The Devil's Chair (7 page)

He turned away from the scene. Not one person would swallow that explanation.

Talith was none too pleased at having to turn the car around and drive back down the A49 to Church Stretton. He wasn't at all keen on having to visit Mansfield and the shabby home again either but if the child's slipper had been found at least it bore out the claim that Daisy Walsh really had been in the car on the fateful night and something had happened to her. Surely, he reasoned, they would soon find her? He gave Lara Tinsley a swift explanation as he did a U-turn on the A49.

As they pulled back up outside the house Mansfield was just getting into his van. He looked surprised to see them again. Surprised and – again – there was that radiant hope that they were bringing Daisy back to him.

They were going to have to disappoint him for the second time that day.

Mansfield stood, frozen, on the pavement and waited for them to draw near. He was oblivious to an elderly woman pulling a Sholley behind her who muttered crossly at having to detour on to the road, the shopping echoing her disapproval as she dropped off the kerb. She continued chuntering until she was yards past while Mansfield stood rooted to the spot, unconscious of either her presence or her annoyance.

He took a step forward, hands outstretched as though he would lift the invisible child from their arms. ‘You've found her?'

Lara Tinsley put a hand on his arm as she shook her head.

‘No,' she said gently, then, ‘it's best if we go inside, Neil. We won't be long. I just have a simple question.'

Mansfield's hand was shaking as he tried to put the key in the lock. They could see numerous dents and scratches where he and/or Tracy had fumbled to insert the key before. As it finally slipped in he turned around, opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. Instinctively Talith knew that Neil Mansfield was not asking the question that hovered on his lips because he was afraid of the answer they would give:
We've found her body
. They both felt sympathy for him but were mindful of DI Randall's instructions. Mansfield wasn't quite in the clear yet. Who knows. The entire story might still have been fiction.

They waited until they were inside and the front door closed behind them before Talith spoke. ‘I'm sorry, Neil,' he said, ‘we haven't found her.' Then he asked casually, ‘You said that Tracy had put Daisy's dressing gown on?'

Mansfield nodded.

‘Did she put the little girl's slippers on too?'

Mansfield's eyes panicked and Talith realized he had jumped to the wrong conclusion. He pressed on quickly. ‘Did Tracy put Daisy's slippers on?'

Neil Mansfield seemed unable to answer. He frowned, looking bemused.

‘Slippers? I can't remember,' he said. ‘You asked that before. Why are you asking again? What's it got to do with …'

His thought processes were too slow to work it out for himself.

‘Try to remember,' Lara prompted gently.

Mansfield shook his head.

‘
Think
,' Talith prompted.

So Mansfield made an effort. He squeezed his eyes tight shut and muttered the word
slippers.
For a moment nothing happened. Then his eyes popped open. ‘Yeah,' he said. ‘I think she was.'

‘What were they like?'

Neil Mansfield gave a snort. ‘Fluffy pink things,' he said, almost smiling.

‘Any motif?'

‘Some Disney thing, I think,' he said. ‘A doll or something.' And then it clicked. The colour drained from his face. He looked from one to the other, blinking quickly. ‘You've found them, haven't you? Is she – was she—?'

‘Wearing them? No.'

Talith would have found it easier if he could have told Mansfield that they had found a child's slipper but Randall had instructed him not to so he was left with an awkward silence which Mansfield interpreted with a bowed head. ‘OK,' Talith said eventually. ‘Sorry to have held you up. Were you going to the hospital?'

Mansfield nodded. ‘In the morning. I'm bloody dreading it,' he confided. ‘I don't know what I'm going to say to her.'

Lara resisted making the unhelpful comment that it wouldn't matter much. People on ventilators weren't usually up to scintillating conversation – or violent quarrels for that matter. But Tracy Walsh's alcohol level on a drip would probably be the lowest it had been for years, so maybe it would be worth a try.

They left.

