‘No. No purse or credit cards.’
Joanna covered the mouthpiece with her hand and addressed Korpanski. ‘Credit cards haven’t been used, have they, Mike?’
Korpanski shook his head. ‘Not since July.’
Joanna spoke to Fask again. ‘Passports?’
‘Yes. Both. In the side pockets.’
‘OK, Mark. Keep looking.’
‘Anything in particular?’
‘No. Just use your eyes.’ She was trying to work out the significance of it all. She glanced through the peephole. Tom Fairway was still asking his client questions, making notes, his face serious. She drew Mike into their office. ‘Hear me out, Mike. I just want to run stuff past you before I do my usual trick of tumbling straight into something I don’t understand.’
Korpanski grinned without even trying to supress his humour. He knew his colleague’s impulsiveness.
‘The girls’ purses are missing. They have money with them and credit cards but they haven’t been used.’
Korpanski blinked and said nothing.
‘The mobile phone which texted Renée Caron three weeks ago is in the rucksack.’
Korpanski nodded, his dark eyes watching her slowly construct a case.
‘Their passports and belongings are neatly packed.’
Korpanski held up his index finger. ‘Barker,’ he pointed out in a low whisper, ‘is a neat and tidy man.’
Joanna nodded her agreement and ploughed on. ‘I think the girls went for a short walk leaving their rucksacks, which, after all, are big, heavy things, bulky and inconvenient, in their rooms at Mandalay. Perhaps they went to say goodbye to the lake. They were big Kipling fans. Rudyard Lake was a place of pilgrimage to them.’ As she spoke she wondered whether their poetry books were in the rucksacks or with them – wherever they were.
She peered through the peephole at Barker. He was speaking animatedly and from the palm-showing gesture trying to convince Tom, his solicitor, of his innocence.
But you have a lot to explain, Joanna thought.
She continued. ‘I think they’re somewhere in the area, Mike.’
He nodded. ‘It looks like it.’
‘And I think they’re dead.’ She needed reassurance. ‘You agree with me?’
Mike nodded again and Joanna glanced at the door.
‘We have a prime suspect. If Barker had nothing to do with the girls’ fate why didn’t he come forward and tell us he had their rucksacks?’
Korpanski waited but proffered no answer.
‘I’m going to have to speak to Rush,’ she said finally, ‘before we continue interviewing Barker. And we’re going to have to have a full-blown search of the area. Rope everyone in.’
Korpanski looked worried now. ‘You’re sure you want to talk to …’ He jerked his head in the direction of Chief Superintendent Gabriel Rush’s room.
‘No – not sure at all, but I’ve got no choice now with this evidence.’
She had to hand it to Rush. He listened to her reasoning without interruption and very carefully, his face not showing emotion but his pale eyes watchful, his expression absorbed as she brought him up to date.
She had thought he might use the opportunity to score points, to tell her she should have suspected something earlier, but he didn’t. He simply listened, sitting back in his chair looking thoughtful, fingers steepled, his face still expressionless. When she had finished he leaned forward, slammed his palms down on the desk, picked up his pen and started to write.
It was a list. But she couldn’t read upside-down writing.
Then he looked up, his pale eyes meeting hers. ‘I agree with your reasoning, Piercy,’ he said, but there was no warmth in his voice, no offer of friendship or comradeship and no acknowledgement. His eyes were Arctic ice. ‘You need to search the entire area. Use sniffer dogs. The weather’s still warm. They’ll track down putrefaction from half a mile away.’
Thanks for the graphic description. A couple of rotting women.
She knew what lay ahead – good, old-fashioned police work: gridding of the area, fingertip searches. And Rush was right – his description cruelly true. In the end it looked like this would be where the story ended and another dramatic court case would begin. Grief for the families, a sort of sad satisfaction for the force and paranoia spreading through the public so Rudyard Lake, instead of being a tribute to a great poet, would for ever be associated with murder – another famous case for Staffordshire to join Smith & Collier, William Palmer the poisoner, the Cannock Chase murders, Lesley Whittle and possibly even the final resting place of the missing child of the Moors Murderers, poor, bespectacled Keith Bennett with his chirpy grin and big teeth.
