Hidden Depths (37 page)

She pulled into the verge, switched off the engine. There were no street lights and it was so quiet that they could hear the ticking of the car as it cooled. Outside it was almost dark, impossible to see colour or detail, but she could make out the shape of the hedge running alongside them.

‘I’ll walk up the lane,’ she said. ‘See if there are any lights on in the cottage, if there’s a car there.’

Ashworth didn’t answer.

The heat as she got out of the car made her think of Spain. There should be cicadas, the smell of rosemary. Walking down the lane, keeping close into the hedge in case she heard a car turning off the main road, she was reminded again of her father. Until she was old enough to protest, he’d taken her out on his raids. She’d hidden in ditches and behind patches of scrub and drystone walls, keeping lookout for him in case the police or RSPB wardens should appear. She’d hated every moment. The panic. The fear of being arrested, locked up, of getting it wrong. What would she do if someone did turn up? But it had been exciting too. Perhaps that’s why I became a cop, she thought. I got addicted to the adrenaline rush at an early age.

Her eyes were becoming adjusted to the dark and, before she came to it, she saw the five-bar gate which led into the observatory garden, and beyond that the matt black shape of the cottage. There was no car. Not on the lane, at least. It was possible that it had been pulled onto the drive and was hidden by trees and a bramble thicket. She wouldn’t see it from here. She walked on down the lane in the hope of getting a better view of the front of the house, where there were windows. Would he take the risk of turning on lights? Was he there at all?

At first she saw nothing, then there was a flicker of light. The striking of a match or a torch being switched on and off. So brief that she could have imagined it. If she’d been the imaginative sort. Perhaps Joe was right after all. Perhaps Parr was here. She imagined how triumphant Joe would be when she told him there was someone in the bungalow. She allowed herself a daydream. She was in Julie’s kitchen, her arm round Laura.
I’ve brought your girl home, pet.
Though she had no evidence that Laura was still alive she wanted that moment so much that it hurt.

She turned and walked back to the car, let herself in. She’d just shut the door when Ashworth’s phone went, startling her so she felt her heart suddenly race.

He pushed the button after the first ring. ‘Yes?’ Even his whisper seemed very loud after the silence outside. Then she felt him relax and she could tell it wasn’t his wife on the other end. She must still be tucked up at home with her cocoa. He wouldn’t have to run back just yet to be present at the birth. ‘It’s Charlie,’ he said. ‘He wants to talk to you.’

She took the phone from Joe. ‘Well, Charlie? What have you got for me?’

‘I found Parr.’

‘Where was he?’

‘The first place you suggested. The cemetery. Next to his wife’s grave. It’s twenty years today since she killed herself. When I got there he was sitting on the grass. Looked as if he’d been crying.’

‘You got someone to check his tyres against the mark on the road at Seaton?’

‘Aye, and they’re nothing like,’ Charlie said. ‘He drives a new car. Billy Wainwright said the tyre that left the mark was almost illegal. Besides, I don’t think he’s been in a fit state to snatch the girl. Sounded to me as if he’d been in the cemetery since early this morning. He puts on a good show, but I’d say finding that lass at the lighthouse brought it all back. When I got there he could hardly hold it together. I asked him about Laura Armstrong, if he knew what had happened to her, but he didn’t have any idea what I was on about. Really, all he could talk about was how he’d let his wife down. I took him home, had a quick look round inside the house before I left him. There was no sign of the girl.’

‘Thanks, Charlie.’ She handed the phone back to Joe. ‘They’ve found Samuel Parr. He had nothing to with abducting Laura.’

‘So that’s it, then. We can go back to Kimmerston.’ She couldn’t tell if he was pleased that his theory had come to nothing, or pleased that he could get back to his wife.

‘Someone’s in the cottage. I saw a light.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Certain. I’m not given to visions.’

‘One of the birdwatchers, perhaps. The members have keys. They’re supposed to let the booking secretary know they’ll be there, but they don’t always.’

