each other. ‘Not exactly,’ they said together.

  Madame Bellange shrugged. ‘And what does that mean, not exactly?’ Again, the two brothers looked at each other, unsure how to proceed.

  Cécile Bellange stretched out one small hand and fluttered her fingers. ‘Do you know where they are now?’

  ‘No.’ In chorus. This time there was no need for them to confer. The denial burst out of them. And Madame Bellange seemed to shrink, her eyes dulled with disappointment. She was silent for a moment, and then something of the fight returned in her. ‘I have not heard from my daughter since the middle of July. Tell me what you know, please.’

  The brothers looked at each other. Then James reached into his pocket and drew out the photograph. Cécile Bellange peered at it.

  Then she turned it over and read the back. ‘They …’

  ‘The picture was taken at the Roaches,’ James said helpfully. ‘We found it on Sunday when we were climbing. It was in a plastic Tupperware box, half hidden so people like us would find it.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ Cécile Bellange said, her brow wrinkled. ‘People like you? What does that mean? Why would they leave a photograph half hidden in a plastic box?’

  ‘It’s known as letterboxing,’ James explained patiently. ‘It’s a sort of hobby. You collect stamps – and stuff. Then you stick them on a card,’ he finished lamely as Cécile Bellange continued to look bemused.

  James looked helplessly at his brother. ‘Part of it is that you leave the stuff behind for others to find. Some people put bits in – photos and stuff – but we didn’t.’

  ‘So anyone else could have followed the girls to Rudyard?’

  ‘In theory, yes,’ James said, seeing a chink of light that might let them off the hook. ‘Anyone else who found the letterbox before us will have seen the photo and might well have followed the girls to Rudyard.’

  ‘But not many people would have found the letterbox,’ James said, feeling even more stupid for exposing this fact. ‘The habit or game or whatever you want to call it is less popular here than on Dartmoor where it all began.’

  They could see from Madame Bellange’s expression that she didn’t really understand the concept at all.

  ‘And you say Annabelle is – does this?’

  The brothers nodded.

  ‘Then where is she? Does this letterbox lead to her?’

  ‘Well, it led to where she was staying at the time.’

  ‘But you don’t know where they are now?’

  The brothers exchanged glances. ‘No.’

  ‘And you took the photograph away. Why?’

  James spoke for both of them. ‘We took the photograph because we hoped to find them and didn’t want any other guys to get hold of it.’ He grinned tentatively.

  ‘They’re very attractive,’ Martin added. He felt this evening was not going at all well. ‘We hoped to find them and maybe go for a drink.’

  Madame Bellange continued to look bemused and the brothers shrugged. They’d done their best.

  ‘And you say it was on a climb … somewhere?’

  ‘Out on the moors. We found it at a famous climb site called the Roaches.’

  ‘You will take me there?’

  The brothers glanced at each other, both thinking the same thought. Not in those clothes.

  James answered for both of them. ‘If you want. In the morning, if you like.’

  ‘Merci,’ she said before dropping her bombshell. ‘But first you will come with me to tell all this to the police,’ she said. ‘You still have your card with the stamps on it?’

  Now they both felt very twitchy. ‘Yes.’ They spoke as one.

  ‘Then you will bring it.’ And she left.

  They groaned. If these girls really were missing, as Annabelle’s mother had suggested, what had happened to them? Even to them their story sounded lame – the chance finding of the letterbox, the apparently seductive invitation to join the two French girls at the lake and their pursuit six weeks after the photo had been left. Could they really have thought the girls would still be here?

  No, but they had thought they might find another clue – possibly a further location or contact details. Something which would lead them nearer to the girls’ tempting invitation. But now they realized how fishy the whole thing sounded – even to them. Imagine what a team of twitchy-nosed detectives would think.

