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‘Busy time, they say. Everyone sharing tables. And the CCTV’s not helpful.’

  ‘That’s an odd thing about CCTV. You drop a bus ticket – not that you would! – and your mug’ll be there, fair and square. Someone doses a child’s drink and all you get is a foggy silhouette. Tom, I’m sorry: I interrupted!’

  ‘So you did, guv,’ he said equably. ‘I was saying if they did manage to isolate her abductor’s DNA, they’d still have to match it with DNA on the national register.’

  ‘Not to mention finding the owner and his whereabouts. I suppose he’s not made any demands for a ransom or anything?’

  ‘Not that I know of. Any news of Elise, by the way?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  His eyes rounded at the thought of test-driving the Lotus: ‘But why not take him up on his offer, guv? I’d give my teeth…’

  ‘I used to drive a Merc sports once,’ she recalled wistfully. ‘Pale blue convertible. But that was then, Tom, and this is now. At my age I want comfort and luggage and safety, as well as pzazz. But the lines, the colour, the sheer glamour – yes, it’s a super young person’s car.’ So why had Elise bought it? ‘It’s a pity you’re so valuable to Henson: you could go in my place.’

  ‘I could anyway if it’s so early—’

  ‘So you could!’ And save her the problem of an early morning after what she hoped would be a late night. ‘But the object of the exercise is really to talk to the cleaner, who might know the names and current whereabouts of the staff the current dealership let go. Apparently, although it trades under the same name and sells the same cars, it’s now got new owners. Don’t ask me how it works, because I don’t really understand. And I’m not looking for just any old employees, I’m looking for those who went on to other Lotus dealerships, remember. To lead us to a car-theft scam. So don’t lose focus when you whiz round Ashford’s lovely dual carriageways in a very pretty car. I’ll phone Stuart Timms and tell him you’ll be there about seven forty-five, shall I? On the other hand,’ she said regretfully, ‘you really ought to clear it with your DCI – just in case there’s a panic.’

  ‘It’s only spitting distance from where I live, guv. I’ll leave my mobile on – come on, who’s to know?’

  ‘But who’s to get found out if anything goes wrong? You and me! Clear it, Tom – or would you prefer me to?’ His face gave the answer. ‘OK. I’ll have a very quick word with Henson. But you’ll owe me – right?’

  Her motto had always been that coincidences happened to those who made them, so she would contrive to meet Henson while he was talking to someone in front of whom he couldn’t possibly deny her request. Mark, as ACC (Crime) would have done nicely, had it not been for the ambiguous ending to their phone conversation. The Chief Constable would have been even better, but it was clear from the cluster of sleek cars in the visitors’ spaces that Important People were in the building, and that he was their natural target.

  She saw Mark’s amongst the suits and uniforms striding towards the main meetings room. No chance of a private word to resolve the ambiguity of their phone call, then. But at least she could smile and flap a hand to him to re-establish that they were friends. He hesitated a moment, but, grinning like a schoolboy, took half a step back and stopped beside her.

  ‘You were right about the rumours,’ he said, his face by now straight as a clergyman’s at a graveside but his eyes less under control. ‘The Chief’s the main source, too. As a matter of fact, he’s just suggested we take over the room he and Mrs Chief had been allocated.’

  ‘It’d be a serious matter to disobey orders,’ she said, shaking her head solemnly. ‘It might be a terrible threat to your career.’

  ‘It might indeed.’

  The pause was one of the most glowing she’d ever known. At last she had to break it.

  ‘Meanwhile, Mark – I need a big favour. I want to borrow Tom for half an hour’s work tomorrow. An hour at most. It’s for the Elise case. And he’d do it much better than I. Man to man car talk. You know the sort of thing: salesmen thinking woman use gear-leavers for their handbags,’ she lied.

  ‘Of course. Tell Henson you’ve cleared it with me. Funny, he’s shaking down well, despite the rocky start – he’s making real progress.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Fran murmured non-committally.

  He stared intently at her face. ‘It’s you and Tom making the progress, isn’t it? You’re feeding Tom ideas!’

