While Inspector Singh made some phone calls, Pearson and Gumm walked through the gap in the dunes to the track beside the cottage. Near the cottage tyre marks were clearly visible in the sand as well as a number of footprints. ‘Those prints look like whoever made them was wearing trainers,’ said Pearson. ‘Not that that tells us much. Most people do nowadays, especially on beaches.’
‘These tyres were made by some kind of small lorry. Big treads, but not so big it would get stuck,’ said Geoff thoughtfully.
‘Could’ve been a small bus,’ Pearson replied. ‘More likely, if it had come to pick people up. Anyway, our forensic guys will know what it was.’
By now Inspector Singh had joined them, having finished his calls. ‘They’re all on the way,’ he said. He too was looking at the tyre marks and the footprints. ‘Have you noticed?’ he asked after a moment. ‘There’s no marks of little wheels.’ The other two looked at him.
‘Little wheels?’
‘You know. When people travel anywhere now they all have bags with little wheels that they pull behind them. So perhaps these people had no luggage.’
‘Maybe it was on their backs,’ Geoff said. ‘Backpacks.’
‘That could mean they were young,’ said Pearson, frowning. He turned to Inspector Singh. ‘What traffic cameras are there on the roads round here?’
‘Not sure exactly, sir. I know there’s one on the road into Southwold.’
‘Get on to Southwold right away. Let’s get CCTV checked on all the major roads with a ten-mile radius. That early there wouldn’t have been much traffic.’
‘Will do, sir. I’ll tell them we’re looking for a small bus or a van – transit van or a bit bigger. Possibly a small lorry. There shouldn’t be too much to choose from at that time in the morning.’
Pearson turned to Geoff Gumm. ‘Thanks very much, Geoff, for your quick action on this one.’
‘Not at all. I’m kicking myself I didn’t get out of bed to have a look. That would have been a lot more helpful.’
Pearson shook his head. ‘You’ve helped a lot; don’t worry.’ He smiled. ‘I’d love to come down one weekend and talk to you about boats. Here’s my card. I used to do a lot of sailing when I was working in the north. I’m missing it now and thinking I might get something small myself.’
‘I’d be very pleased to help. You know where I am and I’m nearly always here.’ With a handshake and a nod, Geoff Gumm went back to his sanding. Pearson was silent as he and Inspector Singh walked back to their car. The coast here was increasingly used as a landing place for illegal immigrants, but this example seemed unusually well planned. For what possible purpose?
32
Liz had been more spooked than she liked to admit by her visit to the school – the pathetic Miss Girling clinging to the glories of the past in the face of change, the strange headmaster, the camera hidden in the bookshelves, but above all Cicero, the headmaster’s assistant, who she thought had followed her car as she drove away. She had been a lot more observant since then of the people and cars around her but so far she had detected nothing to indicate that anyone was taking a particular interest in her.
She hadn’t told anyone she was feeling uneasy – nervous was too strong a word for it – nor had she said she thought she might have been followed. Of course, in her account of her visit to the school she had mentioned the hidden camera but her colleagues didn’t find it particularly worrying that the school now had a photograph of her. Her cover as a prospective parent had been good and there was no reason to think that it hadn’t been taken at face value. Everyone agreed, though, that she would have to keep clear of any dealings with the school in future.
As she drove through Pimlico towards the M4 on Friday afternoon, she was keeping a sharp eye on the traffic behind her. But she saw no blue Mini or anything else to cause her concern. As she left London behind her, she began to relax and look forward to seeing her mother for the first time in several weeks.
‘Darling! I wasn’t expecting you for hours.’
Susan Carlyle was watering the potted fruit trees in the back courtyard of the plant nursery she still helped to run. It was next door to the Bowerhouse, the small gatehouse of the large estate where her father had been the manager. Her father had died unexpectedly young, but the estate owners had let Liz’s mother stay on, and when the estate itself had been broken up – the outbuildings sold, the land leased to two local farmers – she had used her savings to buy the Bowerhouse outright.
With an empty nest when Liz left home, Susan Carlyle had time on her hands, and she had gone to work in the new nursery when it opened. Within two years she was running it; now being well past retirement age she had moved to part-time hours but refused to quit work altogether, despite Liz’s urgings.
Liz said, ‘I left early to beat the traffic. Getting out of London on Friday gets worse and worse.’
‘Well, it’s a nice surprise. Give me two seconds and I’ll be finished. Edward should be back any minute now; I sent him out to buy supper. You’re a nice excuse for a proper meal – most evenings we seem to fall back on scrambled eggs and toast. And you’ve picked a good weekend to come down; there’s nothing on at all. Just the three of us.’
Part of the reason Liz hadn’t often visited Bowerbridge in recent months was a fear of being a spare wheel. The other part was that when Martin Seurat was alive, they had spent many happy times here. Martin had come to love the local Wiltshire countryside, and to appreciate the resonance that certain places, like the Nadder river where her father had liked to fish, still held for a grownup Liz. He had got along comfortably with Liz’s mother, and famously well with Edward – since they both shared a love of travel. So after Martin’s death in Paris, memories of their time together here had been painful for Liz.
But something must have changed – Liz found herself happy to be back in the embrace of her childhood. She still missed Martin, and there was a pang when she went into her bedroom and saw the framed photograph that Martin had teased her about of a very young Liz sitting on her pony. But the veil of sadness that had hovered over even the prospect of this kind of visit had somehow lifted.
She made the most of it. On Saturday morning she helped her mother in the nursery where the early autumn sale was on, then in the afternoon took a long solitary walk along the Nadder. When she came home she found her mother and Edward standing together by the Aga in the kitchen, her mother wearing a striped cook’s apron and Edward dressed in corduroys and a fisherman’s sweater. The radio was playing big band music, and to Liz’s amusement Edward was singing along to ‘Take the “A” Train’. Seeing her, they both laughed, then conscripted her into helping with the venison stew they were making. Soon she was chopping carrots and mincing garlic, and she felt, as she had done when Martin was there, that she was joining in.
They had a long delicious supper, fuelled by two bottles of Chianti that Liz had brought down with her, and after dinner they sat in the low-beamed sitting room. Edward had lit the first fire of the autumn, made with ash logs cut from a tree that had come down in the previous year’s big storm. When her mother yawned and announced she was going to bed, Liz stayed up to talk with Edward.
‘I’ve got something special,’ he announced, getting up to poke the fire before bending down to open the cupboard in the corner of the room. Reaching in with his long arms, he brought out a bottle in one hand, and two small glasses in the other. ‘I hope you’re joining me,’ he said.