Double Fault (6 page)

Fran nodded. ‘It'll suit me fine to keep the media in the dark just a few hours longer.'

‘You know they like to have news yesterday.'

‘We've got a kid gone missing. I want the public's attention focused on finding her just now.'

‘Of course.' Evans touched her arm. ‘Well, it's all covered decently. We've definitely cleared this section, so you can feed them that as and when. And it's truly much better to work in optimum conditions.'

‘Not to mention absolute safety. Do you have a scaffolder you regularly use, or do I have to try Yellow Pages?'

‘We've got a good bloke – I'll call him now. Assuming you can pay him overtime?'

She could. And could then go home. She phoned Mark but got nothing. His battery must have died. The landline went straight to answerphone. So he was still searching. Her stomach clenched, but not for him, for the child she didn't even know: eight hours was a long time – well past the Golden Hour in which they always hoped to get a result.

The inestimable Sergeant Baird had returned from ferrying and debriefing Barry Grant some time ago; now she turned to Fran, who had joined her in the car. ‘Back to Maidstone, ma'am?'

‘I'm Fran at this time of night, Hilary. I'm not sure yet, actually, where I need to go. I can't seem to raise Mark to come and do his chauffeuring duties,' she added apologetically.

‘Mr Turner? Well, you wouldn't, not if he's still tied up with the search for that missing child. You know they extended their search to the caravan site just down the road?'

Fran nodded – old news.

‘Well, now they've moved on to the cricket field area.'

‘Better get me out to Great Hogben, then, Hilary.'

Baird was manoeuvring the car carefully. ‘Actually, guv, I wouldn't say this in front of anyone else, but do you think it's a good idea? Your leg …' Not to mention the poor back. ‘Trying to walk on rough ground in the dark – it's dead risky, isn't it? You'll get all the latest information if I take you back to Maidstone.'

‘I might get a flea in my ear: you probably heard about the chopper.'

The sergeant threw back her head and laughed. Then she stopped. ‘If they'd found her, I'm sure you wouldn't. But since they didn't … But last thing I knew, Mr Wren's meeting was running on and he was still in London. He's not a great one for coming in at weekends, so you might get away with it.'

‘Hang on – whatever happened to Friday?'

‘Maybe the meeting will overrun even more … In any case, if he bollocks you, you can always threaten to go to the press. A missing child pretty well trumps everything, even budgets, doesn't it?'

‘It should do. So why did no one think of going all-out twenty years ago when those kids went AWOL?'

‘Kids? God, I didn't realize …'

‘According to the pathologist. Teenagers, he reckons. Three boys, one girl. Yes, back to my office, Hilary – if Mark's still out hunting I might as well do some hunting from my desk. But ten-thirty's my witching hour: I need to have a takeaway on our kitchen table by eleven.'

If Fran felt done in, Mark looked it. He was still in his tennis tracksuit, but had added a fleece: they'd switched on the central heating but it was only just beginning to take the chill off the kitchen. It might have been a gorgeous day, but the starlit night threatened a frost. He'd become such a serious gardener he insisted on nipping off to close up the greenhouse and then to swathe some of his favourite shrubs with fleece. Only then did he consent to have a hot shower while she reheated their comfort food – highly illicit fish and chips. By then, with a bottle and a couple of glasses in front of her, she could admit that her back hurt enough for both legs to be propped up.

‘Two old stagers,' he grumbled, pouring red wine. ‘Heavens, is that really only one portion of chips? There's enough for an army.'

‘How long is it since even a single chip touched our lips? Well, then – and the fish is supposed to be good for us.'

He made a great show of tucking in.

She did the same. It might have been sawdust for all the pleasure she got from it. She looked at him under her eyebrows. ‘It's no good, Mark – we have to break the no-talking-shop-at-home-rule tonight, don't we? Missing kids, dead kids – we need to get stuff off our chests. You first. So long as you don't start blaming yourself.'