  And then there was the peeping Tom landlord. What was that all about? There was something unsavoury about Barker but they couldn’t really imagine him doing away with the girls because they’d seen him watching them. If they had, they’d have just left and booked into somewhere else, surely? Somewhere other than Mandalay. But then James remembered the rucksacks standing in the kitchen, and Barker’s apparent confusion when he had rounded the door. The Chinese girl’s eye so carefully and precisely cut away to provide a peephole. What did the law call it? Pre-meditation. They looked at each other, troubled that they were booked in there tonight.

  Oh, hell. They just wanted to leave.

  They ate their steak and kidney pie with chips and mushy peas – home-made and cooked to perfection. But, in spite of their initial hunger, they didn’t enjoy it half as much as they’d expected before meeting Cécile Bellange, even though the big fat chips were probably the best chips they’d ever eaten in their lives.

  They sat with their heads together exchanging low words. They were going to have to get their story straight for the police.

  TEN

  Wednesday, 11 September, 8 a.m.

  Charlotte Bingley was planning a trip. She’d bought the book on the Roaches’ climbs and planned every single day for four whole days – a different climb or walk each day, whatever the weather. She would go in early October when the weather should still be good, when children would be back at school and before half-term. Over the internet she booked into Mandalay, liking the exotic sound of the name and the pretty picture of the lake which accompanied the website.

  Charlotte liked to climb alone so she had no one else to consult. There was another reason why this particular time suited her. Two years ago she and her long-term boyfriend, Stan Morton, had split up and she’d found the break liberating. Shocking, her mother had said, vinegar in her voice. She had been hoping for a wonderful white wedding and a couple of cute grandchildren that she could boast about to her friends. Charlotte had sighed and known that her mother was disappointed in her. Very disappointed.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ her best friend Shona had said, ‘letting him go. Stan’s gorgeous, he’s rich, he has a good job (an IT consultant in central London) and he loves you. He’s fabulous.’

  But Charlotte had taken absolutely no notice.

  And so Shona had set her snares, which had relieved Charlotte of the dual burden of guilt and the accusatory presence, complete with hangdog expression, of her ex, who for the first couple of months after the split had seemed to be wherever she was socially. But eventually it had also relieved her of her best friend too. Shona’s allegiance had changed. Her admiration for her friend’s boyfriend had translated into a relationship with the result that, as her relationship with Stan had blossomed and bloomed, her shared confidences with Charlotte had dried up. And now they were to be married. Shona and Stan had planned humongous nuptials in Italy in a big, fairy-tale, footballers’-wives-style wedding. Her mother had seen the invitation propped up on her mantelpiece in the tiny flat in Maida Vale and had read every word out aloud, including the nauseating and clichéd quote, La amora tutto intorno – Love is all around.

  “The marriage will take place of Shona and Stan at the Villa Principessa, Napoli, Saturday fifth of October at three p.m.”’ She had read the words, using them as a cat-o’-nine-tails to whip her daughter with. Charlotte, to her mother’s intense irritation, had simply smiled and said she was happy for them.

  ‘Happy for them,’ her mother had snorted.

  But Charlotte really was. Shona and Stan had found eac
h other and she had found herself. Her mother appeared to be the only one who had not moved on. When the wedding invitation had arrived, with its puke-provoking strapline, Charlotte Bingley had thought, Not for me is la amora tutto intorno, and had politely declined, saying she had a long-booked holiday. No one there would believe her, of course. Just about everyone at the wedding would form their own explanation for her absence.

  She could just imagine it – all her old university friends: from heartbroken to embarrassed to green-eyed jealous and so on and so on. What she wouldn’t have been able to stand would not have been the adoring glances between bride and groom, the oh look how happy they are moving on to plans for one of each within two years I wouldn’t be surprised, which would have had her mother grinding her teeth in frustration. No – that was as it should be. It would have been the misguided pity aimed in her direction as they wrongly judged her, turning away from her to mutter, she’s made a terrible mistake, and I bet she’s regretting it now.

  And however much she might protest that she was happy that Stan and Shona had found each other, no one would believe her. She doth protest too much, would be next.

