Fatal Connection (8 page)

As the car powered past Pickling, Lexi glanced at her partner and said, ‘I haven’t asked. How are you feeling?’

Troy took a deep breath. ‘Funerals help. You can think back to the good times. But they were a long time ago. I kept thinking about me not getting in touch.’ He shook his head. ‘I feel like I’ve just sat the most important exam of my life and when the bell went for the end, I realized I’ve made a complete mess of it. I got the whole thing wrong. But it’s too late. I feel sick to my stomach and I’ve
got to live with the fact that I’ve failed. Know what I mean?’

Lexi shook her head. ‘Never had a less than perfect exam performance.’ Then, trying to cheer him up, she smiled cheekily.

‘Yeah. Right.’

‘The more people are educated, the less they believe in religion. Outers are cleverer, so we’re good at exams and we don’t believe in all that business about souls and the afterlife. No evidence for either.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, going on for ever sounds boring to me. I’m happy that, when I die, that’s my lot. Gone. Finished. Done.’

‘Believing in heaven – a reward for living a good life – gives us a reason to behave.’

‘Huh. You majors set yourselves up for guilt, shame and self-loathing, don’t you? Hey. We all make mistakes. Get over it.’ She hesitated, realizing that, despite trying, she wasn’t being sympathetic. ‘I’m sorry. But I can’t change my opinion because you’re feeling bad. I’m still me.’

‘I know,’ Troy replied. ‘I don’t want you to change – or say things you don’t believe – for my sake. It’s done. Dad’s moved on. I just want to get on with the case.’

She looked at the road ahead and said, ‘Well, we’re going in the right direction. Perhaps.’

They drew a blank at the only campsite near Loose End but, knowing that Alyssa and Richard would have needed to hire camping equipment, they also tried an outdoor shop in Tight End. Surrounded by climbing, camping and skiing equipment, sturdy clothing and footwear, Troy showed a collection of photographs to two assistants who seemed to stick together like glue. ‘Oh, yes,’ the first one said. ‘Him and her.’ He pointed at the images of Richard Featherstone and Alyssa Bending.

‘Really?’ the other one replied, as she looked more closely at the images.

‘Don’t you remember?’

‘Maybe,’ she muttered.

‘They looked very cosy together. Like they were going to have a good weekend.’ He nudged his colleague.

She nodded. ‘That’s right. They asked about somewhere.’

‘Yes. Somewhere to go walking and fishing.’

Troy simply stood there and listened to the two of them. He saw no need to interrupt with questions.

‘Where was it?’

‘He – the man – had an ancient map. It wasn’t downloaded. Really old and tatty.’

‘That’s right. It was something about wild walks.’

‘We’d never seen it before, had we?’

‘That’s right,’ she agreed. ‘I hadn’t heard of the path they asked about either.’

‘That’s how wild it was.’

They both laughed. Then they looked at Troy and the male major said, ‘So, it looks like we can’t help you on where they went.’

‘But it was off the beaten track,’ Troy replied.

‘No doubt about it.’

‘Did they hire – or buy – anything other than a tent?’

‘No. Just the tent.’

‘The map Richard was holding. You must have got an idea about the area it covered.’

The man replied, ‘It was between Loose End and the sea.’

‘That’s right,’ his friend added. ‘It’s kind of wild up there. Parts of Loose End Edge used to be popular with climbers and hang-gliders.’

The first shopkeeper chipped in, ‘Caving and potholing as well, but not any more. There was an accident. It’s not safe. Landslips and the like. You’d have to be crazy to go along the edge now.’

‘Richard mentioned fishing …’ Troy began.

‘There’s the river – and lots of streams that feed into it.’

‘And two remote bays. Very hard to get to. One would be a long walk. They’d have to scramble down to the other or go by boat.’

‘And if we wanted to go there now?’ asked Troy.

‘Take the road north from Loose End.’

‘That’s right,’ the woman said. ‘The road ends at the chemical factory. You’re on foot from there.’

‘What’s this factory?’ said Lexi.

The shop assistants looked at each other blankly and shrugged. ‘It makes chemicals. That’s all we know. It’s out of the way because it’s not very pretty.’

‘And it smells.’

‘Okay. Thanks,’ Troy said.

On the way out, Lexi elbowed Troy and said, ‘Not a very funny comedy double act.’

