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  ‘No passport. Everything a woman might need was there – even make-up and tampons, for goodness’ sake. But I never saw her passport. And before you ask, no, I didn’t point this out to him at the time. Or, in fact, to the police. I might be a city lad, Fran, but after that afternoon, I agreed with her parents and everyone else that she was better off without him. As a matter of information, I had my own bonfire: the bill I’d prepared, and the entire file.’

  ‘But not the cash for the bribe?’

  He might have blushed. ‘Come on, I’m only human. But I can see from your face the information about the passport was what you were after. Unless Natalie’s parents kept it?’ He sounded very dubious.

  She decided to trust him, for the time being at least: ‘What do you think? Quite. Did he ever say anything about his parents?’

  ‘Dad died down the pit. Didn’t get on with his mother, though I know he paid her a good allowance. He may still do. If he filled in a standing order, then he’s probably forgotten all about it. Not my problem. His accountant’s. I made sure he had one of those when Natalie left him, by the way.’

  ‘What about her parents? Did he see much of them?’

  ‘Liked her dad, loathed her mother. Surprise, surprise. I never interviewed them: even I would have thought it was intrusive.’

  ‘According to Mrs G, they didn’t even know you’d been employed.’

  ‘Fi said that she’d go berserk if she knew. The police certainly did, which is why Fi got the boot. Well, impugning their honour and all that. How do they feel about your talking to me now?’

  ‘I’m not answering direct to Colin Webster any more.’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘Now that is interesting. I wonder why. Frankly, I’d never have recommended working for him in the first place – a supine little man, as I recall, even in those days obsessing about budgets, with a weather-eye, of course, on promotion. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, eh? Who’s he toadying up to these days? The new CC’s as milky-mild as they come.’

  ‘We’ve never had the pleasure,’ she said. ‘I did meet the commissioner once – in the loo,’ she added, ready to employ a bit of charm herself. ‘As one does. Opinion about her is sharply divided, isn’t it?’

  ‘Alpha female, locally born, good-looking – she’s bound to have enemies,’ Desmond responded mildly, looking at her under his lashes. ‘Though I gather she’s thrown her weight around as commissioner more than you’d expect and got up some male noses. That’s all.’

  ‘Just dish the dirt, Desmond. I can’t believe you don’t have any. We’ve both got jobs to do.’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘Connection with Foreman? No? Don’t tell me there’s a connection with Natalie! They must be pretty well exact contemporaries. Her parents claim they don’t recall any of her friends; she’s not one of them, is she? Dear Lord, fancy missing that one.’

  ‘I don’t know. Seriously. But there’d be a sporting connection, wouldn’t there?’

  Fran clapped a hand to her forehead. ‘Between Natalie and Dundy! Of course. And at this point we’re supposed to bow out gracefully,’ she added furiously.

  What’s your budget, Fran? I could sniff round for you. Maybe get a result within twenty-four hours?’

  ‘Zero in answer to your first question. Sorry. Oh, shit.’

  ‘If I do it anyway?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll get your reward in heaven, if not elsewhere.’ She dug in her bag. ‘If you get anything, these are the guys to call. IPCC. You see, Desmond, it’s them I’m working for now.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, getting to his feet and shaking her hand warmly, ‘I wish you were working for me.’ She smiled a dry negative, but he kept her hand. ‘In fact, you and your husband. The BOGOF principle.’

  ‘As in supermarket offers on lettuces? If you want to get Mark for free,’ she declared, throwing her head back and laughing, ‘you’ll find the initial unit price is pretty high.’

  She was about to nose out of the service area car park when an idea crawled belatedly into her mind. They shouldn’t ever have been looking for just a missing woman; they should have been looking for her grown-up son, too. Phil Foreman’s son, the one with amazing ball skills. She killed the engine and texted Naz. With IPCC resources they could enhance the photos of young Hadrian to add twenty years to his life, and, with Naz’s extraordinary ability, he might just pick out from a load of sporting mugshots a young man with ball skills good enough to put him in the public arena. Probably not football – she couldn’t imagine that having gone to all the trouble of leaving Phil so deviously, Natalie would risk someone in the game recognizing him.

