“Because I’m a lot more concerned now. When I saw him in the half marathon, he was running beside a woman who plainly wasn’t amused by what he was saying. I checked with the organisers and she didn’t finish the race. She hasn’t been home since.”
“I expect there’s an explanation.”
“That’s my fear.”
“An innocent explanation is what I mean.”
“I thought so.” He let the silence speak.
“Are you telling me my job, Superintendent?”
The “my” didn’t escape him: almost an admission that Pinto was on her caseload.
“If there isn’t anything else...” She wanted to end this.
“The name of the woman was Belinda Pye and she lived in a rented room in Spring Gardens Road.”
“I’m sure there’s no need to speak in the past tense, Superintendent.”
“I wish I could be sure, ma’am.”
16
Hartley the beagle was enjoying Combe Down more than anyone, straining at the limit of his retractable lead. He’d met and greeted all the humans and now he was into serious exploration. Paloma was finding him difficult to control. Already he’d collapsed the drone’s stand by catching one of the legs with his lead. Good thing the drone hadn’t been in place yet.
The so-called pilots from The Sky’s No Limit, a likeable duo called Noah and Naomi, had come early to set up. Conditions were difficult for them in a keen east wind, even without an excited dog.
When Paloma succeeded in getting Hartley back on a short leash, he protested by barking.
And continued.
Paloma shouted to Diamond over the din, “This was a mistake.”
“The mistake was mine.”
“I’ll take him for a run and try and tire him out.” She must have anticipated this because she was wearing tracksuit and trainers.
“You might miss the drone flight.”
“It won’t break my heart.”
Diamond watched them head away across the field. He was starting to regret this adventure. “Bleak spot,” he said to Halliwell.
“You chose it, guv,” Halliwell reminded him.
“Can’t argue with that. I wish they’d get on with it.”
“We can’t start without the ACC. Where is she?”
“Georgina? Probably gone to the wrong place and wondering where we are.”
“Did you give her coordinates?”
“Do I look as if I’m capable of giving anyone coordinates? I offered to meet at the Hadley Arms, if that’s what you’re getting at, but she said she’d find her own way here. She thought I was touting for a drink.”
“Were you?”
“It crossed my mind.”
They were south of the village, at the top of a steeply sloping uneven field off Summer Lane that would be a good testing ground for the drones. The hazards included trees, stone walls and bushes.
“Did your Other Half come through here?” Halliwell asked.
Diamond was fazed for a moment.
“The runners.”
“They did, but no one will have seen them.” He could be enigmatic, too. “They will have gone beneath us.”
“Yes?”
“The route goes through Combe Down tunnel, which passes under the village.”
“Why are we up here, then?”
“Put yourself in Belinda’s shoes, if you can, with a berk like Pinto running beside you for mile after mile, trying to chat you up.”
“I’d tell him to get lost.”
“You might, but she wouldn’t. She’s painfully shy, according to her friend Bella and her landlady. He was still at her side when they went through the ten-K mark.”
“Where’s that?”
“Monkton Combe, near enough. She’d know the tunnel is ahead and a mile long and she wouldn’t want to be in there with him. I think she’d quit the race before she got there and head this way along one of the footpaths towards the village.”
“He’d follow her, wouldn’t he?”
“If I know anything about him, yes.”
“I’m with you now, guv. If he attacked her, it would be somewhere out here. We know he finished the race about an hour later than the people he was running with. Plenty of time to carry out an assault and maybe silence her forever, not wanting another long spell in prison.”
“Some big assumptions there, Keith.”
“Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”
“Broadly, yes. It’s my duty to think the worst and hope for the best.”
“If there’s a body in the fields, the drone might spot it.”
“Possibly. But don’t hold your breath.”
“Does Georgina know why we finished up here?”
“No — and don’t you tell her.”
They went to see how the preparations were going. The drone, a strange-looking silver contraption made of some alloy material and with four propellers, was on its stand and the operators were testing the electronics.
“No pressure, but how much longer?” Diamond asked.
“We want to make sure everything is right,” Naomi told him. “Didn’t you say someone else is coming?”
“The Assistant Chief Constable, yes.”
“And the other lady, with the dog? Is she coming back?”
“I hope so. But don’t let that hold you up.”
“We were wondering if you were planning to test us out, using the UAV to find them.”
“Hadn’t thought of that.”
“We have a thermal imager with us.”
“A heat-seeking device?”
“Yes. The heat-sensing camera would show the location of a living person, say if they’d had an accident and were lying somewhere in the open.”
“I hope it hasn’t come to that.” Diamond weighed his options. “What if the person we were looking for is dead?”
“Pessimistic.”
“Hypothetically, I mean.”
“We’d need to use normal imaging for that. There’s a technique using NIR — near infrared — for detecting decomposition, but we don’t have the equipment. It would probably find a body in a shallow grave. Would you like us to show the heat sensor at work? It will almost certainly pinpoint the position of the lady with the dog.”
He pictured Paloma’s annoyance at having the drone hovering above her like a hungry falcon. “No, thanks. We’ll settle for a straightforward aerial view. Can you do that?”
“With an optical camera. Certainly.”
“And can we cover the area fully?”
“If that’s what you wanted, you should have said.” She made him feel like a five-year-old. “We’d use a grid system to make a search.”
“Let’s try that.”
“Can’t be done today. This UAV uses a lot of battery power because it’s a quadcopter. If I’d known you wanted a systematic search, we’d have brought a fixed-wing drone.”
A gleeful smile spread across his face. “Like the model planes I flew as a boy?”
“No,” Naomi said. “These are far more sophisticated. I expect yours were driven by elastic.”
“Excuse me, they had little motors.”
“Simple two-stroke glow engines using methanol or nitromethane?”
“I couldn’t tell you, but you could get high on the fumes.”
“And do yourself untold damage. Didn’t anyone tell you the fuel is toxic?”
“I survived.”
“These days you’d wear a gas mask.”
“Health and safety,” he said in a tone that left no doubt what he thought.
“As a policeman, I thought you’d know better than that.”
“I was talking about my childhood.”
“And I’m talking about UAVs that are battery-powered. And they don’t fly in circles on control wires. They use satellite navigation.”
“It’s another world.” He stared across the field at a substantial female figure in uniform complete with the policewoman’s bowler hat heading rapidly towards him, every stride eloquent of displeasure. “That’s my boss. I’m not her blue-eyed boy by the look of her. Do me a favour and get the thing in the air as soon as possible and she’ll be off my back.” He turned away and went to meet Georgina.