The Dead Place (9 page)

'The FOAs. He's got his supervisor here with him now, too. He called his head office as soon as we arrived.'

'We need to talk to him again,' said Kessen. 'If it was so quiet in here last night, it makes me wonder what exactly the attendant was doing down there.'

Hitchens wiped his face with a handkerchief. He was getting very unfit if he couldn't walk up a few flights of stairs without risking a heart attack.

'At least he heard the scream,' he said.

'Oh yes, the scream.'

'It helps us with the timing.'

'Well, it's a pity he wasn't quicker off the mark getting up here, instead of staring at his little screens wondering if he was on the wrong channel.'

'According to his initial statement, there was no one around when he did come up to check, so he thought it must be kids messing around outside.'

66 'And then he went back to his tea break, no doubt,' said Kessen.

Hitchens shrugged. 'Also, the mobile phone network recorded the logging-off signal from Mrs Birley's phone. But I don't think that will help us much, in the circumstances.'

The smashed phone had been bagged by the SOCOs, along with the bits of broken plastic scattered across Level 8 by the tyre of a Daihatsu 4x4 that had driven over it. The SIM card would identify the phone definitely, but it matched the description given by Geoff Birley - a Nokia with a soft leather case and a red fascia.

Fry walked to the outside wall of the car park and looked over the ledge at the buildings in Clappergate. Far below, a group of youths wearing rucksacks went by with their skateboards, whistling between their teeth as they entered the shopping precinct. She tugged at the wire mesh, but it didn't shift an inch.

A movement caught Fry's attention, and she saw Liz Petty again, walking across to the crime scene van to speak to Abbott, who was now her supervisor. She had pushed her hood back from her face, and she looked flushed. SOCOs didn't like wearing the hoods of the scene suits if they could help it, especially the female officers. Petty brushed her hair back and tried to confine it in the clip behind her head. She saw Fry watching her, and smiled again.

'I'll get everything under way, sir,' Hitchens was saying. 'DS Fry and I have an appointment with the psychologist.'

'The phone calls?' said Kessen.

'Yes, sir.'

'I don't suppose we've had a call since Mrs Birley disappeared?' 'No. And it's difficult to know whether we should hope for one or not.'

'At least we'd know where we stand. You need to make the right call on this one, Paul.'

67 Fry felt a little sorry for Hitchens. Nine times out of ten there were other reasons why people went missing, especially adults. They usually turned up alive and well, with surprised looks on their faces at all the fuss they'd caused. That could waste a lot of time and resources if a hasty decision was made.

For now, Hitchens was the man who had to make that judgement. He'd want firm evidence of a serious crime before he pressed the alarm button. A vague message from a disturbed individual wasn't adequate justification - not enough to look good on paper when the DI's handling of the case was reviewed. But add a scream in the night, a dropped mobile phone and a missing woman, and the equation became much more difficult. All Fry could hope for was that it added up on the right side for Sandra Birley.

68 6

Dr Rosa Kane wasn't what Fry had expected at all. New experts with fresh ideas were fine, but they weren't supposed to be young and attractive, with Irish accents and the shade of red hair that DI Hitchens had a weakness for. These were factors that distracted Fry from the start, and somehow interfered with her ability to listen to what Dr Kane was saying with serious attention.

'We can make some tentative deductions from the language he uses, of course,' said Dr Kane, some time after the introductions had been made and the content of the calls summarized. 'Can we?' said Fry.

Then she realized immediately that her surprised tone might give away the fact that it was the first comment from the psychologist she'd really heard.

'For a more detailed analysis, you'll need the services of a forensic linguist. But some of it is fairly obvious. If you'd like my opinion, that is . . .?'

'Please go ahead, Doctor,' said Hitchens, smiling as he saw an opportunity to save on the expense of another expert.

'Well, for a start, there's his tendency to make grammatical switches from first person singular to first person plural,

69 and then to third person. That's very interesting. When he says "I", "me" and "my", he's almost certainly telling the truth. But when he switches to the plural or third person, or to a passive form, that's when he's concealing something. It's an unconscious sign of evasion.'