  A reply warbled back almost immediately. Can do!

  But what could she do? Nothing. And where should she go?

  She texted again, asking for a renewal of her visitor’s pass to Hindlip. Access All Areas, this time.

  ‘Independent Police Complaints Commission?’ Mrs Garbutt repeated, staring from Dan to his card and back again. ‘But we haven’t made any complaints.’ Standing impregnably on her doorstep, she folded her arms and watched the rain drip from her visitors.

  ‘You may be about to, Mrs Garbutt.’

  Mark noticed that his colleague made no attempt to ask to use her first name. As Fran had realized, she was not a likely candidate for first-name informality.

  ‘Well, complaint or no, you’ll have to come back another time. It’s not convenient. You should have phoned to warn me. I’m doing my housework. And before you say you don’t mind, let me tell you, young man, I do.’ She looked at her watch, a handsome modern one, and smoothed her skirt, which was surely far too smart to wear while wielding a duster. ‘Four at the earliest. Understand?’

  They understood, retreating to the car and driving away. But not very far. Just out of sight. Obbo time. Just like when they’d been young officers. Mark could almost taste the cardboard-flavoured tea and coffee.

  ‘Just who might she be expecting?’ Dan asked, releasing his seat belt and leaning back. ‘Someone she doesn’t want us to meet, evidently. Any ideas?’

  ‘Too many for any of them to be worth sharing – from the police commissioner down to our landlady, via the chair of the WI and the nanny Natalie once employed. The last two would almost certainly fill in the pieces about Natalie’s disappearance, which I’m sure, apart from wasting police time, of course, involves a reasonably harmless conspiracy. They weren’t to know about Natalie’s financial activities, and would probably have considered siphoning funds away from an unlikeable husband a good idea. The first, of course, would be – no, could be – much more serious.’

  ‘Who else would have the clout to get an ACC sacked and the investigation suspended?’ asked Dan.

  ‘Apart from the commissioner, the chief constable himself?’

  ‘Quite. I must say, Mark, between ourselves, you seem to have had a bit of a blind spot where he’s concerned, if your emails to me are anything to judge by.’

  Stung, Mark stared straight ahead. ‘You’re right. Possibly because we’ve never met him. He’s given us not so much as a nosy look in the corridor, let alone a polite welcome. To do him justice they say he’s forced to spread himself very thinly, and we’ve heard nothing bad against him. Mind you, if we’d not been chucked out of the building yesterday we’d certainly have wanted to talk to him.’

  ‘OK, and have you actually interviewed the commissioner?’

  ‘We focused our informal enquiries on her. Yesterday was the strangest in my police life: I felt like a victim, not an investigator. Vulnerable. Impotent. We didn’t even know if one of our own little team was involved in stealing the documents and trying to hack into the iPad. Still don’t, actually. And then the villagers turned on us. Not quite a lynch mob,’ he added with a chuckle, ‘but when I said that one of the people Mrs G might be expecting was the chair of the WI, I wasn’t joking.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Dan said quietly, ‘we may just be about to find out. There’s a car pu
lling over on to their drive now.’ He clocked the reg and spoke into his radio. The ID crackled back immediately. ‘Now who might Ms Anna Fratello be?’

  ‘The Foremans’ nanny. Sacked a couple of weeks before Natalie went missing. Fled to Italy as soon as she knew we wanted to talk to her, but now – as you can see – back here. Do we barge in now or let them start talking?’ He added, though he hated the words, ‘Your call – you’re the boss.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  As she pulled over her head the Access All Areas lanyard handed to her by a bemused-looking Charlie, Fran did a double-take. Sandra Dundy had walked straight past her in the direction of the women’s loos. Talk about déjà vu. This time their conversation wouldn’t be about haircuts.

  She ran a mental check. Posture – non-threatening; face – open, relaxed. Her breath might match her pulse rate for speed, but she mustn’t let it show. Right. Apparently reading all the safety notices, she hovered long enough to let Dundy retire to a cubicle. Now it was time to stroll in as if all she was worried about was finding her comb. Except she leaned heavily on the door: she didn’t want anyone else to come in and certainly didn’t want Dundy to be able to escape. So far so good. Except that two of the five cubicles were in use. She might just have to wait outside to pounce; if it came to running, there’d be no contest between her shoes and Dundy’s.