Then Rush looked at her and the corners of his mouth twitched. There was the faintest glimmer of a smile. Rush smiling? She looked again – and wasn’t sure.
‘Something’s bothering you, Piercy.’
She heaved out a big sigh. ‘It’s this, sir. Barker isn’t a complete fool. He managed Mandalay well, efficiently. He’s well organized and practical. He’s sorted out his own website. He’s an intelligent man. If he is our man and killed the two girls …’
Rush shrugged but there was a gleam in his eye as he waited for her to finish the sentence.
‘… where and how has he concealed their bodies?’
Rush interrupted. ‘You haven’t been looking for them.’
‘No, sir,’ she said earnestly. ‘But it’s been summer. A hot summer. There have been trippers packing around Rudyard.’ She ploughed on. ‘Trippers with dogs. You mentioned putrefaction. And,’ she continued, finally telling him what was really bothering her, ‘if he’s been clever enough to murder two girls and conceal their bodies, why on earth would he keep the rucksacks?’
He thought about this one for a minute or two, then acknowledged her doubts. ‘I see what you mean. Well, Piercy,’ he scribbled a bit more on the pad, ‘you’ve met this man. I haven’t. You must make your own judgement and act on it.’
She was shaking her head. ‘It doesn’t feel quite right,’ she said. ‘Barker’s not a fool. Even the way he spied on the room, cutting the eye out … It was clever and unless the girls did notice it, no one else did until the brothers saw it.’
‘Killers often are fools, Piercy, even if they’re not, by nature, foolish people.’ Another glimmer of a smile. A slight twist of those thin lips. ‘You’re a long way off having a case, a long way off proving the two girls are dead and a very long way off convicting Mr Barker of murder.’
It was funny, she thought. Mr Barker. She’d always thought of him as simply Barker. He’d never told them his first names.
‘How long do you reckon he’s been spying?’
‘I don’t know, sir, but if anyone had noticed it they surely would have come to us?’
He gave this some thought too. ‘Probably,’ he said slowly.
She had her authorisation for a full search of the area. She turned to go but Rush held her back. ‘Possibly,’ he said very slowly and reluctantly, ‘I should explain my less-than-warm welcome to you when I arrived.’
Joanna was instantly wary. ‘Sir?’
‘I came here aware of your reputation.’ A pause. ‘I knew that you were high profile and had solved some’ – another pause as he picked out his word – ‘difficult and unusual cases. I wanted to make it plain from the start that I know Chief Superintendent Colclough indulged you somewhat.’ He smiled. A proper smile this time. ‘You were both his pet and his token female senior officer.’
Joanna bowed her head, frowning. She didn’t know what was coming next.
Rush drew in a harsh breath. ‘I’m also aware that despite the close relationship you have with DS Korpanski you put his life in danger staking out a farm resulting in a gunshot wound to your sergeant.’
She bowed her head even lower. It hadn’t exactly been the high point of her career.
Rush continued: ‘I’ve read through the report of that incident and I think your behaviour w
as indefensible. Particularly as it appears DS Korpanski took a bullet that was meant for you.’
She felt a glower of anger. Rub it in, why don’t you?
‘However, on balance you are a good detective. More careful than I had expected and I want – I encourage – you to continue in that vein.’ Then he skewered her with a stare. ‘But you won’t get away with anything while I’m in charge here. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You do understand?’
She met his eyes. ‘I do, sir.’
‘Right, then prove yourself to me, Inspector Piercy.’
She gave him a tight smile and left. Maybe, she thought, as she walked along the corridor, just maybe she might manage working with him. She went back in to interview Barker.
Tom met her eyes, gave a small shake of his head and looked – frankly – pissed off.
Korpanski sat at her side. Still as a sphinx but she could almost feel the electricity bounce off him. They were both tense – the sort of tension that happens when you’re lifting a stone and think an adder might slither out.
‘Mr Barker,’ she began. ‘Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?’
