The Devil's Chair (21 page)

She kept her eyes trained on the woman's face, studied her expression, tried to penetrate the mask of studious blankness, the eyes emptied of emotion and truth, and Shaw wondered. She waited, hoping that Lucy Stanstead would drop something into the silence. But there was nothing. She simply gave a long, slow blink. ‘I'm afraid, Constable Shaw, that you've had a wasted journey.'

Delia couldn't resist throwing one last pebble into the pond. ‘I wonder,' she said. And this time it was she who looked smug and Lucy Stanstead who looked concerned.

Had it not been for the gravity of the situation PC Sean Dart would have burst out laughing at the sight.

Freddy Ribbler, tall, skinny, silver haired and wearing shorts, was bouncing up and down on the spot, elbows stiffly held at an angle. And he looked cold. He actually looked relieved when Dart's car skidded to a halt right by him.

‘Morning!' he shouted out, still bouncing but less energetically now, as though he knew his ordeal was coming to an end.

‘Hello, sir.' Dart held his hand out and was rewarded with a knuckle-crushing grip that brought tears to his eyes.

Ribble stopped bouncing. ‘Over there,' he said, pointing.

Where the stream flowed over rocks, in the middle of the white spray, something pink lay on the bottom. ‘Didn't touch it, of course,' Ribbler said gruffly.

Dart simply stared.

It was a small garment with a Barbie doll motif on the front and it was weighed down with a large, smooth stone which had kept it beneath the water. And yet the colour was so bright, so foreign that it stood out like a beacon. All around was green, the stream silver and blue, the stones grey. The pink stood out as a sickly bright colour. Nothing in nature is quite so garish as Barbie-doll pink and Ribble was quite right: it had not been there when the police search had been ongoing. Someone had put it there since yesterday's run. And Ribble, pale, goose-pimply focusing on the sodden garment, echoed his observation.

‘It's been placed there,' he barked. ‘Some time since yesterday. I do my run every single morning. Military training,' he said proudly, chest puffed out, ‘means you keep your eyes and ears open. Know what I mean, Constable?' He was still in some sort of running rhythm. Even his words were spoken in time.

Dart nodded. He glanced superstitiously around him. It was still early. Few people were here. Those that were watched him curiously. Was the person who had placed the child's dressing gown oh-so-carefully at the bottom of the stream, with equal care weighted it down with the rock, watched and waited for someone to see it and make the connection? Were they watching him now? Had they known about Ribble's daily runs, regular as clockwork, observant and passing within feet of the gaudy pink? Dart groaned. They were going to have to seal off the immediate area – again. And for the life of him he couldn't see where this case was heading. The SIO was up in Scotland. For the moment they were a ship without a captain. No one in charge. He put the now shivering Freddy Ribble in his car with, despite his protestations, the heater full on, and made his way to the National Trust shop and a telephone.

Arlene and Allistair seemed the perfect couple – amicable, friendly, and Talith couldn't take his eyes off the swinging blonde hair and the beautifully applied lipstick on her mouth.

Arlene did quite a bit of the talking, using her sexual charm to wind DS Paul Talith right round her little finger.

Randall could have kicked him.

‘Of course, I knew that Allistair had been married before,' she said with a smiling flash of white teeth. ‘I knew he had a daughter. And I wouldn't have minded if he'd wanted to keep contact with her.' She actually batted her eyelashes at Talith, instinctively knowing that she would have cut no ice with his superior.

‘But things had been so acrimonious with Tracy.' She sighed. ‘In the beginning Allistair tried,' she turned her head, ‘didn't you?'

He nodded, as mesmerized by Arlene as Talith was.

‘But every contact provoked rows and shouting, misunderstandings, didn't they, darl.'

Donaldson nodded. He was patently a man of few words.

Arlene fixed her blue eyes on Talith. ‘We plan to get married in the summer,' she said softly, her tone practically seducing Talith. ‘We don't want any trouble.'

Randall interrupted the soliloquy. ‘Did you ever meet Daisy, Arlene?'

Wonderingly, she shook her head. ‘No.'

