‘Delighted to meet you, Peter.’ Her Welsh accent was less pronounced than her mother’s. I noticed that there was no visible sign of the spliff.
I nodded and said likewise. The Corve was a tributary of the Teme – I’d looked up the whole watershed before coming over.
‘Lilly, love,’ called Miss Tefeidiad. ‘Why don’t you be a dear and put the kettle on.’
Something groaned and stirred inside the VW, which rocked alarmingly. I realised then that the back end of the van was dangling over the edge of the bank, as if the ground had eroded away after it had parked.
Beyond where I was sitting a path dropped down to the river, tree roots entangling to form a disturbingly regular flight of steps. At the bottom, the action of the river had carved a pool, deeper and darker than the shallow water immediately downstream. I wondered if the kids playing less than ten metres downstream ever ventured into it for a swim – or what would happen if they did.
A white face appeared in the shadowed doorway of the VW, stared blearily at us from eyes heavily outlined in black, grunted and then swivelled to address the compact cooker that was Germany’s contribution to family holidays in the 1950s.
‘My youngest,’ said Miss Tefeidiad, and got an answering snarl.
‘Don’t mind her,’ said Corve. ‘She’s been like that since Ralph de Mortimer married Gladys the Dark.’
‘So Scotland Yard is back in business,’ said Miss Tefeidiad. ‘Gaily rushing in where even the saints fear to tread.’
I wanted to ask where Beverley was, and how the Teme family just happened to have her phone. But if there’s one thing Nightingale has taught me, it’s to let other people talk themselves out before giving anything away. It’s something he has in common with Seawoll and Stephanopoulos, and all the top cops that I know.
‘I’m just lending a hand with the search,’ I said.
‘For the missing girls?’ asked Corve.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, we haven’t seen them,’ said Miss Tefeidiad. ‘I can tell you that for nothing.’
Lilly’s pale face emerged from the gloom of the camper van and looked around before fixing on me. ‘Do you want sugar?’ she asked. Her left eyebrow was practically hidden behind a row of studs, and loops of silver pierced her left ear from lobe to tip.
‘No tea for me,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
‘You could have said,’ she snorted, and withdrew.
‘Don’t you go back to sleep now, Lilly,’ said Corve. ‘We still want a cup.’
‘Let me tell you something, Constable Grant,’ said Miss Tefeidiad. ‘Where you are now is not London – it’s not even England.’
‘Yes it is, Ma,’ said Corve.
‘Only in a political sense,’ snapped Miss Tefeidiad over her shoulder, before turning a slightly less than reassuring smile on me. ‘We remember your lot when they first started, and a more arrogant collection of . . . gentlemen . . . you will never meet. But we have long memories that go all the way back, you see, back to when your beloved Thames was still scuttling around with his tongue jammed up a Roman backside.’
‘We used to get heads,’ said Corve. ‘The druids used to throw them in along with the other offerings.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Tefeidiad. ‘You got some respect in those days.’
‘Not that we’re looking for heads these days,’ said Corve. ‘We’ll take cash or goods in kind.’
‘So when your lot got themselves all massacred or whatever,’ said Miss Tefeidiad, ‘we weren’t exactly crying into our tea. And I have to say that we’ve got a little bit used to managing our own business in recent years. So, it’s not that we don’t like visitors . . .’
‘We love visitors, really we do,’ said Corve. ‘Liven the place up.’
‘But I think we’re going to have to insist on certain minimum standards of navigational etiquette in future.’ Miss Tefeidiad gave me an expectant look.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Stakeholder engagement is a vital part of our modernisation plans going forward.’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘do you want your girlfriend back or not?’
I wanted to tell them that she wasn’t actually my girlfriend and that they better release her before her mother, goddess of the important bit of the Thames, found out they were detaining her and came over to have words. But my life is complicated enough these days and I try not to make things more difficult for myself.
‘Yes, please,’ I said.
