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  ‘Why old?’

  ‘Newer Transits take a sixteen inch. Like Smudge’s brother’s Custom. This is a fifteen, like I said.’

  Singh nodded. ‘All right, let’s think about that. A man who drives an old Ford Transit. A small trader perhaps.’

  ‘If business is all right most of them will upgrade. Smudge told me that.’

  ‘A small trader just scraping by then. Or a solo courier. Or someone not bothered about fancy extras or a bit of rust. Gardeners, perhaps. Clearance guys.’ He looked at Garvie. ‘I didn’t know you were interested in vans.’

  ‘Couldn’t care less about them. That’s why it’s lucky I got Smudge. He’s a real van whisperer.’

  ‘Are you sure about all this?’

  ‘Let’s pretend I am. It’ll save time.’

  Singh nodded. Picked up his phone.

  ‘It’s gone midnight,’ Garvie said.

  ‘It’s OK. He’s a friend.’

  ‘You’ve got a friend?’

  Singh ignored him. Instead, as the phone rang, he said softly, ‘Why did you come here to tell me this?’

  ‘You need help. You’ve just about run out of time.’

  The phone was answered.

  ‘Bill? Raminder here. I know you’re at home. Sorry it’s so late. Remember the check you ran on owners of vans? No, it was fine. I saw all of them except three. If I remember, a Brickfields decorator, a man from Tick Hill, and someone called, I think, PJ. I didn’t proceed with them because at that point we went in a different direction. Now we’re back again. Do you have access to the information? Thank you. Which, if any of them, has a Transit? Yes, the bigger model. Yes. I see. Thanks. No, that’s good. I’ve got the addresses.’

  He hung up.

  ‘The decorator and this man called PJ both drive a Transit. But the decorator’s is brand-new.’

  ‘Who’s this PJ?’

  ‘He lives the other side of Froggett Woods. Camps out. An eccentric, apparently.’

  ‘What’s he do?’

  Singh paused. ‘That’s the thing. He does odd jobs. Gardening. A bit of clearance.’ He pinched his lip with his fingers, frowning. ‘I missed this. I must go now. Excuse me.’

  He went out of the room and down the stairs.

  He said to Garvie, who had fallen in behind him, ‘How will you get home?’

  ‘You can give me a lift after we’ve seen PJ.’

  Singh stopped. ‘No, no. You’re not coming with me.’

  ‘Identify the tyre tread by yourself then?’

  ‘Hand me your drawing.’

  Garvie put it in his pocket.

  Singh glanced at his watch and said without moving his lips, ‘Just make sure nobody sees you.’ And they turned together down the stairs to the sally port.

  21

  They turned off at the car plant and drove briskly uphill towards Froggett. It was pitch-dark; fields and copses around them were invisible. Clouds in the night sky were pale and wispy like the faint nightbreath of the black trees.

  Records had phoned through supplementary details about the man called PJ. His name was Peter James Atkins, and he was fifty years old, ex-army. He’d done a tour of Iraq in 2003 and come back a mess. Now he lived in a converted garage in the woods, a peace activist, smoker of dope, hippyish mentor to the young, working occasionally as an odd-job man, specializing in garden clearance, supplemented with stints for a dispatch company and nights at a self-storage depot on the city ring road. He was a loner. Several complaints had been made against him for harassment and loitering – one, Garvie noted, by the headteacher at Marsh Academy – but none upheld.

  ‘One of the strangest things,’ Singh said, ‘is that for a time he was personal chauffeur to Nicholas Winder. You remember, Imperium’s owner.’

  He passed Garvie his phone. A number of photographs of PJ had come through on it. The man had a squarish jaw, deeply lined face, pierced ears and nose, and tombstone teeth. Smiling, he looked wary and frightening. His ponytail was grey and frayed. He had strong hands and tattooed knuckles. He subsisted on herbs from the woods, and roadkill.

  ‘Mentor to the young,’ Garvie said. ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘He’s worked with local authorities in the past as a guardian or sponsor of vulnerable young people.’

