Gregory's Game (25 page)

‘Any more news on that poor woman who went missing? The one with the little girl,' Harry asked as they stepped on to the promenade.

‘Nothing,' Alec said. ‘Everything seems to lead to a dead end. There's been talk, of course. A shift of focus.'

‘What kind of shift?'

‘Well, it's a peculiar sort of kidnap when no demands are made, the abductors don't even make contact. Confidentially, I think the team are probably looking at Marsh. And now he's disappeared.'

‘Disappeared? That isn't in the papers.'

‘No. Officially, he's gone to stay with friends. But he took off, they think on Monday morning. Not a hide nor hair has been seen of him since. That's confidential, of course.'

‘Goes without saying,' Harry said.

‘Do the police think he might have staged it?' Patrick asked.

‘You mean he's a suspect?' Harry was horrified. ‘But why kidnap your own … Oh, you mean they suspect he might have killed them?'

‘He has an alibi for when they were supposedly taken, but … well, there are no new leads. There's no one else involved so far as the police can tell.'

‘And this Nathan Crow?'

Alec shrugged. ‘Still in the wind, as they say.'

Harry saw Patrick look suddenly uncomfortable. Had Gregory told him something, Harry wondered. He dismissed the idea. Patrick hadn't mentioned seeing Gregory recently and Harry felt reasonably sure his son would have let him know if he'd shown up again.

‘How come you know so much about it?' Harry asked.

‘We don't, not really, but an old colleague is on the investigation. She's come round to let off steam a couple of times.'

‘I can understand the need,' Harry said.

Conversation turned to Patrick's driving and other, more random subjects. Tess had definitely felt the need to let off steam, Naomi thought. She'd come round the night they'd discovered Katherine Marsh's mobile phone, furious and distressed and not seeming to understand why she felt that way. She had told them about the phone, told them about the day she'd visited Ian Marsh and he had so disturbed her. Reiterated that some man from the Home Office seemed to be calling the shots and then she'd gone and Naomi had understood that she had come and ranted at them in full knowledge and probably hope that they'd pass what she told them on to Nathan Crow and Gregory – though she still doubted that Tess would have admitted as much.

Naomi had duly passed everything along.

‘Figures,' was all Gregory had said.

Patrick slid an arm through hers and Naomi dropped back so she could walk side by side with the young man.

‘What's on your mind?' she asked.

‘Oh, nothing major.' Patrick said. ‘I was just thinking. Everyone is out here enjoying themselves tonight; it's all so ordinary and so … well, you know. And probably in the next street or the next town, there's someone getting beaten up, somebody breaking into a house, someone ill treating their kid. Someone like Gregory doing whatever. It's like we just float on the surface most of the time and all around us, people are drowning.'

‘And that's nothing major?' Naomi joked. ‘Are you really OK?'

He squeezed her arm. ‘I am,' he said. ‘I realized something the other day. I realized that as an artist I probably thrive on thinking and knowing that kind of stuff. It was a shocking kind of thought for a while, but then I thought about it and I realized there were far worse things to be. I see what's really going on and I create art that maybe makes people think. I don't think that's such a dreadful thing.'

Naomi squeezed his arm in return. ‘I think you're doing OK,' she told him.

At ten p.m. on 5 November, a woman was seen staggering down the centre of Great Wentworth High Street. That in itself might have attracted little notice. There were three pubs on that road and one small nightclub in a side street off it. But what did attract attention was the fact that she was barefoot, had no coat and was dressed only in what looked like a tattered nightdress.

That and the fact that she was obviously distraught.

The police and an ambulance arrived on the scene, by which time she was sitting in the lounge bar of one of the local pubs and the landlady had wrapped her in a blanket.

‘We can't get any sense out of her,' the landlady told the paramedic. ‘I think she's looking for a cat. We asked her name but she keeps talking about the cat.'

It wasn't long before the landlady finally put two and two together and got the right answer. By the time Katherine Marsh had been admitted to hospital, the local press were ensconced in the Blue Monkey, drinking beer and listening to the account of how the missing woman turned up, half frozen and ‘in a right state' and the locals had rallied round to help.