‘I blame all of us there – but actually no one. I don't even blame Zac. The last words Livvie said to Jayne were that she had to stay where her father could see her. And there were always responsible adults around. When we'd finished searching the woods we spent ages together making a great chart of who was there, the time they arrived and left, who they played with, who they sat out with. With some folk unable even to remember which side of the court they're supposed to be standing on …' He paused for her to chuckle dryly.

‘So how does Ray Barlow – it is him who's in charge, isn't it? – feel about things?'

‘Desperate, I'd say. Not secure in his role, since he's only acting DCI. Your chopper was a master stroke, by the way – it made him think someone thought the situation was as serious as he did. He's done everything by the textbook – we all have – but she's …' He swallowed a mouthful of food with obvious difficulty. ‘She's probably dead by now, isn't she? And we'll find her body in a ditch.'

She poured him more wine. If she filled her own glass again, she'd never be up at five, would she? But she ought to say something, something positive, with luck.

‘Unless she becomes another Madeleine McCann,' he added before she could think of anything.

‘But this is UK policing, not Portuguese. And we've all learned a lot from that case,' she said, finding a few words at last. ‘Damn it, you were one of the ACPO team who drew up the code of practice. An immediate response; a dedicated team; designated and trained peripheral staff. If things get tough we can always call in the national team. What's happening now?'

‘People are scanning every single CCTV image from the surrounding area – it would have to happen where there's virtually no coverage, of course. Some are rechecking those shot earlier; others are on the current ones – in case someone concealed her but thinks it's OK to do something about her at night.'

Sean Murray's words popped up unbidden. ‘Kent's an easy place for people to get out of,' she half-echoed them, soberly. ‘Europol notified yet?'

‘I don't know.' He grimaced. ‘Not my job any more, is it?'

‘Give me a couple of minutes – I'll get on to Jean-Paul. Privately – so no one thinks I'm checking up on Ray.'

‘At this time of night?'

Jean-Paul le Tissier was an old contact, but also an old flame. No need to rub Mark's nose in her past, which was occasionally more brightly coloured than his.

‘I could text him?' Which told him she still had his private number. But then, they were both senior officers, who occasionally needed to be able to make contact out of hours.

The message sent, she turned to the table, which Mark had already cleared, to lay it for tomorrow's breakfast.

‘I've got an early start, I'm afraid,' she said, unnecessarily. She almost added,
What about you?

But he replied to the unasked question. ‘I should be out there, looking. But I promised I'd look after Mark junior, remember. Working parents, Easter holidays,' he added, not quite managing to grumble. In fact, his son's return into his life, complete with two kids that they both adored and a wife they'd soon come to love, had made what could have been a stressful retirement a delightful one.

‘Are you planning to work on the model railway layout?'

‘Something much grander. We're off to Swindon, to Steam. The big railway museum. Fran, how can I go? In the middle of all this?'

‘How can you not? Unless Ray Barlow specifically asks for you – and then, who looks after young Marco? And Phoebe?'

‘In any case, what could I do for Ray? Be on the end of a phone, maybe …'

Fran's phone rang. It seemed Jean-Paul kept late nights. For a few minutes he and Fran were all charming formality. And no, no one had requested help, but now they had it. In Gallic spades.

Mark had headed upstairs while she took the call, his back suddenly bent, as if under a physical burden. She watched, heart in mouth. One thing they hadn't talked about was how he felt taking orders from a comparatively junior officer. True, he'd been in charge of policy rather than hands-on daily investigations, but it must be strange to be sucked back into a world he'd left so abruptly. She couldn't have done it.

As he slipped into bed beside her, his body no longer young, but lean and muscled after all his work in the garden, not to mention, of course, on the tennis courts, he answered the question she didn't dare put.

‘I thought I'd hate it. All the time I was with people I'd seen come up through the ranks, I kept thinking, I should resent this. But I didn't. I just felt – I don't know, call it pride, that they were doing the job so well. Putting into action the guidelines I'd helped set down. Satisfaction. Like when young Marco gets the hang of wiring points.'

She squeezed his hand. ‘I'm glad.'

‘I cocked up big time at one point, though.' He told her about his meeting with Livingstone. ‘Talk about rubbing Joe Public up the wrong way.'

