Resolutions (19 page)

Mac listened as Mr Macintyre told, once again, how he had heard the shot, looked out of his front window and seen a man with a shotgun enter his neighbour's house. That he'd come downstairs and told his wife to call the police, and that then the security light in his yard had sparked on.

‘They were hiding out behind the wall,' he said. ‘Young Calum had carried the dog and poor little Em – she was in bits, so she was. I said to them, you come along in, I'll make you a brew. Then all of a sudden, there he was. I tell you, if Frankie hadn't barked when he did, I'd have been a gonner and the young 'uns too. Then we heard the sirens, just after the shot, and he scarpered, that Peel.' He nodded emphatically and Frankie barked, just to show how he'd done it that night.

Had Mac been in a better mood, he might have joined the laughter. As it was, Macintyre's good humour just set his teeth on edge.

‘Weren't you scared to open your door?' The interviewer was very young, very pretty, and the old man was clearly enjoying his moment of glory. ‘No, my love, we don't scare easy round here. Not that we expect trouble, mind; this is a respectable street, and Calum and young Emily are a lovely pair, even if they haven't found the time to get married yet.'

Mac walked away, stared instead out of the window and down into the car park. He took his phone from his jacket pocket and studied the screen, checking just in case it had rung or a message had been left, and he, somehow, had not heard.

‘If you're not going to be any good to me here, you'd best fuck off home,' Wildman said.

Mac started, so absorbed in his own thoughts he'd not heard his boss. ‘I may well do that,' he said. ‘Miriam is missing. Right now that's all I can think about. Peel has her.'

‘And the last time you and he crossed swords, you lost, far as I remember.'

‘I don't need reminding.'

‘I think you do. I think you need to be reminded of it over and over again until you realize you can't solve anything on your tod. You need the rest of us. Police work is about team work, not playing the bloody hero. That way people get killed.'

‘I never played the hero, as you put it. I followed a lead. I didn't have time to wait. We'd waited before and Peel had slipped through our fingers in the time it took backup to get there. I didn't ask for what happened. I didn't want to be the one there, facing him. I didn't make it happen. Peel did; he called the shots right from the very start and he's doing it now.'

‘Good,' Wildman said.

‘What?'

‘I said
good
. Time you brushed that frigging chip from your shoulder and realized you aren't alone in your suffering.'

‘What?'

‘You think any of us got away with it? Any of us here that didn't go home and rack our brains wondering if we could have done more, done anything to save that little lass? It was chance. Chance Peel decided you were the one he wanted to fuck around with. You were the one he could watch suffer and enjoy the most, but get this straight, Mac: it could have been any one of us on the beach with him that night, and ninety per cent would have done exactly what you did. Run to the kid and let him go. Peel was playing his luck that night, betting on the odds.'

‘And you'd have done it different, would you?'

‘Damn right I would, but, you know what, Mac, I don't see myself as being a better person for knowing that. I don't hold myself up against the likes of you and pass judgement; that's your game, not mine. I just know
me
, just like Peel knows himself, just like Peel knew you. Like he knows you now. You're not the most able opponent, Mac, not the best copper, not the meanest, not the strongest – just the one that provides him with the best game. Remember that, then, when it all goes tits up again, which – mark my words – it will; you might get to play him a blinder. You don't want another death on your hands, and no one that knows you wants to deal with your bloody conscience either, so do us all a favour.'

Mac stared, lost for words. Angry retorts rose to his lips and died there. The room had fallen silent, only the television breaking the tension and that was now delivering the weather report. Absently, Mac absorbed the fact that fog would be blanketing most of the country from late afternoon.

‘You've no right . . .' he said at last, but there was no heat in his protest, just a profound weariness.

‘No right to do what, Mac? To make you less of a martyr? Martyrs don't make good cops. Remember that.'

He turned on his heel and left the room. Mac watched him go, wondering if and how to make his own exit.

