"Dizzy?" he shouted urgently. "Boss?"
But there was no reply.
Diane reached into her jacket as Ivie tried the door again, again without getting anywhere. She saw the expression of surprise on his face as he turned to speak to her again and saw the compact police radio that she was switching on in the way that Ross Aldridge had shown her.
"Ross?" she said. "Pete? She's here, all right. In the house, upstairs."
FORTY-TWO
They swung in through the narrow gateway with only inches to spare. The dirt road dash to the house was short, fast, and over in seconds.
Pete didn't worry about neatness, but left the car standing at the end of its slewed turn into the forecourt, blocking the end of the driveway and leaving deep, fresh scars in the gravel. As he ran for the house Aldridge was behind him, slowed a little by the shotgun. Their first sight as they charged into the hallway through the open doors was of Tony Marinello, faintly stoned and looking as if he'd walked into a long running play and discovered that he'd learned the wrong script.
"Up here!" Diane called from the gallery, and they headed for the stairs.
Bob Ivie was still trying to insist that everything was under control, but nobody was listening and he wasn't trying too hard. He got out of the way when he saw that Pete was aiming to hit the door, whether he moved or not. The first attempt at breaking through bruised Pete's shoulder and had little effect; the second, with the policeman's added weight, sent the door flying inward with a crash of splintering wood. They fell into the suite through the remains of the antique chair that had been keeping them out. Loud music hit them like an incoming wave.
Aldridge already had the shotgun levelled at the kneeling figure out in the middle of the polished wooden floor.
But it wasn't her.
It wasn't Liston, either; she didn't look much more than a child, and by her on-the-road uniform of T shirt, faded jeans and training shoes Pete would have guessed her to be one of the region's hitch-hikers. Her head was bowed, dark braids hanging, and she was holding her throat and trying to be sick. She heaved in silence, because the sound system was drowning her out.
There was nobody else.
Pete crossed the room, and switched off the stereo. The pause that followed was like a dead silence for the moment that it took them all to readjust, but then real sound started to return; their hollow footsteps on the boards, the faint breeze that was lifting the net curtains at the windows, the choking of the young girl. Diane crouched by her with a hand on the child's back, looking to find out what was wrong.
Aldridge said, "Other rooms?"
"Through there," Ivie said, and he pointed.
"Show me."
Pete followed them. Aldridge checked the rooms to the left, giving a quick glance into each and moving on when he saw nobody there, and Pete covered the rest of the wing. He was beginning to wonder if there would be any way of telling whether Alina had been here at all; but then, in the master bedroom, he saw something that confirmed it for him beyond a doubt.
Diane looked up as the three of them went back into the main room. Tony Marinello was with her now, and the child had stopped retching and was sitting upright. Here eyes were wide, and her skin was an awesomely pale tint of blue.
Diane said, "Any sign of Dizzy?"
"He's hiding in the bathroom and he won't come out," Aldridge told her. "We looked over the door, and he's alone. But the exit to the back stairs is still locked from the inside, and there's no other exit."
"There's the windows and the terrace," Pete said. "She was definitely here." And he showed them his find; her scrapbook of home, which he'd found with her other stuff on the chair by the unmade bed. He'd looked at the rumpled sheets and the king sized mattress, and he'd wondered.
Pete laid the book on the table before them, and fanned the pages. They all looked as the photographs went by in a blur; the display was totally personal, and pretty well meaningless to anyone other than the book's owner.
"That's him!" Diane said, reaching out and stopping the book at one of the pages. The paper's cheap binding was so worn that even this light pressure was enough to detach it, and it came away in her hand. "This is the man I met!"
Aldridge took a look, half interested. "Keep it somewhere safe," he said.
"For evidence?" Diane said.
"Something like that," Aldridge said, moving off toward the french windows as if the legal niceties couldn't be further from his mind right now.
They went out to take a look at the terrace. There was no way down other than to drop from the parapet, but the ground beneath was soft. There might have been some mark of where she'd landed, but it was impossible to be certain from here.
Aldridge said nothing for a moment. But he seemed to be running through his options, rather than hesitating.
"Right," he said when he'd reached a decision. "We have to move." He turned to the girl, who was standing in the window behind them. "Are you all right?"
"I just want to go," the girl said in a small voice.
"You know you're a witness."
"I didn't even want to come here. My dad'll kill me if he ever finds out. Can't I just leave?"
Aldridge glanced out across the overgrown gardens. Pete could see no movement out there.
"I'll tell you what to do," Aldridge said to the girl. "Get your stuff and walk out of the gates and don't look back. Don't tell anybody what you saw here today, and no one'll come looking for you. That's the deal."
"You're on," she said, and hurried to get her pack.
They went down to check the ground under the terrace, leaving Ivie and Marinello in a hurried whispered conference. The empty sun lounger stood out on the lawn, a faint breeze riffling the pages of Ivie's abandoned magazine. On the ground by the wall there was no convincing sign, but after a minute Ivie appeared at the parapet above them and called down, "The limo's gone."
"Gone where?" Aldridge said.
"How should I know? It was there ten minutes ago, it ain't there now."
The five of them met up again in Diane's office, where Diane unlocked her grey metal gun cupboard. Laid out on the desk, the four shotguns — Aldridge's own included — made a formidable looking arsenal. Ivie and Marinello were both contemplating it with the same dazed look; but Pete's dismay was mainly felt when he looked at Ross Aldridge.
He was beginning to feel railroaded, hustled along the young policeman's path before he'd had time to consider the game that he was entering. This entire affair was beginning to take on an ugly aspect, almost like the organisation of a lynch mob. Aldridge wasn't pursuing his professional duty; this seemed to be turning more into some kind of a vendetta, with Aldridge merely using his profession to legitimise it.
The four guns, and the schoolteacher's scrapbook. There was the situation, in one simple picture. Aldridge was asking each of them about their firearms experience.
"Don't look at me," Pete said. "Most I ever handled was a bent air rifle in a fairground."
Tony Marinello said more or less the same. Ivie had hit a few birds in his time. Diane had hit very little in hers, but she was still included as one of the experienced shots.
"Now," Aldridge said. "This is the situation. We know she's taken the limo. Pete's car's still blocking the way out, so she could only have gone into the estate. How many tracks are there?"
Ivie and Marinello looked blank. Diane rubbed her forehead as she thought for a moment.
"Three main ones," she said. "Lakeside, woodland, and across the top. There are little dirt roads as well, but that car's too wide."
"So that's three possibilities, but we've only got two cars — Diane's pickup, and Pete's wreck."