Guilty Waters

by Priscilla Masters

She looked from one to the other and when she caught Korpanski’s eye she could see that he was as bemused as she was.

  What the hell was going on?

  Gradually she began to tease out the story. Last weekend these two young men had been climbing in the Roaches. On reaching the top of the climb known as the Valkyrie near the Winking Man’s head they had found, partly hidden, a Tupperware box placed there by someone calling himself the King of the Roaches. This was an oblique referral to someone whose story was so amazing it had practically passed into folklore. It was the story of Doug Moller, King of the Roaches, his wife, Annie, and Rock Hall Cottage. Rock Hall Cottage was part cave, part home to this eccentric pair. They had lived in this remote position for years until it had become untenable. Tragically, Annie had died of burns a few years later. Doug was still around and their son, Prince of the Roaches, carried on the tradition. His ink stamp was considered a rare prize as he was adept at hiding his letterboxes. These days Rock Hall Cottage had been turned into a retreat or shelter for climbers.

  ‘Show me,’ Joanna said, and the brothers unfolded a climbing map of the area. The Valkyrie was clearly marked.

  ‘And the letterbox?’

  The brothers showed Joanna their notebook and the collected stamps from other letterboxes. They had stamps from all over the country – Dartmoor, Exmoor, Devon and Cornwall, the top of Brown Willie and the peak of Snowdon, Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike. Looking at them made Joanna wish that she and Matthew had more time for this sort of pursuit. It looked fun.

  ‘And in the box was this photo,’ James said.

  Joanna slipped on a latex glove. ‘Do you mind?’

  It was a colour photo of two laughing girls, both extremely attractive with fine skin and teeth and long, straight silky hair. They were wearing short shorts with their bottoms to the camera, turning to laugh teasingly into the lens.

  Scrawled on the back was the invitation. We are two French girls on a voyage of discovery. Come and find us. We will give you a welcome at the poet’s lake, love Annabelle Bellange and Dorothée Caron XXX

  There was no date.

  ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘No.’ James answered for both of them.

  Joanna dropped the photograph into an evidence bag then removed her gloves. ‘So,’ she asked innocently, ‘you didn’t meet up with them?’

  The brothers shook their heads violently and vehemently. ‘No,’ they protested. ‘We never did.’ They looked even more awkward. They were concealing something.

  Joanna shot a glance at Madame Bellange. Her face was impassive, her black eyes bright and inquisitive as a bird’s, her thin face almost quivering with attention. She turned her gaze on one brother and then the other, sharp as a drill. She looked dubious. And looking at her, Joanna wondered whether she believed their story.

  Joanna was still bemused. ‘So what exactly did happen? What did you do next?’

  ‘Well, we found out through the barmaid at the Rudyard Hotel that the girls had stayed at Mandalay.’ Martin had taken up the reins and was speaking animatedly. ‘So we went there and searched through the visitors’ book.’

  ‘But the girls would have moved on.’

  Again James seemed to take charge. No longer sheep-faced, he spoke clearly. ‘We thought we might catch up with them somewhere else, maybe through their mobile numbers. They left one in the visitors’ book at Mandalay, but it went straight to answerphone when I tried to call it. They looked fun,’ he said defensively.

  ‘And attractive,’ his brother put in with more honesty.

  Joanna didn’t even ask whether the brothers were in current relationships. The question she needed to ask herself was how much of this was true? Had they really never met Annabelle and Dorothée? Had they just followed a whim? Searched for two girls who appeared to have vanished? Just like she was now doing? Or …

  The two brothers exchanged nervous glances which were not lost on either Joanna or Mike. She knew they were hiding something.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ she tried innocently. ‘Surely when you discover a letterbox the idea is to collect the stamp; some people leave stuff – a picture or a little souvenir – and then you leave everything as it was?’

  ‘Ye-es. At least, theoretically.’

  ‘So why did you remove the photograph?’

  They had their answer sorted – just as they had explained to Cécile Bellange. ‘We didn’t want the competition.’

  ‘But anyone prior to your removing the picture could have pursued the girls to Rudyard Lake and found them.’ She gave Korpanski a swift glance and knew he was already compiling a list of things to do. Top of the list was to visit the letterbox site. Then return to Mandalay and ask Mr Barker again whether anyone had been searching for the girls, including these boys. Start asking questions and then ask some more.