  But when one woman started to speak to the other she abandoned all thought of lurking outside. Sensing the conversation wasn’t going to be about hair or hormones, she switched her phone to Record. One voice was Dundy’s, of course. Thank goodness it was neither Paula nor Robyn she was speaking to. She really didn’t want them implicated in any of their misfortunes. So whose was the other?

  ‘Time to go in?’ Dan asked, as if he needed Mark’s permission.

  ‘Sure,’ Mark agreed, already shifting in his seat when his phone warbled. ‘No. Hang on one second. This is from Fran. Sandra Dundy’s at Hindlip.’

  Dan nodded. ‘Excellent. Right – no, hang on.’ A text on his phone this time. ‘Naz. Look at this, Mark. This might stir things up in there.’ He rubbed his hands in glee at the understatement. ‘Let’s go. Oh, bloody hell. Who’s that?’ he added, as another car joined Anna’s on the Garbutts’ drive.

  Mark smiled grimly. ‘I told you I wouldn’t be surprised if the WI were involved. That’s their chairwoman. Correction: Madam Chairman. Sandra Mould.’

  Dan rolled his eyes. ‘All these women! Or are they ladies?’

  ‘That remains to be seen. When I was a beat bobby, I always thought girls were far harder to deal with than blokes.’

  ‘Absolutely. You knew they’d be violent – but the women were transformed into biting, scratching harpies, with language to match.’

  ‘These women may turn into harpies, but I think we can rely on them to be genteel, well-spoken harpies. I’d suggest we go for our very first plan, which was a formal apology. And take it from there. Ready? No, hang on. Someone else is arriving.’

  A man this time. He emerged from a car that was weirdly familiar – though heaven knew there were enough silver Fiestas on the road. He could have done with Naz’s powers of recall. Except that as soon as the driver stepped out, Mark knew him straight away. ‘An ex-cop,’ he told Dan. ‘Part of the original search party, but not part of the investigation itself because he had a family connection with the missing woman.’

  ‘Do you want to intercept?’

  What was Dan doing deferring to him? Perhaps in the younger man’s eyes an ACC trumped a chief superintendent despite his year’s retirement. ‘Let’s let him join the others, shall we? Day’s his name, by the way. Ted Day.’

  If Fran’s reaction to the sight of Dundy emerging from the cubicle was surprised pleasure, Dundy’s was one of fury mingled with terror.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here? This is harassment. You’re stalking me! Leave me alone!’ Her voice was loud and shrill. In response, the other woman emerged too, eyes blazing.

  Fran’s smile broadened. ‘DCI Sumner, I presume.’ She texted Naz to come and ride shotgun.

  At first Naz ushered all three women not to an interview room, which would, Fran admitted, have been crude, but by a stroke of typical police irony to the room that she and Mark had briefly occupied. Some of their notes were still on the wallboard. She stood near the window, so that had there been any sun her face would have been shaded. The interview, after all, was between Naz, Sumner and Dundy; her role was primarily to observe, though Naz might well call on her to participate if necessary. She toyed, but very briefly, with making tea or coffee in the mugs she and Mark had disdained, but rejected the notion. Meanwhile, a nervy plain clothes officer, presumably someone who knew her well, came to escort Sumner to another room.

  How would the young man play this? It would have been nice to plan the interview beforehand. Would it have been disrespectful to the commissioner to leave her to stew a while on her own? Or even more so to question her ineptly? But there was nothing inept about Naz, who was swift to remind Dundy that this was simply an informal talk, prior to a formal investigation of possible police corruption.

  ‘I’d like you to look at this, Ms Dundy, and tell me who it is.’ He slipped a large photograph from a card folder. Fran was as nonplussed as Dundy. Then it dawned on her that Naz might be showing the result of the party trick she’d hoped he would perform. From somewhere he’d conjured a colour photo of a bronzed young god clutching helmet and gloves and schmoozing up to a glossy horse.

