“Why did Tracy go to McCready’s flat in the first place?”
“We think she dashed over to warn McCready that the police might soon become interested in him.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Better perhaps. Why do you think?”
“The question assumes that Tracy knew he was dodgy, if she felt she needed to warn him.”
“Maybe she did.”
“How?”
“We’re pretty sure that McCready supplied a good deal of E to the club scene in Leeds. Maybe other things, too.”
“Are you suggesting that Tracy takes drugs?”
“Who knows? Maybe she does. Who knows what kids get up to, Alan? But my point is only that maybe she knew somehow that McCready was involved in drugs, and she liked him enough to want to warn him. Young people have different priorities.”
“Then she took off with him?”
“It appears that way. I suppose it seemed like a bit of an adventure. Nobody had been killed, or shot, at that point, remember-a least the news of Patrick Doyle’s death hadn’t been announced before the time they would have left McCready’s flat, and his death was a Taser-related accident, anyway.”
“I suppose if he’d chucked Erin and taken up with Tracy, that might explain some of it,” Banks mused. “Would Tracy have known about the gun? How much had been on the news by then?”
“We hadn’t given the media any information by then, but the TV cameras on the evening local news showed the AFO walking out with a gun-shaped object wrapped in a tea cloth. It wouldn’t have taken a lot of imagination to figure out what had happened, if they were watching.”
“So McCready would immediately check on his gun and find it was gone.”
“Yes. But he might not have told Tracy what the problem was. We just don’t know.”
“I can tell you one thing for certain,” Banks said. “Tracy might have gone with McCready willingly at the start, but she’s not with him of her own free will now, not after what happened to Annie. Tracy may make mistakes, maybe she even takes drugs and has rotten taste in men, but she’s a decent girl at heart. I ought to know.”
“I’m not here to argue with you, Alan. As a matter of fact, I agree that she’s in serious trouble, and probably in danger, too. I don’t say that to alarm you, and I wouldn’t mention it if I thought you didn’t know it already. We need to find them and bring this to a peaceful conclusion as soon as possible.”
“How’s the search going?”
“We need more men. There’s a lot of countryside out there.”
“Where?” said Banks.
“Well, you’d know better than I would, but we doubt they took the road to Eastvale from your cottage because they’d have been seen. The patrol cars sent in response to the call kept their eyes open. That leaves the moorland to the south and the wild areas to the north and west. We’ve had the helicopter out, but they spotted nothing. We’ll be doing more aerial sweeps as the day goes on. We’ve got men on foot, patrol cars, the lot. But as I said, there’s a lot of ground to cover, and they could have gone in almost any direction. Is there anything more you can tell me about Erin Doyle? Had you seen much of her lately?”
“Not a lot,” said Banks. “You don’t when they grow up, do you? I’m afraid I’ve been a bit neglectful of even my own daughter, too. Obviously. It’s been a hard summer. Personal problems.”
“So would it surprise you to hear that Erin had a reputation for running a bit wild?”
“No more so than any other attractive girl her age, I shouldn’t think. But no, I wasn’t aware she had that reputation.”
“Liked bad boys.”
“That’s hardly unusual.”
“It explains McCready.”
“You’re assuming she knew how bad he was.”
“If she took the gun and knew he dealt drugs, she had to have some inkling.”
“Are you suggesting that whatever he was into, Erin was involved?”
“It’s a possibility we need to consider. She was hardly an innocent bystander.”
“Tracy, too?”
“I’m not saying that. If Tracy does have any sort of relationship with McCready, it’s a very recent one. Maybe they just fancied each other, and he was tired of Erin Doyle. But he’s shown his true colors now. She can’t be too happy about it. She must know she’s made a very bad error in judgment.”
“I’m sure she does,” said Banks. “What’s going to happen to Erin?”
“No idea. She’s still not talking.”
“I remember when she was a little kid,” Banks said. “Erin. She used to wear pigtails and she had freckles across her nose and on her arms. Cute. I took her and Tracy to Blackpool Illuminations once. They loved it. Though I think it was more the staying up late after dark than the illuminations themselves. They both fell asleep in the car on the way home. Brian, too.” Banks shook his head to clear the memory. “Sorry,” he went on. “You’re right. It’s a bit close to home.”
“When Juliet Doyle came to report the gun, she asked for you.”
“So Chambers said. Made quite a big deal of it, in fact. But it makes sense to me. She knows me. Turning in her own daughter must have been a terrible decision for her.”
“Do you reckon she thought you’d go easy on Erin?”
“Probably,” said Banks. “But I’d like to think I could have defused the situation without anyone getting killed.”
“Maybe you could have, but you weren’t here, and hindsight’s no use to us now.”
The phone rang. Gervaise answered it, listened for a moment, then thanked the caller and hung up. “That was Winsome,” she said. “We’ve just had a bit of a break. We found the car. Or a car. Up behind your cottage, on the moors road.”
Banks gripped the arms of his chair. “Abandoned?”
“Hidden in the woods behind a wall. Local birdwatcher found it, remembered the news about the shooting and reported it. Preliminary examination indicates the gears were stripped.”
“So they’re out on the moors on foot. They can’t have got far.”
“Don’t get too excited. We can’t be sure it’s their car yet. Though there is confirmation of sorts.”
“What?”
“The last entry in Annie’s notebook. It was the car’s number plate.”
“She must have made a note of it when she dropped by my cottage.
Seeing a strange car there would have struck her as odd under any circumstances.”
“Maybe. But that’s all there was. A car number. No time, place, or date. She could have seen it anytime that day, or even before. This wasn’t her official notebook, you understand.”
“But still…it’s a bit too much of a coincidence, isn’t it?”
“Yes. We’ve got men out on foot and in patrol cars looking, as well as the search and rescue team. Now we can narrow our search, concentrate on the moors. But it’s pretty wild up there, as you know. It looks as if they may have spent the night in a ruined barn about three miles from the cottage.”
“What do you think?” Banks asked.
“I think a city boy like McCready will be feeling too exposed up there. Twelve miles of bad roads, or no roads at all for the most part. He’ll want to find the nearest large village or small town and probably steal a car. Head for the city.”
“Risky.”
“Everything’s a risk since he shot Annie. And the stakes are high.”
“I know,” said Banks. “The nearest village is Baldersghyll. It’s not very big, though.”
“The local station there’s been alerted. There’s more. The car’s registered to a Victor Mallory. Lives in Horsforth, Leeds.”
“Stolen?”
Gervaise shook her head. “I don’t think so. Maybe. But according to Winsome, Victor Mallory comes up on West Yorkshire’s radar as one of McCready’s suspicious cronies.”