  She blushed. A blush, she noticed, not a flush. ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat, Mark. But just so Henson continues to think he’s wonderful, I shall make myself scarce this afternoon. Alan Pitt, the man in the Elise case, has taken it into his head to go walkabout just when they’ve started to move with the court case to end her treatment. And just when we think we’ve ID’d her, too.’

  ‘You’ve got that far! Well done!’ His face lit up with pleasure. He glanced at his watch. ‘Hell! No time for an update now—’

  ‘We’ll sort it. And Rebecca, too. But while we’ve plenty of time in the Elise case, the courts notwithstanding, we don’t have that luxury in hers. Go on, go to your meeting, Mark. Your carriage will call for you at seven.’ To the amazement and shock of both of them, she reached up and dotted a kiss on his lips. And swirled away like a girl at a dance.

  Or, she admitted to herself, like a girl of her generation at the sort of dance that involved layers of frothy petticoats under taffeta skirts.

  She thought back to herself as a girl just in her teens, her stiletto heels and American tan stockings, thinking she was the Belle of the Ball. It would have been nice to wear the lipstick she’d bought from Boots or somewhere – Outdoor Girl, in a very pale pink Ma had stigmatised as common. The hair she’d tried to grow for a French plait – the scraped earwig look Ma had derided – was held back by an Alice band, surely no longer fashionable by then. With her long slender limbs and size eight figure, she’d thought of herself as gawky at thirteen, but photographs of herself at the time told another story. Perhaps it was because she was the second child that there were so few photos of her in the family albums. The enlarged snapshot on the mantelpiece, alongside the studio portrait of Fran on her graduation day, showed her at her passing out parade almost comically severe. The dancing girl marched away, blue serge replacing the flirting petticoats.

  Tonight? She had no time now to get the sort of dress she’d promised herself, so she’d be elegantly tailored in a female equivalent of a man’s dinner suit. But at least, she told herself, she could sport fuchsia underwear.

  If Alan Pitt had indeed gone away for a long spell, he’d wisely left no signs, like drawn curtains, to attract intruders. His front gates were shut, but he was the sort of man who might well open and close them each day as he drove out of the garage. This had a metal roller gate, so there was no way to tell if it was occupied. No bottles cluttered his steps, but who these days didn’t buy supermarket milk if they were at work all day? Post? She tried peering through the letterbox, but her view was blocked by what looked like a sheet of green baize, so she couldn’t see if letters had accumulated. She made a note to check with Royal Mail or whatever they called themselves these days to see if he had asked for his post to be retained.

  Now for the neighbours. Her poking around had aroused depressingly little interest: she’d have preferred a Neighbourhood Watch representative to come yelling at her. Which neighbour should she try first? The one opposite was the far side of the busy A291, so it was unlikely that anyone would take a close interest. Left or right? As she mentally tossed up, the decision was made as a people-carrier pulled into the drive of the one on the left, a much-extended bungalow with a loft conversion. It disgorged three loud, school-uniformed children, the middle one of whom was about Rebecca’s age. The mother, in a voice that seemed to Fran to be deliberately projected, told the girls to change quickly so they wouldn’t be late for their musical appreciation lesson.

  Keeping her face impassive, Fran approached, ID in hand, and introduced herself. ‘I’m just won
dering, Mrs—?’

  ‘Harwood. Natalie Harwood.’

  ‘I was wondering, Mrs Harwood, if you had any idea what time Dr Pitt might be back.’

  ‘Is he in some sort of trouble?’ Clearly the woman felt some sort of gesture was called for, a metaphorical gathering of her chickens about her, but the children had already done as they were told.

  ‘Not at all. He’s been extraordinarily helpful in dealing with a woman with memory loss, and I wanted to update him.’

  ‘One of his students?’

  Now why should she ask that? ‘An accident victim. Do you know what time he usually gets home?’

  ‘I’m usually out ferrying the children somewhere: music here, dance there – you know how it is.’

  Fran’s smile indicated duplicitously that she could not only guess but sympathised with Mrs Harwood’s tough life. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘he did say last time we spoke that he might have to go away for a couple of days. I suppose you wouldn’t have any ideas?’