  Dundy shook her head dismissively, but then stared, as if despite herself. Her eyes slid from it to Naz, back to the photo and then to Fran. Fran had no trouble looking impassive, since the photo was just the wrong distance for her eyes. But she’d have placed bets on it being the lad who once shared tennis coaching with Thomas, Dean Redhead’s son.

  ‘Why are you showing me this?’ Dundy gathered her assurance round her like a cloak.

  ‘You tell me. You do recognize him, don’t you? Once he was called Hadrian Foreman. Now he’s Adrian del Castro. I’ve looked for one of his mother, maybe Mrs del Castro now, but she seems to have slipped from the photographic radar. If I have time to scan the crowds at one of this young man’s polo matches in Argentina, I’ve no doubt I’ll find her.’

  Fran nodded. Argentina would be a good choice for someone with a degree that included Spanish. And, as she recalled, extradition between the two countries wasn’t almost automatic in some cases, unsurprising given the Falklands issue.

  Naz picked up the questioning again. ‘Would you like to tell us what part you played in all this? No? You see going missing isn’t an offence. Neither is investing your husband’s money, provided you have permission. Nor is leaving him if he’s abusive, though it’s nice to get a proper legal settlement. I wouldn’t cross the street to question Natalie, let alone the Atlantic. What is infinitely more problematic is when someone in your position breaks the law.’

  ‘It was minor. It was trivial.’

  ‘In that case there’s nothing to worry about.’ Naz looked at her as if he was about to paint her portrait. He held up another photo. ‘Is this of you?’ With a quick sideways smile, he turned it for Fran to see. ‘Of course it isn’t. It’s Natalie, isn’t it? But you’re as like as two peas.’

  Fran nodded. ‘You could almost have been sisters. Swapped clothes.’ And then she knew. ‘You could have swapped passports.’

  ‘What proof do you have?’

  ‘Your reaction for a start. But we can easily check to see if you reported yours lost when you were in your late twenties. Did she pay you? Or did you do it out of friendship?’ Fran added more kindly.

  Dundy looked exclusively at Naz, as if to blank Fran. But she got no help there.

  ‘Answer the question, please, Ms Dundy. As I’m sure you know, the more cooperative you are, the more lenient any sentence is likely to be. Though I have to confess I don’t see you being able to continue in your present role.’

  Fran tried hard to feel sor
ry for her, but remembered her lucrative business would probably welcome her back and become even more profitable, assuming the community accepted what she’d done as a mere peccadillo.

  Perhaps the word confess had a subliminal effect. ‘We ran a lot together. Sort of rivals, I suppose. But we became close. Funny, I’d always thought of myself as being as hetero as they come. And I do now. But – I loved her. I’d have done anything for her. Lending her my passport didn’t seem a big thing. OK, giving.’

  Naz frowned. ‘But yours wouldn’t have Hadrian on it.’

  ‘Of course not. He must have had his own, because sometimes he travelled with her, sometimes with his dad. He worshipped him, Phil did. That was the only part I didn’t like, leaving the man absolutely distraught. They say he couldn’t even face seeing the spot Hadrian had disappeared. Anyway, I got my new passport, and got on with my life. Until all this unsolved cases business came along. I was all in favour of the force improving their clean-up rates but never imagined they’d look at this one.’

  ‘And you leaned on them to stop it?’

  ‘I told them I wasn’t at all happy. For heaven’s sake, why pick on a missing person case when there were a load of others involving real criminals? I think they thought it would be – shall we say, a soft target?’

  ‘Leaned on whom, precisely? Ms Dundy, we need names. Now.’

  Dundy’s smile was steely. ‘That would be to incriminate myself and them.’

  Fran returned smile for smile. ‘Your phone will give plenty of evidence. And I can tell you now, we’ll be investigating from the chief constable downwards. Let me mention some names. Then you can tell me how you know them – where you met, and so on. We’ll start with the chief constable, shall we?’

  ‘Of course I know him. I meet him every day.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Naz said soothingly. ‘But when and where did you first meet?’

  ‘I can’t recall.’

  ‘How about Mr Webster?’

  ‘Another stupid question. Since he’s assistant chief constable we’re also in pretty much daily contact.’