  They were all wrong. She and Stan would never have made each other happy. She was, as she was finding out, far too independent and happy in her own company.

  Charlotte was a tall, muscular thirty-eight-year-old. When her mother had advised her to remember the ‘time clock’ she had blown out an exasperated raspberry. She didn’t give a monkey’s tits about her time clock. In fact, if someone looked into a crystal ball and pronounced, ‘You will end your days alone, childless and a spinster’, she would have felt some relief. Thank goodness for that. Something I don’t have to worry about.

  She was a doctor who had passed all her exams a little late in life, having initially embarked on the same career as Stan – IT. Her abandoning such a well-paid career had been the thin end of the wedge between them. But she hadn’t really decided which speciality she wanted to pursue (which would inevitably mean yet more exams). At times she fancied herself a GP but at others the idea of working in paediatrics as a saviour of children appealed more. And at other times she wondered about gynaecology and/or obstetrics.

  The choice was vast. Too vast. One wouldn’t have believed the human body could throw up so many different specialities. And then there was the adventure world of Médecins Sans Frontières, working in war-torn countries: emergency field work in areas his by crises – tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, nuclear explosions, Ebola outbreaks and war. Or doing less exciting voluntary work, treating tropical diseases in village health centres. That attracted her too, so for the moment she fiddled around in A&E departments up and down the country while she made up her mind. She relished the idea of this holiday, travelling incognito, without her mobile phone, just wandering where the fancy took her. She would walk, climb and explore and spend her evenings reading. Bliss. She booked a room in Mandalay for early October for four nights.

  Wednesday, 11 September, 8.30 a.m.

  As though he had been lying in wait for her, Chief Superintendent Gabriel Rush found her at the very moment that she was walking into the station in full regalia: cycling shorts, garish cycling top (to make sure vehicle drivers saw her), helmet, SPDs. The lot. His pale eyes took in her fancy-dress costume and his scarred mouth looked even more disapproving as he greeted her coldly. ‘Good morning, Piercy.’

  ‘Morning, sir.’ She removed her cycling helmet – a present from Matthew following a cycling accident when she had broken her wrist. And although a cycling helmet would be no protection against a broken wrist, she always wore it now. He tended to remind her if she ‘forgot’.

  ‘These French girls,’ Rush said. ‘Have you found anything out?’

  She felt at a real disadvantage facing the CS in a pair of Lycra cycling shorts and the vividly coloured top – great to alert careless drivers to your presence but not exactly de rigueur for a DI. ‘Nothing positive, sir,’ she said, trying to sound dignified and in control and knowing she was managing neither. ‘Only negatives. No bank transactions, no mobile phone usage. They haven’t been on their email accounts since mid-July. Nothing’s been picked up. The last record we have of them is on Friday the nineteenth of July, the day the card was posted.’

  ‘Ah, the postcard,’ he said, as though he understood the significance.

  ‘We’ve tracked them back to a guest house in Rudyard at that time but they haven’t been seen or heard of since that week.’ Oh, for goodness’ sake, can we talk about this when I’m dressed?

  ‘The postcard,’ he repeated. ‘It was posted where?’

  He was doing this deliberately. ‘At the post box at the end of the road where the guest house is, sir.’

  ‘So what next, Piercy?’

  ‘We’ve spoken to some local people who remember the girls but no one seems to know where they were headed next, sir. It could be anywhere. They were hitchhiking. There’s a possibility the girls were picked up by a driver and …’ She didn’t need to complete the sentence.

  ‘So do you have a line of enquiry?’

  ‘Two young men have been asking about them but we don’t know their connection with the girls.’

  Rush waited, his face impassive.

  She tried again. ‘Madame Bellange is coming in at nine o’clock this morning to see me, sir.’ And now can I bloody well get changed?

  ‘Then you’d better get changed, hadn’t you?’

  Had she been glaring at him? She smothered a smile.

