Gone (9 page)

‘Sir?’ The police search adviser – the POLSA – a small guy with neat John Lennon glasses, appeared next to the car. ‘A word?’

Caffery followed him across the car park and through a low stone doorway into a room the landlord had set aside for the police to use. The games room, it smelt of stale beer and bleach. The pool table had been pushed to one side and replaced with a row of chairs; the dartboard was invisible behind a flip-chart stand where a series of photographs had been mounted.

‘The briefing’s in ten – and it’s going to be a nightmare. This area the soil man’s given us – it’s massive.’

Every forensic test known to man had been thrown at the Bradleys’ Yaris. There were signs of a struggle in the back seat – the upholstery had been torn and there were strands of Martha’s
pale blonde hair in a window seal, but the car hadn’t yielded any fingerprints that didn’t match a member of the Bradley family. The latex gloves, of course. No blood either and no semen. But there had been soil lodged in the treads of the tyres and an expert in forensic soil analysis had spent the night analysing the samples. He had put it together with how many miles the Bradleys estimated had gone on the clock, and decided there was only one place a car could have picked up a soil signature so unique: before the jacker had dumped it in Wiltshire he’d stopped somewhere out here in the Cotswolds, somewhere within a radius of about ten kilometres from this pub. Half the police force, it seemed, from the vehicles in the car park, had descended on the area.

‘We knew it was going to be a wide net,’ said Caffery. ‘The soil man didn’t have much time – we paid him to stay up all night.’

‘With the area he gave me, I’ve identified about a hundred and fifty buildings that should be searched.’

‘Shit. We’d need about six units to do that properly.’

‘Gloucestershire’s offering manpower. We’re on their patch.’

‘An interforce operation? I don’t even know how you do that. I’ve never done a memorandum of understanding in my life, it’s a logistical nightmare. We need to narrow it down.’

‘That
is
narrowed down. Those hundred and fifty are just the buildings you could hide a car in. About thirty per cent of them are garages, mostly connected to private homes, so they’re easy, but there are others you need Land Registry searches even to find out who owns them. And this is the Cotswolds, area of outstanding natural beauty. Half the places are second homes: Russians running some prostitute ring in London want to own a house next to Prince Charles but never bother to visit. It’s either absentee rich bastards or bolshy farmers with single-bore shotguns. Think Tony Martin.’ He tapped the back of his head. ‘A round in the skull as you’re running away. Welcome to rural bliss. Still, on a bright note, it rained yesterday. Perfect weather for it. If he parked out here the tracks will still be visible.’

Caffery wandered over to look at the photos on the board. A
series of tracks. Made last night in the lab using casts of the Yaris’s tyres.

‘There was something else in the soil, they told me. Wood chip?’

‘Yes. So maybe a timber yard. Stainless-steel swarf, too, and flecks of titanium. The titanium’s too small to say what process it came from so it’s probably not relevant at this point, but the stainless steel means some kind of engineering plant. I’ve outlined seven in the area. And a couple of timber yards. I’m going to divvy up my team – half of them knocking on the buildings, the other half trying to find those tyre tracks.’

Caffery nodded. Tried to hide how despondent he felt. A radius of ten kilometres. A hundred and fifty buildings and Christ only knew how many driveways and lanes. It was going to be searching for a needle in a haystack. Even with extra units from Gloucestershire, with the warrants and the paperwork it was going to take for ever. And – the jacker’s words came back to him:
It’s started now, hasn’t it, and it ain’t going to stop just sudden
– time was the one thing they didn’t have.

Flea’s unit spent only 20 per cent of its time diving. During the rest they did other specialist operations, confined space and rope-access searches. On occasion they did general support-group work, including wide-range searches like this one in the Cotswolds.

They’d sat through the POLSA’s briefing in the smelly games room. Her team was handed the job of hunting for tyre tracks. He’d given them a map with about six miles of road outlined in red and pointed them in the general direction, but when she came out of the briefing, got into the Sprinter van with the team and pulled out of the car park, instead of turning left to head out to the area, she turned right.

‘Where are we going?’ Wellard, her second-in-command, was sitting behind her. He leaned forward in the seat. ‘It’s the other way.’

