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  He told them about the phone call Amy had made to Sophie, her midnight flight along the path, her disappearance into the thickest part of the woods.

  Uncle Len interjected a comment about the dog. ‘By the way, Raminder, we’ve got a very early indication on the death. TNI: traumatic neck injury. It’s possible there was a natural cause – but equally possible that someone broke its neck. Which would have taken uncommon strength, not to say savagery.’

  There were all quiet for a few moments.

  ‘What sort of girl is Amy Roecastle?’ Len asked the detective.

  ‘If you listen to her mother, she’s moody, disobedient, thoughtless and selfish.’

  By chance, both men happened to glance at Garvie.

  ‘I like the sound of her,’ he retorted. He looked at Singh. ‘What manpower you got?’

  ‘Just me for the present.’

  ‘Not being funny, but that’s not enough.’

  ‘No crime has been committed.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  His mother objected to his tone. ‘Garvie!’

  ‘It’s all right, I’m going anyway. I’ve done my bit.’ He got to his feet.

  Singh said to Uncle Len, ‘I’m very worried. To leave the house in the dark, at the peak of the storm, to take a dog for protection, and to go into the woods, is an act of special desperation.’

  Uncle Len nodded. ‘What would make her do such a thing?’

  ‘I think perhaps she was in danger.’

  ‘What danger?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing out of the ordinary happened all evening. She was sober and calm. She got home safely. She agreed to have a talk with her mother. And five minutes later she was fleeing into the woods. Why? I don’t know yet.’

  There was a silence after he said this. Into this silence, Garvie said casually, ‘You don’t know ’cause you’re not thinking.’

  ‘Garvie!’

  ‘Not thinking about what?’ Uncle Len said crossly.

  ‘About real things.’

  ‘What do you mean? Like what?’

  ‘Like her jacket.’

  There was a silence.

  Uncle Len said, ‘I just said. There’s almost no chance of any useful information from the jacket, it’s soaked through.’

  ‘Don’t you see? That is the information!’

  And he went into his bedroom and shut the door.

  He was irritable and he knew it. Half past eight. Early. All his friends were busy; he didn’t feel like going out anyway. He didn’t feel like doing anything, in fact. For a few minutes he stood there uncertainly. On the floor was one of his old school textbooks, Mathematical Analysis, and he picked it up and flicked through the pages. Arithmetic and geometric sequences. He dropped it again, and lay down on his bed, face to face with the ceiling. From the living room he could hear the continuing muted voices of his mother and Singh, probably still talking about Amy Roecastle, why she’d left, what she’d done next.

  A series of events with gaps in it.

  A sequence containing unknown terms.

  After a while he took out his phone and called Abdul. Abdul drove a cab out of the rank on Bulwarks Lane, a beautiful, uncomplicated man. When he first came over from Morocco he had been befriended by Garvie’s mother, and remained joyously grateful to the family.

  ‘Abdul, mate. Garvie.’

  Abdul’s goodwill seemed to radiate out of the phone. ‘My Garvie man, how is?’

  ‘Is good, thanks. Got a question for you.’

  ‘For you, Garvie, is plaisir.’

  ‘Does your cab log times of passengers’ journeys?’

  ‘Bien sûr. Is obligatoire. I have machine.’

  ‘Good. Don’t suppose you took a girl up to Froggett last night, did you? House called ‘Four Winds’. About midnight.’

  ‘Non. Was not I.’

  ‘Could you ask around, find out which cabbie did?’

  ‘For sure.’

  ‘I need the exact time they dropped her off.’

  ‘I comprehend. I will ask now, quick, quick.’

  ‘Cheers, Abdul.’

  He rang off and lay there, staring at the ceiling.

  11

  Six storeys below his bedroom, at the entrance to Eastwick Gardens, Garvie’s mother said goodbye to Raminder Singh.

  ‘I feel I should apologize for my son’s attitude,’ she said. ‘Not just for now, but for all those other times as well.’