‘But where's the kiddie? That's what we all want to know,' the landlady demanded. ‘And that husband of hers. Gone missing too, I heard.'

The story grew in the telling. By midnight, Katherine Marsh had turned up, starving and naked and calling for her child and screaming to the world that her husband tried to kill them both.

‘How is she?' Tess asked as she rushed into the waiting room. Vin had made it fifteen minutes ahead of her and had had a chance to speak to one of the paramedics. For both of them it had been a ninety-minute drive from Pinsent to Peterborough.

‘Dehydrated and totally off her head.'

‘He used those words, did he?'

‘Actually,' Vin said. ‘Pretty close. I spoke to one of the doctors. He said – and this is just a preliminary assessment – that she may have had a psychotic break. He doesn't know if she'll be able to tell us anything.'

‘She's said nothing?'

‘Just her name, over and over again.'

Tess called Katherine Marsh's uncle and aunt. The local police had been notified as soon as Kat's identity had been confirmed and had visited just a few minutes ahead of Tess's phone call.

‘Shall we drive up? Should we be there? What can we do?'

‘Hold fire for a bit,' Tess said. ‘I don't think she's in a fit state to see anyone just yet. I'll ring just as soon as I know anything. I promise.'

‘And what about the baby?'

Tess closed her eyes. The question was inevitable, but she'd still dreaded it. ‘We don't know, yet. I'm sorry, we just don't know.'

Katherine Marsh lay on her side, a drip in her arm. Her hands were bandaged. She was crying.

‘Katherine? I'm DI Tess Fuller … Tess. Can you tell me what happened to you?'

Kat Marsh didn't move. The tears fell but she didn't even look at Tess.

‘Katherine?'

Tess looked up at the doctor. She shook her head and motioned Tess back into the ante room.

‘What happened to her hands?'

‘We took photographs. They're on the laptop.' She turned the computer so that Tess and Vin could see. ‘Her feet were cut to ribbons. She's walked barefoot for a fair way. She'd still got one sock, but seems to have lost the other. Her hands were bruised and blooded. She'd ripped one nail right off.'

‘She had?'

The doctor shrugged. ‘Perhaps I should have said that one nail was ripped, right down to the quick. The palms of her hands, you can see, it's like she's gripped rough wood, full of splinters, and there are splinters of glass. It took a while to get them all out.'

‘What was she wearing?'

The doctor pointed to a nearby table. ‘A nightdress, a t-shirt, one sock. I'm guessing the t-shirt and sock were hers; the nightdress is a size eighteen. Katherine Marsh can't be more than a size twelve.'

Tess looked at the clothing. Muddy and torn, what was left of the sock was more hole than fabric. The t-shirt matched what she was known to have been wearing the day she was abducted.

‘And she's said nothing?'

‘Just her name.'

‘She's not spoken about the child?'

A shake of the head. ‘Inspector, right now she's not going to respond. She's shocked and exhausted and dehydrated. Try again in a few hours, when she's slept and we've got some fluids into her. That could make all the difference.'

‘You think she might be more inclined to talk to family?'

‘I really couldn't say. Sometimes it's easier to accept family support. Some people … sometimes when there's been a massive emotional trauma, it's easier to talk to a stranger. But I've never had to deal with a patient who's been through anything like this.'

‘No sign of sexual assault?'

‘No. Nothing like that. Come back in the morning. She might be able to talk to you by then.'

‘Well, what do we make of this?' Vin asked.

‘We try and work out where she came from. Surely she can't have come far, not dressed like that. It's bloody freezing out there.'

‘Out buildings, barns. We need to set up a search radius. What do you reckon. Five miles?'

‘We need to talk to the people who know the area,' Tess said practically. ‘And go back to the pub, see if anyone noticed which direction she came from.'

Vin nodded. ‘What about the baby?' he said. ‘I can't see her leaving the kid behind.'

‘Not if she was still alive,' Tess said.

N
aomi's phone rang. It was two in the morning and she immediately thought the worst. Something bad had happened, some crisis in the family.