  ‘Is there any chance,’ she said to the brothers, ‘that you can take me to the site of the letterbox?’

  ELEVEN

  Timmis and McBrine, Moorland patrol, were waiting for them at the bottom of the climb. This wild and rugged area was their patch. They loved the challenge of the terrain which could be unforgiving in winter and almost always felt hostile to intruders, even in the height of summer. Visitors quickly grew aware of the isolation of the area, the miles and miles of nothing except buzzards and kestrels, rabbits and the odd domesticated animal, cows and a few sheep. Otherwise, apart from the more adventurous hikers, bikers and climbers there was an absence of people. The natives were used to isolation and felt crowded in when they went to Leek for market day or to fill their freezers with provisions. Out here one could take nothing for granted – not even a reliable supply of food. There had been snows in June and September, quite apart from the normal extended span of winter. The natives kept themselves to themselves. Visitors came at their own risk.

  Either Josh Timmis or Saul McBrine would be happy to scale the heights of the Roaches. They could run crab-like up its rocky surface or wander along the easier paths. It was all the same to them. Joanna laced up her climbing boots, tucked her jeans in her socks and prepared herself. It was not a tough climb but it was strenuous and she didn’t feel at her fittest. Since her marriage there’d been many demands on her which had cut down her cycling time. It didn’t seem fair on her free Sundays to abandon Matthew and join her buddies in the Leek Women’s Cycling Club, so reluctantly she simply stuck to her route to and from work. And when the clocks went back in October, it would be too dark to cycle the lonely and unlit country lanes which led from Waterfall Cottage to Leek police station. And then there was this business of Matthew wanting a family. He was a protective man and would not look kindly on her putting a child at risk by cycling. Heigh ho.

  James and Martin were climbing reluctantly out of the car behind them. They were to act as their guides.

  She looked up at the bony crags of the Roaches. And, as always, she questioned herself. What was she doing here? Chasing up a flimsy clue in the search for the two girls? What Mike had said earlier was right. If they were missing rather than just gone AWOL because they didn’t want to attend their college courses, the likelihood was that something had happened away from this area. The probability was that they had returned to the main road, stuck their thumbs out and been picked up by someone whose intentions were less than honourable. They would have to widen their search. As she scrabbled behind Josh Timmis, who was well kitted out in climbing gear, she followed him into handholds and footholds, remembering the mantra to keep close bodily contact with the rock face and to use, monkey-like, hands and feet to secure her safety. At the back of her mind was the embarrassment of explaining this to CS Gabriel Rush: Well, sir, I thought I might find a clue to the girls’ whereabouts up there on the crags.

  Ha. She scolded herself. She would achieve nothing by this except a bit of extra exercise. Then, hands and feet secure, she looked around her. Gaining height had afforded an even wider, more panoramic view of the hills and valleys of the moors. Surely, on
such a blue-sky day, this was better than sitting in her office and staring at a brick wall? Then the wind whipped around the corner and she was not quite so sure.

  They had left Saul McBrine in the car and Korpanski was back at the station with Cécile Bellange. There was no way she could have climbed up here, particularly in her elegant Parisian clothes. Martin and James were well ahead now, climbing quickly and confidently in their natural environment, glancing back every now and again like true group leaders to make sure she was keeping up. Josh Timmis was next in line, his boots occasionally catching some shale and sending it spilling down below. You had to think here. One slip and you would tumble – admittedly not to your death – but to some very nasty grazes which could be quite painful. Joanna had done this years ago with another boyfriend who had been a keen climbing partner, and she had always thought he had taken malicious delight in applying some stinging antiseptic to her injuries.

  The trouble was she was a cop. And cops tend to look for trouble. It’s not that they are pessimistic, more that they have met the worst scenarios too many times. And so, nibbling away, like a mouse on cheese, at the back of her mind, in a hole no bigger than a mouse hole was something. Some feeling …

  Perhaps it was Madame Bellange’s manner – quietly dignified, dumbly pleading. That desperate appeal that pricked at her conscience.