‘He must have heard the quip a million times.'

‘And does that make it any better the millionth and first? I scooted, I tell you – left it to young Kennaway to get permission to search the outbuildings.'

‘Which I'm sure he got. Well, if that's the worst thing you've ever done …'

But he was already falling asleep, and loving tenderness was replaced by an urgent need to roll him over to stop his snoring.

‘R
ay! Sorry, I was miles away! Years, anyway.' Fran returned with a bump from the nineteen-nineties, as represented in her pile of files. Automatically she checked her watch. Six a.m. She didn't remark that Barlow was in early – she'd be surprised if he'd been home at all.

‘Can I pick your brains, Fran?'

‘If you can find anything there at this hour, pick away and welcome.' But she had to be careful. The poor man had already found an ex-ACC on his team. He might not want too much input from the man's fiancée, for all he'd worked for her for ever. ‘Move that box of files and sit – first time in eighteen hours, I'd guess?'

He sank into the chair, smothering a yawn. ‘Can I be absolutely straight with you?' He waited for her nod, which she hoped didn't show the apprehension she always felt when asked that question. But when it came, it wasn't so bad. ‘Have I done something to offend the old guv'nor? He was brilliant yesterday, but he said he couldn't come in today.'

‘Ray, he'd have given his teeth to. But he promised ages ago to look after his grandchildren – two who didn't go to the tennis camp yesterday. Probably the only children in Kent who didn't, from what Mark said.'

‘You're sure? Must have been weird for him being a civvie, having to take orders.'

‘I never knew a senior officer with less side than Mark. Even when he sported lots of braid, and saluting and deference were in order. He's just like us, Ray – a pro. I'm sure you're right about it being strange for him, but he's one of those people put on this earth to make life better for others, you know. He'd do whatever was needful. And he was full of praise for you and your team.' Ray needed to know that – waiting to be confirmed in your post was no pleasure. It was as if you were somehow on approval and could be parcelled up and sent back.

Ray smothered another yawn. ‘So he wasn't offended?'

‘Just frustrated he couldn't do more. Or do anything today. He'd have been good on one of the public response phone lines, wouldn't he? As for tomorrow, I'm not sure if he's been booked to look after Marco and Phoebe or if he's free.' Saturday – one of their parents should be on duty, surely. But despite what he'd said a few hours ago, she didn't feel she had the right to commit him to anything. ‘Somehow I don't think I'll be available for grandmothering duties, do you?'

‘Not with those skeletons in Ashford.' He laughed grimly. ‘But you wouldn't mind if I asked him?'

‘Ray, it's between the two of you. Not forgetting how you feel about having an old hand on your team. Which is?'

‘Embarrassed, at least to begin with, I suppose. But then he was worth his weight in gold.'

‘Good. But there's something else, isn't there? Some problem?'

He shifted in his seat. ‘I just wondered how Europol got involved. I just never thought … and yet I've got some French guy offering us CCTV footage of French ports and stations.'

‘If I wasn't too old to blush, I'd be blushing now. It was nothing to do with Mark. It was me. I just called in a favour from an old mate. You know how the French like to do things their way: well, I cut through the paperwork. I should have asked you first, but it was almost midnight and I was hoping you might be getting a few minutes' kip – which, by the look of you, you weren't. So don't begin to think that Mark or I went behind your back because we didn't trust the way you were handling the investigation.'

‘Thanks, guv.'

‘You're more than welcome. And if there's anything else I can do, just ask. But I ought to be over in Ashford to see if we've got any more skeletons. I know Don Simpson's in charge but the Review Unit has some input,' she said, getting up and reaching for her jacket. The forecast might be for even warmer weather later in the day but Mark had been right about the overnight frost – and there was no sign of it thawing yet. ‘Have you had any sleep at all?' she shot at him. ‘I know I'm not your line manager but I can tell you that you look like death warmed up. I know we all want to work on a case like this till we drop – heavens, I used to do it myself – but often the best breakthroughs come after even a couple of hours' sleep.'