‘What, um …’ He coughed again. ‘What state was her jacket in?’
Fleet frowned slightly.
‘Was there … I mean, was it torn? Were there signs of violence?’
‘The jacket is intact,’ Fleet told him. ‘The blood is largely on the hood.’
He watched for a reaction, but all Ray Saunders showed was confusion. Again, if he was acting, he was extremely convincing. Fleet wondered how long it would take for either one of Sadie’s parents to show they had worked out what the blood being on the hood implied. Because if Sadie had been wearing the jacket, and the blood was hers, it would almost certainly have flowed from a wound to the base of her skull.
‘I wish I could offer you better news,’ Fleet said. ‘But there is no reason yet to give up hope. There is still the possibility that –’
‘Was it him?’
Alison Saunders’s voice stopped Fleet short. She was in the same precarious position on her chair, her eyes raw and her shoulders hunched, but she was facing Fleet now, confronting him, and her tears had dried on the sudden fire in her cheeks.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Saunders?’
‘Was it him? Mason Payne. And the rest of them. Those … children. My daughter’s so-called friends. They’re here somewhere, aren’t they? What have they said? What aren’t you asking them? If they know what happened to Sadie, why won’t they tell you?’
Fleet paused before answering. His training dictated that he should stick to the company line, that he should assure Sadie’s parents that he and his colleagues were making progress, but that it would take some time, and that obviously he wasn’t at liberty to divulge specific information relating to ongoing interviews. But that was bullshit, and Sadie’s parents would have smelled it. And although Fleet had his doubts about them, he felt that, on balance, they deserved better.
‘Sadie’s friends haven’t been able to tell us anything yet that might lead us to your daughter,’ he said. ‘They’re … confused. Understandably. And I have to stress that they are here voluntarily, and that there are limits on how much time we can spend with them. But rest assured –’
‘Voluntarily?’ spluttered Sadie’s father. ‘You haven’t arrested them?’
‘No one has been formally charged, no.’
‘Why the fuck not?’
Fleet flinched at the profanity. It wasn’t the word itself, but the fact it had come from Ray Saunders’s mouth. So far, from day one, the man hadn’t so much as raised his voice. But everyone had a breaking point, Fleet supposed. And he had no doubt that his own would have come much sooner.
‘Because, to put it frankly, Mr Saunders, we lack evidence. It would be an egregious error to make an arrest if we couldn’t back up our assertions in court.’
Egregious? Jesus, Rob. So much for plain speaking.
‘So what you’re telling us is that you’ve been barking up the wrong tree,’ said Sadie’s father. ‘This whole time you’ve been looking in the wrong direction, just like everyone’s been saying.’
Fleet had been watching both of Sadie’s parents closely, but like the confusion he’d shown before, the anger Ray Saunders was exhibiting seemed authentic. There was nothing to suggest he hadn’t genuinely come to believe what he and his wife had been hearing from their friends and neighbours. That Sadie’s friends perhaps weren’t to blame after all. That Fleet had been blinded by some personal vendetta. That he was at fault for what had happened in the woods, and that he’d allowed whoever was really responsible for Sadie’s disappearance to get away.
The irony in the sudden reversal of popular opinion hadn’t escaped Fleet. At first the community had been only too eager to interpret the police’s interest in Mason and the others as proof that Sadie’s friends had been involved. But now, after what had happened in the woods, opinion had flipped. People in the community were closing ranks – exactly as they had in the past.
‘Mr Saunders,’ Fleet said, ‘Mrs Saunders. I can assure you that we have been pursuing every line of enquiry that has been open to us. If you know my personal history, as I’m sure by now you do, then you’ll understand that there is nothing I want more than to find your daughter.’
Ray Saunders stood, pulling his wife up with him. Sadie’s father appeared too angry to speak. Alison Saunders was shaking her head, fresh tears tracking the make-up that scarred her cheeks.
‘You’re too late,’ she said to him. ‘Whatever you do now, whatever you say … it’s already too late.’
‘Mrs Saunders, I –’
‘I hope she haunts you,’ said Sadie’s father, and Fleet recoiled as though he’d been slapped.
‘Excuse me?’ he managed.
‘My little girl,’ said Ray Saunders. ‘Your sister, too. I hope they both do.’
‘One lump of cyanide?’ said Nicky. ‘Or two?’
She had a cup of coffee waiting for him in the kitchenette. Outside, the open-plan office was strangely quiet. Most of Fleet’s team were either down by the river or up in the woods. If you were a visitor, you wouldn’t know you were standing in the nerve centre of the biggest missing-person enquiry the south of England had seen in the past twenty years. Fleet didn’t want to think about how a journalist might paint the scene.
‘Give me all you’ve got,’ said Fleet, in response to Nicky’s question. ‘Just make sure it does the job. And I’d take quick over painless.’
Nicky clicked a single Canderel into the mug. The sweetener sank meagrely into the tar-coloured liquid.
Fleet frowned. There was a perfectly good bowl of sugar on the sideboard.
‘Just following orders, sir,’ said Nicky, seeing his scowl, and Fleet recalled how he’d asked her at the start of the investigation to refuse to put sugar in his coffee no matter how much he begged. It was a token gesture towards a healthier diet which, at the time, Fleet didn’t think he’d notice.
‘Besides,’ said Nicky, wincing as she sipped from her own mug, ‘not even the good stuff could improve the taste of this shite.’
Fleet gave half a smile. He
