Peter Robinson - Sleeping in the Ground

Gerry noticed something else on the bookshelf and pulled it towards her. It was an old WH Smith wide-ruled exercise book, battered and dog-eared. She sat down carefully in the chair and opened it up. The first thing that caught her attention was a newspaper cutting that slipped on to her lap, a photograph of Maureen Tindall cut from a larger group shot. Across it, someone — Mark Vincent, most likely — had written ‘GRAINGER’ in angry pen strokes.

Gerry shivered and flipped through the pages. She saw a list of names, three of which had been crossed out, and the second one, Martin Edgeworth, ringed in ink. She recognised the other names from the list of shooting-club members Doug Wilson had interviewed. Over the page were Edgeworth’s personal details — his address, telephone number, date of birth, bank, estimate of height and weight. Later came a list of places, including the White Rose, a pub called the Moorcock in Eastvale, and the names of several local restaurants and country inns, presumably places where Edgeworth liked to dine. There was also a list of all the Walkers’ Wearhouse branches in the dale.

Over the page was yet another list, this time of books: The Making of the British Landscape, The Pennine Dales, High Dale Country, Yorkshire Villages, Walks in Swaledale and Wensleydale, A History of Cricket , along with books on military history by Antony Beevor, Ian Kershaw, John Keegan and others.

Gerry put the exercise book down and leaned back in the chair. So Vincent had been grooming Martin Edgeworth. He had staked out the shooting club and spied on several members, finally deciding on Edgeworth, no doubt because he lived alone in an isolated house. After that, he must have made it his business to meet Edgeworth, get chatting, probably on long walks so they were less likely to be seen together. He had found out about the guns Edgeworth owned, which suited his purposes, and the more he learned about Edgeworth’s tastes and interests, the more he could read up on and feign an interest of his own; hence the books on local history and geography, military history, rambling and cricket.

There were no signs of any of the books in the caravan, so Gerry assumed he must have either borrowed them from a local library or perhaps skimmed them in the library. There were pages of notes about the various subjects covered by the books, so he had clearly done his homework and turned himself into someone who had a lot in common with Martin Edgeworth. And he had done it all fairly quickly. The longer Edgeworth remained alive, the greater the possibility of something going wrong. It was a cruel and calculating thing to do to get revenge, a dish served very cold indeed. Gazing down the length of the caravan to the neat bed, she could see nothing out of place. She would bring in a team of experts to take the place apart, and they might find something else. But that would take time. Besides, she thought what she had found was incriminating enough, though it didn’t tell her where he had taken Maureen Tindall. On a whim, she nipped outside and bent to check underneath the caravan. Nothing there, either, except the water rising.

There wasn’t much she could do now but wait for Banks and Annie to arrive, and that could take a while, given the worsening state of the roads. Gerry lay the newspaper on the table before her and noticed something interesting. The way it was folded highlighted an article about local flood danger spots in the weather section above the crossword puzzle. Mark Vincent could have been reading this before or after he had worked on the crossword. The report showed a map of the River Swain’s course, with attention drawn to potential flood trouble spots, places in danger when the Leas, a wide swathe of meadowland on both sides of the river just west of Eastvale, became waterlogged. The closest one marked on the map was Swainsford Bridge and there was a circle of ink around it. It could just be coincidence, of course, Gerry told herself, or a pointless doodle he’d done when filling in the crossword. But it chimed with something in her memory, something she couldn’t quite grasp immediately. It was there, she knew, and it would come.

Gerry also knew from previous experience that the Leas wouldn’t hold out much longer. The water would then spread further north and south, over and beyond the meadowland towards some of the houses that faced the riverside beauty spot. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The water was rushing down from becks and streams high up in the hills at an alarming rate, all of it joining the Swain and swelling its already bursting banks. There were certain spots where the river narrowed and became shallower for a stretch, and as the water couldn’t soak into the waterlogged swathe of the Leas, it would back up and overflow at those narrow points with some force, creating flash floods as unpredictable and as certain to burst as aneurysms. One of those spots, marked in a newspaper Vincent had been reading, was Swainsford Bridge.

The bridge was a single arch over the Swain, a bugger to cross because you couldn’t see if anyone was coming the other way, and it was less than a mile east of the caravan site, right in the thick of Hindswell Woods.

Suddenly, the phrases ran like a mantra through her mind and she knew what connection she was looking for.

In the woods. Under the bridge. In the rain .

Wendy Vincent had been killed in some woods and her body hidden under a bridge beside a broad stream. What if Vincent were, in his way, trying to emulate that murder, or at least the scene of the crime? What if Swainsford Bridge was his chosen spot? What if he had left Maureen Tindall under the bridge by the riverside for the flood to take her? Under the bridge. In the rain . Was that the place from where she was meant to contemplate her own death arriving? Vincent hadn’t intended to rape and stab Maureen Tindall, as Frank Dowson had done to his sister, but he had a twisted sense of poetic justice, and perhaps this was how he had planned things to work out.

It was a guess, of course, but Gerry thought it was an inspired one. She could find out whether she was right easily enough by driving to Swainsford Bridge and checking it out. The road running west from the caravan site was nothing but a narrow unfenced track for over a mile or so before it came to the turning for the bridge, and it wasn’t likely to be busy now, not with everyone heading east. The only question in her mind was that, if she was right, where had Vincent gone after abandoning Maureen Tindall to her fate? Wouldn’t he want to stick around and see what happened? But she couldn’t let thoughts like that hold her back. The main thing was that Maureen’s life might be in danger, if she hadn’t been killed already.

When Gerry got back up to her car by the site office, the chaos had diminished enough for her to manoeuvre her way out easily enough. Fortunately, someone had found some boards and laid them across the muddiest sections of the road. Gerry picked up her mobile as she drove, squinting at the short stretch of road her headlights illuminated in the rain and darkness.

This time she got through to Banks, told him where she was going, what she was thinking and what she was doing.

‘It’s far too dangerous,’ Banks said. ‘Stay where you are, and I’ll send the emergency services out to the bridge, in case you’re right. The patrol vehicle should reach you soon. We’re on our way, but these diversions are taking time. We’ll be there as soon as we can.’

‘There’s no time,’ said Gerry, narrowly avoiding a caravan that seemed to materialise out of the rain and darkness in the middle of the road. ‘The emergency vehicles won’t be able to get here any faster than you can. And if I’m right, it may be too late already. I’m almost there. It makes more sense this way.’