‘Quite useful, though,’ Troy replied.

Ethyl Products was the most northerly industry in the country. It sat in a remote spot in the river valley, about five kilometres from the estuary and open sea. It was a tangle of tanks, scaffolding and pipes thicker than tree trunks. And downwind there was a faint sweetness in the air.

The factory made some simple substances for the chemical trade. Other factories took those basic building blocks and turned them into useful products
like plastics, medicines, perfumes and dyes. Online, Lexi discovered that Ethyl Products had been notorious. A few years earlier, the factory had switched to making acetaldehyde with a new process involving mercury sulphate. An unexpected and unwanted reaction resulted in a small amount of methylmercury. This, the most feared of the toxic compounds of mercury, was released into the river. It killed all the fish and most of the other local wildlife.

‘Do you still use mercury sulphate?’ Troy asked the Head of Operations.

‘No. Not any more. As soon as we realized what was going on, we discontinued that process.’

‘But do you still keep mercury sulphate?’

‘Er … No.’

‘Why hesitate?’

‘I haven’t been asked about it for years.’

‘Is the river still poisoned?’ Troy queried.

‘No. We test it to make sure. I’d happily swim in it – or drink it. The habitat’s fully recovered.’

Lexi and Troy left Ethyl Products and made their way towards the estuary. To either side and behind them, hills rose up and, in places, water gushed down into the valley. There was no clear path. Dragging their boots through the scrubland, they battled alongside the river. They saw no evidence that any
other human beings had trodden the same route and no evidence of a pitched tent.

‘It’s a bit of a coincidence about Ethyl Products,’ said Troy as they trudged shoulder-to-shoulder, all the time scanning ahead and to the sides.

‘Yeah. But maybe not as much as you think. A lot of people used mercury till everyone realized how nasty it could be. There’s probably a story like theirs almost everywhere.’

Troy gazed at the quiet countryside and said, ‘It’s nice out here.’

‘Huh. Too much empty space.’ She grinned and shielded her eyes with her left hand, ‘Too much sunshine and fresh air.’

Troy stopped walking. ‘What’s that noise?’

‘What noise?’

‘That.’

There was a definite scrabbling in the bushes a few paces in front of them.

Lexi shrugged. ‘A rabbit? I don’t know.’

‘It could be a person. Hiding.’

‘Too quiet.’

A couple of frightened blackbirds flew high into the air, issuing loud warning cries.

Troy sighed. ‘Okay. Not a person.’

‘I’ll tell you what else there’s too much of.’

‘What?’

‘Ground. There’s too much for us to cover.’

Troy nodded. ‘I feel like I’m treading water. Not getting anywhere.’

‘What are we going to do about it?’

Mentally drained, Troy shrugged.

Lexi pointed upwards. ‘We’d be able to see a lot more – and finer detail – from up there.’

‘Like blackbirds.’

Lexi took her life-logger in her hands. ‘I’ll see if our funny friends in Tight End Crime Central have got a drone they can send in our direction.’

‘Good thinking.’

‘I’ll make sure it’s fitted with a high-resolution camera.’

‘While we’re waiting, let’s carry on to the estuary and look for any signs of anyone else.’

‘Huh.’

‘We’ve got this far. We might as well carry on and see if there’s any hint of anybody fishing.’

‘Like what?’

Troy shrugged. ‘Discarded fishing line. Footprints. Anything.’

‘All right.’

In twenty minutes, they ran out of land. They arrived at a small sandy bay and the sea. The spot
was mostly unspoiled. The only feet that had patterned the beach were those of seabirds. There was one drinks can, partly buried in sand.

‘It probably came down the river,’ Lexi said. ‘It’s not in good condition. Corroded. It’s been here longer than a couple of weeks.’

Troy nodded.

They went over to the only other object lying on the beach. At the high-tide mark near some rocks, there was a rotting fish.

Lexi squatted down by it and grimaced. ‘We’ve come all this way for one dead fish. It doesn’t mean anything. No hook in its mouth as far as I can see. It could have died of old age or got left behind in a pool. But …’ She sighed and pulled on a glove.

‘Because you’re methodical …’

‘Yeah. I’m going to take it back to test it for mercury.’ She slid the smelly corpse into an evidence bag and sealed it. ‘I’m going to take a sample of the river water as well – just in case Ethyl Products are still pumping out pollution.’

