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Authors: R.L. Nolen

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BOOK: Deadly Thyme
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“No.”

“No?”

“I want to know what you
’re doing to find my daughter.” She heard the breathless panic in her own voice.

“Mrs. Butler
…” Trewe hesitated, watching her. At last, he turned to Perstow. “The area’s been secured?”

“Yes, s
ar.”

“Scenes of Crime Office came immediately?”

“The whole area’d been trampled by the time they arrived but SOCO worked as fast as the tide would allow.” Perstow bobbed his head as he spoke. His accent was thick. His “sir” sounded like “sar” and while his “s” sounded like a “z”, he pronounced his “th” like a “d.”

A huge weight was crushing Ruth inside. Her breath came in gasps. She coughed to clear her throat.
Don’t fall apart now, missy
. “You suspect foul play. You suspect someone’s taken her.”

“We take every precaution in situations such as this, Mrs. Butler,” Trewe said. “When a young girl goes missing
, it is important we do what we do quickly. I can reassure you, usually there’s a logical explanation. I don’t want you to worry overmuch. We are doing everything possible.”

Ruth swallowed.
Get a hold of yourself. He won’t listen if you fall apart.
The two police officers were staring at her. Did her presence constrain them?

As if he had read her mind, the ice-eyed man said, “It
’d be best if you were home.”

Ruth took a moment to stand
, and even then, she was not sure her legs would support her. She wanted to sink to the floor right there, but she jerked herself upright, chin up. “Fine. I’ll be at home.”

 

 

Trewe looked at the clock on the wall. Several hours had passed since the child
’s disappearance. So many things can happen in a moment. He didn’t like to think of it.

Perstow came back into the office and picked up another stack of files. “I
’ll have these sorted soon enough, sar.”

“Perstow, what do you think happened to the girl?”

“Heaven forbid someone took her, sar.”

“I
’m going to tell you something that no one else is to hear for gossip’s sake. But for the record, I was at that beach this morning.”

Perstow
’s broad face registered shock. “You were there?”

“But I saw nothing, as God is my witness, of this girl, Annie. I recall thinking that it was strange that the little girl, Dot, was there alone. I often stop for a moment at the top of the wall before I come to work. Today was not much different than any other day. That is, until I received the call about the missing girl.”

“I see, sar.”

“If it comes up, I won
’t hide the fact. I simply don’t see any relevance.” Trewe laid a chart across the district map on his desk. He studied it for a moment, then looked up at Perstow. “It was hard getting the mother to listen, wasn’t it?”

“Annie is a good girl, s
ar.”

“You know her?”

“She would speak if we passed.”

Trewe shook his head. “Tell me what you know of the mother.”

“Well, she lived here for some years before anyone knew her a-tall.”

“What do you mean?”

“Kept herself to herself. Save for sending the girl for school, no one ever saw Mrs. Butler until a few years ago, when she began volunteering at the church.”

“So you haven
’t spoken to her before today?”

“I wouldn
’t go that far, sar. She sort of came out of her shell, you might say, here about a year ago. I don’t know that I’d noticed her before then. We would speak after church services. A few months ago, she helped run one of the booths at the fete. And I saw her at the hall later. She was dancing.”

“Who with?”

“Well, if ye must know, me, for one. She was only being friendly, not picking anyone in particular.”

“Flirting?”

“No, definitely not. I asked her to dance.”

Trewe pursed his lips, thinking, then said, “She
’s American. There’s something she’s holding back, Perstow. Knowing the villagers as you do, do you have any idea about what she might be hiding?”

“I have no idea, s
ar.”

“I don
’t either, but I intend to find out. Perstow, prepare a team. Alert the coast guard. Put out an Amber Alert. Let’s jack this thing up!”

 

4

 

Sunday night

 

J
on Graham turned away from the live feed of the beachfront. His heart heavy, he fiddled with his cup. When he followed his sergeant’s written instructions as to where all the cameras were, he had seen the blue flyers. What he had heard this morning had been no celebration on the beach. They had been searching for a missing girl.

His super would have to know right away, though he wondered if perhaps he should hold off. The girl might turn up. Offering help with this missing girl situation would jeopardize his undercover work. To make matters worse
, the officer in charge of finding the missing girl was the officer he was investigating.

He pulled his bowl of rice from the micro and cleared the table of
Detective Sergeant Thomas Browne’s old mags, remotes, empty cello tape dispensers, and stacks of blank notepads. The monitor hooked up to the lone DVD player was the closest to him. A lot of the newer cameras recorded directly to the computer. All the VHS tapes would have to wait until he could locate a VCR. Who uses such outdated equipment anymore?

