Breaking Point (29 page)

She couldn't be sure about the role of the quiet man, but according to Molly, the fingerprints of the Australian had been found on Mark's van, so he must be involved in some way. Emma had tried to get hold of Molly, but the detective who had answered her call this morning had told her she wasn't there, and he'd seemed vague about when she would be back.

Emma looked at the clock for perhaps the fiftieth time that morning. Almost twelve. She made up her mind; she would call at lunchtime, and if Molly wasn't there she would ask for Sergeant Tregalles.

DC Lyons sat slumped in his chair, feet up on an open drawer as he munched his sandwich. The office was all but deserted. Ormside had gone upstairs on some errand or other, and the others had all gone to the pub across the street for lunch. Normally, he would have been there as well, but someone had to stay behind, and he was it today.

Seemed like he was ‘it' every day, he thought bitterly.

He poked at the load of crime statistics Ormside had dumped on his desk. ‘The collator needs a preliminary sort before entering them into the system,' he'd said. ‘And keep an eye open for patterns while you're doing it. Might save her some time if you can pick any out ahead of time.'

A mind-numbing task if ever there was one, and certainly not the sort of job that someone with his background and training should be lumbered with.

He popped the last of the sandwich in his mouth, then screwed up the paper it had been wrapped in and lobbed it at the wastepaper basket. An easy shot, but today it bounced off the edge and fell to the floor. Muttering to himself that nothing seemed to be going right these days, he was about to pick it up when the phone rang.

‘DC Lyons,' he said, swallowing the remains of his sandwich.

‘Emma Baker,' the caller told him. ‘I believe you are the detective I spoke to earlier, when I asked to speak to Molly Forsythe. Do you know if she is back yet?'

‘That's right, Miss Baker, but Constable Forsythe isn't available at the moment. Can I help you?'

‘What about Sergeant Tregalles? Is he there?'

‘I'm afraid not, miss. But if it has to do with the Mark Newman case, I've been working very closely with Sergeant Tregalles on that one, so if I can help . . .?'

‘It's just that . . . It's just that the Australian was in the Red Lion again last night. You know the man I mean – they found his prints on Mark's van when they pulled it out of the water, and Molly asked me to let her know if I saw him again. Well, I did see him again. He came in last night with another man, and I probably shouldn't have done it, but I followed them when they left.'

Suddenly she had Lyons' full attention. ‘We don't advise that, miss,' he said, quoting directly from the manual, ‘because it could be dangerous. But since you did, can you tell me where they went or what they did?'

‘Well . . .' Now that she was actually talking to someone about it, Emma realized how little she really had to tell. ‘You see,' she said hesitantly, ‘I've never done that sort of thing before, and I'm afraid I lost them when they left the Lyddingham road to cut across country to the main road to Ludlow. Do you know the road I mean? It's about a mile-and-a-half out of Whitcott.'

‘Yes, I do, miss,' he said as a memory stirred. Tregalles had pointed to that very same road when they were on their way back from Lyddingham, and told him about Fletcher's call to a farmer by the name of Roper. Could it be that there was something about the farm that Tregalles had missed? This could turn out to be just what he was looking for, a chance – a
proper
chance to show them what he could do. If he could find out . . .

Emma was speaking again, ‘To tell you the truth, I feel a bit foolish calling about this now, but I thought you should at least know that the Australian is still in the area, and he was with the other man – the one who might have been in the pub the night Mark and Mickey Doyle had their heads together. So if you would just tell Molly or the sergeant that I called?'

‘No, no, don't hang up,' Lyons broke in. ‘Even though you say you lost them, I would like to hear everything from the beginning. You may recall something that turns out to be very important. You say the Australian and another man came into the pub? Can you describe this other man, Miss Baker?'

It had taken Lyons very little time to pinpoint the location of a hill farm belonging to a man by the name of Evan Roper. He studied a contour map of the area, and decided that the best way to approach the farm without being seen was from the rear. He would have much preferred a position overlooking the front of the place, but there was no cover. Approaching from the rear would mean a cross-country hike of roughly three miles, and a fairly steep climb, but for someone who had competed in five marathon events last year alone, from the Fun Run in Knowle in May, to the Loch Ness Marathon in Inverness in October, a three-mile walk in the hills was a doddle.