  Mrs Harwood was clearly under far too much pressure to take any notice of Pitt’s social life. Accepting Fran’s card with some reluctance, at last she said, ‘Maybe old Mrs Wallace?’ She gestured to the unextended bungalow the far side of Pitt’s.

  Old? Mrs Wallace might have been about sixty, but these days – and especially not in Fran’s book – surely no one of that age was considered old. Thin and with iron grey hair, she might have looked older than a woman resorting to hair colour, but she clearly had every one of her faculties, inspecting Fran’s ID before inviting her in. Moreover, Pitt trusted her enough to ask her to keep his spare key.

  ‘Some conference, up north somewhere, he told my husband. I thought it was a funny time of year for a conference, right at the start of the most difficult term, but perhaps I’m out of date in such matters.’

  It would be so easy to indulge them both by asking about Mrs Wallace’s past. The books lining even the small entrance hall were a sufficient clue. ‘You’ve no idea where or how long?’

  ‘He was in a great rush. I did ask, but it was like talking to the wind.’

  ‘And what day was that?’

  For the first time the woman looked less than sure of herself. ‘Hell, these senior moments! The trouble is, Superintendent, that you lose track of the days…’ She screwed up her face in an effort to remember.

  My God: imagine losing your marbles so young. Fran bit her lip in distress.

  ‘Let me think: Wednesday I was in Cambridge. Thursday was the London Library… So it must have been Friday. I’m sorry, Superintendent. I’m absolutely wrapped up in a research project and—’

  She could resist no longer. ‘What are you researching, Mrs Wallace? Or is it Professor?’

  The older woman chuckled. ‘It used to be. When I was teaching in Sheffield I got myself bogged down in a research project that was far too big for someone with a teaching commitment. A big, Casaubon-like project.’

  ‘Casaubon?’

  ‘A character in Middlemarch, Superintendent.’

  Fran grinned. ‘Ah! One of my retirement books! I have a list, Mrs Wallace, of books I ought to have read years ago. That’s about number five. I wish I could discuss the rest of them with you—’

  ‘But you really only wanted to talk about Dr Pitt. A strange man. Lives, as far as I can tell, an entirely blameless life, yet he seems to attract suspicion simply by breathing, does he not?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of any suspicion.’ Fran meant it as a statement, but willy-nilly it turned itself into a question.

  ‘There were one or two rumours, Superintendent. In the past we attended several conferences, having interests in much the same period. Indiscretions of the groping-the-waitress sort. It always seemed to me that, living a curiously cloistered existence, as soon as he found himself in a distinctly uncloistered environment he used to let himself out on the razzle whenever he got the chance.’

  ‘Why should his existence be cloistered?’

  ‘A self-imposed punishment, I fancy. Was there not a whisper of a student pregnancy?’

  Was there indeed? ‘But Professor: you were at different universities – how on earth would you hear such a rumour?’

  ‘Because one of my colleagues received the blame for the affair. That’s why he left Kent and came up north, where it might be supposed we take a more bracing view of such goings-on. Unfortunately he is no longer with us. A premature death, but I don’t think we can blame Dr Pitt for causing it. He was caught in a train crash. Some woman stalled her car on a level crossing. The train was partially derailed.’

  ‘You liked him?’

  ‘More than Pitt, yes. Who worries me.’

  ‘Why did you choose to live next to a man you had reason to dislike?’

  ‘Coincidence. I hope Hardy’s on your retirement list, too. I came down here because my husband’s job brought us. He’s on a year’s secondment – he may be an academic like myself, but his knowledge of biochemicals is useful to a pharmaceutical company down here. So for twelve months we’re strangers in a strange land. But we can’t wait to get back, Superintendent. And that’s nothing to do with Dr Pitt. We miss our friends too much. And I would prefer a neighbour other than Pitt, to be honest.’

  ‘Because of what he did to your colleague? Or because he’s a bad neighbour?’

  ‘As a neighbour he’s impeccable. On refuse day he puts out all the items carefully sorted for recycling; never plays loud music; maintains his dull little garden. What more could you want?’

