‘No. She’s trained to ignore them. It’s something else.’ The handler bent down, grabbed the dog by the scruff and shouted an order. The dog yapped once and looked up at the tor where a sheer rock face rose into the darkness. The dog gave a whine and shot across to a crack in the face, bounding upwards in a huge leap until it was a couple of metres from the ground on a small ledge. Short, sharp barks echoed for a moment before being snatched away by the wind.
‘We’ll not get up there,’ Campbell said. ‘Let’s walk round to the side of this little crag and we might be able to find an easier route.’
Sure enough Campbell was right. Twenty metres farther on a grassy slope led up the side, and they scrambled up and round until they stood atop the rock. A metre or so below them the dog perched on the ledge. She had found Forester. He wasn’t alive. In fact, as Savage would recall later, he didn’t even look human.
Chapter 18
St Ives, Cornwall. Saturday 30th October. 10.51 am
It took Tatershall a few days to get round to returning to St Ives. The missing couple didn’t figure high on the list of priorities and if DI Peters hadn’t badgered him he might not have bothered. However, a break in the weather at last brought a beautiful clear day and the prospect of a nice drive, a spot of lunch and the sun falling on Kate Simbeck’s perfect face was too much to resist.
Now he and Simbeck were leafing through the couple’s papers, trying to sort them in some meaningful fashion, Tatershall wearing his new glasses and trying not to feel self-conscious with them on. A few weeks back his wife had noticed him squinting at the evening paper and insisted he went for an eye test. The result had been a pair of the least biddyish looking reading glasses he could find and a feeling of age catching up with him. Simbeck had said the grey of the wire-framed glasses matched his hair and made him look distinguished, which hadn’t helped a whole lot.
Finding the big cardboard box in the back of a cupboard in the flat’s utility room had been a bonus because it seemed to contain the only solid evidence that the couple existed at all. The rest of the flat had been devoid of anything much personal. As if they didn’t want to be reminded of who they were or where they had come from. The box contained a number of manila folders, each stuffed with documents. From share certificates to a car registration, from a manual for the microwave to old utility bills.
‘It’s like everything else in the flat, sir,’ Simbeck said. ‘All practical stuff. Nothing emotional. No letters, no postcards, no birthday cards, no memories. A couple who didn’t want to remember anything from their past.’
‘Very poetic, but I am not sure it is the basis for a case against them.’
‘I wasn’t trying to say that. I just don’t understand how anyone’s life can be so sterile.’
‘Like her paintings?’ The gallery below the flat displayed several examples of the woman’s work, hyperrealistic watercolours of the harbour at St Ives with every detail painstakingly copied. You may as well have used a camera, Tatershall thought, though even a photograph would have had more warmth.
‘Exactly.’
They carried on the work, ploughing deeper into the box, making a note or two, but finding nothing to give them a handle on the couple’s life.
‘Remember, we are trying to find something to connect them with Devon, with Dartmouth maybe,’ Tatershall said.
They didn’t find anything. Tatershall even tried ringing Dartmouth police to see if they knew of the couple, but they didn’t. In fact the officer on the end of the line seemed to think he was a bit of a joker for even suggesting they might have. She asked if Tatershall realised how many hundreds of thousands of tourists visited Dartmouth each year. Tatershall didn’t know and didn’t want to know either, but the woman on the end of the phone proceeded to tell him anyway. The place sounded like St Ives, only with more boats. Feeling admonished Tatershall hung up.
‘Fucking idiots!’
‘Dartmouth?’
‘FootInMouth. No help at all. Bloody English tossers.’
‘Never mind.’ Simbeck stood smiling, mischief on her face. ‘Why don’t you come down and peruse my etchings instead, sir.’
She led him down the stairs and into the gallery where halogen light blazed from overhead. While he had been on the phone she had been having a nose around and from her expression she had discovered something.
‘There.’ She pointed at a picture on the wall. A little notice beneath said the painting was not for sale. Tatershall had to look twice to tell the image wasn’t a photograph.
‘And?’
‘The inscription.’
Tatershall looked again. The artist had signed her name and just above the signature were some tiny printed words: Netherston Cottage, South Hams, Devon, 1983.
‘An address, sir. No idea where, but I bet your new friends at Dartmouth nick could find out for you.’
Saturday morning and Savage had woken to the bed in motion; Jamie bouncing up and down and imploring her to get up.
‘Daddy is calling today.’
Jamie was right, Pete would call later. She had looked at the clock and noted the darkness behind the curtains. 6:30 am. Something like Christmas morning behaviour for Jamie. Nothing wrong with his enthusiasm, but considering her moorland excursion Thursday evening she could have done with a lie in.
Now it was mid-afternoon and Jamie and Samantha jostled in front of Savage’s laptop, Pete’s voice gurgling through the speakers, the kids’ own words tumbling forth in a stream of questions while at the same time Samantha Googled ‘Panama Canal’ and found a live webcam situated at the Gatun Locks. Pete told them about the passage up the coast of Chile and the journey through the canal and sent through some pictures of the ship navigating one of the locks.
Savage had spoken to him before calling the kids down and the only thing she could think of now were his opening words to her: ‘I’m coming home.’ Of course she had known already since the ship’s itinerary, barring unforeseen events, had been planned for months, but hearing the words had lifted her spirit and now she couldn’t stop smiling.
The children burbled on, Savage managing a word here and there, and then it was over, Pete’s ‘I love you’ echoing in the silence for a moment before Jamie asked for a biscuit and Samantha ran upstairs to text a friend.
For the kids Pete being away was nothing unusual. They missed him, sure, but they had grown up with his prolonged absences and a snatched call and a few emails each week was normality. Savage thought it stank and not for the first time she hoped he would settle for a desk job on his return. Improbable though and a little like her working fewer hours or not spending the coming night on Hardin’s undercover operation.
She went to the phone and dialled through to Stefan in the annex to remind him he was babysitting and then went upstairs to find something suitable to wear.
Savage entered the briefing room at the station at Charles Cross in the centre of town to a very strange sight. DC Carl Denton whirled around in the centre, dancing and singing, his mobile held to his lips like a microphone as he sang the first few lines from ‘Saturday Night’ by Whigfield. He ended with a fancy pirouette and sat down on Enders’s lap.
‘Anytime babe, anytime,’ Enders said, stroking Denton’s hair. ‘Only do you think you could lose the aftershave? I prefer my girls not to smell of old jockstraps.’
The station had never seen anything to match it. The room heaved with an assortment of colourful looking characters, some smart and suited and booted like Riley and some casual like Enders. Being as Sunday would be Halloween a few had even come in costume and Savage spotted two devils and a witch. As for Calter, she leant against a desk chewing gum, a right sight in a miniskirt Savage thought more suited for use as a belt.
