Evil Valley (33 page)

She didn’t have the luxury of time to think. ‘We go hunting. If we don’t get him in twenty minutes we go after Nicola.’

‘We? We?’

She grabbed her coat and car keys, then remembered the wine. ‘You’ll have to drive,’ she said.

‘Me?’ said Zac. ‘Where are we going? To the allotment? But I’m a boffin. I don’t do field work. I wouldn’t know how. It might be dangerous. I’ve never been on a stake-out. I don’t like …’

‘Then it’s time you learned. It’ll help you understand CID better. But how am I going to keep him on line so we can get there?’

‘How about … telling him you want to hear more, but you’ve got to pop away for ten minutes to splash some water on your face and take this in,’ said Zac breathlessly.

Claire began typing fast.

Dan had lost his sense of time. All he could feel was a vague, blank hopelessness. He stared up at the half moon, serene in the night sky, the silent, silver moorland around him. He looked longingly down to the south, towards Plymouth, the safety of his flat and beloved dog, the home that would mark the end of these six days of madness. The moon’s gentle light was making the sea glitter.

The thundering roar of a hovering helicopter forced him back to the moor, its pure white beam of searchlight sweeping over him. The marksmen had spread out across Evil Coombe and around Higher Hartor Tor, but they’d found no trace of Nicola. Dan could see the swinging flashes of torchlight as more search teams jogged up the mine track, heard the odd crackle of a radio. Adam’s scramble call for every available officer to join them had had instant effect.

An ambulance crew arrived to take Gibson’s body away and forensics officers were marking the area around the tent, lighting it with staccato flares of camera flashes. The moonlight faded, softened by some trails of wispy cloud that had gathered in the starry sky. It was growing colder still and his ankle was throbbing with new vigour. He couldn’t stop fantasising about the safety and warmth of his bed.

Gibson’s last note had been dictated to Eleanor and Michael. Dan too had looked through it, time and again, tried to focus his thoughts but seen nothing. His brain felt numb, sluggish, unable to find the strength to concentrate. He kept reliving the moment Gibson had been shot. It was the first time he’d seen someone die, and so close, right in front of him. The thought made him shudder.

Why him? Why pick on him? Why did Gibson have to invite Dan into his deranged world? And why had he left this final riddle, the last chance to save Nicola, laying the pressure of cracking it so heavily on him? He tried to look again, work through the note, stare at it until he came up with a solution, but the cold and fatigue were weighing him down.

Eleanor had broken the part of the code that was no longer any use to them. Band of Gold and its constituent elements, she’d explained quickly, meant the atomic symbols and numbers of the words. Ba was barium, atomic number 56, Nd was neodymium, number 60, gold was atomic number 79. Combine them and you had 605 679, the exact grid reference of Evil Coombe. She’d worked it out as they were closing in on Gibson, just too late.

Adam stalked up and down by the tent, his eyes wide and wild. The tent had been thoroughly searched, but nothing found that might give them a clue where Nicola was. The helicopter’s thermal imaging camera had found no trace of anything that might be a young girl. She must be inside somewhere, Adam had said, shielded from the camera. She had to be …

No one dared to mention the other possibility. That she was lying cold and dead on the lonely moor, her body waiting to be discovered in the morning light.

‘We’re running out of time,’ Adam croaked again to the police officers and volunteers circled around him. ‘Every second we waste there’s less chance we’ll find Nicola alive. Remember that. Be relentless in your searching. The helicopter hasn’t seen anything obvious, so check in any buildings or trees that might shield her from the camera. The dogs haven’t found a scent either. But she can’t be far from here. She can’t be.’ Adam’s voice almost cracked. He sounded pleading.

‘He didn’t have the time to take her far. So we’ll use the tent as the centre of our search and work outwards in square kilometres. And we will continue doing that until we find her. And we will find her alive. Understand?’

The search teams headed off in their assigned directions, black shapes slipping quickly across the moor, flashlights flitting between them.