Miss Tefeidiad nodded and then looked over at Corve who got to her feet and went to the top of the tree-root stairs. I got up and followed to look over her shoulder.
‘Bev, love,’ called Corve. ‘Your ride’s here.’
She walked out of the pool stark naked – except for the lavender full-body neoprene wetsuit and a Tesco bag wrapped around her hair to keep it dry. She glared at Corve, and then turned her black eyes on me, her full lips twisting into a half smile.
‘You took your time,’ she said.
‘I’ve been busy,’ I said.
Beverley turned to Miss Tefeidiad. ‘Can I have my bag back?’
A purple sausage bag came flying out of the dark interior of the VW. Beverley grabbed it out of the air and slung it over her shoulder.
‘And I believe this is yours,’ said Corve and handed Beverley her phone. ‘Bit of a revelation, that,’ she said. ‘We didn’t know they made them waterproof – very handy.’
‘I can’t be doing with those things,’ said Miss Tefeidiad and sniffed.
Behind her, Corve made a face.
‘Laters, ladies,’ said Beverley and, grabbing my arm, urged me away.
‘So, you won’t be staying for tea then?’ asked Miss Tefeidiad.
Beverley urgently squeezed my arm, so I told them we couldn’t.
‘I have to get back to the investigation,’ I said.
‘That’s a shame then,’ said Miss Tefeidiad.
And me and Beverley got while the going was good.
‘Not a word,’ said Beverley, who was so keen to get away we were halfway back to the car before she realised that she was walking barefoot on gravel. We paused long enough for her to extract a pair of flip flops from her sausage bag and then walked briskly the rest of the way. She didn’t relax until we were in the car and the River Teme was a kilometre behind us.
‘That was close,’ she said.
‘What was all that about?’ I asked.
She pulled off the Tesco bag and shook out her locks, flicking me with water and filling the Asbo with the smell of clean damp hair.
‘I thought it would be quicker to get here by water,’ she said, rummaging in her carryall and bringing out a yellow and blue beach towel. ‘Should have used an M&S bag,’ said Beverly and started squeezing out her locks in bunches. ‘That bitch Sabrina failed to mention the weird sisters were still in residence and I ran right into them at Burford.’
‘They didn’t like you trespassing?’
‘I’m lucky to be alive,’ said Beverley. ‘You don’t mess with someone’s river without getting permission first.’
‘You should have driven up,’ I said.
‘I’d still have had to cross the Severn, and if you do that you’ve got to stop and give some respect to Sabrina or she throws a right strop,’ said Beverley. ‘I thought that if I was getting my hair wet I might as well take a short cut.’
‘What are you doing out here, anyway?’ I asked.
‘I’ve been deputised,’ she said. ‘And sent out to assist in your investigation.’
‘Who by?’
‘Who do you think?’ she said. ‘Your boss wanted someone out here who knew one end of a cow from the other.’
‘And that’s you, is it?’
‘One of us spent a year rusticating with their country cousins,’ she said. ‘And do you remember whose bright idea that was?’ She bunched her fist and punched me in the shoulder – hard enough that I almost put us in the hedgerow. ‘And did I get one visit?’
‘I
t was a difficult time,’ I said.
‘It was the Thames Valley,’ she said. ‘Not the moon.’
My phone rang – it was Dominic.
‘Guess who I’ve found,’ he said.
The interview room at Leominster’s cell block was as clean and as unused as the rest of the station. It was also missing the table that we in the Met have long come to see as an indispensable prop to bang papers on, push cigarettes across, make coffee rings on and, in extremis, put our head down on for a quick kip while no one was looking. Instead, there were two rows of three chairs bolted so that one row faced the other – just over an easy punching distance apart. There was nowhere to put papers or support one of those yellow legal pads while making notes. The briefs must hate it – which, speaking as police, I definitely saw as a feature not a bug.