It could be hard to keep the general public out. Back at the Burway a few people must have got through somehow. They must have walked over the hills via the public footpaths either down in the valley to the crash site or to the point where Tracy Walsh's car had first left the road. A few bunches of flowers with attached notes of sympathy had been laid as tributes on the verge.

Randall looked around him. Was he being watched? Had the search been thorough enough? Had they missed her? Walked over the very spot where her body was? The Long Mynd was full of gulleys and undergrowth, the mountains looming up, forbidding. There were small caves and places where trees had fallen, leaving landslips of mud and roots, somewhere where a four-year-old could, it was possible, be imprisoned.

The question was a drumbeat in his mind. Was she here?

The day was still dull, grey and miserable, reflecting his mood. There was hardly a hint now of any sunshine. As he scanned the horizon Alex Randall believed that somewhere, on these mountains, laid the answer. Beneath were ancient mine workings, tin and other minerals. And then the sun came out from behind a cloud so he was only aware of the raw beauty of the place which inspired him to believe that Daisy Walsh was still here. She had never left the Long Mynd. He scanned the horizon and caught sight of the shape of the Devil's Chair through the mist. She might be hurt. She could be dead. She could be injured but she was – still – here. He watched the searchers, some on the heights, others wading through the brook, still more painstakingly searching the entire valley. There was a buzz around the incident room in the National Trust teashop, a concentration of busy people. The low loader, with its orange lights flashing and warning beeps, struggled back down the narrow valley, taking with it the wrecked vehicle. Randall shook his head. He wanted – needed – inspiration.

And then the mist parted and he saw the small white cottage named Hope Cottage. He strolled across to WPC Delia Shaw. ‘We need to take a walk,' he said. ‘Let's go.'

T
hey slipped on wellington boots, zipped up their oilskins then traipsed the half mile to Charity Ignatio's cottage. It was a modest-looking place, whitewashed, with no more than a patch of steeply sloping hillside as its garden and a tiny patio just big enough for a table and two chairs. It was plain and lacked any sort of inspiration. It looked somehow featureless, anonymous. There was nothing particular to mark it out. No car stood outside. Charity was still in the Middle East, somewhere up country now and not expected back for more than two weeks. They had managed to speak to Shirley, the cleaning woman who had returned from Spain and let them into a small secret. Randall handed Delia Shaw a pair of latex gloves and they pushed open the wicket gate and stepped into the garden, climbed up to the front door. ‘Now then,' Randall said, finger on chin. ‘We need to gain entry without putting up the Shropshire Police's bill for door bashing.' To his right was the white flowerpot prettily planted with lemon primroses. Randall lifted it up and sure enough exposed a Yale key with a plastic tag on it. He held it up as a trophy. ‘Helpful of them to label it “front door”,' he observed and sighed. ‘Oldest trick in the book. I wonder why people aren't a little bit more imaginative.' He inserted the key in the lock and opened the front door. The house was like the Tardis – much bigger from the inside than it looked on the outside. Open plan, with pale walls and white-painted furniture, it looked quite spacious. Slipping on overshoes they stepped straight into a sitting room, long windows to the front overlooking the hills.
The Silent Hills
, as Malcolm Saville had called them. Randall looked at them through the window. He could have done with the hills being a little less silent. But then when have hills spoken? He creased his face up as he recalled
The Sound of Music
, then realized Shaw was watching him. ‘Sir,' she asked uncertainly. He simply smiled. He wasn't going to share this one with her.

They walked through the lounge into an equally spacious and tasteful kitchen, cream units lining the walls, topped by black granite. The floor was grey slate. All was neat and tidy, everything put away except one coffee mug in the sink. Optimistically Randall bagged it up, knowing the chances were that the mug would hold Charity Ignatio's lipstick and DNA, not that of their mystery caller. He moved through to the back door and tried it. It was locked and bolted from the inside. He looked around. There was no sign that the child had ever been here. He could send in the fingerprint and forensic boys but in his heart of hearts he didn't believe that Daisy Walsh had ever been inside Hope Cottage.