Dan leaned against a granite boulder by the tent and pulled his coat tighter. The cold was penetrating. He’d lost all feeling in his hands and feet, but not his ankle. It was still throbbing angrily. He had an odd memory of how much heat was lost from the head and wished he owned a hat.

The memory of Gibson’s death rose again in his mind. The gunshots echoing, the instantaneous transition from life to death, the fresh corpse pitching forwards in the darkness. He stared down at his notebook, the copy of Gibson’s last message scrawled in capitals. Dan tried to force his brain to think, to see the answer, but he was so tired, so very tired. He longed just to lie down on the ground and close his eyes, let the comfort of sleep carry him away from this place of death and despair.

‘Come on Dan. Come on … come on … you got the last one.’ Adam stumbled alongside him. His voice was so broken now it was difficult to hear. ‘Work on that note … work on it. If ever I needed your help it’s now.’

Dan looked down at his notebook again, black letters on silver paper in the dappled moonlight. His eyes could hardly focus. ‘I’m doing my best Adam, but I can’t see anything. I’ll keep trying, don’t worry.’

‘Don’t worry? There’s a little girl out there, alone in the freezing cold, about to die, and you say don’t worry?’

Dan was too tired to bite back. He felt as though the entire world was watching him, expecting him to solve the riddle, relying on him. His eyes stung and he wondered if tears were gathering. ‘I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say. I’ll keep looking at it, I promise you that.’

Adam paused, looked at him. His tone changed, a moment of realisation. ‘You think she’s dead?’

It was the first time Dan had heard his friend raise the possibility. They’d all been thinking it, the fear lurked everywhere here, but no one had mentioned it. No one could. They had to hope.

‘No, I don’t,’ he replied as forcefully as he could. ‘I don’t think Gibson’s a killer. I think he wanted to end his own life and decided to do it in a way that would make some sort of statement. But I don’t think he’s a killer. I think she’s alive somewhere.’

‘But if we don’t find her soon …’

Adam’s words tailed off. He looked up at the sky. ‘Is there a clue in that last letter?’ he rasped.

‘I’m sure there is. It’s all part of his game. It’s not just to taunt you. I know it sounds bizarre with him being dead, but I think it’s partly to cover him. It’s so he could say that if you don’t find Nicola it’s because you weren’t clever enough to do it, not that he didn’t give you every chance.’

‘He’s been ahead of us so far,’ said Adam quietly. ‘All the bloody way. He’s led us a merry dance. He’s taken the piss out of me, that’s for certain. He planned the whole thing, right up to his death at the hands of our marksmen. He knew we couldn’t risk using a baton gun at that range. He knew we’d have to shoot him if we thought there was a threat to Nicola. Now he’s got what he wants and he’s out of it, leaving us with the torment of trying to find her. Game, set and bloody match to him.’

‘Then let’s try and win the final battle and the war,’ said Dan, pulling himself up from his rock and trying to dig out an enthusiasm he didn’t know how to feel. ‘Let’s find Nicola. I’ll look at the last note again and keep going until I come up with something.’

He was almost real now. She thought if she could just stretch out far enough into the darkness, she could stroke his sleek coat. But the ropes held her ankles tight, wouldn’t allow her the freedom to go to him.

She didn’t know why she had to do it, just that she did. She kept thinking of the pony. Jet-black he was, tall and strong to carry her around like a princess. A Black Beauty, just like the book Mummy had read to her in bed, back in the summer when the sunlight slipping into her bedroom had made it difficult to sleep. She’d brush him every day and enter him in shows. He’d always win. All the other girls would be jealous of her and Beauty. She couldn’t wait to see their faces. And Mum would be so proud.