Alec appeared at his side, a mug in his hand. ‘Tea,' he said. ‘Drink. You OK?' he added.

Automatically, Mac took the mug from him. Conversation resumed, drowning out the weather forecast.

‘Is that the general view?' he asked.

‘General? No. Common? I imagine so.'

Mac took that in, accompanied the knowledge with a slug of tea. Found he felt oddly cleansed by Wildman's anger, by his own response – or lack of it. He nodded.

‘Look, everyone sympathizes, everyone knows, fears, it might be them next time. We all hope we'd make the right call, but none of us knows how it would pan out when we're actually in that position.'

‘And how did you feel, afterwards? When they brought her back from the beach, when—'

‘Mac, along with every man Jack of us – women included in that – I was glad I'd been somewhere else.'

TWENTY-TWO

S
omehow Mac made it through lunchtime and into the afternoon. Kendal phoned, but there was nothing to report, only that blood at the scene was the same group as Miriam's, but that traces had been minimal.

‘We can probably assume she's not badly hurt,' he said. ‘Or at least not losing blood.'

Was that compensation? Mac had to hope so. He thought again about just dropping everything and heading for home, but something told him that Peel would not remain so far south, not for long; he would stick with familiar terrain. And the thought that he might be halfway down the motorway should Peel make contact, and he would then have to backtrack and lose precious time, was the one thought that kept Mac from leaving.

Peel needed to know where to contact Mac, and Mac needed to be able to be contacted.

Mid-afternoon brought a shred of news. A driver of a Range Rover, heading for home and encountering the police cordon, had described an event he had witnessed that morning.

‘The timing's right,' Andy Nevins told him. ‘And the description of the man. And he's remembered part of the reg number. It's something.'

‘It is something,' Mac agreed. But what? Was the number plate genuine? Was he even driving the same car? The Range Rover driver had seen no woman passenger and had said that the car was a saloon – a BMW, he thought, or something similar. ‘Big,' he'd said. ‘Nearly wedged itself across the road.'

Mac knew that meant there was only one place Miriam could have been and that was in the boot of the car. He could not help but wonder what Peel had done to her; she may not be bleeding, but she wasn't fighting either, or Range Rover man would have heard.

He closed his eyes for a moment, summoning the energy and the courage to phone Miriam's sister. Andy was acting as liaison – the family knew him and Mac understood how much a familiar voice could help under these sorts of circumstances – but it would not be enough just to hear news from Andy, and Mac knew he had to call them too, talk them through their fears, just as he was trying to do on his own account. He was about to find their number in his contact list when the phone rang again and Mac looked at the display. Miriam's phone.

For an instant he thought that it might be her. That this whole incident was a mistake and a normal, unpainful explanation would emerge. They'd all be relieved, all go home.
He'd
go home, tell Wildman he was right and he really couldn't hack it any more, to count him out.

He pressed the button to accept the call. The voice was not Miriam's. ‘Hello, Inspector,' Thomas Peel said. ‘I think I have something you may want back.'

It was half an hour before anyone noticed that Mac had gone. At first everyone assumed he was just somewhere else in the building; then, as another fifteen minutes passed, it was obvious that he was not.

The desk sergeant recalled him leaving. He said that Inspector McGregor had been talking on his phone and had seemed in a hurry.

Alec tried Mac's mobile number: no response, just straight to voicemail.

‘Peel made contact,' Wildman said bitterly. ‘He went.'

‘What would you have done?' Alec queried. ‘Or have you never cared enough about anyone for that to be an issue?'