WPC Shaw watched his movements without comment.

The two of them explored the rest of the house. The cream carpeted lounge came complete with log burner, shelves of books, mainly on business management, a large flat-screen television and a small sofa with chintzy, loose covers that smelt of fabric conditioner. Upstairs were two bedrooms painted blue, with double beds and built-in wardrobes and a very smart bath/shower room, as sterile, bright and spanking white as an operating theatre. There was no sign of either the missing child or of the intruder who had made the call. It was hard to believe that it had come from here.

Randall looked around. Apart from the solitary coffee mug there was no sign that
anybody
lived here. It was soulless, with no personality stamped on its interior either. It struck Randall that Ms Ignatio led a very tidy and ordered life, most of it away from the cottage. Hope Cottage was merely a pied-à-terre, a place where she dropped in from time to time, not a home. Randall found himself a little curious about this anonymous woman and her tenuous connection with his current case. They trooped downstairs and Randall eyed the phone – a cordless device that plugged into a central line. He hit the redial button and found himself apologizing to the emergency services, which told him something useful. No one had used this phone since their mystery caller.

Their mystery caller who had vanished right back into the silent hills. Well – it was up to him to find him or her.

M
artha had come in early. She hated uncertainties and the fate of this one little girl was exactly that. Uncertain. Come to think of it, she reflected, the fate of the mother was equally uncertain. Life on intensive care was precarious however competent and dedicated the staff. She sat, chewing on the end of her pencil, trying to work out what had happened and why. But it was impossible. No rational explanation seemed to fit. She kept coming back to the mystery caller and it didn't make sense. What had the caller been doing so early in the morning in such a remote area? Had he or she been there by chance? Why had she or he taken the child? In the end she stopped trying to work it out, gave a deep sigh and bent back over her work, but the questions continued to gnaw at her from the inside out, like a rat inside a cardboard box, trying to escape. At the back of her mind she felt there had to be a reason. A rational explanation, a valid explanation for why all this had happened. Something to replace this void.

She well understood it when people voiced their relief at a body found, a fate known. It was the only way one could have any chance of closure. She made a face.
Closure.
She hated the word. It had become a cliché, overused and undervalued but sometimes it was the only appropriate expression.

But, she mused, Tracy aside, who would have closure in the fate of this one little girl? From what she'd heard so far Daisy's father had little to do with his daughter. What was the phrase Alex had used? A tenner at Christmas?

What about grandparents? Perhaps.

Her job frequently offered up more questions than answers but she always strove towards resolution. She was realistic enough to know that this valued phrase,
closure
, was not always possible, and she had watched with sadness those relatives and loved ones who left the coroner's court with bowed shoulders, deepened frown lines and sheer unhappiness that she suspected would never be resolved. It was these cases that stained her mind and bothered her months, even years later. There were times when a solution she knew to be false was proffered and she was tempted to snatch at it. But underneath she knew that it was better to stick to the truth, even though, like coroners up and down the country, she could be lured into white lies:

No, he/she didn't suffer.

Yes, death was instant.

He/she would have known nothing about it.

Sometimes it was counterproductive to delve into those last terrifying and painful minutes of violent death.

And then there were the other white lies, designed to protect the relatives in their part in the tragedy.

It was inevitable/unavoidable. There was nothing you or anyone else could have done to prevent it
. This, too, was not always strictly true. An argument avoided, a drink not poured, an apology or a different action
would
have stopped the event. And she knew it. She usually hoped they did not.

There was no thought or malice behind it.
Psychopaths don't have thoughts and they are incapable of feeling malice, so this, at least, was true in some circumstances.

He didn't mean to kill him/her. It was an accident. The wrong place at the wrong time.
Or the right place at the right time?

And for Martha, the most difficult of all
. I'm sure God didn't plan for your baby to be born with this defect. It was not a punishment to you, his parents.
How do you explain that one, Coroner?