She’d stopped crying. There was no one to hear, no one to help. She understood that now. It was dark and cold and she shivered in her duffle coat. She had been frightened of the dark, but now she was almost used to it. Back at home she’d been scared of the monsters that lived under her bed. She knew that if she put a foot onto the floor they’d grab for her ankle, pull her down into their world. The thought would keep her awake until Mummy came to scare them away by cuddling her and stroking her hair.

At home the darkness was never complete, not even in the cold winter time. There was always a light under the door, or from the street outside. Here there was no light, and for the first few hours she’d been so scared of the monsters it hid. She’d heard them, the creaks and groans they made and she’d panted in fear, her eyes wide, scanning the blackness for the attack. She sobbed and squirmed and cried out until she understood there were no monsters here. There was nothing apart from her. The darkness was her only companion.

Where had Ed gone? Why had he tied her ankles? He’d said it was to keep her safe, stop her wandering and getting lost. Some of his friends would be back very soon to get her and they had to know exactly where she was. This was the last part of their adventure. When Ed’s friends came, he said, they would bring her birthday pony. Mummy would come too and cuddle her for being so brave and clever in her adventure.

Thoughts she hardly dared to face kept coming to her. Did she still trust Ed? The adventure had been strange, and not always fun. But if she didn’t trust him, what would happen to her now?

Somehow, she knew she couldn’t think it. She focused on the pony, cantering around a beautiful green paddock.

She was thirsty, so thirsty. And she was hungry too. She’d finished the water and bread Ed had left. She thought she’d heard voices and a noise, like a helicopter thundering above, but it had gone away. She’d shouted and cried but no one had come. She’d picked and pulled at the ropes, but they hadn’t moved and she’d sat back in the blackness and waited. There was nothing else to do.

There were no monsters, no Ed, no Mummy, no friends, no pony, no one. It was just her.

Another loud creak split the darkness. Before, she’d thought it was one of Ed’s friends coming to get her and she sat up, waiting eagerly. But now she’d lost that hope. There were always creaks here, but never a smiling face afterwards to pick her up, wipe the dirt from her cheeks and take her to the pony.

When she got back to school she would beat Vicky at hopscotch. She’d ask Mummy if they could have a grid on the patio in the back garden so she could practice. Mum wouldn’t mind. She’d probably want to play too. She liked joining in her games. She loved her mum. She missed her, missed her so much. When she saw Mummy, she could have her hair brushed. It felt tangled. Mum never liked her hair to be tangled. A girl’s got to make the best of herself, she always said, got to look good for the world.

She started crying again at the thought, couldn’t help it. She wanted Mummy here now, to make the darkness and the cold and the hunger and thirst go away. Tears trickled down her cheeks. It was so dark here. So dark and quiet and scary. Her ankles hurt where they were tied together and her fingers too from picking at the plastic ropes.

She leant over to try again, pulling at the tight knots, trying to find a free end. She thought the ropes were a little looser now, wriggled her feet, found a new inch of freedom. She pulled at the knot, pushed her ankles against the constricting pressure. They were sore where the plastic had rubbed at her skin, but the rope was looser now. A little more and she could free her feet, run to Mummy and her pony. Her ankles wriggled again.

There was another groaning creak in the darkness, and she sat still, listening, waiting, hoping. The long seconds passed, but no one came. No one. It was just her. Alone. In the darkness.

She shivered in the cold and rubbed her head against her shoulder to dry the tickling tear. But another followed it, then another, far too many to dry.

Chapter Twenty-two

Z
AC PULLED THE CAR
up on the road by the black metal railings. He chose a long space, was too nervous to try to park. Claire was out before he’d even stopped moving, on tiptoe, peering over the fence. He locked the car and jogged over to join her.

The allotment must have been half a mile long, an oasis of tiny plots of farmland in the concrete city. There were rows of beans and cabbages and carrots, all neat and lovingly tended, shaded silver in the moonlight. And there were wooden sheds too, lots of them, at least seven or eight with dull lights glowing. Zac could hardly believe it. Did so many people really come here at night? Why? To escape their miserable homes? They couldn’t do much gardening in the dark, surely.

