Peter Robinson - All the Colors of Darkness

No crime was suspected, at least not yet, so Annie had no reason to preserve the scene, but she was aware that a forensic examination of the car might become necessary if the situation changed. Still, there were certain things she needed to know. She tried the driver’s door, but it was locked, as was the other side. There was no way she was going to force her way in. Wiping off the rain and glancing through the window, she could see that the keys were gone, and there was nothing out of the ordinary in the interior on a cursory examination in poor light conditions. No obvious blood. No signs of a struggle. No cryptic messages scrawled on the windscreen. Nothing. She turned to PC Drury. “It’s an unusual place to leave a car, isn’t it?” she said. “Any ideas?”

“I was thinking maybe he might have run out of petrol,” said Drury. “Want me to check?”

“Good idea,” said Annie, perfectly happy to let the man do what was clearly man’s work and dig out a dipstick to measure the level of fuel. When he had finished, Drury seemed very pleased with himself, so Annie knew he must be right.

“Nary a drop left,” he said, “and not a garage for three or four miles.”

“What about in the village?”

“Closed a year back.”

“Do you think he may have walked to the garage to get petrol?”

“Possible,” said Drury. “But if it was me, I’d have gone to the Woodcutter’s and phoned and enjoyed a pint while I was waiting.” He pointed down the road, in the opposite direction from the village. “The garage is down the road that way. You can’t miss it.” Then he checked his watch. “Though I doubt it’ll be open at this time of an evening.”

It was after eight o’clock. Annie knew that most businesses kept short hours in this part of the country. “Why don’t you go down there and check for us?” she said. “Wake them up if you have to.” She gestured over to the pub. “We’ll be in there.”

Drury glared at her, but he had a word with his partner, who stamped out his cigarette. They got in their patrol car with exaggerated slowness and drove off down the road.

Winsome and Annie walked into the welcome shelter of the lounge bar, which was deserted apart from an old man and his dog by the empty fireplace, and two farm laborers enjoying their pints at the bar. Everyone looked around.

“Evening, all,” said Annie, smiling as she walked up to the bar. The farm laborers gawped at Winsome and edged away to give them room. “Thank you,” Annie said. She turned to the barman. “Two Cokes, please.”

“Want ice in them?”

Winsome shook her head.

“In one of them,” Annie said. “Nasty night out there.”

“Seen worse,” the barman said.

“My colleague and I are from Major Crimes, Eastvale,” Annie said, fl ashing her warrant card. “We’re here in connection with that car parked over the road.”

“Been there since yesterday, it has,” said the barman.

So Derek Wyman clearly hadn’t just gone down the road for petrol. Or if he had, something had stopped him from coming back. But there was nowhere else to go. It was all open countryside around there, as far as Annie could tell—the pub was as close to the edge of the moors as you could get. Sheep came and grazed right beside it and nosed around the parked cars. Annie didn’t even know if any buses ran along the B road outside, but she doubted it. If Wyman had disappeared into the wilds, she would have to wait until tomorrow to get a search organized; the light was already bad, and soon it would be getting dark.

The barman handed her the drinks and she paid. “Yesterday, you say?” she said. “Any idea what time?”

“Well,” said the barman, scratching his bald head. “At a guess, it’d probably be about the time the bloke who was driving it came in.” The farm laborers snickered.

Ah, thought Annie, a true Yorkshire wit. This area had a surfeit of them, if Drury and Hackett were anything to go by. Must be something in the water. Or the beer.

“Did he look anything like this?” Annie asked, taking Wyman’s photograph from her briefcase.

The bartender scrutinized it. “Aye,” he said finally. “I’d say he looked a lot like that, yes.”

“So this was the man?”

The barman grunted.

“I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?” Annie said. “What time was he here?”

“About seven o’clock Sunday evening.”

Annie remembered that Carol had told her the matinee finished at half past four. It certainly didn’t take two and a half hours to get from Eastvale to here, so he must have been somewhere else first, maybe just driving around aimlessly, unless the MI6 pair had been chasing him. “How long did he stay?” she asked.

“Two drinks.”

“How long’s that?”

“Depends on how long a man takes to drink them.”

Winsome leaned over the bar. “Would you prefer to shut the place up and come to Eastvale to answer these questions? Because that can be arranged, you know.”

That shocked him. The farm laborers laughed, and he blushed. “Hour and a half, maybe.”

“What state of mind was he in?” Annie asked.

“How would I know?”

“Try to remember. Was he upset, jolly, aggressive? Did he appear flustered? What?”

“Just kept himself to himself, like. Sat in the corner over there and drank quietly.”

“What else was he doing? Did he have a book? A newspaper? A mobile? Magazine?”

“Nowt. He just sat there. Like he was thinking or something.”

“So he was thinking?”

“Looked like that to me.”

“How would thee know, tha’s never done it,” said one of the farmhands. The other laughed. Winsome shot him a warning glance, and they shifted uneasily on their feet.

“Did he say anything?” Annie asked. “Did he talk to you or anyone else at all?”

“No.”

“He wasn’t with anyone?”

“I already said he was sat by himself.”

“Did anyone come in and talk to him?”

“No.”

“What about after he’d gone? Did anyone come looking for him, asking about him?”

“Only thee.”

“Did you see where he went when he left?”

“How could I? I was working behind the bar. You can’t see the road from here.”

“Okay,” said Annie. “Any idea where he might have gone?”

“How would I know?”

“Guess,” Annie said. “Is there anywhere near here a traveler might go and spend the night, for example?”

“Well, there’s a youth hostel up the lane.”

“There’s Brierley Farm, too, Charlie, don’t forget,” said one of the farmhands.

“Brierley Farm?”

“Aye. They converted the barn for bed-and-breakfast a couple of years ago. It’s half a mile back toward Kinsbeck. You can’t miss it. Big sign outside.”

“Anything else?”

“Not nearby. Not that you’d leave your car here and walk to.”

“He’d run out of petrol,” Annie said.

“Bert’s garage closes at five o’clock on a Sunday,” said the barman, “so he’d have no joy there.”

At that moment the door opened and everyone looked around again.

“Oh, how jolly,” muttered Annie to Winsome. “It’s Dreary and Hackneyed again.”

“That’s Drury and Hackett to you, ma’am,” said one of them, with a weighty pause before the “ma’am.”

“Any luck?” she asked.

“No. He wasn’t there. They were closed, anyway.”

“Right,” said Annie, finishing her Coke. “I think it’s a bit late to start sending out the search parties on the moors tonight, but we can make a start by doing a house-to-house of the area—the youth hostel and Brierley Farm being first on our list. All right, lads?”

“But we’ve got our patrol route to cover,” one of the officers protested.