Troy bent down, picked up a flat stone and skimmed it across the surface of the sea. It managed three bounces before a wave lurched upward and swallowed it. Overhead, two gulls screamed at each other.

‘Ready to go back to civilization?’ Lexi asked.

‘The end of land’s always a bit magical.’

‘Magical?’

Knowing his partner wouldn’t understand, Troy smiled. ‘Yeah. I’m ready. Let’s go back.’

At first, Lexi struggled to control the drone smoothly and, at the same time, remember the instructions that the police technician had hastily told her. But soon she got the hang of it and, apart from an occasional blurry image, she was successfully recording a bird’s-eye view of the area.

The two detectives were sitting in a café at Loose End, surveying the rugged landscape without even moving, without breathing all that fresh air. They were able to cover far more ground far more thoroughly than when they were hiking over it. They
could even zoom in on any particular area – once Lexi had mastered the software downloaded into her life-logger. But there was too much information to study in detail.

‘This is the best way to appreciate the countryside,’ Lexi said. ‘Inside, with a beer, fudge laden with crickets, and a drone doing the hard work.’

The unmanned aerial vehicle was flying parallel to Loose End Edge. On the screen of Lexi’s life-logger, they watched the movie. Vertical scars marked the positions where water cascaded down and occasional black patches were the tell-tale signs of the mouths of caves. Lexi had instructed the drone to continue its journey to the sea. That would be the limit of its range, but it would allow them to explore the second bay at a distance.

‘What’s that?’ Troy tapped the corner of the screen.

At the base of the vertical hillside, there were boulders and something dark, obscured by surrounding trees.

‘Not sure,’ Lexi said, peering at the monitor. ‘I’m zooming in but I still can’t make it out. It’s not the camera’s fault. It’s this screen. It’s too small and the resolution’s not great.’ She let out a frustrated breath and said, ‘I’ll let the drone carry on. When it’s finished the whole area, let’s collect it and go back to
Tight End. We can put all the data on a large screen in Crime Central. Maybe then …’

‘Okay.’

‘What we really need to do is to narrow it down,’ Lexi said. ‘Then we stand a chance. Right now …’

‘We’re looking for the legendary needle in a haystack.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Actually, it’s harder,’ said Troy. ‘We don’t even know what we’re looking for. The needle’s a red herring. We’re chasing a small unknown in a giant haystack.’

On the way to Tight End, Troy sat on one side of the car and Lexi on the other. The drone occupied the space in between them, its battery almost exhausted. But its camera had successfully transmitted huge amounts of data to Crime Central and to Lexi’s life-logger. The lightweight device at her hip also vibrated twice during the journey with incoming results.

The first message came from Terabyte. Alyssa Bending’s mobile had been discovered, wedged in a grating at Pullover Creek sewage works. Shepford Crime Central’s expert on all things electronic had collected it and found that exposure to running water – and who knows what else – for several days had
wrecked it. Summarizing, Lexi told Troy, ‘Alyssa’s phone was where you thought it might be, but the data in it’s gone for ever according to Terabyte. Washed away. The water’s corroded its chips and memory card.’

Troy nodded. ‘She and Richard covered their tracks pretty well.’

Studying her life-logger again, Lexi smiled broadly. ‘Here’s something, though.’

‘What?’

‘I said we need to focus the search. Hey presto. This’ll help. It’s the mud on Miley Quist’s trainers. I told forensics to profile all the DNA. Most of it’s ordinary soil bacteria and fungi that could come from almost anywhere. Apart from …’

‘What?’ Troy said again.

Lexi paused, reading ahead. ‘You like fungi, don’t you? Especially mushrooms. When it comes to genes, they’re closer to animals than plants. The computer’s highlighted one stretch of DNA from her shoes. It comes from a mushroom,
Rhodotus palmatus
, usually called the wrinkled peach because it looks like …’

‘A wrinkled peach?’

‘Only if you use a lot of imagination. Anyway, the important point is that it’s quite rare, apparently. Listed as endangered.’

‘But Miley’s stepped on one?’

‘Yeah. In this country, it grows on rotting hardwood but only in two places – the extreme west of the National Forest and in woodland up here.’

Troy nodded slowly. ‘That fits.’

‘It means we can concentrate on wooded bits of the drone data.’

‘The only problem with that is the trees. They get in the way of an aerial view.’