‘We haven’t got long,’ whispered Claire. ‘He might get suspicious and give up in a few minutes. Besides, I want to know what’s happening on Dartmoor. We’ll have to split up to check the sheds.’ She pointed to the right-hand side of the allotment. ‘You do the four down there. You know what he looks like, don’t you?’

‘Vaguely,’ answered Zac, wondering what he’d got himself into. He’d never been on an operation before and this was a police marksman they were hunting. What if he had a gun? He thought of Claire’s flat, those little white lacy knickers hanging up invitingly. He couldn’t let her down now.

‘Well hopefully he’ll still be on a computer,’ she said. ‘That’ll give him away. Keep looking over at me occasionally and I’ll do the same for you. If you see him, turn your mobile phone’s light on and wave it.’

Zac was going to protest but she was up on the fence, over it, away, striding alongside a line of runner beans, down towards the first shed. He didn’t have time to admire her athleticism. He took a deep breath and hoisted himself up on the fence, making sure he didn’t catch the new designer jeans he’d bought that afternoon. Zac dropped heavily onto the soft earth and walked fast towards the first shed.

He could hear a radio coming from inside, sneaked slowly up, bent double, alongside a bramble bush. There was a rhythmic wooden thudding in the shed, then a mumbled oath. He slipped up to the grimy, square window, raised his head, peeked carefully in.

A middle-aged man was standing over a replica of what looked like HMS Victory, trying to force a mast into the hull. Zac stared in amazement, then ducked back down and started off towards the next shed.

Claire stumbled over some long dead roots protruding from a compost heap, righted herself. Her first shed was just ahead. She checked the ground, slid towards the thin window. There were old and faded blue curtains drawn, but just a chink of light at the bottom. She lifted her head, looked in.

An old man was leaning hungrily over a workbench, his toothless mouth open, a pornographic magazine spread out before him. She blinked hard, ducked back down, moved quickly towards the next hut.

‘Where is she?’ moaned Adam, pacing back and forth in a gap between two granite boulders, rubbing his hand through his hair. ‘Where the hell is she?’

They’d been searching for two hours and found no trace of Nicola. Adam hadn’t stopped moving, his eyes wild, manic, always pacing, continually barking into the radio, demanding reports, updates, any hint of progress.

The moor’s ominous quiet had returned, the helicopter completing its thunderous sweeps. The search teams were moving out, further away. Every extra step from here took more time and lessened the chance of finding Nicola alive. But they had to keep trying. Dan checked his watch. It said midnight. His brain registered that meant it was later, but he couldn’t focus on the simple sum to work out what the time was.

He leaned against his rock, shivering hard in the vicious cold. A slight wind had slipped in off the sea, waving the moorgrass and gorse and penetrating his coat. His ankle throbbed worse than ever. In his frozen hand he held his notebook, kept staring at it, willing the words to make sense, to tell him where Nicola was, but nothing came. The cold and his tiredness had built a layer of muffling thickness around his mind.

He closed his eyes, then opened them again, knew he couldn’t afford the risk of even fantasising about sleep.

‘Have you come up with anything yet?’ barked Adam.

‘No,’ Dan managed. He didn’t have the strength to say anything else.

‘Breen to base,’ said Adam into his radio. ‘Any news on the efforts to crack the code?’

There was a pause, then the speaker crackled into life. ‘Nothing yet, sir. They’re still working on it.’

Adam breathed out hard, swore. ‘She’s dying out there Dan. Dying.’

He didn’t know what to say, just stared back down at his notebook and Gibson’s final clue. He tried to stop his mind longing for his bed and a cuddle from his dog. He shifted his weight and found his feet unsteady, uncertain how to hold him.