She found a small passing space in the narrow lane, pulled the van over and cut the engine. She hooked her elbow over the back of the seat and gave the six men a long, serious look.

‘What?’ said one. ‘What is it?’

‘What is it?’ she echoed. ‘What is it? We’ve just sat through a ten-minute briefing. Short. Not long enough for anyone to fall asleep. Hurray. There’s a little girl out there, eleven years old, and we’ve got a chance to find her. Now, there was a time when every one of you, to a man, would have come out of a briefing like that at a run. I’d have had to put muzzles on you all.’

They stared back at her, mouths half open, eyes dull and bovine. What had
happened
to them? Six months ago, when she’d last given it a thought, they’d been healthy young men, every one of them committed to and excited about his job. Now they had nothing: no spark, no enthusiasm. And one or two even looked like they were putting on weight. Getting flabby. How had this happened under her nose? How the hell had she not noticed?

‘Look at you now. Not a flicker. That.’ She held up her hand, rigid, horizontal. ‘That is your brain-wave pattern.
Flat
. Not a spike. What the hell happened, guys?’

No one answered. One or two dropped their eyes. Wellard folded his arms and found something to gaze at out of the window. He pursed his lips as if he was going to—

‘Whistle? Don’t you dare
whistle
, Wellard. I’m not dense. I know what’s going on.’

He turned back to her, raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you?’

She sighed. Ran a hand through her hair. Sank back deflated in her seat and looked out of the windscreen at the brittle winter trees lining the road. ‘Of course,’ she muttered. ‘I know what’s going on. I know what you’re saying.’

‘It’s like you’re not here any more, Sarge,’ he said. Some of the others murmured an agreement. ‘It’s that thousand-mile stare. Going through the motions. You say
we
’ve lost it, but if there’s no one at home at the top of the pile then you might as well give up. And, not that it’s all about the money, but it’ll be the first year we won’t be seeing our competency pay at Christmas.’

She turned again and eyed him steadily. She loved Wellard. He’d worked for her for years now and he was one of the best men she knew. She loved him more than she loved even her brother, Thom. A hundred times more than she loved Thom. Hearing Wellard speak the truth was hard.

‘OK.’ She knelt up and put her hands on the back of the seat. ‘You’re right. I haven’t been at my best. But
you
–’ she pointed a finger at them ‘–
you
guys haven’t lost it. It’s still there.’

‘Eh?’

‘OK. Think back to what the POLSA said. What was in the tyre treads?’

One shrugged. ‘Wood chips. Titanium and stainless-steel swarf. Sounds like a manufacturing place.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded coaxingly. ‘What about the titanium? Did that ring any bells?’

They stared back at her. Not getting it.

‘Oh, come on,’ she said impatiently. ‘Think back. Four, five years? You were all on the unit then: you can’t have forgotten. A water tank? Freezing day. A stabbing. You dived it, Wellard, and I was surface side. There was some dog kept coming out of the woods trying to mount my leg. You thought it was bloody hysterical. Don’t you remember
that
?’

‘Over near the Bathurst Estate?’ Wellard was frowning at her. ‘The guy chucked the weapon in the hatch? We found it in about ten minutes.’

‘Yes. And?’

He shrugged.

She looked expectantly from face to face. ‘Christ almighty. I’ve got to hand-feed you. Remember the place – decommissioned factory? It wasn’t on this POLSA’s map because it’s closed down. But do you remember what it had been making when it was open?’

‘Military gizmos,’ said someone at the back of the Sprinter. ‘Parts for Challenger tanks, that sort of thing.’

‘See? The grey matter’s starting to stir.’

‘Which, I’m guessing, has some components made out of titanium? And stainless steel?’

‘I’d bet my life on it. And do you happen to recall what we had to drive through to get to the damned water tank?’

‘Christ on a bike,’ Wellard said faintly, realization dawning on his face. ‘A timber yard. And it’s this direction – the way you’re heading.’

‘You see?’ She started the engine, threw them a look in the rearview. ‘I said you hadn’t lost it.’

Caffery stood alone on a small track that ran through pine forest, the air around him scented and muffled by the trees. A hundred yards to his right there was a decommissioned arms factory, and to his left a lumber-yard surrounded by worn, weatherboarded sheds. Sawdust, darkened to an apricot colour by the rain, was piled under a huge rusting hopper.