  Added to that … She glanced ahead of her at the brothers, moving crab-like up the surface of the rock, agile as athletes. She wasn’t sure whether she trusted them. During the drive out she’d kept an eye on them as they led the way and was sure they were having a fairly heated argument about something. A disagreement. She’d seen the heads turning towards each other, mouths open, hard stares, and felt the anger that passed between them. She would love to know what it had been about, though she could well guess: which version of events they should stick to.

  A piece of loose shale loosened by Martin’s boot stopped her mind from wandering and forced her to focus on the climb. The brothers were far enough ahead to make a whispered exchange. She strained her ears, quietened her breathing and listened.

  James was talking to his brother. ‘We should have never …’

  She heard three more words. ‘Come back.’ And then: ‘Rucksacks.’ Spoken with intent, it floated down from the ridge. Then, as though they knew she was listening in, as one they turned around, saw her and clamped their mouths shut.

  But when out of earshot they continued speaking, their words wafted away on the wind before they reached Joanna Piercy’s ears.

  When they reached the top all four of them were panting. Even a short climb was strenuous. But despite considering the uncomfortable circumstances which had brought them to this point of time and place they grinned at each other, triumphant. They’d done it. They were on top of the world.

  Joanna was the first to speak. ‘Show me exactly where you found the letterbox.’

  They indicated a small cairn twenty, perhaps thirty yards away, which did not look like a random fall of stones but as though it had been placed there carefully. Man made. Quiet yet inviting the attention of the observant.

  ‘Let’s take a look, shall we?’ Joanna slipped on a pair of gloves and picked up a plastic Tupperware box, the size of a sandwich box. Carefully she lifted the lid. Inside was an ink stamp, some postcards of local views, a couple of business cards. She took out a large evidence bag and slipped the entire contents, sandwich box and all, inside. The brothers looked appalled. ‘You can’t do that,’ they said simultaneously. ‘You can’t take it away. It’s not fair …’ The words died inside them as they recalled the stricken face of Madame Cécile Bellange.

  PC Josh Timmis looked sympathetic. Maybe he too was a secret letterboxer. ‘We’ll bring it back,’ he said kindly, ‘when we’ve taken a good look at it.’ And then, as the brothers looked dubious, he added, ‘I promise. I’ll bring it back myself.’

  The brothers looked mollified.

  ‘But we have to take it,’ Timmis continued, ‘just in case …’ He risked a look at Joanna and explained further. ‘Just in case there’s something inside that gives us a clue where the girls are.’ He put a kindly hand on James’s shoulder who was, he judged, the more upset of the two and seemed to need further assurance. ‘I’ll put it back, I promise. OK?’

  James was looking at his brother. ‘That isn’t the one,’ he said.

  Joanna looked around. ‘No? How many of these things are there hidden?’

  James answered for both of them. ‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘But that isn’t the one we found. It’s in the right place but it’s not the one we took the girls’ photo from.’

  Joanna looked around her again, puzzled. Where had it gone? Had it been moved deliberately and replaced with a different box? But as she studied her surroundings she was struck by another thought: Annabelle and Dorothée must have been fairly tough to have made it up here. They were girls who could look after themselves, she argued. And there had been the two of them to look out for one another.

  And then, in this most incongruous of places, her mobile phone went off, the jaunty ringtone, Paradise Island, set to remind herself of her honeymoon in Sri Lanka sounding strange, exotic and thoroughly out of place in this most English of landscapes. The number began 01538. It was the station.

  ‘Drama off,’ Korpanski said, jaunty as ever. ‘Tour duty over. Come down off the mountain.’

  Joanna smiled. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Mrs Caron has had a message from her daughter today to say they’d decided to visit London.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘That is it, Inspector,’ Korpanski said, sounding even more jaunty. ‘Time to come home and get back to some real work.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way down.’ She ended the call and looked at the brothers. ‘Drama over,’ she said. ‘Dorothée’s mother has heard from her. The girls are in London.’

  ‘Right.’ They looked at each other, as if not sure whether to believe her. Then they turned around and led the way down.