The video would recycle itself unless he took the pertinent footage and archived it. He
’d gone through and archived footage taken at the time the girl disappeared to flash drives. The only thing he could do nothing about was the VHS tapes. There were two of them. He wondered what was on them. He was that knackered. Everything was blurring together.

He cleared his disposable dish out of the way. The flatware he tossed in the sink amongst other unwashed dishes. His predecessor was not much in the cleaning department and he
’d been here two weeks. He grabbed a bin bag and began clearing away where he needed more surface.

He wanted to replay the footage he
’d seen of the two girls on the beach. One of the cameras caught the girls as they rounded a rock outcropping. Both girls had been in brighter light, but when one girl disappeared back around the rock, there was too much shadow. He couldn’t see.

Feeling more awake, he pressed
“pause” and switched his attention to another computer screen. The other camera set on the far side of the beach facing the steps the girls had taken may have caught something more. He set it to play back at the same time, then he clicked “back” on both of them and watched the camera’s clock, pressing “play” just as the girls stepped away from shadows into the light. The video from the other side of the beach made the girls look minuscule. The missing girl had gone back toward the steps as if she’d seen something there.

The VHS tape recorders were closest to the stairs. It was dark there
, but the really important things might be on them.
Blast it!
He pounded a fist into the table, dumping an errant paper cup. A muck of old coffee spread out and he had to grab his police notebook up. He stopped the play by play and stared at the images frozen on the monitor. He soaked up the mess and pulled out another notepad for unofficial scribbles.

Conclusions? The girl had seen someone off-camera, against the rock wall, apparently hiding in a natural crevice where he wouldn
’t be noticed. This means there was a possibility that the person had not planned the attack, that whoever had been there had arrived before dawn. The cliffs faced west. Before the sun was higher in the sky everything on the beach was dark. It wouldn’t have been difficult to remain hidden. So why had the man spoken? Unless he wanted to get the girl’s attention and so, kidnap her? An involuntary shudder took him.

Jon turned to the other monitors, which had footage from the live CCTV cameras set up on the roads to and from the farm where
Detective Chief Inspector Trewe lived with his son’s family. By special dispensation and in conjunction with the UK Highways Agency, Jon’s sergeant had been able to set up a wireless link to the traffic observing stations. In the same vein, Jon had been able to recommend that a few fixed cameras be strategically placed in the Active Traffic Management system around Perrin’s Point. Why hadn’t the local police department requested more cameras before? Answer: Money—always the issue, and damn the results. Jon had used the argument that Cornwall wasn’t as inundated with traffic cameras as were other areas and that traffic accidents did occur here.

He wanted to check to see if the dark car that hit him was recorded. The road footage showed a lot of nothing but dark strips of pavement augmented on one side by stacked rock walls and on the other side by hedgerows. Except for the seasonal influx of sun-and-surf revelers, what was there to see? Hedgehogs, sure. Rare wild ponies would be a definite highlight. And grab your hats and hold your seats if a walker with dog happened by.

He backtracked to the time of the girl’s disappearance, then decided if the fellow who hit him had driven out of Perrin’s Point, he had likely driven into Perrin’s Point, so he backtracked even further until he did catch the dark car enter the road to the beach. The footage was too dark to read the registration tags. He fast-forwarded through darkness, and there it was, the car leaving. Not much to go on. The driver was gripping the wheel; there were no identifying marks on his knuckles and his face was hidden beneath a hat. Then he saw the time. The exact time the girl had gone missing. Coincidence? He thought not.

He should get the VHS tapes to the missing girl
’s investigation team. If he took the VHS tapes to the local police, the entire force would be at him about his role in it. He’d have to return to London having failed in his job. On the other hand, if he didn’t report the footage this moment, he would be accused of withholding evidence, surely a reason for dismissal.

His boss, Detective Superintendent Bakewell, had experts that could help out with getting rid of shadows and lightening and enhancing even VHS footage. But time was of the essence with a missing girl.
“A simple reporting of the facts,” he murmured, depositing the DVD he’d just created into a sleeve and labeling it “Beach Footage.”

What would Bakewell say when he heard Jon
’s story? He would say, “If you report the tapes, we’ll have no choice but to stitch up this business with Trewe, and
that
would put him in a position to withhold information, which would then afford him opportunity to hide the money.”

Jon would make the argument about the missing girl and time, etc. etc.

Bakewell would tell him to send the flash drive footage by email, copy the flash drives and keep them to hand over to DCI Trewe when the time was right, and send the VCR tapes by post first thing in the morning.

Of course
. That is exactly what he would say.

He sent a preliminary email explaining the situation and hoped it sounded lucid
, given his lack of sleep. He then packed the two VCR tapes in a big envelope and the flash drives in a separate, smaller envelope. Done and done.

He cracked a window and closed the door.