He kept his breathing slow and quiet, his hands slightly held out at his sides, his eyes focused on nothing. He was trying to get something elusive. Some kind of atmosphere. As if the trees could give up a memory. It was two in the afternoon. Four hours ago Sergeant Marley’s team had ignored the POLSA’s instructions and headed out here. They hadn’t had to search long, just thirty minutes, before one of them had discovered a remarkably clear set of tyre tracks that exactly matched the Yaris’s. Something had happened here last night. The jacker had been here and something important had happened.

Behind Caffery, further back up the track, the place was overrun with crime-scene investigators, search teams and dog handlers. An area had been taped out, fifty yards radius from the point of the clearest tyre marks. The teams had found footprints everywhere. Large deep marks made by a man’s trainers. They should have been easy to cast for analysis but the jacker had studiously obliterated them, scoring the mud in criss-crosses with a long, sharp instrument. There were no child’s shoes anywhere, but some of the man’s prints, the CSI team had pointed out, were
especially deep. Maybe the jacker had subdued or killed Martha in the car, then carried her away and dealt with her somewhere in the surrounding woods. Problem was, if he’d carried her, her scent wouldn’t have touched the ground. And the weather was disastrous for the dog team – what scent line there might have been had been blown and rained away. The dogs had come in excited and salivating, straining at the leashes, then spent two hours chasing their tails, bumping into each other and running in circles. The lumber-yard and the derelict factory to Caffery’s right had been searched. There, too, the teams turned up nothing – no clues that Martha had been anywhere near them. Even the disused water tank, now cracked and dry, hadn’t got any clues to cough up.

He sighed, let his eyes come back into focus. The trees were giving him nothing either. As if they would. The site might as well be dead. From the direction of the lumber-yard, where they’d set up a work station, the crime-scene manager was wandering down the track. He wore his Andy Pandy forensics suit, the hood pulled down to his shoulders.

‘Well?’ said Caffery. ‘Anything?’

‘We’ve cast what he’s left us of the prints. Do you want to see?’

‘I guess.’

They walked back to the lumber-yard, their footprints and voices muffled by the trees.

‘Seven different trails.’ The CSM waved at the ground as they skirted the cordon. ‘It looks like a jumble but there are actually seven distinct trails. They fan out in every direction and they all stop at the edge of the wood. No one can get anything after that. They could go anywhere – into the fields, through the plant and out on to the road. The teams are doing their best, but it’s too big an area. He’s tricking us. Clever little shit.’

Yeah, Caffery thought, peering into the woods as they walked, and he’ll be liking how pissed off we are right now. He couldn’t figure it out. Had this really been the place the jacker had taken Martha out of the car or had that happened somewhere else? Had he taken her miles away, knowing that the carousel of police
expertise would descend on these woods and keep them occupied while he did his ugly business with her elsewhere? Not for the first time on this case Caffery had the feeling he was having his chain yanked.

Past the cordoned-off area, in the lumber-yard, teams were still working, moving around like ghosts in their forensics suits, the bitter smells of sap from the log sawmill hanging on the air. Next to a shed stacked with the stained dovecotes the yard produced, a temporary trestle table had been set up on which all the evidence the teams had gathered was being examined. The disused factory had been the worst to search – full of fly-tipped household waste: rotting old sofas and fridges, a child’s tricycle, even a carrier bag of used nappies. The CSM and the exhibits officer had the job of deciding what to discard and what to tag and bag. They’d got the serious hump dealing with the nappies.

‘I’m out of ideas on this.’ The CSM took the plastic wrapping from a cast and placed it in front of Caffery. ‘Can’t work out what he’s used here.’

A few people gathered round to look. Caffery got down on his haunches at eye level and stared at the cast. The bottom layer showed some traces of the footprints, but where the jacker had scored through them the plaster-of-paris had trickled deep into the holes made by the sharp instrument, creating spikes and peaks when the cast was reversed.

‘Any idea what he used to make those gouges? Recognize that shape?’

The CSM shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Something sharp, but not with a blade. Something long, thin. Ten inches – a foot? Made a good job of it. We’re not going to get any readable footprints.’