Intrigued now, Fry hunched over the transcript. She ran a yellow highlighter pen through some of the phrases. Perhaps I'll wait, and enjoy the anticipation... 7 can smell it right now, can't you? . . . I promise . . . My kind of killing . . . And then there was a change halfway through a sentence: as a neck slithers in my fingers . . .

There were a few more sentences with The' and 'my'. But then the entire final section was couched in the first person plural, as if to draw his listeners into a conspiracy. The question isn't whether we kill, but how we do it. That section contained all the stuff about Freud and Thanatos, too. No 'I' in it anywhere.

'I see what you mean,' Fry said, reluctantly.

She pushed the highlighted transcript across to the DI, who smiled. A cheap result.

'As for the second message, some of the phrases don't fit at all,' said Dr Kane.

Fry was taken aback. In a speech written by someone so disturbed, it hadn't occurred to her there might be some phrases that didn't fit. Because none of it fit, did it? Not with anything rational.

'Yes, of course,' said Hitchens. He pulled his reading glasses out of his pocket and looked at the transcript with an intelligent smile. 'Which phrases were you thinking of in particular, Doctor?'

'"A cemetery six miles wide", for example. What does that have to do with anything? It's too specific'

'Anything else?'

'Yes. "Here I am at its centre." Also "the signs at the gibbet and the rock". The most significant thing about these phrases

70 is that all three of them occur in the second message, the one which is obviously scripted. In my opinion, he was making sure that he included those phrases. They were important, for some reason.'

'"Six miles wide",' said Hitchens. 'Do you think . . .?'

'They're clues,' said Fry suddenly. 'He's left us some clues to a location. It's a location within a six-mile radius of... Well, of what?'

'His own position?' said Dr Kane. 'The place where he was making the call from?'

'Of course. "Here I am at its centre."'

She took off her glasses, and Hitchens did the same.

'That would suggest he knew in advance where he was going to make the call,' said the DI.

'Is that a problem?'

'Well, it isn't the scenario we had in mind. We think he had the speech prepared, but not the location.'

'It could be that he simply inserted an appropriate figure according to where he eventually made the call,' said Dr Kane. 'A six-mile radius? He might have driven around a specific area until he found somewhere suitable that he knew was within that range.'

Hitchens looked worried. 'Damn it, he might just have been guessing at the three miles, in that case. How many people know even the approximate distance from one spot to another across the countryside? I don't suppose he's using GPS.'

'And that's only if he meant the distance as the crow flies, rather than the distance by road, which people might be more familiar with.'

Fry saw from the DFs expression that he was starting to lose faith in his expert. Dr Kane seemed to be setting up more obstacles than she was helping to overcome. But experts loved to make things look more complex than they really were, didn't they? It helped to justify their fees.

71 'So what about the dead place?' said Fry. 'And the gibbet? The flesh eater?'

But the psychologist had begun to gather her papers together. 'That's your job, I believe. You have an individual here who's trying to draw attention to himself, perhaps because he knows subconsciously that he needs help. Right now, he's doing his best to assist you. His clues are a little obscure and ambiguous, certainly. That's because he has to appear to be demonstrating his superior intelligence. But if you listen properly to what he's telling you, I'm sure it will help you far more than I can at this stage.'

Dr Kane stood up ready to leave, then paused. She was looking at Fry, not at Hitchens, when she delivered her parting advice.

'It's generally true,' she said, 'that you can learn a lot by listening to what other people have to say.'

The regional manager for PNL Parking was called Hicks. Cooper found him in a cramped office on the street level with an attendant in a yellow fluorescent jacket.

'We're bound by all the rules, you know,' said Hicks. 'We have to register the CCTV system and make sure we're compliant with the Data Protection Act.'

'No one is suggesting you've broken any rules,' said Ben Cooper for the third time.

But Hicks barely blinked. 'Apart from anything else, footage won't be accepted as evidence in court if we don't comply with the rules,' he said. 'And registering the system means we have to deal with requests from people for copies of film.'

'Do you get many requests?'