Dominic who, unlike me, had done a couple of PIP courses (Professionalising Investigation Process) in interviewing, said that the open set-up allowed you to see the suspect’s – sorry, the interview subject’s – whole body language. You’d be surprised how many people nervously tap their foot when being questioned and how often the frequency of the tapping depends on how close to the truth you are.
Our ‘interview subject’ had brown hair, small narrow-set blue eyes and an unfortunate nose – he also had a foot tap that just wouldn’t quit. He looked like someone who knew he’d been a naughty boy.
Which was how Dominic had tracked him down, by asking himself what kind of no-good would someone have to be up to not to want to help the police with their inquiries. Given the quiet rural nature of the area, the list was distressingly long, ranging from sheep rustling, poaching, agricultural vehicle theft – a top of the line tractor being more expensive than a Lamborghini and much easier to sell in Eastern Europe – to fly-tipping and public indecency. Even hardened criminals, especially those that consider themselves the salt of the earth trying to get by, will come forward on cases involving missing kids. But none had. And, besides, a quick check revealed that nothing majorly criminal had occurred that night. Dominic figured that if it wasn’t fear of prosecution it might be sexual shame. And since Bircher Common, just up the lane from where the phones were found, was the local dogging site he concentrated his initial efforts on cars sighted accessing the common late that night. Fortunately, some of the locals, fed up with having their beauty sleep disrupted by the nocturnal revelries, had taken to noting down number plates. Fifteen minutes on the computer had got him a list of names and addresses and, by the time I was fetching Beverley out of captivity, he was knocking at the front door of the first on the list. One Russell Banks of Green Lane, Leominster.
Mr Banks had taken one look at Dominic’s warrant card and blurted out that it was in fact him who had left the phones at the crossroad, but he didn’t have anything to do with those missing kids, he’d never do anything to harm a kid for god’s sake, and please don’t tell the wife where he was that night.
‘Obviously,’ said Dominic, ‘the missus wasn’t a participant in our Russ’s escapades.’
The interview room was part of the custody suite downstairs and so had thick walls, making it remarkably cool compared to the rest of the nick. Even so, Russell Banks’s grey and blue check button-down shirt showed dark sweat patches under the armpits.
Dominic explained to Russell that he wasn’t under arrest but, for his own protection, the interview was being recorded on audio and video. And that any time he could just ask to leave. He said he was fine but could he have some water? I passed him a bottle of Highland Spring that we had in a picnic cooler. His hand was trembling.
‘We just want to know about the phones,’ said Dominic.
Russell nodded. ‘I found them,’ he said.
‘Where did you find them?’ asked Dominic.
‘Just short of the Mill,’ said Russell, which seemed to mean something to Dominic, if not to me.
‘Where were they?’ he asked. ‘Exactly?’
‘By the side of the road,’ he said. ‘On the verge like, just lying there and I thought it was strange but didn’t know it had anything to do with those missing girls, you know. Didn’t even know there were missing girls, until the next day when I heard it on the radio, like.’ His leg was practically a blur.
‘Why did you get out of the car?’ I asked.
His head snapped round to look at me.
‘What?’
‘You said you found the phones on the verge – correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you’d have to have got out of your car – yes?’
I personally would have gone with stopping for a slash, but I don’t think Russ was really thinking that clearly. We were pretty certain we knew roughly where he’d been, but members of the public have an unnerving tendency to switch straight from lying to your face to telling you what they think you want to hear – with no intervening period of veracity at all. That’s fine when you’re looking for them to put their hand up to some crimes and boost your clear-up statistics. But when the lives of two kids depends on the accuracy of the statement, you tend to be a bit more thorough.
He started to say something, but then closed his mouth suddenly and looked at Dominic in mute appeal.
‘So,’ said Dominic cheerily. ‘Where did you really find them?’
He told us the truth, although it took ages to pry all the sordid details out. Which just goes to show that if you want a confession, use a telephone book – but if you want the truth, you’ve got to put in the hours.
