‘Should we tell Mrs Tindall what we’re doing, ma’am?’ Gerry asked.
Gervaise glanced at Jenny, then at Annie. ‘Well, you two?’
‘No,’ they both said at once.
‘It would only alarm her, cause her to panic,’ Jenny said.
‘I think we should get her and her husband out of the house,’ said Banks. ‘Panic or not. Put them in a hotel or somewhere to make sure of their safety. Unless he’s watching at the time, he won’t know they’re not there. If he is watching, maybe that’ll give us a chance of capturing him. At least that way nobody’s in danger, and we still stand a chance of getting our man.’
‘But not of catching him in the act,’ Annie said.
‘It doesn’t matter. We’re not going to use Maureen Tindall as bait. And don’t forget, all we have is circumstantial evidence and a very strong suspicion of Vincent’s guilt. We’ll need more than that if we want to get a conviction, and I’m hoping we’ll get it when we have him in custody and question him, search his premises. I think we’re all agreed that right now the main thing is finding him, right?’
They all agreed.
‘Good,’ said Gervaise. ‘Make it so.’
Before they could all return to their respective tasks, a soft tap at the door was followed by the entry of a uniformed constable.
‘Yes?’ said Gervaise, shoving her files into her briefcase.
‘Ma’am.’ The constable took a deep breath, then said, ‘Just heard from dispatch that they’ve had a 999 call from a Robert Tindall. He’s the hus—’
‘I know who he is,’ said Gervaise. ‘What did he want?’
‘They couldn’t make out what he was saying, ma’am. Not all of it. Said his voice sounded funny. But they think he said something about being hurt. They’ve sent an ambulance and a patrol car, but I just thought—’
‘Thank you, Constable. Good thinking,’ said Gervaise, and glanced at Banks. ‘Better get over there, hadn’t you?’
Banks and Annie set off for the Tindalls’ house as the rain started to fall again, gently at first, then harder. Behind them were two patrol cars with their lights flashing and sirens blaring. It wasn’t far, but by the time they got there the uniformed officer on duty outside the house informed them that Robert Tindall had been taken to A & E on the orders of the paramedic. He couldn’t say whether Tindall’s injuries were life-threatening or not, but his partner, who was still inside the house, had felt for a pulse and found one, and when the paramedics had pushed him out on a gurney, his head had been bandaged. So he was alive when they took him to hospital.
Banks noticed that the front door was splintered around the chain, which was hanging loose. It looked as if the door had been on the chain when Robert Tindall, or Maureen, had answered it, and whoever was standing there had kicked it open. There was something resembling a scuff, possibly made by someone’s foot, on the front of the door.
The second patrol officer, who had remained inside the house, led them along the hall and showed them into the kitchen, where Tindall had been found. Banks and Annie stopped in the doorway to avoid contaminating the scene any further. There wasn’t much to see, though there had clearly been a brief struggle, as a few plates lay broken on the floor, along with slices of some oranges and bananas, knives and forks scattered among the wreckage. There was also a pool of dark blood.
‘Where’s his wife?’ Banks asked the constable. ‘Maureen.’
The constable shook his head. ‘There was no one else here when we arrived, sir. Just the man lying on the floor there.’
‘This blood come from him?’
‘It looked that way, sir.’
‘Was he unconscious?’
‘Not quite, but I’d say he was definitely stunned.’
‘Could you tell how he’d been hurt? Gun? Knife?’
‘No, sir. Nothing like that. From what I could tell, he was most likely hit on the head with that heavy wooden chopping block. You can see the blood on it if you look closely. I tried to touch things as little as possible.’
Banks looked and he did see blood on the chopping block. It was certainly heavy enough to deliver a nasty wound. He knew that head wounds bleed a lot, so the amount no longer seemed so significant as it had at first. On the other hand, a blow to the skull can cause any amount of damage, not all of it immediately apparent. ‘Did he say anything?’
‘He was struggling to speak, sir,’ the constable said. ‘But I couldn’t make out any of it. It seemed like he was trying to say something important but it just wasn’t coming out. Then the paramedic got to work and I got out of the way.’
Banks and Annie next made a quick search of the rest of the house but found nothing of interest. There was no blood to be seen anywhere else, and no signs of a struggle in any of the upstairs rooms. Whatever the interloper had done with Maureen Tindall, he hadn’t done it in the house. Maureen was gone. Someone had taken her.
Back outside, Banks told the constable to organise a house-to-house of the neighbourhood and show Vincent’s photo to everyone, and to pay particular attention to getting information on the car he was driving.
After the meeting, Gerry went back to her maps with a heightened sense of excitement. She felt a little annoyed at being left out of the trip to Eastvale General Infirmary, but realised there was no point in all of them being there. According to Banks, Robert Tindall would tell them what he could when he was able to talk. It might mean a lot of waiting around, hospitals being what they were, and she had important work to do, especially now that Maureen Tindall was missing, presumed abducted, according to Banks.
DC Wilson and PC Stamford were out interviewing local estate agents and farmers who rented out rooms and converted barn accommodations. It seemed a fairly thankless task, Gerry thought, especially in this weather, but it had to be done. Now they had a good likeness of their man — of Mark Vincent — they might get a more positive reaction to their enquiries.
Gerry looked over the OS Landranger map with a magnifying glass, feeling a bit like Sherlock Holmes as she scanned the squares for anything she might have missed. At one and a quarter inches to a mile, it was a fairly detailed sheet, but she decided it might be worth having a look at an Explorer map, two and a half inches to a mile. It would be less cluttered.
She spent a few minutes in the tiny station library looking through the racks, eventually found the area she wanted and took it back to the boardroom, where she tacked it gently with adhesive putty to the whiteboard. That was better, she thought, standing back to admire the precision draughtsmanship, translating the whirls and blobs into images of a vital, living landscape in her mind’s eye. The symbols were larger and less likely to be obscured by contour lines, footpaths or village streets, and after a while of simply standing looking at it as she might a painting in the National Gallery, she spotted something she had overlooked. Pausing only to make a few jottings of locations in her notebook, she dashed back to the squad room, grabbed her raincoat and went down to the car park.
Robert Tindall had been moved to the head of the queue for immediate attention, and nobody would be allowed to see him until the doctors had determined the extent of the damage. So far, none of them had given away a thing.
The coffee was weak and the decor drab. It was bad enough that you had to be in a hospital, Banks thought, without having to put up with weak coffee and drab decor, too. He vaguely remembered a funny quote about wallpaper. Oscar Wilde, he thought it was. Wilde had all the best funny quotes. Still, Banks didn’t suppose that patients in need of serious attention cared much about the decor, or the coffee, though no doubt an expensive survey would one day prove that a little colour in a patient’s life could work miraculous cures.