TWENTY-THREE

T
he weather forecast had been right about the fog. It rolled in from a cold ocean and sat heavily upon the land. Mac had grown up not twenty miles from Pinsent and he remembered well the thick fogs that descended so suddenly on a previously clear day. Walking on the beach in winter, he had learnt early to keep one eye on the sea and watch for the mist that came in so often with the turning tide. Once it came down, even those familiar with the area could become disorientated, and Mac had learnt that listening out for the sound of the sea was no sure guide to finding your way off the beach. The north-east coastal fogs seemed possessed of an almost mystical power of deception. Mac remembered well the story of six children and their teacher from a local riding school who'd been lost one winter because the fog had come down and they had turned their horses out to sea, instead of heading back for the beach above the strand line. Three had been drowned, horses and riders. One was never found.

The fog descended in thick blankets when he was only a few miles out of Pinsent, and Mac was forced to slow right down. He could, at times, barely see the front of the car, and oncoming vehicles slipped out of the gloom like diffuse ghosts, internally lit and seeming insubstantial.

Peel had given instructions: where to go, how to get there, when to be there. To come alone. Mac knew this was foolishness, but what else could he do? A full-scale police operation would only scare Thomas Peel away, and Mac could just imagine that Peel would either take Miriam with him or leave her like Cara Evans. Mac could not bear to consider either scenario.

Briefly, he wondered if he'd actually have a job to go back to after this, but it was a fleeting, unimportant thought.

Rowleigh Bay was thirty miles from Pinsent and ten from the beach where he'd seen Cara Evans die. It should have been an easy drive, but the fog on the twisting coast road was daunting, taking every ounce of his concentration. Once, twice, he saw Alec's name flash up on the caller display. Once, Wiseman's. He let the voicemail take them. Wiseman left no message. The route was not a complicated one, but at each turn he had to stop the car in order to see the signposts. Twice he had to get out and peer through drifting cloud at the battered, rusted signs. Rowleigh Bay was a beautiful place in summer, though even then it was remote enough to avoid the glut of the tourist trade. This time of year, it was left to the seals and the birds, and the few brave walkers who came down from the cliff path to cross the rocky beach and maybe walk the mile back to Rowleigh village and the Cross Keys pub, though those that did were either local or frequent visitors: they had to be to know that Rowleigh village even existed, that Rowleigh Bay was even there.

A mile to go. Mac glanced at his phone, telling himself that he could call for backup now, that this was the sensible thing to do. That he was an even bigger fool than he'd taken himself for when he'd left Pinsent almost an hour before. He was, though, unsurprised to see that he had no reception here. That his phone was useless. Did Thomas Peel know that? Likely so.

Mac drove through the little village of Rowleigh, noting the absence of cars in the pub car park – still too early for opening – the lack of people in the street – too cold, too damp, too dark now – and parked his car at the break in the cliff, the dip that gave access from the village and the road on to the beach and into the bay. Once, he'd been told, there'd been a lifeboat station here. Once a jetty that took pleasure-seekers round the headland to watch the seals. Nothing here now but cold and damp and despair. No other cars parked either. Did that mean that Peel had parked elsewhere, had been delayed by the fog or . . . was not going to show after all?

Something very close to despair gripped Mac at the pit of his belly and cramped hard. What if Wildman was right and he had made the wrong call again? Could he live with that?

No.

He looked at the dashboard clock. With the engine off and the lights doused, it was hard to see anything. He could just make out that it was five fifteen. He rummaged in the glove compartment and found a torch, detached his mobile phone from its cradle, hoping irrationally that it might find a signal down on the beach, then left the comparative comfort of his car and began the long, painful walk down on to yet another lonely beach.

Miriam was back in the boot of Thomas Peel's car. She was cold and stiff and scared. He'd cuffed her hands again, behind her back, so that each time the car rounded a bend or took a corner she was rolled sideways with no means of controlling her momentum. Her shoulder was stiff and bruised from lying on it with her arms wrenched back, and her hands were now almost numb. What wasn't numb was bruised and sore.

He had fastened tape across her mouth, wrapped a blindfold around her eyes. Frantic rubbing of her head against the boot carpet had shifted the blindfold, and though there was nothing to see in a space that was too dark for vision anyway, she felt slightly better for having at least fought back in that small way.