Randall ignored her then and turned to Tracy's ex. ‘And when did you last see her, sir?'

‘When she was about six months old,' he said with a hint of shame.

‘You haven't seen her since?'

‘No.' He patently felt some explanation was called for. ‘In the beginning things were acrimonious between me and Tracy. And then later – well, it seemed too late. From all accounts Neil had a good relationship with her. She had a new dad. She didn't need me. I was only going to muddy the waters.'

Arlene nodded her agreement and suddenly Randall felt he would explode. A child doesn't have a new father just as a father cannot ever replace a child. He felt a momentary pain in his chest.

‘What about your mother, Daisy's grandmother?'

Allistair looked a little evasive at the question. He gave a swift, checking glance at his fiancée and reluctantly dragged out an answer. ‘I think she did ring her up once or twice,' he said.

‘Did she ever go south and visit her?'

Allistair stared at the carpet. ‘Not that I know of.'

‘And did Daisy ever come up here to stay with her grandmother?'

‘No.'

‘But you did send your daughter money for birthdays and Christmas?'

‘I sent it to Tracy, thinking she could buy Daisy something. Whether she'd say it was from me or not I never knew. It didn't really matter one way or the other.'

‘You realize that now Tracy's dead you're Daisy's next of kin?'

‘Yeah.'

Randall felt the anger rise like an insurrection. ‘So aren't you at least concerned at your daughter's disappearance?'

And at last he'd provoked a response. ‘Of course I am,' Donaldson burst out. ‘But …' Here he hesitated. ‘She doesn't feel like my daughter. We'd never …' He was searching in his mind for a suitable phrase and came up with, ‘bonded.'

Randall blinked.

‘What Allistair's trying to explain,' Arlene put in silkily, ‘is that he only felt the same as if
any
four-year-old had gone missing. Understand?'

Randall ignored her. She was beginning to annoy him. He addressed his next question to Donaldson and him alone. ‘Can you shed any light on your daughter's disappearance?'

He shook his head.

‘We're going to have a word with your mother. Can you give us her address?'

Donaldson obliged and the two officers left, Randall feeling dissatisfied and as for Talith … He'd had a glimpse of a goddess and now he had to come right back down to earth again.

Mrs Donaldson didn't live in anything like as salubrious an area as her son and his partner. In fact, she lived in a rather unpleasant block of flats in a rundown area of Inverness, on the seventh floor of an ugly, communist-looking gulag of a place, a square concrete block with little to relieve it apart from a few colourful sheets and towels placed out, in the vain and highly optimistic hope that they would dry on the miniscule balconies.

She looked older than she should have been with a thirty-year-old son, but that was partly due to very poor dentition and witch-like pointed features. She even cackled as she opened the door. ‘So you'll be the policemen,' she said in a strong Scottish brogue. ‘You found me all right, then?'

They both smiled their responses and flashed their ID. She didn't bother to look at the cards but showed them into a tiny lounge which smelt of chip fat. But the views, to the north, over the city and beyond towards the Moray Firth, were astonishing.

The witchy woman spoke. ‘So you've met the wee Arlene then?'

They both nodded.

‘Had me out of ma own house,' she said, her mouth tightening as though in preparation for sucking a particularly bitter lemon. ‘Aye, that girl,' she said in disgust. ‘He shouldna allowed it. But there we are. Men's always a fool when it comes to a sweet-lookin' thing like oor Arlene.'

Talith looked embarrassed and felt he wanted to go home. Back to his good, familiar, pleasant life. Domestication.
Get me out of here
.

Randall took over. ‘You know we're investigating the disappearance of your granddaughter.'

Mairie Donaldson cackled again disconcertingly. ‘Oh, ma granddaughter now, is it,' she mocked. ‘Well, there's a turn up for the books.'

The officers waited.

‘Look,' Mairie said, more reasonably now. ‘I went to the weddin' when he married Tracy though I didna like her. Right? I played my part. I sent down a Mothercare voucher after wee Daisy was born. That's as much as I know. I never was invited down to Shropshire. Not for a visit or to take a wee peek at the little girl. For a year after Tracy and my son broke up I sent Christmas and birthday presents but Tracy never acknowledged them. I rang my granddaughter but there was not a word not a phone call or a letter back so I stopped and that, Inspector, is as much I know about ma own granddaughter. That is sum total. You understand?'

