Flesh And Blood (28 page)

‘I’d like to think,’ he said, ‘that young Emma was out enjoying the countryside of her own free will when she crossed that field, yomping through the buttercups and cow shit without a care in the whole wide fucking world. I’d like to think someone sprinkled fairy dust on her eyes that sunny Saturday afternoon and she’s been wandering around in a blissful trance ever since. Except this isn’t
Midsummer Night’s
fucking
Dream
. And sooner or later we’re going to find her poor sodding body.’ He looked from one to the other of his colleagues. ‘Unless one of you’s about to disagree?’

Nobody did.

‘Right. Then she’s there because someone’s taken her there, that’s what we assume. Someone she’s met out at Rufford or later. She might have gone with him initially of her own volition – most likely did – or she might have been under duress from the start. She might have known him or she might not. So far there’s too many unknowns, too much we don’t know.’

Maureen started to say something but thought better of it.

‘Gerry,’ Young said, ‘what you’ve put in place would be hard to improve upon…’ Clarke moved a hand across his face to disguise a rising flush of embarrassment. ‘So all search operations will remain under your control. Maureen, tracking down and interviewing known offenders, that’ll be your priority. Sex Offenders’ Register for starters. Anyone convicted of sex or violent offences and recently released back into the area from prison.’

Maureen nodded. Before filleting them out, they could be looking at around eight hundred names, possibly more. And how many detectives would she have at her disposal? If she were lucky, very lucky, and if other forces came up trumps, there could be thirty or forty. Overtime guaranteed for the first week, but after that…?

‘It should go without saying, but I’ll underline it anyway. Co-operation between the two of you’s essential, no withholding, open access at all times. Anything important, any developments, I want to know almost as soon as you do yourselves. And all statements to the press, the media, are cleared through me. No grandstanding, understood?’

‘Understood, sir,’ Maureen said.

‘Right, sir,’ Clarke said.

‘All of which brings us to Frank here. You both know him. You, Maureen, as well as I do if not better. You’ve worked with him and successfully, not so many years back now. It was Frank who was largely responsible for putting McKeirnan and Donald inside and now, as we all know, Donald’s on the loose. More than that, he was in the area just one day before Emma Harrison disappeared. Of course, that may be no more than a coincidence and if I were a betting man I’d say it probably is. But then I take a look at that picture of young Emma and bring to mind the face of the lass those two bastards killed. Peas in a pod, maybe not, but fruit from the same tree.’

He paused to take a breath, sip a little water from the glass on his desk.

‘I’ve talked to the ACC about this earlier and I’m offering to take Frank into this investigation as a civilian consultant. He knows Donald probably better than anyone and he’s worked this kind of case before. Added to which, the unit’s already up to the gunnels and we need every bit of good help we can get. Frank knows his way around, knows the way we work, I doubt he’ll be getting under our feet.’

Elder knew full well that before the super had spoken to the assistant chief, Maureen Prior had spoken to him.

‘Comments? Observations?’

‘I think it’s a good idea,’ Maureen said without hesitation.

‘Gerry?’

‘No skin off my nose,’ Clarke said. ‘From what you’ve said, he’ll be mostly working Maureen’s side of the fence, anyway.’

‘Right,’ said the superintendent, automatically beginning to rebutton his waistcoat. ‘It’s yours, Frank, if you want it.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Elder said.

♦

Paul Latham was waiting for him near the enquiry desk, looking awkward and out of place. The trademark suit, pale corduroy, was still the same, but his shoulders sagged and the life had gone from his eyes.

‘You’re not easy to track down,’ Latham said.

‘What do you want?’

‘Aside from giving you the satisfaction of knowing I’ve been suspended, I’m not sure.’

‘Okay,’ Elder said. ‘If you want to talk, let’s not do it here.’

They found a nondescript pub with metal ashtrays and coasters advertising a beer that was no longer brewed. ‘
Big Screen Sports Here
’ proclaimed a notice, but Elder couldn’t imagine big crowds. He ordered a half of bitter for himself and wished that he hadn’t; Latham had a large gin and tonic, the better half of this deal if nothing else.

