The Night Hunter (18 page)

‘Do you like it? It’s something I’ve been working on.’

‘What is it?’

Eric smiles. ‘It’s a water clock.’

‘Oh, Mary has one in the house. Do they work?’

‘Alex’s is one of mine. Yes, they’re the oldest form of timekeeping in the world. Incredibly accurate, engineering at its finest and purest. They’re called clepsydra, the thieves of time. I’ve been working on this one for some time and it’s nearly right but not quite.’

I am fascinated by this. ‘How does it work?’

‘Would you be interested?’ He smiles. ‘I thought you would think it was a waste of time.’

‘Anything that you have a passion for is never a waste of time.’

‘I’ll get it going.’ He opens a drawer on the sideboard, takes out a syringe and places it on the sideboard. Then he smooths out the felt that the water clock stands on and lays a spirit level on it. He picks up three bottles of coloured ink – red, blue and yellow – then lines them up with a precision that I would be proud of. He draws a tiny amount of blue up into the syringe and injects it into the tap at the end of the bundle of three neatly bound glass tubes. He repeats it with the yellow bottle and then the red, injecting each into a different place. He stands back, checks his watch. He waits. I sense I am to watch this and not comment. Once his wristwatch has reached some pertinent time, he opens the tiny tap at the top of the maze and waits. And waits. And watches. With all the expectancy of a young lover awaiting the first sight of his sweetheart, he holds his breath as the first drop of clear water winds its way down the narrow glass pipe where it meets a bubble of black dye. They float towards each other, embrace, and an azure cloud forms. A slow blue comet rolls it way to the end where it forms a perfect sphere. It steals yellow, and turns deep emerald, hinting at lime round the edges. The colour is not constant, it swirls to the colour of olives, then weakens to buttercup. The water halts at the edge of the tub, pauses before taking the final plunge on to the aluminium gutter below.

Eric leans in and peers at the water drop as it forms a red teardrop; the surface tension builds, then it lets go. The receiving cup takes charge of the red drop with a quiet ‘bip’, a rather pleasing sound like an honest raindrop. Eric holds his breath, watching again, waiting again; that fascination will never leave him. Another drop runs down the channel, hesitates, then also slips on to the cup below. For a moment nothing happens but then the cup begins to register the extra weight, recognizes its own tipping point, and begins, infinitesimally at first, degree by degree, to sink down on the end of its off-centre spindle. Just as slowly, the next cup lowers to take its place. Eric looks at his watch and frowns a little.

‘That has turned the wheel exactly one sixteenth of its circumference, twenty-two point five degrees. One sixteenth of a minute, one cup every three point seven-five seconds. One minute per rotation. It has to be perfect, it has to be right. But it isn’t. Yet.’ Eric sits back on his old velvet chair. ‘There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.’

‘Gandhi?’

‘Correct. But all time is an illusion.’

‘Einstein. It is beautiful, isn’t it?’ I sit down on the other chair, a battered old brown leather thing. As the cups fill with water, a small glass slide is being counterweighted and it slowly lifts like a portcullis. The dark blue water scuttles under yellow, they mix in wave form but stay separate.

‘Now that is clever,’ I say, impressed. ‘So when that little bucket fills it lifts the door slightly.’

‘And as the level of the water rises it escapes into the bucket, which becomes heavier and lifts the barrier so the water gets through, reducing the pressure. When the weight drops the barrier falls back. Its own little perpetual motion system, if such a thing could ever exist.’ He leans forward and closes the small glass tap on the pipe. The dripping stops, the wheel slowly stops turning. Eric Mason can stop time.

I then notice that the sofa and the chairs in the room are all pointed towards the water clock, the way my parents’ chairs used to point towards the telly.

‘You spend a lot of time looking at it?’ I ask. He looks at me to see if I’m taking the mickey. ‘I can see it being therapeutic, watching time pass like that. This is a work of art, but do you see a practical use for it?’

‘Do you?’ He regards me with sludgy brown eyes. ‘I mean, they are effective timepieces but you have to have a very small electric pump in there and that kind of spoils it. If it were outside, though, all I have to do is regulate the rainfall. That’s the experiment out there, but it’s broken with all this rain pissing down all the time.’ He turns a tap again, the water starts moving, almost imperceptibly.

‘Is there a pump in the one in Mary’s hall?’

‘At Alex’s house.’ He corrects me automatically. ‘Just listen.’

Then I hear it, the sound of water and time passing in perfect harmony. A metronome of life.

‘Has that always fascinated you, the dance of water and time?’

‘Time and tide wait for no man,’ he says. ‘They both go quickly on their way. No matter what happens to water or minutes, sooner or later, they both … I can never find the right word … escape, retreat? Water can be diverted, dammed, blocked or stored. Time can be ignored or delayed, but they will both pass. The end result is always the same, water goes to ground to join the great cycle of life. Everything goes to ground.’