He looked wary, but there was now an inner confidence. She wasn’t frightening him any more. It was as though the worst had already happened. Surely not? But now he wasn’t nervous. If anything, he was slightly truculent.
He folded his arms. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’
She decided on an oblique attack before facing him with the contents of the rucksacks and the discovery of the mobile phone. ‘When did you buy the Tretchikoff?’
It did the trick. Barker looked startled. Then he did look frightened. And worried. And, more interestingly, guiltier. He had not expected this.
‘Back …’ he began, his mouth so dry she could hear his tongue sticking against his teeth.
‘Mr Barker,’ she prompted after a few seconds.
‘In March,’ he said, his eyes searching around the room for a resting place. ‘She reminded me of the poem,’ he said.
Joanna raised her eyebrows.
‘Supi-yaw-lat.’
She stared at him. ‘Explain.’
‘“Mandalay”,’ he said. ‘“There’s a Burma girl a-settin’ and I know she thinks of me.” Kipling,’ he said, and made an attempt at a joke. ‘And I don’t mean the cakes.’
That was when Joanna became angry. ‘We’re talking about two young girls who are currently missing. Their mothers are frantic. The last place …’ She could feel Tom’s warning stare but she ignored him and carried on. ‘The last place they were seen was at your bed and breakfast where you use the subterfuge of a picture to spy on your guests. The girls’ luggage was there.’ She kept back the fact of the text message. She would use it later – to greater effect.
‘I had to let the room,’ Barker insisted plaintively. ‘I told you – I had a family coming. The room was booked and I couldn’t let it with two big rucksacks standing in the middle, could I?’
Joanna gave Mike a swift glance. Barker just didn’t get it.
He smiled again. ‘“I’ve a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!” Now you know why I called the guest house Mandalay.’ He actually looked pleased with himself.
Joanna realized she needed to try different tactics. ‘Mr Barker,’ she said, and felt Tom’s shoulders relax, ‘do you know anything about Dorothée Caron and Annabelle Bellange’s whereabouts?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’
‘When did you last see them?’
‘I saw them on the Saturday night,’ he said. ‘They were just going out. They paid their bill and told me they would be leaving early on Sunday morning because they wanted to get on the road. That was the last I saw of them. I left some breakfast out for Sunday but they didn’t eat it. I went out on Sunday morning to do some shopping. I needed to restock ready for my new guests. I went into Morrisons in Leek. It took me most of the morning. I arrived back at lunchtime and there was no sign of them. I assumed they’d gone early as they’d said. As I’ve told you, I didn’t discover the rucksacks until it was almost evening.’
Korpanski interrupted. ‘Did they have their keys with them?’
Barker looked annoyed. ‘Yes, they did,’ he said crossly. ‘I had to get some new ones cut.’ Now his eyes looked shifty. ‘I always keep spares,’ he said, his eyes sliding over the floor. ‘In case,’ he added with a gulping swallow, and seemed to have run out of explanations.
‘Go on, Mr Barker,’ Joanna said silkily, the polite voice that anyone who knew her would recognize as being her most dangerous.
Barker gave her a half smile and decided to quote Kipling again, affecting a mockney accent. ‘“’Er petticoat was yaller an’ ’er little cap was green.’
Joanna glanced up at the clock and then at Tom, frowning slightly. He would get the message. The police and criminal evidence clock – PACE – was ticking.
SEVENTEEN
While Joanna was interviewing Barker, trying to squeeze some truth out of him, Mark Fask and his team were searching Mandalay, starting with Barker’s own rooms. The guest suites they would leave until later.
All was tidy, clean and in order – kitchen, bedroom, bathroom. Nothing remarkable here. Nothing out of place. It was as organized as a show home.