  He shook his head. ‘No need. How old is he?’

  ‘Sixteen. Going on seven.’

  ‘His attitude is his own.’ He paused. ‘When I was his age …’ he began, and then his phone rang. ‘Excuse me.’

  He did not recognize the number.

  ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Detective Inspector Raminder Singh.’

  A refined voice said, ‘This is Jane Brighouse, Sophie’s mother. I know it’s late, but I wonder if you could come over. My daughter has thought of something else she wants to say.’

  Singh said to Garvie’s mother, ‘I must go.’ He hesitated. ‘Please don’t worry about your son on my account.’

  ‘You’re very generous. I’m afraid he hasn’t found his way yet.’

  ‘He’s on his way. He just doesn’t realize it.’

  He turned, a little stiffly, as if he felt he’d been too informal, and walked quickly to his beige-coloured Skoda Fabia, and Garvie’s mother went back inside the building.

  In the kitchen of Cross Keys House, they sat around the table. Sophie had evidently been crying again; her face looked spongy and swollen. But she held Singh’s gaze when he asked her what she wanted to say to him.

  ‘I don’t honestly know if it’s anything. But you said get in touch anyway.’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She took a breath. ‘There’s this guy’s been hanging round. I’ve only just thought of it.’

  ‘What guy?’

  ‘I’ve only seen him a few times. I don’t think he’s from Froggett. He looks sort of east city to me. Older. Like twenty, twenty-five. He drives this old white van.’

  ‘What do you mean, “hanging around”?’

  ‘We were joking that he was Amy’s stalker. We’d turn round and he’d be there, across the road or under the trees. I saw him in front of Amy’s house. And we saw his van a couple of times parked at the side of Rustlings Lane, on the other side of the woods. He was sitting in it, smoking, not looking as if he was doing anything, just hanging about. Of course,’ she added, ‘it might be nothing.’

  ‘Why do you say “Amy’s stalker”?’

  ‘It was definitely her he was looking at.’

  ‘I see. What did she think about it?’

  ‘She’s not the nervous type, she just laughed it off. I didn’t think it was serious either. But now I don’t know.’

  Singh thought. ‘How often have you seen him?’

  ‘Just now and then.’

  ‘When did you first notice him?’

  ‘Maybe two or three months ago.’

  ‘What sort of van does he drive?’

  Sophie frowned. ‘Well. It’s white. And it’s old. I don’t know anything about vans.’

  ‘And you’ve seen it parked where?’

  ‘Round about. Sometimes on the road in front of Amy’s house.’

  ‘Have you seen him in the woods?’

  ‘No. But a few days ago I saw someone on the path at the back of ‘Four Winds’. I think it could have been him. I was in Amy’s bedroom, and I called her over, but when she got there he’d gone.’

  ‘What was doing?’

  ‘Just looking up at the house. That was the odd thing. Like I could feel him staring. He looked … nervous. He was sort of moving his head from side to side, you know the way people do to relieve the tension in their necks, but he kept his eyes on the house all the time.’

  ‘OK.’ He made notes. ‘Anything else?’

  Sophie shook her head and Singh turned off his recorder. ‘Thank you, Sophie. This is very helpfu
l.’

  ‘Do you think it’s important?’

  ‘I don’t know. It might be. Would you be able to provide a police artist with a description of this man, do you think?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Good. I know it’s late, but if it’s all right with you I’d like to get someone to come over immediately. I’m sure you understand that in the case of disappearances we want to make progress as quickly as possible.’

  She nodded again.

  He turned to Sophie’s mother. ‘In the meantime, can you let me have the names of as many of your neighbours as you know? I’ll want to ask them too about this man and his van.’

  Sophie had begun to cry once more; she left the room with her mother, and for a moment Singh sat there alone. Obvious conclusions were often too easy, but the possibility that Amy had a stalker was a new and alarming development.

  He put through a call to the station to organize the police artist.