Instead, it was Gregory. ‘Kat Marsh turned up,' he said.

‘Dead or alive?'

‘Alive and alone. You heard anything?'

‘Gregory, why would I have heard anything?'

‘I suppose you've got a point. Naomi, anything you do hear …'

‘And the little girl?'

‘Apparently not.'

‘Shit. Do you think the television news will have more?'

‘You stick the telly on; I'll check on the Internet,' Alec said. But half an hour later and despite the television news from the Blue Monkey; updates (there were nothing of the kind) from outside of the Marsh home and a bulletin from the hospital that said she was being treated for shock and police were waiting to interview her, there was nothing useful to be had.

‘We've got a lead. Naomi, we need to be able to speak to Katherine. Can you help?'

‘God's sake, Gregory, what do you think I can do?'

There was silence as he thought about it. ‘Like I said, we've got a possible lead, maybe something we can trade with Tess Fuller. Can you fix up a meeting with her?'

‘I'll try,' Naomi said. ‘But I don't know if she'll go for it.'

‘Of course she will,' Gregory said. ‘It's her chance to break the case. Make a name for herself. Just ask her, Naomi. She'll bite.'

He was probably right, she thought.

‘The other thing you've got to tell her is that Katherine Marsh isn't safe in that hospital.'

‘She'll be under guard,' Naomi reassured him.

‘Yeah, right,' he said. ‘Just tell her. Hopefully she'll take notice.'

‘In danger from whom?'

‘From whoever took her; whoever still has her child. Naomi, if we can find out how she got away—'

‘I don't see how. Look, I'll do what I can. You know what gets to me though? I can't believe she'd leave her child behind.'

‘She wouldn't,' Gregory said flatly. ‘Which means either Daisy is dead or Daisy was taken from her.'

Neither option was one Naomi wanted to consider.

‘I know. I'll be in touch.'

Neither she nor Alec could sleep then. They got up and found a rolling news programme on the television, supplemented that with reports on the Internet. It might still be the middle of the night, but the media loved a human interest story, Naomi thought.

‘Alive and alone, Gregory said.'

‘That can't be good.' Alec shook his head. ‘And nothing on Ian Marsh yet, presumably. You think he's still alive?'

‘I think I don't like his odds, whoever gets to him first.'

Vin and Tess haunted the ward. They had spent time at the Blue Monkey, walked the streets where Kat had been found wandering. CSI were tracking the bloody footprints as far as they could, but it was slow work. They'd talked to their colleagues and a search would be begun at first light. Local farmers had been alerted and would help out by searching barns and outbuildings, but even setting a five-mile radius, the search area was massive and difficult. Fields and copses and fens. Scattered communities and abandoned farm buildings. There were also Second World War bunkers, they were told. Locked up tight now, but with passageways that were unsafe, partly closed and largely unmapped.

‘She's got to talk to us,' Tess said. ‘Anything she can tell us would help.'

And so they had retreated to the hospital again and paced the corridor, drunk foul coffee, and waited.

Just after seven o'clock the doctor approached and told Tess she could have another try.

‘I'm still not getting much sense out of her, but the fluids have helped and she's more lucid.'

Tess drew up a chair beside Kat's bed. ‘Remember me?' she asked. ‘I was here earlier. I'm with the police, Kat. Can you tell me what happened to you?'

Katherine Marsh stared at the ceiling, examining the tiles with a focus and concentration that seemed utterly strange, then abruptly she turned her face towards Tess. ‘They took my baby,' she said. ‘They took my little girl. Someone came and grabbed her and I tried to fight them, but they were much too strong. And she was crying and reaching out for me and I couldn't reach her. I heard her screaming. I heard her crying for me. They came and they took my child.'

Tess was taken aback. Finally, she asked, ‘Katherine, did you see anyone? See their faces? Anything you can tell me?'

Kat had turned away again. She was staring at the ceiling once again, her bandaged hands clutching at the sheets, and Tess knew she replayed that moment in her mind when they, whoever they were, had torn her child away from her. She knew instinctively that Kat was incapable of getting beyond that. She was caught in a loop and could not break out.