In the past twelve months, there’d been several cases of sheep rustling, but more recently even the sheep were getting thinner, barely meat enough on their bones to warrant all that up and down through the heather. The only reason Cordon hadn’t jacked it in and walked away before his thirty years were up, he hadn’t wanted to give his bosses the satisfaction.
Besides, there wasn’t so very long now to go.
So he reported for duty, clocked in, clocked off, kept Home Office directives piled high in a corner until there were enough for a decent bonfire, happy enough to let the powers that be forget he was there.
At home, he sat with his feet up, reading, listening to music, rationing the Scotch. A mishmash, where the music was concerned: Mingus with Eric Dolphy at Cornell; Bach
Opposite the one comfortable chair was a television set with its screen turned to the wall. Occasionally, as if to remind himself of the world beyond his own, he would swivel it round and watch the news. Bankers and captains of failed industries slinking wantonly into the shelter of their offshore accounts with their air-brushed mistresses or surgically reconstructed wives; men whose pensions would bring them more in a year than many of the men Cordon knew would earn in a lifetime. Trollope all over again. We never learned.
Hungry, he took the remaining half of pork pie from the fridge. He was just levering the cap from a bottle of Tribute ale, when the mobile sounded from his coat pocket across the room.
The custody sergeant in Penzance. ‘Woman here, sir. Bit of a state. Half out of her head on drink and I’d not like to say what else. Not making a lot of sense.’
‘My concern?’
‘Asking for you, sir, that’s all. Thought you’d like to know.’
‘She have a name?’
‘Carlin.’
Cordon stopped his breath. ‘Rose? Rose Carlin?’
‘Maxine.’
‘You sure it’s not Rose? Or Letitia. She could be calling herself that.’
‘Maxine, that’s what she says. Maxine.’
Cordon looked at his watch. A quick drive eastwards around the bay. Newlyn to Penzance. His car parked at the bottom of the hill. ‘I’ll be right there.’ Pressing the cap firmly back on to the bottle, he took a healthy bite out of the pie and reached for his coat.
The custody sergeant pushed the paper he was reading aside.
‘Sorry to call you out, sir. Only way to shut her up.’ He nodded in the direction of the cells.
‘She’s under arrest?’
‘There for her own safety. Thought she might sleep it off.’
‘Be suing you, next thing you know, false imprisonment.’
The sergeant made a face. ‘Human bloody Rights Act, like as not succeed.’
The door to the cell was unlocked, the air inside vinegary with disinfectant. Maxine Carlin lay curled in one corner, face to the wall. She turned only slowly when he spoke her name.
One side of her face was pinched tight, the corner of her mouth aslant; a scab above the right eye had been picked away down to the pink skin beneath. He could smell the drink on her from where he stood.
‘You wanted to see me?’
‘Took your bastard time!’
‘Wanted to talk?’
‘Not here.’
She could only walk unsteadily at first, ignoring Cordon’s proffered hand. Once they had reached the car, she leaned against the roof until her breathing had become more regular and her head had begun to clear. He drove south past Morrab Gardens and parked along the West Promenade, windows wound down, waiting while, painstakingly, she rolled a cigarette. Faint, under the occasional clamour of gulls, he could hear the rhythmic shushing of pebbles as the tide moved them up and back along the beach.
‘It’s about Letitia?’ Cordon asked.
‘That stupid bloody name!’
‘Rose, then. What you wanted to see me for, it’s about your daughter? About Rose?’
‘She’s gone missing, i’n’t she?’
Missing, Cordon thought: missing from where? He hadn’t clapped eyes on her in months, years.
‘Her father, he rung me. She was supposed to be going down to see him, stay for a bit. Hastings, where he’s got some excuse for a bloody bookshop. Down from London. Never turned up. Never showed.’
‘Changed her mind, perhaps.’
‘Called him, didn’t she, right before she left. Charing something?’
‘Charing Cross?’
‘Maybe. I dunno. Meet the train, she told him. Waited half the day. Her mobile switched off each time he tried. Got on to me in the end, see if I knew anything. I didn’t know a bloody thing.’ She flicked the cigarette away in a shower of sparks. ‘Since she moved up there, London, we’ve not exactly kept in touch. Not like when she was here. Used to be, we was more like sisters. These last few years, never tells me a thing. More secrets’n the Queen of bloody Sheba. Don’t even know where’s she’s living. Not properly. Never been there, never been asked.’
Cordon nodded. ‘All this was when? When she was supposed to meet her father?’
‘Last week. Beginnin’ of last week. Right after New Year.’ She rubbed a cracked fingernail against the corner of her eye.
‘The two of them, they were close then?’
‘When it suited him.’
‘But she did see him?’
‘Like I say, when it suited him, miserable bastard.’
‘And this time, no explanation, she just never arrived?’
‘Christ! Didn’t I just bloody say so?’
‘You’ve tried contacting her?’
‘Much good it did me. Old mobile number, that’s all I had. Waste of bleedin’ time.’
‘And you’ve not got an address?’
‘Just this. Here.’ Maxine started scrabbling in her bag. ‘Place she used to work. Housekeepin’, somethin’ like that. Never said too much about it.’
She pushed a piece of paper into his hand. A street name and house number in London, N16.
‘And this was when? When she was working here?’
‘A year back, got to be. Maybe more. Something though, isn’t it? If you’re lookin’. Somewhere to start.’
Cordon sighed and folded the paper carefully into his top pocket. She’d been missing, if missing she was, for just a week, not yet quite two. No time, no time at all. The air through the open windows was cold and getting colder, a breeze lifting off the sea.
‘You’ll do what you can? To find her?’
Cordon turned away. The lights farther around the bay suggested home, a glass of whisky and a warm bed.
‘You will?’
‘I could make a few inquiries from here. Get somebody to go round, maybe, check that old address. Beyond that, I don’t think there’s a great deal I can do. Not until we know more. Grown woman, independent. No suggestion of foul play. She’s probably fine. Just changed her mind. Last moment. It happens. Went somewhere else instead. Friends.’
‘You’ll do fuck all.’
Down on the beach a dog was barking excitedly, chasing shadows across the dark.
‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘Fuck all. You’ll do fuck all.’
Cordon sighed.