  ‘In the past?’

  ‘He was debarred from further employment five years ago after a complaint of harassment by the foster mother of a girl.’

  There was a moment’s silence in the car.

  Garvie said, ‘I hope we’re not too late.’

  Singh speeded up.

  Beyond Froggett the lanes narrowed. A few miles north of Pike Pond, they went through an old wooden gate on a dirt track winding through trees. Halton Woods. Their headlights jolted up and down tangles of undergrowth as they went slowly through streaked darkness until they reached a small dirt clearing containing a garage-like concrete building and the tattered remains of a tent. Next to the tent was an old white Ford Transit.

  There was no sign of anyone around. In the evening air hung a damp singed smell.

  Singh lifted his head and sniffed. ‘He’s been burning things,’ he said.

  They got out of the car and went cautiously across rutted ground. The woodland silence waited around them as if listening. Here and there the area was littered with Calor gas canisters, rolls of barbed wire, polythene sheets.

  Singh stood with his back to the van while Garvie crouched down by it. ‘Well?’ he asked quietly.

  Garvie straightened up. ‘Same tyres. And reddish dirt. This is the van all right.’

  Singh nodded briefly. His face was grim. ‘Wait in the car.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Singh didn’t bother to argue. They went together over to the garage. Nailed up on a rough board next to the door were the dried corpses of various small animals and birds – moles, rats and pigeons – and they stood looking at their leathery remains until it was clear no one was going to answer. The door was heavily padlocked with two locks.

  ‘Good place to keep someone,’ Garvie said without expression.

  Singh banged loudly on the door, sending a bird clattering out of the tree above them.

  There was no response. Silence descended.

  ‘Wait here,’ Singh said in an undertone. He crept away round the side of the building following the beam of his flashlight, and when he returned a few minutes later, emerging from the darkness of the other side, the door was open, and Garvie was putting something back in his pocket.

  ‘Just sort of came open,’ he said.

  Singh said nothing but gave Garvie a disapproving look as he went past him through the doorway into darkness. There was a smell, kerosene, old cigarette smoke and something else, sweetish and out of place. After a moment Singh found the light switch and they looked about in silence.

  Little attempt had been made to make the place comfortable. There were a few rugs spread here and there on the rough-cast concrete floor, an old sofa and a couple of garden chairs, a folding table. In one corner was a primus stove. The breeze-block walls were unpainted, the ceiling cladding bare and grey. Stacked against one wall were dozens of bags of cement, cans of paint, brass pipes. Behind a faded orange curtain hanging at the far end they could see the corner of a mattress on the floor.

  The poverty of the place made them hushed.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ Singh murmured. ‘Is it liquor?’

  ‘Or perfume. I hope not Alien by Mugler.’

  Singh gave him a puzzled look. Together they went slowly down the centre of the room, quietly looking about, stopping occasionally to pick up an empty bottle or poke at a piece of clothing. At the far end Singh reached forward and drew back the orange curtain – and they both sucked in their breath. Everywhere were the unmistakable signs of a struggle. Jagged bits of a destroyed chair were strewn across the floor. Smashed glass was scattered along the wall. A bent and broken lamp lay in a corner. The mattress itself was ripped open and partially burned, as
if someone had tried to set it alight.

  The smell of perfume hit them harder.

  Singh talked into his radio, and went to work. He took out a tool of some sort and, crouching, began to sift carefully through the debris. He traced the trail of glass, and found the frayed flex of the lamp in a knot under the sleeping bag, and examined the dark pool of dried liquid that had formed around its edge. From time to time he put things into small clear plastic bags.

  When he looked up Garvie was standing there, holding something between his fingertips. A silver ring with an unusual pattern of spirals picked out in black.

  Singh took it. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Hers,’ Garvie said simply and walked away.

  Garvie waited by the van, smoking, while Singh sat in his car talking to Support. The woods around were blacker than ever.