‘So what’s on your mind?’ Elder asked.

‘Aside from finding another job, you mean? Outside of the teaching profession, of course. Not an easy task when you’re my age and all of your working life has been spent in schools.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Elder said, though he wasn’t sure if he meant it, even then.

‘Are you?’

Elder sipped some more bitter and lightly grimaced. ‘What happened?’

‘That thug you sent round, that’s what happened.’

‘I didn’t send anybody anywhere.’

‘That member of Her Majesty’s constabulary, fine upholder of the law.’

‘Loake.’

‘The very same. Detective Inspector Loake. Who marched right into the middle of one of my classes and more or less accused me of being a paedophile in front of thirty twelve-year-olds. Oh, I’ve written to his chief constable and my MP and the Police Complaints Authority, not that it’ll do a scrap of good. To all intents and purposes, I’ve been sacked, my contract discontinued; I’ve been almost completely ostracised by colleagues I’ve worked with, some of them, for over ten years. I suffered the indignity of being escorted from the premises and instructed not to set foot on school grounds again without written permission, which, of course, I won’t get. My union representative assured me that I have the right to appeal, at the same time as ostentatiously looking at his watch. My time, it seems, as a member of the noble profession, is up.’

‘Noble?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘What’s so noble about seducing fifteen-year-old girls?’

‘Seducing? Is that what happened?’

‘You tell me.’

‘We became very close, Susan and I. We were friends.’

‘Yes,’ Elder sneered.

‘Believe what you will.’

‘She was in your care,’ Elder said.

‘And what? I hurt her? Caused her pain?’

‘Probably.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You abused your trust.’

‘The trust that mattered was the one between Susan and myself, and I never abused that; I never lied to her, never exaggerated my feelings, told her anything that wasn’t true.’

‘You took advantage…’

‘God! You’re a self-righteous prig.’

‘If you or anyone like you ever came near my daughter…’

‘You’d what? Tar and feather me and have me frogmarched through the streets? Cut off my balls and throw them to the dogs? Hang me, perhaps? But no, I’ve read the placards; hanging’s too good for the likes of me.’

‘You’re being ridiculous,’ Elder said.

‘Am I? Does it never occur to you that what happened between Susan and myself was considerate and loving and that maybe, just maybe, it was what she needed at that stage of her life?’

‘No.’

‘Just as, if your daughter had a relationship with an older man, that could be what was right for her?’

‘No.’

Latham lowered his head, picked up his glass and swallowed down more gin.

‘Susan,’ Elder said. ‘When did you see her last?’

‘On the last day of term. They’d mostly left, Susan’s year, their exams were over, some of them were already off on their holidays or had started summer jobs. Susan came in to say goodbye. She was going off to college in September, a different life. There was no way in which we were going to carry on seeing one another, we’d discussed all that. She gave me a card, it was very sweet, a quotation from Shakespeare, the sonnets. I still have it, you can see it if you like.
For Paul with love and thanks for everything
. I never saw her again.’

‘And you’ve no idea what happened to her?’

‘None.’

Elder continued to stare at him.

‘You think I’m lying?’ Latham asked.

‘No.’ Elder pushed his beer away, unfinished. ‘I’ve got to be getting back.’

‘I’ll stay here a while longer.’

Elder nodded and got to his feet.

‘What happened with Susan,’ Latham said. ‘I don’t regret it. Not at all. No matter what’s happened to me since.’

With the merest of nods, Elder left him sitting there, staring into an all but empty glass.

When Elder’s marriage had broken down he had put as much distance between himself and the wreckage as he could. For the first few months Joanne had lived in a sort of limbo, seeing Martyn Miles more openly, staying over sometimes, but mostly returning home to face the unmade bed and Katherine’s reproachful stare. Some small part of her, she realised afterwards, was waiting for Elder to get back in touch, argue, concede, find a way through, set things to rights. He had done it before.