Our Russell had been out enjoying the pleasures of alfresco voyeurism and public sex on Bircher Common with likeminded individuals. Having satiated his carnal desires, he’d made his way back to where he’d parked his car and spotted, when he turned on his headlights, the phones by a gate into the woods. Thinking that one of his fellow swingers had lost them during the throes of passion, he left them at the war memorial in the hope that their owners would find them there – this being the accepted practice, apparently.
‘Does you good to see such neighbourliness at work,’ I said.
‘I bet you don’t get that kind of community spirit in the big city,’ said Dominic.
It took us another couple of hours to winkle out the names of the participants he’d recognised, and descriptions of others – ‘fabulous blonde’, ‘short hairy guy’ and ‘let’s just say he was lucky we were all doing it in the dark.’ Plus makes and models of their cars. This was all going to generate a ton of actions that would be dumped on a bevy of constables who would set forth to TIE every single one. I suspected the dogging scene in North Herefordshire was about to suffer a serious blow. People would just have to go back to having sex indoors for a change.
Fortunately for me and Dominic, what with me being a specialist officer, we could leave that to others.
‘We need you to take us to the exact spot where you found the phones,’ I said.
‘Okay,’ said Russell. ‘When do you want to do that?’
‘How much daylight do we have left?’ I asked Dominic.
‘A couple of hours.’
‘How about right now?’ I said.
I hadn’t thought the West Mercia Police were quite ready for Beverley, so just before my little tête-à-tête with Russell Banks I’d dropped her off at the Swan in the Rushes in Rushpool, and suggested that once we’d finished for the day Dominic might be able to help her with accommodation.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said. ‘I can take care of myself.’
I would have offered to put her up in the cowshed, but that sort of thing can be misconstrued. Or to be honest, accurately construed. And I didn’t think I wanted to go there.
Dominic put Russell in his boyfriend’s truck and I followed on in the Asbo as we drove back to Rushpool, up through the village, across the main road and up yet another narrow lane which twisted onto the ridge. We passed a rather fine cottage with a neat thatched roof, rattled across a cattle grid and parked in the open space beyond, just long enough for me to tra
nsfer into the truck. Then we proceeded up a flinty track that was rough enough to eat the bottom chassis of any family hatchback.
‘And you drove up here in your car?’ I asked Russell.
He said everyone did, which meant to my mind you could track all these doggers by their frequent trips to the garage. Dominic’s boyfriend’s Nissan made short work of the rough track, as it probably did of wild animals and anti-personnel mines. We climbed towards the ridge with woods on our left and a wide stretch of short grass to our right. After five hundred metres or so we ran out of car-destroying track and set out directly over the grass.
‘And you came all the way up here?’ I asked as the Nissan bumped and squeaked on its suspension.
‘Yes,’ said Russell.
‘In the dark?’
‘Yes.’
‘Boy, you really must have been desperate,’ I said.
‘You get a better class of people at the top of the common,’ he said. ‘There’s too many weirdos at the bottom.’
Russell directed us to a point just short of the ridge line where the fence that separated the common from the woodland was pierced by a five-bar gate, a wooden side gate and a wooden sign bearing the National Trust crest and a trail marker.
‘This is part of the Mortimer Trail,’ said Dominic.
We got out of the truck and Russell showed me where he’d found the phones – just on the bare patch that ramblers’ feet had worn in the grass in front of the wooden gate. I wasn’t going to get anything off that, but the metal was everything an investigatory wizard might hope for. I placed my palms on the top rail, trying not to make it look too theatrical, and attempted to sort through the random sense impressions, stray thoughts, sounds and fantasies that are definitely not vestigia. And for a moment I thought the gate was clean, until I realised what it was I was sensing. Nightingale once described vestigia as being like the after-image you get in your eyes after looking at a bright light, but what I felt at the gate was different. It was more like stepping out of a cool house on a bright sunny day – for a moment everything is a confusion of light and warmth, and then your senses adjust. Something powerful had happened around that gate and blotted out any other traces with the magical equivalent of white noise.