Dan wondered where Claire was. Would she come round to the flat when this was over, hold him, comfort him? He ached for that. He longed for someone to cuddle and warm him, chase away the memory of Gibson’s death and the thought of a little girl, frightened and all alone, dying on the freezing moor. He lusted for sleep, but feared the dreams it would bring.

Adam staggered over, put a hand on his shoulder.

‘Come on, Dan,’ he croaked, his eyes angry red and bloodshot. ‘Come on. All those other things we’ve done together have been games. Just bloody games. Catching a gang of murderers was just a game compared to this. It didn’t save anyone, did it? It was only about justice, and that’s just a game. Cracking McCluskey’s riddle was just a game. A big bloody game. But this isn’t. It’s about saving a little girl. Come on, mate. Give it one last try. Find her for me.’

Dan nodded, aching with tiredness. He looked back down at his notebook, trembling in his hands. He screwed up his eyes, forced the words into focus. What was here that could tell them where Nicola was? He knew there was a clue, was sure of it.

Something stirred his reluctant brain, something deep in his subconscious, frozen by the relentless cold and numbing fatigue. What was it? A memory of doing cryptic crosswords on trains, long journeys, bored with his book, time to kill. He still did them occasionally when he had the time, mainly on holidays, basking in the glorious sun, dangling his bare feet into a cool, welcoming pool.

He longed for the warmth of that sun now, a relaxing lounger and a pint of cold lager. Sun and warmth, as far from this place of darkness and despair as ever he could be. He gritted his teeth, forced the vision away. He had to concentrate. Adam’s imploring eyes were set on him. What was it in Gibson’s last note that was teasing him?

He dragged his eyes across the words. “Have you managed to add it all up yet? It was simply about making the law bee sorry.”

He nudged Adam. ‘There, look. There’s something there.’

Adam squinted down at the notepad. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s something odd. Look at the spelling. He’s written “bee” rather than be.’

‘So what? So bloody what?’ the detective spat. ‘So he’s an ignorant bastard and can’t spell, so bloody what? We’re talking about finding a dying girl here and you’re worrying about his spelling …’

Dan felt a fire of anger burst through him, clearing his brain with its burning energy.

‘For fuck’s sake Adam, I’m trying to help! He’s not bloody ignorant is he? That’s the last thing he is. He’s planned all this and led us a merry dance. So he’s hardly fucking ignorant, is he?’

Adam stared at him, quietened by the outburst. ‘OK then … what are you saying?’

‘I’m saying he deliberately spelt “bee” wrongly.’

‘Which means what?’

Dan forced his leaden brain to keep thinking, push away the desire to lie down and stop trying, abandon himself to the temptation of surrender.

‘It means,’ he said heavily, ‘that he had to fit an extra letter into that line. The “e” on the end of be.’ He stopped to think again, stared at the notebook. ‘It means he’s telling us the answer is in there. He wants Nicola to be found, so he’s given us a bloody great hint how. Which means it’s either an acrostic, or an anagram. It must be. Radio to Eleanor back at base.’

Adam did, told her what Dan was thinking. ‘They were working along the same lines,’ he said. ‘Michael’s run the note through his computer programs but he hasn’t come up with anything.’

Dan leaned back against his boulder, tried not to let the feeling of defeat take him. But it was close now and strong, growing irresistible. How much longer could he go on, fighting this cold, stupefying fatigue and hopelessness? If a computer couldn’t crack it, with its power and vocabulary of hundreds of thousands of words, what chance did he have?

Another thought surfaced, a new hope, bringing unexpected strength. Dan didn’t know where it had come from, but he hung on to it. It was a chance, a possibility where before there was none. What if the word they were looking for wouldn’t be in a computer’s memory?

He forced himself to follow the idea. What could that mean? Only a bizarre place name, surely? The type that Dartmoor specialised in.

He felt a rush of adrenaline, took out a pen. ‘It’s an anagram,’ he whispered. ‘It has to be. And you know what? I hate anagrams.’

