‘There’ll be a neighbour with a flattened nose somewhere around. The girls who sold Annet the dress and the nightdress didn’t add much, either.’
‘She shopped alone. Every time. And in city shops and a supermarket, never in the small local places. If he was with her, he waited outside. Most men do. So that’s it. That’s the lot. But at least we’ve moved, and now we can keep moving.’
‘That’s the lot. And I’ve got to be on my way,’ said George, pushing away his empty cup. ‘Mrs Brookes promised me to try and dredge up every word they said to each other, or anything she can remember about the girl. If she does come through with anything, call me, will you? I’ll give you a ring as soon as I get in at the office, and give you anything new we’ve got at that end. Not that I expect anything,’ he said honestly, turning up the collar of his coat in the doorway against the thin wind that had sprung up with dusk. ‘Yet,’ he said further, and went round to the parking ground to pick up the car.
He was later than he’d said he’d be, getting back to the office in Comerbourne. Tom Kenyon had telephoned once already, with nothing to report but a blameless day of chaotic activity among the geographers, and a continuing watch on the Hallowmount, which would be faithfully maintained until he and his helpers were either called off or relieved. He had promised to ring again in half an hour, which meant he might be on the line again at any moment.
But when the telephone rang again, and George leaned across to pick it up, the voice that boomed in his ear belonged to the Superintendent in Birmingham.
‘Thought you’d be making it about now,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Two bits of news for you, for what they’re worth. First, we’ve found a small boy who lives three doors away from Mrs Brookes’s back premises, and plays football in the street there. They will do it. He kicked the ball over the wall into Miss Clarkson’s yard on Friday morning, and knowing she was away, opened the door and let himself in to fetch it. He says there was a motor-bike propped on its stand inside there. A BSA three-fifty. That fits?’
‘It fits,’ said George, aware of a sudden lurch forward, as though he had been astride just such a mount, and accelerating along a closed alley between blank walls. ‘He didn’t, by any chance, collect registrations?’
‘No luck, he didn’t. Bright as a button about what interests him, he’s completely dim about the number. But if it was there, somebody else must have seen it, if we look hard enough. Somebody will have seen the rider, too. It’s only a matter of slogging, now we know where to look. And the second thing. Mrs Brookes has had an afterthought. Don’t ask me what it means, or even if it means anything. Myself, I’d be inclined to suppose she made it up to bolster her own picture of the visiting angel, if she didn’t in other ways strike me as being scrupulously honest in her observations, if not exactly acute. She says there was mention of a man. It didn’t occur to her when she was talking to you, because it was so obvious that you were enquiring about someone very different. But she remembered it afterwards, and thought she ought to correct her statement, however irrelevant this information may be.’
‘I recognise,’ said George, ‘the style.’
‘Good, now make sense of the matter. So far, I can’t. She says when Annet Beck fetched the key on Thursday, she told her that she would probably be having a visitor during the week-end. Said he had to be in Birmingham, so he’d be looking in to see her—’
‘He?’ said George, ears pricked, suddenly aware that this was going to be the place where the cul-de-sac ended, and he must brake now, and hard, if he wanted to keep his head unbroken.
‘He. The man for whose presence she was apparently preparing Mrs Brookes, just in case he should be seen. The only man in the case. And know who she said he’d be? This’ll shake you! Her father!’
CHAPTER IX
« ^ »
Promptly at five-thirty Tom Kenyon telephoned again.
‘Nothng new here. It was a good day out, but nothing whatever happened. I suppose that was exactly what we could expect, with forty-two of us clambering about all over the rocks. If there is anything here to be found, you can stake your life nobody came for it to-day. But we didn’t find it, either.’
‘Were you able to do any looking?’ It wouldn’t be easy, with a handful of sharp-eyed juniors on the watch for every eccentricity in their elders.
‘Some. Not to attract attention, though, and that means we could only look very superficially at the outcrop areas where the kids were swarming. We had a go at the ring of trees, and the old footways down below, until the boys came down to hunt over the tips for crystals among the calcite. But all we collected was pockets full of Jane’s rock specimens. She always loads them on to the nearest human pack-mules to carry home for her. Women know what they’re doing, having no pockets.’
‘They’ve all come down by this time, I suppose?’ said George.
‘Ostentatiously. I thought it might be a good idea to leave with as much noise as possible, in case someone somewhere was waiting his turn. But Mallindine and your boy are still up there,’ he said reassuringly, ‘keeping an eye on things from cover until I go back. I’m on my way now, I’m going to send them down to get tea here at the pub.’
‘The others have gone?’
‘Yes, into Comerford with their coach, for tea. Jane arranged it. And then home to Comerbourne and disperse. Dead quiet up there now.’
He could feel the quietness of the Hallowmount moving, growing, pouring through the dusk towards the village, flowing round and over Fairford and Wastfield, drowning this isolated telephone box on the edge of the wilds. Down the darkening flanks the streams of silence ran softly and slowly, curling round the scattered buildings of the farm, sweeping greenly over the roof of the Sparrowhawk’s Nest. All day waiting like a great beast asleep, the long ridge stretched and stirred now in the first chill of twilight, and the little, quivering, treacherous ground-wind awoke and began curling its tremulous pathways up through the long grass.
‘Can you hold on there until I come out to meet you?’
‘Yes, I’ll be somewhere on top. I’ve had tea. I’ll send the boys down and wait for you.’
‘Good! I’ll be along as soon as I’ve talked to the Superintendent. And had a look in at Fairford, perhaps, if you don’t mind hanging on another half-hour or so?’
‘I don’t mind. Whenever you can make it, I’ll be here. Don’t pass up anything you should do first.’ He hesitated, unsure how much right he had to ask questions but aching with the effort to contain them. “Did you turn up anything useful at your end?’
‘Maybe. Difficult to tell as yet. We’ve found where they stayed. Not a hotel – they borrowed a flat rented by a friend of Annet’s. The motor-bike appears again. No one saw the man. But according to the old lady round the corner, the owner of the house, Annet told her she was expecting a visitor. Annet described him to her as her father.’
The indrawn breath at the other end of the line hissed agonisingly, as though the listener had flinched from a stab-wound. ‘Her father?’
‘Does that suggest anything?’
It suggested far too much, things Tom had never wanted to hear, and did not want to remember, possibilities he could not bear to contemplate. He choked on exclamations that would unload a share of the burden on to George’s shoulders, bit them back and swallowed them unuttered. They lay in his middle like lead.