When this didn’t happen she put the house on the market and Martyn traded up his flat for something larger in the same area: a new architect-designed house set amongst largely fading nineteenth-century splendour. At the front, white concrete presented a curved, almost featureless face to passers-by; to the rear, a wall of sheer glass separated a hundred metres of landscaped garden from the double-height living-room with its spiral staircase and expensive prints.

Within minutes of meeting her, years before, in a salon he owned in London, Martyn had touched Joanne’s arm and a charge had run through her, reflected in her eyes. And in that moment she had known that unless she turned and walked away, sooner or later she would sleep with him, no matter how hard she tried to convince herself otherwise. Of course, she didn’t walk away, she stayed. As if aware of a tacit agreement between them, Martyn withdrew, did nothing to pursue her, their relationship professional and beyond reproach. Elder, meanwhile, worked longer and longer hours, became less and less a part of Joanne’s life, beyond the drab and ordinary, the back turned in bed, the everyday. In the end it was almost trite – a party, a little too much wine and what began in the back of a hired car ended on a circular bed with a mirrored wall mimicking the sweated thrashing of their limbs.

After that there were so many promises made and broken; promises to Frank, promises to herself. Sometimes she and Martyn would go for months without being alone together, without touching; when he was trying to get established in America they were out of contact for almost a year. He had other women, she knew, girls – still married, a husband more or less in her bed, how could she complain? With time, the fire between them cooled as these things do.

By the time she moved to Nottingham, she and Martyn were business partners and good friends. He looked after the salons in London, everything else was increasingly down to her. When, occasionally, he travelled up and stayed, they would have dinner together, nothing more. And then, like flicking a switch, it changed. She wanted him, like a sudden illness inside her. A fever. And Martyn responded, excited by the change. They saw each other more and more, took risks; once she phoned him in the middle of the night, slipped out of the house and made love to him on a neighbour’s path, naked beneath an old raincoat of Frank’s she grabbed from behind the door.

Elder had to find out. For quite some time she was sure he knew but for whatever reason didn’t want to say. More and more she gave him opportunities and more and more he turned away. And then, suddenly, she was telling him, confessing, and it was as if he had never known at all. The words as cold and hard as stone, as glass.
Frank, I’ve been seeing him again
 . . .

♦

He had not been to the house before. He knew of it, where it was, had driven past it several times; once, thumbing through a lifestyle magazine someone had left in a beach café in Cornwall, he had found an article about it, colour photographs, an interview with the architect. In one of the pictures, an interior shot, there was Martyn, hands in the pockets of his loose white suit, posing barefoot in front of the spiral stairs. In another, he and Joanne sat side by side on a leather sofa, holding hands.

That afternoon he had been introduced to the other members of the inquiry team and noticed no more resentment than he had expected. Some faces he had known from before, others had been new. He read through the interviews conducted with members of the public who had been in the band tent that Saturday afternoon, then secluded himself with a monitor and the CCTV tape from the craft shop at Rufford Park. Footage showing Emma, Alison and Ashley earlier in the day had been noted and marked, the three of them laughing as they moved from one section to another, picking up this, trying on that.

And there was brief footage of Alison and Ashley later, hurrying, almost running round the aisles in their last frantic search for Emma before the bus departed.

What Elder wanted to see was something else.

Shane Donald.

After almost two hours, there was only one section he kept going back to: a man standing at the very edge of the camera’s range and for no more than seconds, enough to glimpse an arm, a blur of face, the arm again and then the back as he turned – a dark shirt, short hair, nothing more – turning in response to something shouted or said. No more than an impression, impossible to recognise. But there on camera, in the middle of the frame, her face quite animated, a slender girl with light hair, holding something in her hands – a piece of jewellery, a necklace, bracelet, it was difficult to tell – holding it up as if to say, hey, look at this, and then the camera swivelled away and when it moved back both girl and man were gone.