  At last Singh finished and they sat together in the car waiting for Forensics and backup to join them.

  ‘One of the men will take you home,’ Singh said. ‘I’ve told your uncle where you are.’

  If Garvie was concerned about this he didn’t show it.

  ‘What happens now? Manhunt?’

  Singh hesitated. ‘Our focus remains on finding Amy. But, yes, we urgently need to contact Atkins.’

  ‘The media are going to love him. Hippy dropout. Dope smoker. Loiterer round schools and woods. Harasser of underage girls.’

  Singh winced. ‘I was too slow,’ he murmured. ‘Far too slow.’

  Garvie ignored him. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘The case will be treated as suspected abduction. I will need to talk to Dr Roecastle as soon as Forensics and the GPR team arrive.’

  ‘GPR?’

  Singh hesitated. ‘Ground-penetrating radar.’

  Garvie looked at him. ‘They’re going to dig?’

  ‘In these situations it is common for the body to be buried nearby. I’m sorry.’

  Garvie got out of the car and walked away. In the shadow of the trees at the edge of the clearing he stopped and lit up, and stood there smoking. There would be time to think about the events that had led up to this conclusion. But not now. What came into his mind instead were random details in no known sequence he could think of: Amy Roecastle’s face in the photograph with that impish expression of cleverness; the scuffed, rebel-girl clothes in her wardrobe, the maths problem in her exercise book that she had left abandoned.

  The silence was broken by sudden animal squeals, and a fox barked again, nearer this time, marking a kill.

  22

  It hit the news. Too late for the Sunday papers, reports of the manhunt appeared on the internet throughout the morning. Breaking News flashes raised the alarm: Police Hunt Dropout. Face of a Predator. Recluse on the Run. By lunchtime the same picture of Peter Atkins had appeared everywhere: the bony face of a man in combat jacket with grey ponytail, gesturing blearily with a spliff across a table of empty bottles.

  There were stories from his life: lurid descriptions of the breakdown after his tour of duty in Iraq; a period of peddling narcotics on a beach in Goa; minor incidents at festivals, protests and raves. Twice in the last year he had faced charges for possession of cannabis, and once for harassment, since dropped. A colleague at the delivery company where he occasionally worked called him a ‘loner’. His brother, who had emigrated to Australia, said he hadn’t spoken to him in fifteen years and hoped never to do so again. A resident of Froggett Woods, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was a predatory presence in the area, often to be seen at night, unnervingly, in the lanes or the woods.

  Stalker on the Run. Suspect Has ‘Mental Issues’. Find Him!

  Newer stories called in strident voices for his immediate capture and enforced confession, and the chief of police, in carefully neutral tones, promised approximately the same thing. The public should be reassured: huge police resources were being devoted to the hunt.

  There was the unspoken assumption that, for Amy Roecastle, it was too late, however; and now that the drama of her disappearance had assumed its final and ugliest form, her picture was everywhere too, the girl of radiant possibility snuffed out by perverted desires.

  The rest of Sunday disappeared in speculation and distress.

  On Monday the blinds at ‘Four Winds’ remained down all day.

  Smudge’s brother and the men moved quietly about the garden, as if out of respect, digging foundations for the wooden pagoda which was to form a feature above the patio. But the only digging in Dr Roecastle’s mind was being done with the help of ground-penetrating radar in a clearing in Halton Woods. Singh had been updating her every few hours. The previous evening she had identified Amy’s ring, and today she had cancelled all operations and sat now on the floor of her black-and-white living room in her dressing gown, knees up to her chest, squeezing a ball of wet tissues in each fist, as if only the intense concentration of her own misery could prevent bad news reaching her about her daughter. In reality, however, she was waiting, silently, for the worst. Singh had told her that although she should not give up hope, the investigation had moved now into a different phase.

  She couldn’t stop herself calling him: two, three, four times an hour. He always said that there had been no new developments.

  At lunchtime she took a milligram of Xanax and 20 milligrams of Inderal, and washed them down with a glass of Scotch.