'Some. A lot of them are too vague, though. They have to give us an idea of what time they might have been filmed, where they were and what they look like.' He shrugged. 'Most of them give up when they're asked for details. They're just fishing. And then there are some where we have to admit we

72 didn't film them at all, because the camera they saw was a dummy. Well, we don't say dummy. We just say the camera wasn't functioning at the time.'

'And the camera on Level 8 would be one of those dummies?' asked Cooper.

'Yes.'

'Has it always been nonfunctioning?'

'For as long as I can recall.' Hicks hesitated. 'Yes, I'm pretty sure it was installed like that. It's a bit ridiculous really, but at the time it was considered more economical. Cameras were supposed to be a deterrent, as much as anything else.'

'I'd like to see any requests you have on file for copies of film from the camera on Level 8.'

'As I said, we don't give out copies of film from that camera, because it's nonfunctioning.'

'Exactly,' said Cooper. 'You know that, and I know that. And anyone who's ever requested film from it must know that, too.'

Hitchens got up to escort Dr Kane out of the building, leaving Diane Fry on her own. She watched them walking away down the corridor, the DI's hand lightly touching the doctor's elbow as he chatted to her about his student days in Sheffield.

Fry knew that seeing visitors off the premises would normally be a job the DI delegated to somebody more junior. But for Dr Kane, Hitchens was making an exception. Probably because she was an expert and had to be treated with respect. Probably.

To prevent herself from thinking about it any more, Fry lowered her gaze and found herself staring at the yellow highlighter marks on the transcript in front of her. She wished she hadn't used yellow. Now that the colour had dried, it looked faintly rancid and unhealthy, like a four-day-old bruise or a urine stain. Pink or orange would have been much more cheerful.

73 But who was she kidding? Whatever colour she chose wouldn't make a bit of difference to the sly, evil look of the words themselves.

I can smell it right now, can't you? It's so powerful, so sweet. So irresistible.

She left the DI's office and walked slowly back to the CID room. Ben Cooper wasn't at his desk, but Gavin Murfin and a couple of other DCs were in, and they looked up as she entered.

As usual, there was a whiff of pastry from Murfin's direction. Steak pie or Cornish pasty, she wasn't sure. Right now, she wouldn't have been able to identify it. Another, more elusive smell was in her nostrils, something rancid, unhealthy, yellow and evil. It was a smell she knew would only get closer and couldn't be dispersed by the ventilation system.

/ can smell it right now, can't you?. . . It's the scent of death.

'Let's get the map out,' said Hitchens, almost before he could get back into the CID room. 'We need the Ordnance Survey map, Diane - White Peak.'

'We could use the mapping system on the computer,' said Fry.

'That's no good for a six-mile radius. We won't be able to see enough detail at that scale.'

He cleared a table while Fry found a copy of the right map and they spread it out.

'Wardlow is here,' said Hitchens. 'Now we need a ruler to measure three miles in each direction. Damn it, the village is too close to the edge of the map - we'll have to turn over to the other side. Why is everything you want to look at on an OS map always too close to the edge?'

Cooper came in as they were finding a ruler, and Hitchens called him. 'Ben, just the lad we need. You know this area, I'm sure.'

74 'Yes, sir. What is it you're looking for?'

The DI explained, while Fry checked the scale of the map and used the ruler and a pen to draw a rough circle around the location of the public phone box in Wardlow, helpfully marked by the OS with a capital T' and a little blue handset.

'Why the six-mile radius?' asked Cooper.

'We've got some clues from the tape. Or we think they're meant as clues.'

Continuing the westward arc of her three-mile circle on to the other side of the map was tricky, but finally Fry managed it.

'We'll get somebody to do a proper job of it, but this will do for now,' said Hitchens, oblivious to the exasperated look that Fry gave him. 'What do you make of it?'

Cooper bent over the map. 'Well, you've got an area that includes a dozen villages and one small town. Several dales on the western side, including part of the Wye Valley. The main A6 between Bakewell and Buxton is down here, and near the top there's a smaller trunk road that cuts right across the A623.'