Dan calmed himself, focused his strength. An anagram … so, what letters was he looking for? What in the note could indicate where the anagram lay?

“Bee” had to be part of it, otherwise why would it be misspelt? He let his eyes run over that line. “Making the law bee sorry.” And making could mean “law bee sorry” would form the answer, couldn’t it? Spin the letters of “law bee sorry” and you had it.

He felt another surge of hope, invigorating his mind with its extraordinary power. It was here, he was sure of it. Dan did as he had so many times when faced by anagrams in crosswords. He took all the letters he thought could be involved and wrote them at random, stared at them.

W O R L Y E B S E R A

Nothing came to him, so he wrote them again in a different order.

B S A W O L E E Y R R

Still nothing. Then again, a new order.

O R B E W A R S E L Y

Still nothing. The precious hope was starting to die.
Once more. He had to keep trying.

E L S Y B A E W R R O

Dan’s eyes locked on the paper, fluttering slightly in the breeze. Now there was a hint of something, he was sure of it. There was a nuance of sense. He could see a pattern. It was here.

Again Dan wrote the letters down in a circle, and this he time saw it.

‘Aaagghh!’ he moaned, slumping back on his rock. ‘Shit! The bastard! It was right in front of me.’

‘What?’ urged Adam, staring at the notebook, then back at Dan. ‘What? Have you got something? What? What is it?’

‘It’s been staring us in the bloody face. Look.’

He wrote it down for Adam to see. Together they gaped at the word.

EYLESBARROW

‘Call the search teams back,’ panted Dan, suddenly breathless. ‘She’s in the old tin mine.’

Zac crept up on the next hut. Music was leaking from inside, but this time it was loud, a thumping bass beat. The shed seemed to be creaking in time with it. He stood up slowly and peered in at the window, then looked away immediately, stepped back and snagged his jeans on a pile of wood.

He swore under his breath. A semi-naked young couple were grappling in a passionate clinch on the shed’s patchy carpet, all writhing arms and legs. There was only one thing worse than not getting any sex, and that was having to watch other people enjoying it.

He checked his jeans. No rip thankfully, just a loose thread. They’d cost almost a hundred pounds. Bought to impress Claire, and she hadn’t even noticed. He swore again and picked his way carefully towards the next hut.

The shed Claire was sneaking up on was silent. There was a faint light in the little square window, but thick curtains were drawn fast across it. She heard a muffled movement inside and shrunk back, crouched by a line of carrots, tiny explosions of spraying leaves in the dark soil. She waited, but no one emerged. Edged closer. Was it her imagination, or could she hear the tapping of a keyboard?

Claire stood up slowly at the window, tried to look in, but the curtains were tightly drawn. She inched around the side, treading softly in the earth, saw a slit of light escaping from a gap in the wooden slats. She craned her head around and put her eye to it, squinted in, had to raise a hand to her mouth to stop herself gasping.

There, inside the shed, packing up a keyboard was Crouch. He sipped quickly from a flask and buttoned up his anorak. He kept glancing over his shoulder. She got the feeling he was in a hurry. She stepped back from the shed and manoeuvred herself behind a compost heap, knelt down, tried to control her fast, shallow breathing. She watched as he stepped down from the shed, switched off the light, fumbled with a padlock, clicked it into place, then strode off fast towards the line of streetlights on the main road.

She looked around. She couldn’t see Zac but she thought he was in the opposite corner of the allotment, safely out of the way.

Crouch got to the fence and hurried out through a gate. He was moving fast. Did he know they were on to him? She hadn’t planned it this way, but she couldn’t take the risk of him escaping. And she wanted to get to Dartmoor, to Dan and the hunt for Nicola.

Claire picked her mobile out of her pocket and made the call. She’d kept the number in its memory so one day she could tell the man what she thought of him. But this was more important than revenge. Or was it revenge of a sort? No, she knew exactly what it was, but she grimaced at the thought and almost laughed. Almost.

It was her duty.