His plan was to conceal himself directly across from the farmhouse on the far side of what appeared on the map to be a gully or shallow ravine, and he found it hard to curb his impatience to finish his shift and be on his way. His mind, that afternoon, was more on planning his approach than on searching for patterns among the crime stats he was supposed to be sorting.

Reluctantly, he decided that he would have to go home to pick up his digital camera and one or two other things before taking off for the farm, but he should still be in position with at least an hour of daylight left for observation.

And if Slater or the other chap that Emma Baker had described should show themselves, he would take pictures. He had quite a decent telephoto lens he'd bought on eBay, so he was confident he could get a reasonable shot of them at that distance.

He looked at the clock again. The time seemed to be crawling by, and he was impatient to be off. He could hardly wait to see the look on Tregalles's face when he plunked the pictures down in front of him tomorrow morning.

It had all seemed so simple and straightforward back there in the office, but nothing was working out as planned. For a start, it had taken him considerably longer to get there than he'd thought it would, and it was almost dusk by the time he'd worked his way into position. And while it had been sunny and warm earlier in the day, the temperature was dropping rapidly, and mist was rising from the valley bottom.

He found cover of a sort in a scrubby patch of trees overlooking the valley, and now, stretched out on a groundsheet, he took his first good look at the farmhouse through binoculars.

His heart sank. What he'd thought would be a good vantage point wasn't anything of the sort. In fact, what had looked like a shallow ravine on the map, turned out to be a broad, steep-sided valley, and one look through the lens of his camera told him that he could never get a decent picture of anything at that range.

Lyons buried his face in his arms and groaned aloud. He'd been so caught up in the idea of proving that he could act on his own initiative, so anxious to ‘show them what he could do', that he'd made a balls up of it again.

But there had to be
something
he could salvage from this disaster. Perhaps he could tell them . . .

Tell them what? That he'd deliberately withheld the information he'd received from Emma Baker, so that he could come out here on his own to take a few pictures? And then what? What the hell had he been thinking of? If Paget ever found out . . . Just the thought was enough to make him cringe.

‘Idiot!' he breathed. What he
should
have done was report Emma's call to Ormside, and taken whatever small credit there might be for tying it in to Roper's farm. Too bad he hadn't had the sense to think of that earlier.

There was nothing for it now but to leave as quickly as he could and say nothing to anyone about coming out here. He'd give Molly Emma's message in the morning and let her make the connection with the Roper farm. And if she didn't make the connection, he could suddenly recall Tregalles's mention of the farm, and take credit for that at least. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

Somewhat buoyed by the thought, he knelt to roll up the groundsheet and was reaching for his rucksack when he heard a sound, and something cold and hard was pressed against the base of his skull.

‘Don't even
think
of moving,' a hoarse voice whispered in his ear. ‘Move before I tell you to, and I'll blow your bloody head off!'

Perhaps it was the pent up anger and frustration that made him do it; perhaps it was simply an adrenalin rush that made him lash out without thinking. His forearm smashed with numbing force against the weapon as he jerked his head away. He twisted round, kicking blindly. He felt his boot strike solid bone, and heard a yelp of pain as his assailant went down. Lyons didn't wait. He was up and running for his life, slithering and sliding down the hillside so fast that he couldn't have stopped if he'd wanted to.

His foot went out from under him and suddenly he was flying through the air. He landed hard, tried to stop himself, but the slope was even steeper here, and there was nothing he could do except try to protect his head as he plunged end over end into the mists below.

A
very worried-looking Sergeant Ormside met Paget at the door as he entered the office next morning. ‘Alcott's looking for you,' he said baldly, ‘and I've never seen him in such a state. Practically blue in the face, he was. Came in like a bloody whirlwind and told me to tell you to get up to his office before you do anything else.'

‘Did he say what it was about?'