  So the first day of Amy’s disappearance ended. 22:00. She had been missing for twenty-one and half hours.

  12

  The second day of Amy’s disappearance was another great day for fencing, warm but fresh after a second heavy downpour during the night. In the middle of the morning Smudge and Garvie took a cigarette break, and stood looking across Garvie’s panel, still lying on the ground, at the woods beyond. They were being swept by a volunteer force of neighbours and friends marshalled by Singh. From time to time they heard shouts among the trees.

  ‘This girl gone missing,’ Smudge said thoughtfully. ‘What’s she look like, do you think?’

  ‘If she’s out there she’s probably still damp.’

  ‘No, but, I mean, you know, looks-wise.’

  ‘Oh. Just your type, Smudge.’

  ‘Really? Why d’you think that?’

  ‘One hundred per cent probability. All girls are just your type.’

  Smudge nodded. ‘That’s true. Weird, when you think about it.’ He cleaned his ear for a while.

  ‘Interesting, though,’ Garvie said.

  ‘I think I’m just made for love.’

  ‘No, not that.’ Garvie gestured towards the woods. ‘All this.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah. They’re after someone already. Did you hear? Plod’s put out a picture of some guy they want to interview. “Seen in the vicinity”. And, hey, you’ll never guess what.’

  Garvie looked at him. Thought about it. ‘He drives a van,’ he said after a moment.

  Smudge’s face fell. ‘You’ve spoiled it. And vans aren’t even your thing.’

  ‘I could get interested in vans, Smudge.’

  Smudge frowned. ‘Could you?’

  ‘If I had a genuine expert telling me about them.’

  Smudge looked modest.

  ‘I hear they’re good over rough ground,’ Garvie said. ‘Dirt tracks through woods, that sort of thing.’

  Smudge lit up, but before he could share some of his encyclopaedic knowledge about tyre traction, rear air suspension and the like, his brother appeared to remind them that there was a fence needed putting up this year.

  ‘Never mind, Smudge. Laters.’

  Garvie gazed for a moment longer at the woods, then bent to the gravelboard and resumed work.

  Not far away, out of sight in the woods, a dozen people were moving slowly in a line through the undergrowth, head down. They were wearing hiking gear, hi-viz jackets, and most of them carried poles. One or two had brought their dogs, which moved between them energetically. From time to time one of the searchers called out, and Singh went over so they could show him what they’d found. They had begun the sweep at 05:30, just after daybreak, and they were getting tired. All they’d found so far were a few scraps of black material caught on briars and the usual items of litter.

  The overnight rain had been unfortunate. Footprints and other marks in the earth had been obliterated. And progress remained painfully slow. The artist’s impression of ‘Amy’s stalker’, the man in the van, had so far led mainly to calls from cranks, all of which had to be carefully sifted. Singh glanced at his watch, sighed, and moved off again with the rest of the search party, making their laborious way towards Battery Hill.

  It was late in the afternoon before he returned to his office at the Police Centre. More responses to the artist’s impression of the suspect had come in and he went through them methodically. The drawing had shown a lean-faced young man with overhanging eyebrows and dark hair, but the respondents had paid little attention to this. The man they had seen was sometimes young and dark, sometimes young and blond, sometimes middle-aged; one caller remembered distinctly that he had a patch over one eye. They were slightly more consistent about the van, which had been described in the suspicious vehicle notice as ‘white’ and ‘old’. Several Froggett residents claimed to have seen it parked in the neighbourhood, up on the pavement alongside the main road, or in Rustlings Lane, beyond the woods. One elderly lady – a dog-walker – said she had seen it rocking violently from side to side on the verge one night, though it had driven off before she was close enough to find out what was happening.

  A friend at MID – the motor insurance database – had provided Singh with a list of local owners of white vans, and he began now to work his way methodically through it. He focused on those in the right age bracket, then everyone else within a twenty-mile radius, concentrating first on the east city districts: Limekilns, Five Mile and Strawberry Hill.