In an effort to connect with them, she added, ‘I know it's tradition for a woman not to like the girl or in this case girls her son marries but that isna it at all. My son, not unlike others of his sex …' This provoked a severe stare at each of the male policeman in turn, holding her stare twice as long on Talith, which seemed to see right through to his inner thoughts, ‘is very susceptible to the charms of a pretty female. And it makes him ignore other, less pleasant aspects of their character, you understand? So he ends up with complete bitches.' This time there was no cackle, no irregularly toothed smile. Just a nod of the head and a general acceptance of the status quo.

They had sealed off the area, created a corridor of access and carefully pulled the dressing gown out of the running water. But even the cool, fast flow of the stream had failed to rinse away the crusted bloodstain. Dart looked at it and his heart sank.

PC Gary Coleman had found Mansfield's house empty and abandoned, so had returned to the office to hack into his computer. And what he found was very interesting indeed. Well, maybe not so much interesting as odd. Certainly odd. Not quite what he had expected.

R
andall got the call about the dressing gown just as they were driving back to the airport and the news gave him the bad feeling of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Well done, Randall
, he thought. Backed the wrong horse – again. He should have been there instead of leaving it all behind to the junior officers. He needed to regain control. Talith, he noticed, wisely kept mum on the subject when he voiced this point of view. But even his silence was a sort of tacit agreement.

During the brief flight Randall was fidgety. His mind was posing questions. How did the garment get there? If, as it appeared, it had been put there in the last twenty-four hours, why? Why hold back a vital piece of evidence only to plant it weeks later? What could the motive be except to keep taunting the police and prove that he or she was smarter than they were? So what was the game? Hide and seek? Or was the abductor after money? In which case why not simply come forward with a demand? Had they asked for a ransom it would likely be paid by public subscription anyway. He could well imagine a couple of the tabloids running a Save Daisy campaign. For such a cute child money would pour in but it was a very risky strategy. Ransom money and the swap-over frequently led straight back to the kidnapper who would be unable to benefit from his ill-gotten gains. And there was always a risk to the child. No, he could not think of this as a kidnapping. It didn't fit right. This could hardly have been a planned kidnapping. It was, surely, a chance encounter?

Randall gritted his teeth. ‘Ask a bloody ransom if you like,' he growled under his breath, ‘but don't play tease me, squeeze me.'

Being drip-fed clues left them wondering whether every minute, every hour that they failed to find Daisy was costing the little girl her life? It was cruel. Worse, it was pointless.

His impatience and frustration lasted all the way from Manchester airport to the outskirts of Shrewsbury. He wanted to reach the police station as quickly as possible and speak to Sean Dart himself. He wanted to see the garment. Touch it. Randall gave a twisted smile. If one could divine the fate of the child from a bright pink dressing gown it would be helpful. As it was he contented himself with summoning the lead officers to a briefing as soon as he touched the station door.

As he was talking Talith was aiming a look of sympathy his way. He wouldn't have liked to be the SIO on this case. Oh no, thank you. He'd stick to sergeant. For now.

Randall saw the look out of the corner of his eye and appreciated it while thinking up another scenario. It was possible that someone, not even the abductor, but someone else, someone unconnected with the crime, could have bought a similar dressing gown and planted it themselves in the Carding Mill brook. Bloodstained?

Well, people were strange.

He rejected the idea. No. This was a tease from their abductor, all right. He was beginning to get a feel for this person. Martha had hit the nail on the head. Someone with a mystical sense of superiority. Someone superstitious and obscure. Someone who thought up ideas like the twisted clues of a crossword puzzle; someone who liked to make their clues none too easy. Someone who … He could have gone on and on. And all of it bad. He was learning not to trust this adversary. Her clues were not always what they seemed. A gift could be a Trojan horse guaranteed to hide some obscure evil.