‘Oh, it’s a bit early for me,’ she said virtuously, ‘and I’m drowning with tea, but I’ll get you something.’
‘Tea then.’ He looked at her suspiciously.
‘Have you found Connie, that social worker, yet?’
‘I found her car. Or at least I saw it a couple of times on CCTV. There’s a camera in Effingham, the village east of Barnard Bridge. A little lass was killed on the zebra crossing and the parish council paid to have one installed.’ Doreen had brought him a plate of biscuits with his tea and he dipped one in the cup before eating it whole.
‘And where was the other camera?’ Sometimes, Vera thought, patience was the only way to deal with Charlie.
‘There was only one, but the car appeared on it twice.’ The second biscuit crumbled and fell into the tea before he had a chance to eat it. He swore under his breath and scooped it out with his spoon.
‘Why don’t you explain to me, Charlie? Words of one syllable. I’m a bit brain-dead after spending most of the day in this place.’
‘Yesterday, nine o’clock in the morning, the car goes east.’
‘So towards Newcastle.’
‘Aye, but if she were going into Newcastle, wouldn’t she just cut onto the A69 and go down the dual carriageway?’
‘I don’t know, Charlie, maybe she wanted to go on the scenic route!’ But would she? Vera wondered. If Connie were scared and had somewhere in mind to run to, wouldn’t she just choose the quickest road?
Charlie ignored that and continued. ‘Then an hour and twenty minutes later she drove back west, past the same camera.’
‘So where was she going?’ Vera was talking to herself now. ‘Certainly not into Newcastle. There’d hardly be time to get there and back, never mind do whatever she wanted while she was there. Unless she just wanted to drop off her daughter for safekeeping. But that would be with the father, and he says he’s not heard from her, and why should he lie? To Hexham then? To pick up a load of food from the supermarket, if she’s planning to go into hiding. I had an idea, but I must have got everything wrong.’
‘If she carried on driving she’d end up in Carlisle,’ Charlie said. ‘From there, Scotland or anywhere in north-west England.’
‘I don’t need a geography lesson, man!’
And I don’t need reminding that this is needle-andhaystack territory.
They sat for a moment in silence. Doreen threw a log onto the fire and it must have been damp because it hissed and oozed sap.
‘Holly said an early finish might be in order.’ Charlie gave her a look, hopeful, almost pleading. It reminded her of one of those big, soft, slack-jawed dogs, the sort she’d always hated and felt like kicking under the table when the owner wasn’t looking. The sort that drooled.
‘Not for you, bonny lad.’ She flashed him a smile. ‘You’ve still got that car to find. I know you’re not one for leaving a job half done.’
Now it was quite dark outside and though she thought the rain had started again because the lights that lined the drive were misty, filtered by the moisture, she couldn’t hear it. If there were still guests in the hotel they must be hidden in their rooms. No cars approached the house, though she watched Charlie’s leave. She thought she should be kinder to him. There was no real sport in having a go at him. But at this sort of job he was the best on the team, and she’d told him that too, before he’d shrugged on his stained raincoat and walked away from her.
She shouted to Doreen to bring her a bowl of chips, maybe a burger if they could run to it. When the food arrived she had her eyes shut and was lost in thought – not relaxed at all, but the ideas bouncing around in her brain, random images colliding and connecting and almost making sense. She ate too quickly because she didn’t want to lose the thread of her deliberations and ended up with indigestion that stayed with her all night.
Later she made a call to Durham prison. ‘Yes, I know what time it is. But this is urgent. I need to get a message to Mattie Jones. Even better, let me speak to her.’
But the governor was unsympathetic. He’d been called in on his night off. There’d been a suicide and then trouble on one of the wings. They’d done an early lock-up in the hope of calming things down. He implied that he wouldn’t put the safety of his officers and inmates at risk on the whim of a policewoman. Vera pressed him, but without success. There was surely nothing, he said, patronizing and unmoving, that couldn’t wait until the morning.
As soon as that call was ended, Ashworth rang. Hannah Lister was back home, he said. He didn’t know where she’d spent the afternoon, but he’d seen her arrive. Simon was there too now. Did Vera want him to chat to her?
‘No,’ Vera said. ‘Best leave things be, for tonight.’
For the last time she stood up and halted in front of the fire. There was a temptation to stay where she was, to curl up in the big armchair and sleep the night there. But she went out into the soft, dark evening, intending to drive home.
Halfway there the idea came to her, sudden, like a light bulb flashing above her head in the cartoons she read when she was a child. In comics bought for her by Hector because he loved them too. She did a U-turn the next place she came to and went south and east towards the coast.
Tynemouth was hidden by the misty drizzle and she came on it suddenly, the lamps on the wide main street hardly throwing enough light to park the car. Outside there was a smell of salt and seaweed. The foghorn was sounding, as it had that first time she’d come to interview Morgan.
There were no lights on in his flat. She looked at her watch. Nine o’clock. Too early, surely, for the couple to be in bed. All the same she rang the bell and banged on the door. No answer. Someone appeared in the mist at the top of the street. Tall as Morgan and wearing a long coat, a snug hat that gave the same outline as a bald head would. But it wasn’t him, she saw as he approached. This man was younger, a student.
Still she refused to give up and she walked through the village, checking all the bars and restaurants, looking for Morgan or his woman. Looking quite mad, she realized, as she grew more desperate. All she wanted was confirmation, for Morgan to dig into his memory, to relive his conversations with Mattie Jones and Danny Shaw. A few words to make sense of the whole drama. There was no sign of them and at last, after trying the flat for one last time, she went back to her car. When she arrived home, she saw it was midnight.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The water rose silently in the night. There was no wind, no rain like pebbles against the window, but, instead, a persistently steady downpour. When Vera woke it was to quite a different landscape, a countryside dominated by water. Looking down from her house, she saw that the banks of the lough had breached in places and become indistinct, almost lacy in outline, ditches had become rivers, then seeped into low meadows and formed a string of pools. But the sky was lighter now and the rain had stopped.
It was just dawn and she was woken by her phone. Charlie. My God, he’s been up all night. ‘I’ve found the car.’ His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been speaking all night too, but triumphant.
‘Where?’
‘Not far from where the CCTV picked it up in Effingham. There’s a small business park on the Barnard Bridge side of the village. It’s in the car park there.’
‘Bloody hell, man, how did you find it?’
‘I looked.’
And she imagined him driving round in the dark and the rain, checking every side street and lay-by in the Tyne valley.
‘Are you still there now?’
‘Yeah, I found it about an hour ago, but I reckoned you needed your beauty sleep.’
‘You shouldn’t have bothered about that!’
‘Aye, well, I was so knackered I dropped off myself, before I got round to calling you.’