  The descent was easier and the exhilaration was wearing off quickly. At the car Joanna returned to business. ‘What are your plans now?’ she asked the brothers, more for politeness than any real curiosity.

  ‘Back to work,’ James said.

  ‘In Birmingham,’ his brother finished.

  James worked in financial planning while his brother was ‘in the car industry’. He didn’t enlarge and she didn’t ask.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind leaving your contact details back at the station, that’d be helpful,’ Joanna said, knowing the invitation would rattle the two men.

  The look they exchanged between them was a simple, shrugging, What for? The drama was over, wasn’t it?

  Well, let them be rattled just a little longer.

  Back at the station Joanna spoke to Cécile Bellange. ‘So what are your plans now?’ she asked pleasantly. ‘Do you intend meeting up with the girls in London, madame?’

  ‘Mais non,’ she responded heartily. ‘I cannot find them in such a big city. I shall return home. Back to Paris and my work and to wait for them to arrive back home. Then I shall give them a réprimande.’ She smiled. ‘Merci beaucoup, Inspector. Merci pour votre aide …’

  Joanna cut in. ‘Have you actually spoken to Annabelle yourself?’ She felt she was being a wet blanket. A pessimist. A Cassandra. A detective.

  Cécile Bellange must have thought so too. Her response was irritable. ‘Mais non,’ she said. ‘It seems obvious to me that only Dorothée still has her phone. Annabelle’s number is not working.’

  ‘OK. And did Dorothée’s mother ring her daughter back?’

  ‘I don’t know that.’ She sounded irritated and defensive. ‘Renée Caron rang me half an hour ago to tell me. I only know that the girl has sent a message and that they are both safe.’

  Joanna was thoughtful. ‘So,’ she said slowly, ‘Madame Caron did not actually speak to her daughter?’

  Cécile Bellange was angry. �
�Non,’ she said, even more crossly this time. ‘I already told you. Dorothée sent a text to her maman.’

  ‘OK,’ Joanna said slowly. She would have preferred it if Mrs Caron had actually spoken to her daughter herself. Why all this silence until now, when the police were involved? But Madame Bellange seemed adamant that the girls were safe – and maybe they were. There was no point trying to keep the investigation alive if the girls’ families were convinced they were found.

  And Cécile Bellange clearly was. Her demeanour had changed. She was brisk and anxious to be gone. ‘Merci. Merci. Thank you and goodbye, Inspector,’ she said firmly and quickly. She shook hands and was gone.

  Joanna hoped the goodbye wasn’t simply an au revoir.

  TWELVE

  So Joanna filled Rush in with the result of the case. She completed her reports, emphasizing the fact that Cécile Bellange was content the girls were safe in London.

  She couldn’t pretend to be a hundred per cent happy at the result. With her suspicious DI’s mind, like doubting Thomas, she wouldn’t be absolutely certain until someone who knew them had actually seen the two girls. But still, she could settle back in relief at the fact that the errant French girls appeared to be safe and not dead on her patch.

  And there were distinct advantages to this state. When there is a major case in progress, policemen, whether DIs or DCs, are not allowed to have private lives. Weddings, funerals, let alone holidays and any other commitments, have to be placed in a bin and the lid screwed down tightly. With this new situation, Joanna felt released. Her weekends and evenings could be freed up. There was no other major case on at the minute. Simply a couple of routine investigations which would tie her and Korpanski and most of their team to their desks for the next few weeks. Achingly boring, collecting statistics and proving, in time for the party conferences, that the current party in power was the one who could be trusted to achieve better law and order.

  Wednesday, 18 September, 7.30 p.m.

  It had been Eloise’s idea to meet up at a pub not far from Keele, the university where she was studying medicine. ‘The Mainwaring Arms, eight o’clock,’ she had stipulated in her icicle-sharp little voice. From across the width of their sitting room Joanna had heard the words even though Eloise had been speaking to her father. Matthew had half turned towards her, his eyebrows voicing the question and she had nodded and smiled. Time for détente. She was weary with the hostilities that existed between herself and her stepdaughter. If there was to be an absence of affection between them – and she suspected this was the status quo – then a truce, or at least a civilized tolerance, had to be the order of the day. She simply didn’t have the energy for any more belligerence between them.