She saw him sneak a look at his watch, took no notice, shut her eyes to help her concentrate.

‘Why don’t we just go to the front door?’ Ashworth said. ‘Find out who’s there and what’s going on.’

She ignored him. It was important to think this through. Perhaps Samuel Parr’s short story about the abduction of a child was irrelevant. A strange coincidence. She’d been so desperate to find Laura Armstrong that she’d allowed herself to be misled, swept along by Joe’s enthusiasm. But the details were so similar, so consistent. She thought of the jacket of the anthology, the swirling greens and blues of the design, a stylized image of waves. The title in white, sharp against the patterned background. Parr’s name at the bottom of the page. She’d borrowed the book in hardback from the library. Hundreds of people could have had access to it.

When she opened her eyes, she knew what had happened. She’d been right all along. It wasn’t a surprise to her. She usually was.

She was relieved when they found the door of the cottage was unlocked. Ashworth hadn’t mentioned it again but she wasn’t sure he believed her about the light. Not when they pushed open the five-bar gate, lifting it carefully on its hinges, and the place was dark. They walked across the grass to avoid the sound of their feet on the gravel drive. The grass was long and felt cool, slightly damp, through her sandals. Then a thin moon appeared and she even questioned her own judgement. Perhaps what she’d seen had been some sort of reflection. She’d wanted so much to find Laura here. She looked through the window, but could make out nothing inside.

But why would the cottage be open if the place was empty? She touched the door gently until it opened a crack, and listened. Joe Ashworth was making his way to the back of the house. She couldn’t hear a thing, not even his moving. She stretched in her arm and ran her fingers over the inside wall, feeling for the light switch. Woodchip wallpaper, then the smooth plastic of the surround to the switch. She struggled again to remember the layout of the bungalow. She was sure there was no hall. This was the living room. Beyond it lay the kitchen and to the right two doors leading to the bedrooms which were used as dormitories. She gave Ashworth a few more minutes to take up position, switched on the light, pushed the door wide open.

The light came from a low-watt, energy-saving bulb which hung from the centre of the ceiling, but for a moment it blinded her.

‘Police. Don’t move.’ She blinked as she shouted, heard a noise somewhere, a door being opened.

There was no one in the room. It was much as she remembered it. A table under the window. It might once have been a decent piece of furniture but now it was scratched and covered with rings from coffee cups and beer glasses. Two upright chairs pushed under it. A sagging sofa and two easy chairs facing the empty grate. On the walls photographs of birds and a number of paintings and drawings, mostly terrible. A few shelves with natural history books, maps and field guides. In the seconds it took to look around her, Ashworth appeared. The noise she’d heard had been him opening the door into the kitchen.

Without speaking she threw open the doors to the bedrooms. They were both surprisingly neat. Three sets of bunks in each. Grey blankets folded at the foot of each bed. A faint smell of mildew and socks.

She turned to follow Ashworth, who’d wandered back into the kitchen. It was the time to admit she’d been wrong. To get him to promise not to tell the world they’d cocked up and to let him go home to his enormous wife.

‘Someone’s been here very recently,’ he said. ‘The kettle’s still hot. The light you saw could have been someone lighting the gas.’

So there was still a chance they’d find Laura before she was killed. She wanted to kiss him.

Ashworth seemed not to realize the effect of his words. ‘He can’t have gone anywhere. We’d have passed a vehicle in the lane. There’s no car in the drive. He must have parked further down the track.’

‘He knows we’re here now,’ Vera said. ‘Switching on that light wasn’t the brightest thing I’ve done in my career. You’ll be able to see it for miles.’ She ran out of the house and into the garden, stumbling on the last step from the front door. The pond was ahead of her. There was hardly any reflection from the water, only tiny patches of silver around the edges. In the centre a black shadow. She found herself praying in her head to a God she’d never believed in.
Please let her not be there. Not the girl. Not Laura.
She heard Ashworth close behind her, the sound of his breathing, the rustle of denim against denim as he walked. I hope you’re praying, she thought. You’re a believer. He might listen to you.