  By the end of the afternoon, motionless in the same position, staring with glassy eyes at nothing, she was so exhausted that when the phone rang she almost fainted as she staggered to get it.

  She heard Singh say, ‘Dr Roecastle?’

  ‘Have you found her?’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Tell me quickly! What have you found?’

  Singh hesitated. He said carefully, ‘I’d like to come to see you. There have been … developments, but I need to see you so that we can talk face to face.’

  After he rang off she held the phone for a moment, then dropped it and watched it settle on the floor. It seemed very far away from her, in a different dimension altogether. She willed it to disappear, for herself to disappear, and for the world to come to an end, but none of this happened, and she told herself to sit on the sofa to wait for Singh to arrive, to prepare herself to hear what he had to say, however terrible, but she didn’t move, didn’t seem able to; she stayed exactly where she was, swaying slightly from side to side in a sort of seasickness, feeling the room go in and out of focus around her, and was still there half an hour later when she heard his knock on the door.

  With great effort she managed to turn to face the living-room doorway, and saw with paralysing clarity exactly what was happening. It was as if she had lived it already. As she heard the front door open and close and Singh’s footsteps come down the hall, she foresaw precisely how he would appear, and precisely what he would say, and knew beyond all doubt that she would remember for the rest of her life the exact words he used to give her the news.

  Then Amy walked in.

  She was dirty and bedraggled, as if she’d been sleeping rough. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ she said. ‘This fence. I thought it was only going to be at the front.’

  23

  She was recognizably Amy, wearing a familiar black vest and black bondage trousers, but she seemed changed, and not just because she was dirty and tired. There was a fierce expression on her face as she stood there blinking, and after a moment Dr Roecastle realized that her daughter was crying. She went hesitantly across the room, and Amy lifted up her arms and they silently caught hold of each other.

  They had not moved from this position when Singh arrived five minutes later. He stood in the doorway, ignored, watching them, and at last Dr Roecastle stepped back and said to him, ‘Amy’s here,’ and he nodded and came quietly into the room.

  There would be procedures, he said, after introducing himself to Amy, investigatory debriefings, not to mention medical attention, and evaluation for post-traumatic stress and other psychological conditions, and it woul
d be necessary to take Amy down to the station later, and of course there would be the media to deal with, but first they simply sat together on the sofas in Dr Roecastle’s black-and-white living room, as if acclimatizing to the strangeness of the situation.

  Singh gave the cautionary advice: ‘This is probably not the time for questions.’

  And Dr Roecastle said, ‘But for God’s sake, Amy, just tell us where you’ve been all this time.’

  Singh watched the girl as she sat there. Dirty and tired though she was, unwashed, her long hair matted, he could see that Sophie had not lied about her friend’s looks.

  The girl turned her face towards her mother, and said, ‘Dad’s.’

  Dr Roecastle gagged. ‘What do you mean, “Dad’s”? I thought he was in California. I thought you said you never wanted to see him again.’

  ‘He’s renting this little place in the country. He’s on sabbatical from the university, and he’s got this research thing he’s doing there.’

  ‘How do you even know that? You never talk to him.’

  Amy gave a broken smile. ‘You never talk to him.’

  Singh said, ‘We will be able to go through all this at a later stage, Amy. We will need to, in fact. As I say, this may not be the right moment for questions.’

  Her mother said, ‘But at least tell me why. Why, Amy, why did you leave?’

  Amy said nothing for a moment. She glanced once at Singh, and he thought she almost smiled. She sighed, looked embarrassed. ‘I know it might seem like a little thing, but …’

  She told them about the shoes.

  When she had come into the house that night and had seen the shoes back in their bag, waiting on the table, something seemed to go off with a bang in her head. She closed herself off completely, couldn’t even speak. The decision to leave home was taken, without forethought, as soon as her mother left the room. ‘I just couldn’t hack it any more.’ She went upstairs, dumped her coat, and went out of the window to avoid triggering the alarm which her mother had just set.