A full twenty-two hours had passed since he’d last slept. The best sleep-inducing aid would be to read what reports his ailing sergeant had left in his wake. He picked up the reports, lay on the sofa, and within an hour sat up again, not having closed his eyes. The most remarkable thing about all the information in the reports was that there was nothing remarkable. What had the man been doing? This lack of progress meant that he would have to go to the hospital and interview his sergeant. It was past visiting hours, so he couldn’t do that until the next day. His stay in Cornwall just grew one day longer. Ha!

He fell asleep with an open book of Shakespeare on his chest.
Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

 

 

Ruth pressed the toothbrush harder against the tub grout.
The toothbrush was a frazzled mess. She was told to stay put and wait for a call, but she couldn’t just sit. So she cleaned. She stared up at the mirror above the sink.

The day before
, Annie had called, “Mom! Come see!”

Ruth had gone into the bathroom. Her funny, creative daughter was sitting on the sink, her feet in the bowl, drawing faces in a smear of shaving gel. “Annie! I said
clean
the mirror.”

“But
Mom, I drew you! This is you. Look,” she drew her finger through the gel, “a smile!”

“Oh? And why am I smiling?”

“Because I made two goals in the practice game today, and straight away Mr. Sawyer told me I was brilliant. Real praise—coming from him, that is.”

“Great! I
’m so proud of you.”

“Yeah
, and Caroline was furious about it, jealous prat.”

“Annie!”

“She was.”

Annie had tackled her school papers
the night before so she wouldn’t have them to do the last day of her weekend.

The mirrors were fogged now
with hot water steam. She felt inclined to clean the mirrors until she noticed the tiny smears left from the shaving cream. No. She wouldn’t touch them.

Ruth got up from beside the tub and took her gloves off. She
’d been at it since coming home from the police station that morning. She took up the bottle of cleaner and squirted it on the sink. The sink was already desperately clean.

“Dear Lord Jesus.”

It sounded odd. She hadn’t really prayed in such a long time.

She wandered out to the living room. She couldn
’t vacuum; the phone might ring and she wouldn’t hear it. The big window overlooking the front yard was dark. It was already night? When did that happen? The clock on the wall ticked. Was Annie hungry? Cold? What was he doing to her?

Earlier that day, Sally had held Ruth
’s hand, answered the phone, fixed meals Ruth couldn’t eat, then left to care for her own family, promising to come back and spend the night.

Ruth sat at the edge of her couch. The flowers in the vase looked orderly
, but they smelled. They reeked. She stood and yanked the flowers from the sour water, stumbled into the kitchen, rammed them into the trash bin, bent over, and retched.

She stumbled back to the living room.
He meant to kill us. No one would believe me.
Now she had to tell. Everyone here would find out what a liar she was. But it didn’t matter. He still meant to hurt
Annie.

“Please Lord, not my Annie.” Staring blankly at the mug of tea that she hadn
’t moved since this morning, she felt the room close in. She couldn’t breathe properly. She paced—back and forth, back and forth. She hit the wall with an open hand each time she came to it. Pace, slap. Pace, slap.

She looked at the clock again. It was eleven forty-five
. Why hadn’t she heard anything? With a cry she fell across the couch.
No, no, no! Annie!
She rubbed at her face until it hurt.

She needed to wait. Something would happen. She reached for the box of tissues from a side table, turned off the lamp and sat in the dark. She picked at her nails
as she stared out the window.

Riverside was the name of her cottage. It lay nestled in a quiet neighborhood with the River Perrin,
which was more like a stream, running along behind. She was four blocks from the sea with several rows of cottages or businesses between, but sometimes she could swear she heard the song of the waves, as she did now. She went to the window and cracked it. No. It was, of course, only the river she heard, and yet—the rhythm, the ghostly echo of drums—and she was back on the beach surrounded by people. They were calling for Annie.

Across the village, in the harbor, searchers
’ lights flashed like fallen stars, pieces of hope spreading farther and farther out of her reach.

She paced some more, then sat on the couch. Mandy
, the cat, jumped up and settled herself on the back of the couch behind Ruth’s head. Somewhere Ruth had a picture of baby Annie sleeping on Mandy. She remembered taking it—in the picture Annie’s baby drool dripped onto the ferocious-hater-of-water-turned-pillow. Despite being ten and too “cool” to be sentimental, Annie loved her Mandy-cat. Ruth leaned back against the cat and let her purr drown out the ticking of the clock.

A melodic ring woke her. She sprang from her seat letting fly a b
illion pieces of shredded Kleenex. The pieces of white fluff clung where they had fallen, from her jeans to the rug. The tinny notes of “Annie Get Your Gun” grew louder. Her cell phone!
They call them mobiles here, mum, remember?
She snatched up her purse and began to dig into it.

BOOK: Deadly Thyme
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