She crouched to get closer to the water. Began to make out the shape of a young woman’s body, arms outstretched, when Ashworth switched on his torch. As the narrow beam swung over the surface, the image changed. She saw flat, waxy leaves, balls of tangled vegetation sucking in the light, but nothing human. Nothing dead. She realized she’d stopped breathing and took a lungful of air. She felt her head swimming.

The girl might already have been killed but she hadn’t been posed. Not yet. She hadn’t been used for effect, turned into a piece of art which had nothing to do with the real Laura. At least Julie had been spared that.

Vera straightened and tried to keep her thoughts clear, to remember the detail of what had happened during the Deepden party. Because she’d been determined to keep Hector on the straight and narrow, she’d been perfectly sober. The memories should be sharp. There’d been the guided tour: a walk through the orchard, sunlight sloping through the trees, a look into the cottage, which had been freshly painted for the occasion, a ringing exhibition.

The ringing exhibition. They’d stood in a semicircle while a tall man in a blue smock reached out a bird for them to see. A yellowhammer, loosely held, the head caught between his second and third fingers. Through the door, they’d seen him weigh it. He’d slid it head first into a plastic cone which clipped onto a spring balance. He’d measured its wing with a metal rule. With his free hand he’d taken pliers from a shelf and a silver ring from a string hanging on the wall. He’d fitted the ring on the bird’s leg, then squeezed it carefully into place. Then he’d stood at the door, the bird resting on the palm of his hand, until it had flown away.

It hadn’t been the cottage door. She was sure of that. She dug in her memory for a picture of it. A flimsy wooden door held shut by a padlock which the ringer had unlocked when he’d returned from catching the birds. A door into a hut, the size of a big garden shed, made with stained wood panels. A corrugated iron roof. And surrounding the hut a thicket of bramble and buckthorn, so it was hidden from the garden and the house. They’d been surprised when the tour guide had led them there down a path cut through the undergrowth. The bushes had been cleared close to the front of the structure and that was where the group had stood, an audience waiting for the show to begin.

Now she tried to get her bearings. Standing next to Hector on the night of the party, while the ringer did his stuff, she’d felt her father start to get restless; he could only take not being the centre of attention for so long. She’d thought that he might escape, show his boredom by making an obvious run for it. It would have been easy enough for him to do that. The hut was right on the edge of observatory land, on the boundary with the field of rough grazing which led to the sea.

She began to move along the edge of the grass, looking for a gap in the vegetation. It seemed to her that the moon was brighter, or perhaps her eyes had adjusted to the dark. Then she found it, a narrow path leading through the bushes. She made herself walk slowly. She knew if she hurried, he’d hear them coming. If he was listening out for them he’d hear them anyway. Some noises she couldn’t prevent – her laboured breathing, the snapping of dry undergrowth as it snagged on her clothing. The path was so narrow, she couldn’t help that. But perhaps he wouldn’t be listening out. Perhaps, locked in the hut, he hadn’t seen the light from the cottage. Her fear was that if he knew they were there, he might be goaded into some grand gesture. It would upset him to be denied the water and the flowers, but he’d love a live audience.

He’s forgotten why this started. He’s become seduced by the glamour of it. He probably keeps a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings. Where will we find them?

The hut was just as she remembered it. Perhaps the paint had faded, the roof rusted, but in this light it was impossible to tell.

They stood on the edge of the clearing. Vera put her mouth so close to Ashworth’s ear that she could feel his skin briefly against her lips.

‘Wait. Until I call.’

She inched her way across the grass, aware of the weight she carried, the space she took up. As if, inside the hut, he’d sense the vibration of her feet on the ground, the displacement of the air.

At the door she stopped. There was no padlock. It had been pulled to from the inside, but she didn’t think it had been bolted. She listened. No voices. Then she heard a rhythmic creaking, metal not wood, then a hissing. A white light appeared in the crack between the door and the frame.