  ‘A positively nice neighbour?’

  ‘Perhaps he is. All the same…’

  Fran surprised herself: ‘How do you rate his research?’

  ‘It’s in a different field from mine, of course, so I’m scarcely qualified to comment.’ She smiled, as other people smiled when they spoke of children or a favourite sporting moment. ‘Mine’s concerned with the rise and fall of the epistolary novel – novels written in the form of letters, like Clarissa, which ought to be another on your retirement list. He’s got this curious obsession with a novelist he actually professes to loathe, DH Lawrence. I can’t make him out.’

  Fran shook her head. ‘Neither can I. But he left neither forwarding address, nor any indication when he would return?’

  ‘Ah! To hear the neither/nor construction used correctly – and in dialogue such as this, too! You are, Chief Superintendent, a natural reader of the great English novel!’

  ‘And so I might be,’ Fran told Mark, ‘but it doesn’t get us any further forward with either case.’

  It was so good to hear her laugh, and to laugh with her. ‘I’m not clear why you’re pursuing this Pitt character with such vigour, Fran,’ he said tentatively, though even as a passenger in her car he might have been entitled to ask in an official voice.

  ‘Neither am I, not a hundred per cent. You’d expect me to be throwing my weight into the Rebecca investigation—’

  ‘Except, in the interests of preserving the peace you want to steer clear: I can quite see that.’

  ‘Or to be pounding on every Lotus dealer’s door demanding information – though I’ve done that by phone already: there should be a pile of faxes waiting for me tomorrow morning. But I’ve done something I’ve hardly ever done. I’ve arranged for my calls at work to be rerouted to my mobile. And I’ve got a round the clock trace put on any calls coming in.’

  ‘In case Pitt calls again.’ It wasn’t a question. He knew her too well.

  ‘Yes. I’m getting obsessed with him.’

  ‘You’re getting suspicious of him,’ he corrected gently. ‘Turn left here. I believe,’ he coughed ironically, ‘that there’s valet parking. And they deliver our baggage to our room. Pukka do’s, the Chief goes to.’

  ‘He does indeed.’ She handed over the car to the uniformed flunkey and walked up the broad steps of the elegant country house turned hotel side by side with him. She’d scrubbed up wonderfully well: there wouldn’t be a better turned out or more attractive woman at t
he function. Something had brought back the spring in her step and had straightened her back.

  He had wondered how she would dress tonight. Whenever he’d seen her at similar functions, she’d worn an evening version of her usual severe suits, and had never looked less than queenly. In this dress she looked almost sculptured: she didn’t need the flowing outfits some women wore, presumably to hide their expanded waists. He sucked his own stomach in. What if she thought him too old, inadequate as a lover? It had been so long, and then with Tina. Married sex was altogether easier, more predictable, safer.

  God, he wanted Fran now. Now.

  How would she feel? Was she a slow seduction woman or did she enjoy urgency?

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said out of the corner of her mouth, ‘let’s not mention Alan Pitt for the rest of the evening.’

  ‘What a good idea,’ he agreed, tucking his hand possessively under her elbow.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Mark, preparing to make the keynote speech, had retired to the cloakroom for a post-dinner spruce. Fran did the female equivalent, wanting no criticism to come his way because the dish of supposedly upmarket pheasant (it had in fact proved almost impenetrable) had eroded her lipstick. She took the opportunity to check for phone messages. There were none, neither directly to her nor redirected from HQ. So far so good. Why then did she feel so uneasy? It was the sort of feeling she had when one parent or the other was ill. She checked her watch – it was too late to call Devon now, her parents’ bedtime being nearer eight than ten. Then, of course, one or other would wake to use the commode in the night, and both would complain of insomnia. In vain she’d tried to persuade them that going to bed later would ensure a better night’s sleep. Pa insisted that he wanted to get a few hours in before Ma’s tooth-grinding woke him, hard to comprehend since she wore dentures, and Ma demanding the chance to beat her husband’s snoring, entirely credible because his stertorous breathing could fill the entire bungalow. She stared at the phone – was it really too late?