Ann Cleeves - Hidden Depths

Samuel didn’t answer.

‘Everything’s such a mess,’ he said at last.

‘Where are you?’ she asked.

‘Forget it.’ More bitter than she’d ever heard him. He switched off his phone.

Peter had made her Earl Grey, with a splash of milk, just as she liked it. ‘Who was that?’

She hesitated for only a moment. ‘Samuel. He sounded a bit upset. It’s the anniversary of Claire’s death. I tried to get him to speak to you.’

‘I’ll talk to him later.’

‘That young detective was here this afternoon. Another young woman has gone missing.’

Peter carefully set down his cup, but she could tell the news had upset him. Perhaps it reminded him of Lily.

‘Do they think that has anything to do with the murders?’

‘That was what Ashworth suggested. He wanted to know where I’d been this morning.’

‘They’ve been trying to track me down all day.’ Peter leaned back in his chair, stretched, implying that he’d been so busy that he was exhausted.

‘Where were you?’

‘A meeting. Extremely tedious and abysmally chaired, which is why it went on so long.’

‘Really?’

‘You can’t think I had anything to do with this abduction?’

‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Of course not. Not that. I went into Morpeth this morning. I tried to phone you. But I couldn’t get hold of you either.’

‘You suspected I was with another woman?’

‘I’m sorry. It did cross my mind.’

‘Never again,’ he said. ‘I promise I’ll never do that again.’ He moved his head to take in the house, James in the next room, the view of the garden. ‘This is all too important.’ She realized he was echoing the thought she’d had earlier, when she was talking to Samuel.

After dinner, she and Peter watched television with James. Later, they went together to put the boy to bed, then they took their drinks onto the veranda and watched the huge orange sun floating low over the hills to the west. Peter seemed anxious, preoccupied. He returned several times to the subject of the abducted young woman. What else had Ashworth told her?

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Really. But if they find her and catch the person who took her, you’ll be in the clear, won’t you? It’ll all be over.’

But that thought seemed to give him no comfort. He couldn’t settle. At one point he went into the house to make a phone call. She assumed it was to Samuel.

‘How was he?’ she asked when he returned.

‘I don’t know.’ Peter was frowning. ‘He wasn’t answering.’

The police officers arrived just as it was getting dark. She’d never met them before. She’d locked the front door and they walked round the side of the house, a man and a woman. They seemed impossibly young to her, gauche, inarticulate, though they made every effort to be polite.

‘Sergeant Ashworth said we could watch the mill race from here. You told him it would be OK?’

‘Did I?’ She couldn’t really remember what she’d agreed to.

‘Perhaps there’s a front room upstairs? We could watch from there.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Anything we can do to help.’

They were still in the spare bedroom when Peter and Felicity went to bed. She saw them sitting in the dark, peering out over the meadow towards the cottage. There was a moon now. It didn’t give enough light to see detail, but would be enough to make out somebody moving as a shadow. But what will they do, if someone does turn up? Felicity wondered. They’re hardly more than children.

She made them a flask of coffee and some sandwiches. They thanked her, keeping their eyes on the window.

She must have fallen asleep before Peter. She was aware of him lying next to her, very still, trying not to disturb her.

It was mid-afternoon when the search team found Laura’s shoe. It was in a ditch by the side of the road, not very far from the bus stop. They’d started close to Julie’s house in Seaton and followed the line of the footpath, spreading out across the field which was all stubble now. The residents of Laurel Avenue watched them from the upstairs windows, saw them as black figures against the bright sunlight and the gold of the cut field. The officers moved in sequence like dancers in a slow, elaborate ballet, their shadows shifting as the day wore on.

It must have occurred to some of the team, after being at it for so long, that they’d find nothing. Vera thought that in this situation she might find it hard to keep up her concentration; she’d start thinking of home and a shower, a cold beer. But when they hit the road the team didn’t stop. They moved along the hawthorn hedge and down the ditch, which was almost dry now. They were still focused. They just stood up occasionally to stretch or rub an aching back. They worked almost in complete silence. Even after the discovery of the shoe they continued all the way along the verge to the big roundabout on the outskirts of Whitley Bay.

It was clear that the shoe had been dropped by accident. It was a mistake. Whoever had taken Laura hadn’t realized she’d lost it. There was no sign that it had been placed in the ditch to hide it and it wasn’t there to make a point. The water was so low that it was clearly visible sticking out of the mud. Vera was sure this had nothing to do with the placing of the bodies. There were no flowers. It was just a shoe. A flat, black shoe with no heel and no back, simple, the fashion of the summer. The kidnapper would know now that it had been left. Would it be preying on his mind? Would he think the forensic team would be able to work some magic with it, that they would deduce immediately who and where he was?

Julie recognized the shoe at once and began to cry. Until then it had been possible to convince herself that Laura had bunked off school. To pay her back for being such a crap mother. For not being there that morning when she set off for Whitley High. She looked at the shoe in its plastic evidence bag and she howled. Vera couldn’t bear to see her in such a state. She persuaded Julie to take one of the tranquillizers prescribed for her by the doctor. This was more for her sake than for Julie’s. The sound of the crying woman got under her skin and stopped her concentrating. Even when she’d gone outside to speak to the supervisor of the search team the noise remained with her.

Of course the shoe told them nothing. It could have told them about Laura. About how tall she was likely to be, about the way she threw her weight forward when she moved, about where she’d been walking. It didn’t tell them anything about the man who’d taken her. But close to the spot where it had been found there were tyre tracks on the verge. The grass was very dry there. The tyres had only crushed the grass and left no real imprint. However, just where the grass sloped down to the tarmac was a small patch of reddish builder’s sand. Perhaps it had been left during road repairs or spilled from a lorry. And there a perfectly formed tyre mark remained. Only a fragment, half the width of the tyre and about ten centimetres long, but enough to excite CSI Billy Wainwright, who crouched over it, like a toddler concentrating on making a perfect mud pie.

‘Well?’ Vera knew she shouldn’t really be there. She should be back in her office, pulling in all the information, keeping on top of things. Only she didn’t feel on top of things.

‘I’m not sure we’ll be able to identify the make of tyre from this.’ Billy stood up. She thought he looked knackered and a bit stressed. He was too old to be playing away with his new young lover. Too decent to do it lightly. Again she wanted to tell him to be glad of what he had. A wife he could talk to at the end of the day. Not to throw it all away for some mid-life fantasy, however young and however bonny. ‘But if you find me a suspect vehicle, I’ll be able to tell you if there’s a match. Look, there are very specific marks of wear, chips and nicks in the rubber.’