  It was slow-going. The light panels overhead burned evenly as if time did not pass, though outside, across the wasteland of parking lots and old brick warehouses and glass-plated skyscrapers, sunshine dimmed, shadows lengthened and daylight failed at last. By ten o’clock contact had been made with most of the people on the list, without result. There were three owners left, all of them older men: a decorator in Brickfields who had been finishing a job in Froggett; a window-cleaner from Tick Hill; and a middle-aged odd-job man called PJ, an eccentric apparently, who lived in a converted garage in Halton Woods, further off. None of them fitted the physical description of the ‘stalker’.

  Fearing he would be too tired later, Singh got up and stood in the corner of the room to say his evening prayers. Eyes closed, under his breath he recited lines from the rehras sahib – ‘Where is that door of yours, and where is that home, in which you sit and take care of all?’ – and then his phone rang.

  It was the switchboard. There was a Dr Roecastle on the line, wanting to speak to him urgently.

  Singh glanced at his watch. ‘Put her through.’

  Dr Roecastle came on, her voice clear but unsteady. ‘There’s a man in the garden.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘A few minutes ago.’

  ‘Tell me what you saw.’

  Her voice was over-loud, as if she was holding the phone tightly against her mouth. ‘A man on the lawn,’ she said, ‘near the outhouse.’

  ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘Looking up at the house. At Amy’s window.’

  ‘Is he still there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I will come now,’ Singh said, and rang off.

  13

  As his car drew up, she opened the door to him, but he went past her round the side of the house onto the lawn. It was dark and colourless in the garden, a sunken pool of shadow pressed round by cut-out shapes of trees and bushes in heavy black silhouette. Somewhere in the invisible woods beyond, a bird sang, tranquil and lonely. Singh went across the grass, scanning this way and that, to the gap in the fence and looked down the lane. He went down the slope to the outhouse, then returned to the main house.

  Dr Roecastle said, ‘Has he gone?’

  ‘There is no one there,’ he replied. ‘But the outhouse has been broken into.’

  They sat in the black-and-white lounge. Singh took out his recorder and put it on the table between them. ‘Tell me what you saw.’

  ELENA ROECASTLE: A man in the garden.

  DI SINGH: Can you describe him?

  EL
ENA ROECASTLE: It was too dark. I saw his outline framed by the doorway into the outhouse. He was very still, as if he was concentrating.

  DI SINGH: Young or old?

  ELENA ROECASTLE: Young, I think. In his twenties.

  DI SINGH: Why do you think he was in the garden?

  ELENA ROECASTLE: I don’t know. I got the impression he wanted something. And that it was [pause] something to do with Amy. I don’t know why I thought that. But he was looking up at her window. As if, whoever he was, he had some sort of … intention. He seemed … menacing. It was the way he stared. He was moving about a bit, rolling his shoulders, as if he was preparing to … do something. It has shaken me. I’m frightened.

  DI SINGH: Did he attempt to get into the house?

  ELENA ROECASTLE: No. He moved away, up the lawn.

  DI SINGH: Towards the broken fence panel where the path is?

  ELENA ROECASTLE: Yes. After that I didn’t see him again. I phoned you.

  Singh put away his recorder.

  ‘It’s possible this is a coincidence,’ he said. ‘It might be an opportunist, someone who has taken advantage of that fence panel being down to come in and see if there was anything worth taking. But it is also possible,’ he added, ‘that there is a connection with Amy’s disappearance. We can’t rule that out. We will need Forensics to look more closely at the outhouse.’

  Sitting upright on her chair, Dr Roecastle stared at him, white-faced. The event had changed her attitude towards her daughter’s disappearance, he could tell at once. Irritable and dismissive only the day before, she was now in the grip of her worst fears.

  ‘She’s not in a hotel, is she?’ she said at last, her voice fragile, unstable.

  Singh said carefully, ‘Not as far as we can tell. We’ve rung round, but so far there has been no evidence to support this view.’