‘Wouldn't say. Just about took my head off when I asked, so I wouldn't hang about if I were you, sir.'

‘Nothing that might give us a clue in the night log?'

Ormside shook his head.

‘Better get up there and see what it's all about, then,' said Paget as he headed for the door. ‘Wish me luck.'

‘I think you might need a bloody sight more than luck,' Ormside muttered to himself as the door closed behind the chief inspector.

The superintendent's door was open and Alcott was standing by the window, a cigarette cupped in his hand, eyes fixed on some distant object.

‘You wished to see me, sir?' said Paget as he entered.

Alcott turned to face the chief inspector. ‘No,' he said deliberately, his voice ominously low, ‘I did not
wish
to see you, Chief Inspector. What I
want
is an explanation. I want to know why you, as a senior officer, feel you have the right to jeopardize a major investigation, when you have been given explicit instructions to halt your own investigation? And why you would see fit to send in one of the greenest men you've got to go blundering about like a drunken sailor, is beyond me. This action of yours has almost certainly destroyed years of painstaking work, to say nothing of what will happen to God knows how many young women and children who might have been rescued.' His narrowed eyes bored into Paget's own. ‘This is a disciplinary matter,' he continued ominously, ‘and I—'

‘Which means I should at least be told what I'm accused of,' Paget broke in sharply, ‘because I have no idea what you are talking about, and I can't give you an explanation until you tell me what this is about.'

Alcott's eyes narrowed. ‘I'm talking about this idiot, Lyons, up at the Roper farm,' he grated. ‘Did you really think you could send someone in the back way without him being detected? And what did you hope to accomplish? Good God, man, Lyons has already allowed one man to escape, so what . . .?'

‘If Lyons or anyone else was at the Roper farm, he certainly didn't go there with my permission,' Paget broke in. ‘Are you sure about this, sir? I mean how—'

‘Of course I'm bloody sure!' Alcott exploded. ‘I've had the chief constable and a thoroughly pissed off Superintendent Trowbridge chewing my arse off since six o'clock this morning.'

‘So, what does Lyons have to say for himself? To the best of my knowledge he's been on desk duties these past few days, and I have no idea how he learned about the farm or what prompted him to go out there on his own. Where is he now?'

Alcott threw up his hands. ‘That,' he said thinly, ‘is what we would all like to know. One of Trowbridge's men caught him sneaking in the back way to spy on the farm. He tackled him, but somehow or other Lyons broke away, and the last anyone saw of him he was going like the clappers down the hill behind the farm. The mist was rising, and they lost him, so God knows where he is now or how much damage he's done. If he's been caught by the people Trowbridge is after, he's probably dead, and the entire operation will be shut down. The whole thing is an absolute shambles, and I'm being held responsible for it.'

Alcott jammed the half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray with such force that butts and ash flew across his desk.

Paget frowned. ‘How did they know it was
Lyons
?' he asked. ‘If he got away as quickly as they say . . .?'

‘He left his stuff behind. They ran the prints on a camera and binoculars. They came up with Lyons, and traced him straight back to us.'

‘If Trowbridge has someone on the inside, as I suspect he does,' said Paget, ‘then he should know if they have Lyons or not. And if his men lost him in the mist, Lyons may have managed to get away undetected.'

‘So where is he, then?' Alcott demanded. ‘Because if he isn't dead, he's going to wish to hell he was if I get hold of him.'

Paget reached across the desk to pick up the phone. ‘Let me check something out,' he said, punching in Ormside's number. He had a short conversation with the sergeant, then waited while Ormside checked Lyons' desk.

‘According to the message log,' he said, relaying the information to Alcott as he was getting it on the phone, ‘it shows Lyons received a call from Emma Baker at lunchtime yesterday. The message was intended for Forsythe, but she was away, so it would seem that Lyons dealt with it himself. Ormside says Roper's name is on the scratch pad on Lyons' desk, so it looks as if Baker told him something that pointed him in the direction of the farm. I've asked Ormside to check with Emma Baker to find out what she told Lyons, and to see if it will shed any light on what prompted him to go out there on his own.'