‘Another word of advice, Rob,’ the superintendent said, as though reading Fleet’s mind. ‘Don’t go into politics. It ages a man quicker than cancer.’
Fleet sat down on a chair opposite him. Screens had been put up to cover the windows, but through a crack he could just make out a group of locals watching the divers from the bank of the river. ‘I’d say there’s very little chance of that either,’ Fleet said.
Burton’s smile flickered, then went out. ‘Rob, listen,’ he said, leaning forwards.
Fleet braced himself. Here we go.
‘There has been … talk,’ the superintendent said.
‘Talk, sir?’
‘People are saying – unfairly, I might add – that we messed up.’
The we being purely figurative, Fleet assumed.
‘This search party,’ the superintendent went on. ‘They’re saying we should have found them sooner.’
‘All I can say, sir, is that we would have found them sooner. If their parents had informed us they were gone. And if –’ Fleet stopped himself. It was true that the kids in the search party had only been reported missing almost thirty-six hours after they had apparently started out, but in his opinion that wasn’t the main reason they hadn’t been found. As soon as he’d heard the kids were gone, Fleet had wanted to divert some of the resources that were tied up in the hunt for Sadie, but Burton had wielded his veto. He’d justified it in all sorts of fancy ways, but the message, boiled down, was that it wouldn’t have looked right. There was a significant police presence in the woods now, of course, but to Fleet’s mind it was a clear case of shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted.
The superintendent had recovered his posture. ‘It’s easy to be wise in retrospect, Detective Inspector. And it’s unbecoming to crow I told you so.’
Once again Fleet was obliged to hold his tongue. The joke among Fleet and some of his peers was that, as a copper, you were forced to hold your tongue so much, you might as well have one hand tied behind your back.
The superintendent softened his tone. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m on your side, Rob. I am. That’s why I wanted to have this conversation with you. In private. Before things have a chance to escalate.’
Fleet waited.
‘All I’m trying to convey,’ Burton went on, ‘is the urgency that now applies to this situation. We need results, and we need them quickly.’
‘A teenage girl has been missing for a week,’ Fleet responded. ‘Nobody’s been sitting on their hands.’
‘I know that. And I know your strengths, Rob. There’s not a doubt in my mind that you’re the best person to lead this investigation. That’s why I appointed you in the first place.’
But? thought Fleet.
‘But the perception is, things are spiralling out of control. We don’t even know what we’re really dealing with. Two searches now, rather than one? Two murders, potentially – assuming we ever find Sadie? Added to which, there have been … complaints.’
‘Complaints?’
‘From the local community. A feeling has been expressed that you may be using this investigation to settle old scores. To do with that business between the locals and your sister.’
Fleet shifted, not trusting himself to speak.
Burton sighed. ‘We’re caught in the middle here, Rob. Half the town is asking why we didn’t charge these kids when we had the opportunity, if we were really so certain they were involved in Sadie’s disappearance. The rest of the community – not to mention the press – has decided that we put too much pressure on them. That it was our fault they set off in the first place. Which makes it our fault what happened out there in the woods.’
Fleet opened his mouth to respond, and Burton raised a hand.
‘I know it’s bullshit, Rob. If I’d had any concerns about your history here, I wouldn’t have brought you in. You’re a bloodhound. You pick up a scent and you follow it. All I’m saying is, if it turns out we’ve been on the wrong trail, and there’s no pot of gold at the end of it …’
‘The bloodhound will be in for a kicking,’ Fleet finished.
Burton looked at him coldly, as though Fleet were the one making his life difficult. He breathed, and Fleet got a waft of what the superintendent had eaten for breakfast.
‘There are two ways to look at this, you know,’ Burton said. ‘The fiasco in the woods, I mean. We can view it as the failure the press are already saying it was, and allow ourselves to be pilloried by the public. Or, we can see it as an opportunity.’
‘An opportunity, sir?’ Really?
‘To move things on. To get a result.’
‘An arrest, you mean. Someone to blame. If not for Sadie then for everything else.’
‘Or perhaps, in an ideal world, for Sadie as well.’
Fleet frowned. ‘I’m not sure I’m following you, sir.’
‘This Mason boy. The boyfriend. You’ve always liked him for Sadie’s murder.’
Careful, Rob, Fleet told himself. Be very careful.
‘I always suspected him, sir. Of something. Just as I’ve always had my suspicions about the rest of them. But there’s nothing to say conclusively that Sadie was murdered, let alone that Mason was the one to do it.’
‘But he’s your prime suspect. Correct?’
‘I … Correct.’
‘And he was out there in the woods with Sadie’s brother and the others? His prints everywhere, blood all over his shirt?’
‘They all had blood on them, sir. I told you, it’s a mess. We don’t yet know the full story. Which is what I’ve been trying to get across. The search party … it changes things. What we’re trying to work out is how.’
‘So a lesser charge, then. Possession, intent, something. Just for the time being, until we have enough to prosecute for