  Heaven help me if Chief Superintendent Gabriel Rush can read my mind.

  She changed into a more suitable short black skirt, wedge-heeled shoes and a blue shirt, then went into her office where Korpanski was already working hard, checking into the PNC for any sightings of the two girls. He’d done two missing person’s posts yesterday but so far nothing had come up.

  He aimed a look of sympathy in her direction. ‘Get copped by Rush, did you?’

  She dropped into her seat. ‘I swear he was waiting for me, Mike – lying in wait like a bloody predatory animal.’

  Korpanski simply chuckled.

  She glanced at his computer screen. ‘No line on the girls then, yet?’

  ‘No,’ he said, then swivelled his chair around to speak to her. ‘We’re going to have to escalate the enquiry. Widen our search.’

  She nodded.

  Wednesday, 11 September, 9 a.m.

  Nothing was said as Barker served the brothers their full English, but there was a general air of embarrassment and the Stuart brothers didn’t even ask if they could possibly stay another night. Neither did they mention their impending trip to the Leek police station with the mother of Annabelle Bellange. Feeling slightly sick, they didn’t even finish their breakfast.

  They paid their bill with a debit card, loaded up their rucksacks and left.

  Barker watched them go, his feelings a mixture of anxiety at what they would do next and relief. Then he went into his study and thought.

  Barker with was good with technology. Self-taught and with a natural bent towards IT: mobile phones, email, the lot. He was very proud of the website he’d constructed for Mandalay and he’d had an idea. A very clever idea.

  What if, he thought, he charged up one of the girls’ mobile phones which had been left in their rucksacks, switched off (he’d checked), and sent a text on it, telling mum they were heading for somewhere far away from here? Then he could switch it off so no one would have time to track it and no one would be any the wiser. At least, that was what he hoped.

  Good idea or what, Barker? He almost patted himself on the back but could only manage his shoulder. He answered the question himself. A very good idea, Barker. He would just need to practice what he was saying. Do a little translation. Choose a city. London. Eventually, he settled on the message:

  Hello, Mum, sorry we haven’t been in touch. We’re in London and we’re staying here for a bit. Just to let you know we’re both well. See you soon.

 
He had a French dictionary, but the online translator tool was much easier and quicker. Bonjour, maman, désolé, nous n’avons pas été en contact. Nous sommes à Londres, nous allons rester un peu ici. Nous voulions simplement vous dire que nous allions, toutes les deux, bien. A bientôt.

  Barker smiled, feeling pleased with himself. He found Maman in the phone’s contacts and sent the text.

  At the station, Cécile Bellange was not only on time for her ten o’clock appointment but she had in tow two ruggedly handsome men who looked decidedly sheepish. Joanna looked at Mike, her shoulders raised in question. Were these the guys who had been asking about the girls? Did they know Madame Bellange? Why were they here?

  She glanced at Mike who gave his all-will-be-revealed shrug. But unfortunately, the garbled story that came out didn’t help her much.

  Letterboxing. A photograph. Interpreted as an invitation. Rudyard. Poems.

  They’d not actually met the girls. It all came out in a complete jumble, and it didn’t help that the brothers had developed the habit of finishing off each other’s sentences.

  There was only one thing to do. ‘Start at the beginning,’ she said, and tried to let them speak without interruption, only asking questions if she felt she needed further clarification.

  ‘So what took you to the Roaches and that particular climb?’

  ‘Pure chance,’ James said. ‘We’d done some of the climbs before and that seemed a challenging one, so we went ahead with it.’

  ‘And the letterboxing?’

  ‘That’s a sort of sideline.’ They glanced at each other, both obviously wishing they’d left the Roaches well alone. Who would want to get embroiled in this?

  ‘Describe to me exactly where it was.’ Joanna glanced at Korpanski and he could read the tacit question in the lift of her eyebrows. How’s your climbing skills, Detective Sergeant?

  He grinned back at her. Easily as good as yours, Inspector.