At the back of the house, on the ground floor, Barker had his own small sitting room. Rather than facing the front view, the terrace and the lawn which sloped down towards the lake, this room, darkly decorated, overlooked the back garden through French windows. It was overgrown, with rhododendrons threatening to invade the neat lawn. The scene was completed by some dark Scots pines which kept a threatening watch. There were two armchairs facing an open fire, a television – small by today’s standards – and a lovely inlaid bookcase. Fask took a look at the titles and saw that Barker’s interests were in this order: the novels and poems of Kipling: The Man Who Would Be King caught his eye, next to The Jungle Book, next to the Collected Poems. The shelf below consisted of true crime – the Moors Murderers, a biography of Harold Shipman, Donald Nielson and Dennis Nilson, while the third shelf consisted surprisingly – though it fitted with Barker’s character and the ambience of Mandalay – of four or five books on art and interior design, what the Americans call home-making, cookery books, quilting and paint effects. Nothing tells us more about a person than the books on their shelves – or lack of them. And in Fask’s opinion this pretty much summed up the unusual and eccentric character of Horace Gladstone Barker. She’d chuckled when she’d found this out. His mother certainly had gone for the grand old names.
But again, nothing unexpected, nothing out of place, everything as carefully set out as the stage set of a West End production.
Except. In the corner of the room stood a solid-looking 1920s oak roll top desk. It was unlocked. Fask opened it. Inside, again as expected, all was similarly neat and tidy. There was a laptop – closed – and two bundles of papers in rubber bands. At a quick glance one consisted of copies of receipts for provisions, food, cleaning materials, electricity bills and some building work – all claimable against tax. The other bundle was copies of receipts for monies received from his clients. A quick flick soon found the copy of the girls’ receipt for their holiday – five nights at eighty pounds a night. Paid on arrival. Nice. Signed Annabelle Bellange in a flourishing script. Fask put it and the other receipts to one side. Maybe it would lead to someone else staying at Mandalay during that time?
Again everything supported the fact that Barker was an organized man. Everything was neatly pigeon-holed. Fask picked up a French dictionary. Maybe Barker had been trying to communicate with his international clients. Out fell one slightly crumpled sheet of paper.
Fask’s French wasn’t great. He’d failed his GCSE but knew enough to translate. And he knew exactly what it signified.
It was a transcript of the text sent to Renée Caron, Dorothée’s mother. It was typed in English, with the French translation u
nderneath. Barker had composed it, then translated it online and printed out the webpage. He slipped it into an evidence bag. The noose around Barker’s fat little neck was tightening. But apart from the rucksacks this was the only other sign of Barker’s involvement. Fask stared out of the sitting-room window, caught the trees waving inwards and wondered. His forensic search had uncovered the rucksacks and the phones. The police had uncovered the peeping eye of the Chinese girl. So what had he done with the girls?
He slipped the laptop into an evidence bag.
Joanna was speaking to Chief Superintendent Rush. ‘We’re going to have to apply for an extension, sir. I don’t feel I have enough evidence to charge him. The rucksacks are circumstantial evidence – even with the geographical location of the text message. We have no bodies, sir.’
Rush nodded, his face impassive, his expression displaying neither approval nor disapproval, pleasure nor displeasure. He was as inscrutable as the face of the sphinx, as indecipherable as a book written in Sanskrit.
Joanna waited for some hint – and got nothing. She ploughed on. ‘I’m going to need a full team.’ She hesitated and met his eyes. She felt troubled still – something in this case was wrong. Not just not-quite-right but patently wrong. Was Rush picking up on this?
‘I don’t agree with you, Piercy,’ he said crisply, ‘but I can see your point. Charge him with involvement in the two girls’ disappearance. Detain him while we make a full search of the area.’
She dipped her head, still unsure in her mind. But she was dismissed. Rush didn’t want a discussion about this. He wanted an arrest.
Back in her office, she was still chewing this over when Mark Fask’s call came in. She listened for a few minutes while he read out, in dreadful French, the contents of the note he had found and confirmed that the details on the printed sheet matched those on the webpage with the translator tool found in Barker’s internet history. The words on the printed sheet were the same as the text. The last known sighting of the girls had been at Mandalay. Their rucksacks were there and now they had evidence that Barker had sent the text from one of the girls’ phones to divert attention away from Rudyard. It was time to charge him.
Guilty Waters Page 13
