‘Not too bright, Lance.’
Ledwich folded his arms sulkily on the bedclothes at his chest.
‘I’ll ask you again, did anyone else drive your Pajero?’
‘No.’
‘What about the station wagon?’
‘The wife’s car.’
‘But you drive it sometimes?’
‘Not often. Not while I was unlicensed. She had this thing about the police confiscating it if I drove it.’
‘Did you take it out this morning?’
‘The wife did. I needed painkillers. She was only gone ten minutes.’
‘Getting back to the Pajero. Did you have occasion to fit another set of tyres to it before Christmas?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Do you own another vehicle?’
‘Do I look like I can afford three?’
‘I’ll come clean with you, Lance,’ Challis said. ‘An investigator found a Cooper tyre track left by your Pajero in Chicory Kiln Road.’
‘Wouldn’t know what tyres I had on it. They were already on it when I bought it.’
‘The vehicle we’re looking for in connection with the murder of Jane Gideon was fitted with a Cooper tyre of the same size and type.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Can you account for that, Lance?’
‘Account for it? You’re stitching me up. You’re running around like headless chooks getting nowhere, so you think, hang on, let’s frame old Lance.’
‘A Cooper all-terrain tyre, quite uncommon, quite distinctive tread pattern.’
Challis saw Ledwich fight with the information, and then saw his face clear and heard him say, what any good defence brief would say: ‘Yeah, but you’re not saying my tyre’s the exact same tyre that you’re looking for, only that it’s similar.’
‘Where did you have your tyres fitted?’
‘I told you, they were already on it. I didn’t take much notice what they were. A tyre’s a tyre to me. Anyhow, anything could have happened after it was stolen. Maybe those what took it fitted new tyres, or maybe the spare was a Cooper tyre and they had a puncture.’
All good defence brief arguments, Challis thought.
At that point, Ellen came in with the calendar. She looked drawn and pale and defeated. Challis huddled with her in the corridor, where she murmured, ‘According to this, he did have a six o’clock start on the twenty-third.’
‘That could have been written in since,’ Challis said. ‘But check with his employer again.’
‘Meanwhile,’ Ellen said, ‘Lance has been in bed all day and clearly couldn’t have nabbed Larrayne. So where does that leave us?’
Outside, Challis spoke into his mobile phone. ‘Sir, a request. It will need to be quick.’
‘Try me,’ McQuarrie said.
‘I need a team of uniforms and detectives at Penzance Beach. Sergeant Destry’s daughter hasn’t been seen since this morning.’
Silence. Then, ‘Oh, Lord.’
‘It might not be related, but we have to treat it as if it is. It’s panic stations here.’
‘I should have been informed the minute you knew.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Okay, you can have your extra men,’ McQuarrie said. ‘Do you have any leads at all?’ he added peevishly.
‘Some,’ said Challis coldly, ‘and we’re about to crack that arson death.’
‘Keep me informed, Hal, okay? Regularly.’
‘Count on it, sir.’
Challis pocketed the phone.
‘Boss?’
Scobie Sutton had been tugging uselessly on the side door of Ledwich’s steel garage. ‘Locked, boss.’
‘Forget it. We’re going back to the station.’
One of the uniformed constables drove. Challis almost sat in the back with Ellen Destry, but her anxiety was too palpable. She spent the journey talking on her mobile phone, and from his position in the passenger seat he could sense her jittery body, hear her anguish, as she made her calls.
He heard her say, ‘Anything from the hospitals?’
The last three calls had been to her husband. Was this another? No…
‘Constable, I don’t want excuses. Just do it.’
She flipped the phone off, and Challis turned around, about to talk to her, distract her, when she stabbed her fingers at the call buttons again. She had her notebook open in her lap, numbers listed in the back few pages.
‘This is Sergeant Destry. I’m trying to locate my daughter. No, nothing to worry about. Has she been in the shop today? No? She said she might be going in some time to buy a CD. No? Okay, thank you.’
Challis faced ahead again. The calls were serving a useful function, keeping her occupied-if hyper-and, in a way, they constituted police work. Who knows, she might uncover a person or a memory that would lead them to her daughter.
Twenty-Five
The woman at the front desk had a girl with her, seventeen or eighteen, hostile, sulky. Mother and daughter, the desk sergeant decided, and turned to the mother. ‘Help you, madam?’
‘I need to speak to someone.’
She was thin and careworn. Her hands were veined and knuckled, an old woman’s hands, though she was probably no more that forty-five. ‘Will I do?’
‘It’s about that backpack on TV.’
Orders were that anyone with information on the abductions was to be sent straight through to an interview room. ‘Inspector Challis will be along to speak to you shortly,’ the desk sergeant said.
They waited for five minutes. It was early evening, six o’clock. Challis was deeply fatigued. Ellen Destry had gone home to be with her husband, but he knew she’d be back again. The other detectives were occupied with the search for Larrayne Destry. So that left him to speak to the cranks and time-wasters.
‘You told my sergeant that this is about a backpack, Mrs Stokes.’
‘The one on TV.’
‘Go on.’
‘Megan-’ she indicated her daughter ‘-well, she has a boyfriend.’
‘A boyfriend. Go on.’
‘He gave her a backpack.’
‘Name?’
‘Well, it had a brand name stamped into the leather. And a tag of some sort stitched to the lining, but someone had cut it off.’
Challis felt his skin prickle. According to Mrs Abbott, Kymbly Abbott had stitched her name to the bottom of the designer’s label of her backpack. He remembered her teary face: ‘I showed her how to do it, Mr Challis,’ she’d said.
‘We’ll come back to the backpack, Mrs Stokes. I meant, the boyfriend’s name.’
‘Danny Holsinger.’
Challis beamed across the table at the women. ‘Now, there’s a coincidence. Danny is helping us with our inquiries right at this very moment.’
‘I bet he is,’ Mrs Stokes said.
‘Why don’t you all leave him alone,’ the girl said. ‘He hasn’t done nothing.’
‘Tell me about the backpack.’
‘Danny killed them girls, didn’t he?’ Mrs Stokes said. ‘He killed them and souvenired some of their things and had the nerve to give the backpack to my daughter.’
‘We don’t know that it’s the same backpack.’
‘Course it is. I had a gander at it when he gave it to Megan. This is nice, I says. Then I see the tag’s been cut off. I say, what’s this? He goes, Oh, I bought it at a seconds shop, that’s why there’s no label. But I didn’t believe him.’
Challis turned to the girl. ‘Megan? Did Danny say where he got the backpack?’
She looked at the floor. ‘He said he bought it.’
‘In your heart of hearts, do you think that was the truth?’
‘No.’
‘He stole it, dirty bugger. Killed that girl and stole it.’
‘He never! You’re always on at him.’
Mrs Stokes faced her daughter. ‘So? Twice I know of he’s been done for stealing.’
She fished inside her handbag and tossed a videotape across the desk at Challis. ‘Plus he’s a pervert. Tried to make Megan watch this, people having sex with animals. No telling what sick things he’s capable of.’ She turned to her daughter again. ’You want your head read, going out with a scumbag like him.’
‘How would you know, you frigid cow.’
Challis slammed his hand on the desk. ‘This is a murder inquiry. There’s nothing more serious on this earth. Quit your arguing and answer my questions or I’ll have you both in the lockup so fast for obstruction, your heads will spin.’