He closes his eyes again, his head back, fingertips meeting, tapping one on the other in time with the drops of the water clock.

I lean back in the seat and do the same. The water drops tune into my heartbeat, and for a while they are one.

Complete peace falls on the room.

We both jump as a playful tinny tune sounds out in the room. He looks at me in horror.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Mobile.’ He gets up and digs about in various pockets of the jacket he left hanging over the door handle. He looks at the number ID with some surprise.

‘It’s Mary,’ he says to me.

‘Is there a problem?’ I ask, reaching into my own pocket for my mobile. There are no missed calls on it.

Eric takes the call. ‘Mary?’ he says.

There is silence, and he pulls a face at me. He is about to repeat himself when a quiet voice says, ‘Hello.’

Not Mary.

‘Hello?’ Eric tries again.

Silence.

‘Mary, is that you?’

‘It’s me.’

I am now on my feet; both of us know that something is wrong. Eric holds the phone so that we can both hear the childish whisper, the rasping breath.

I say, ‘Charlie?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Elvie here, and your Uncle Eric.’

The reply is automatic and polite. ‘Hello, Elvie. Hello, Eric.’

‘Hi, is your mum there?’ Eric asks, keeping his voice light.

‘No.’

I take the phone from him and watch as Eric puts his shoes back on muttering, ‘Bloody kids, what’s he playing at?’ under his breath.

‘Does your mum know you’re on the phone?’

‘No.’

‘Can you go and get Mum for me?’

‘She’s not here.’

I roll my eyes heavenward. ‘OK, Charlie, where did you get the phone?’

‘On the floor.’

‘And where is Mum?’

‘Not here.’

Eric says, ‘Alex is in Glasgow, she must be there.’ Just as Charlie is whispering in my ear, ‘Nobody here.’

‘You say there’s nobody there?’ I repeat for Eric’s benefit.

Eric looks round; Charlie is not a stupid boy. ‘And where are you?’

‘Kitchen.’

Eric puts out his hand for the mobile.

‘OK, look, Charlie. It’s Uncle Eric here, and this is what I want you to do. You end this call and I’ll phone you back and you answer, OK? Do you know how to do that? Don’t turn the phone off now.’ Eric presses End Call and waits for the number to go red to show that Charlie has hung up. He then calls Alex’s landline. ‘Mary will be about somewhere.’

‘Unless she’s had an accident,’ I say.

Eric looks at me, one eyebrow raised. All kinds of things are running through my mind. Has she fallen down the stairs, had some kind of fit?

‘There’s no answer.’ He holds the phone out for me to hear it ring, then go on to answerphone. Still nobody picks up. Eric ends the call and scrolls back up to Mary’s mobile number and presses Call. It is answered immediately by scratching and bumping. I imagine the clumsy little fingers over the touch screen.

‘Uncle Eric?’

‘Hello, Charlie, did your mum give you your tea?’

‘Yes.’

‘And where is she now?’

‘Dunno.’ There is a faint sniffle. ‘Mum’s not here.’

Eric picks up his jacket and swings it over one arm, knocking some papers to the floor. I bend down to pick them up, handfuls of drawings of extensions and chimneys, water clocks and swimming pools, reinforced floors for indoor pools and a drawing I recognize as his own back garden. I put them back in the file, in roughly the right order, when he taps me on the shoulder and mouths
jacket on.
I get up and slip the fleece back on, check my own phone, and we duck under the scaffolding to get to the front door. I jump at a deep grinding under the floor, then a whirring sound surrounds us.

‘Generator,’ explains Eric. ‘Come on, we need to get going.’

I look out the hall window across the barren moor. The clouds have closed in, the heather is waving around in the gale and rain spikes down. Eric still has the phone clasped to his ear. I follow him as he walks to the front door, keeping his voice calm, teasing. ‘So she’s not being a lazy big sleepyhead and still in her bed?’ He steps over the dog’s bowls, still talking down the phone.

‘She’s not here.’

Eric slips his arms into his jacket, then picks up the keys to the Land Rover, and I follow him across the grass. ‘Where are you, Charlie?’ He opens the door to the vehicle.

‘Kitchen. I’m cold.’ He is nearly crying.

‘Cold?’

‘Yes, Eric.’

‘Why are you cold?’

‘The door’s open.’

‘What door?’

‘The back door. I’m hiding in the kitchen.’

‘Hiding?’ Eric starts the engine, he raises his voice. ‘Why are you hiding, Charlie?’

‘In case they come back.’

It is three minutes past midnight when Eric punches in the numbers on the keypad. The Land Rover grinds to a halt on the monoblock near where Charlie has his swings.

I jump out of the Land Rover and run across the paving, up the steps to the shattered glass of the patio doors. Even in the darkness I can see the blood. Eric is saying to Charlie, ‘I’m just outside, son, but you stay where you are.’

The patio door swings open at the push of my fingertip.

‘Charlie? Are you still here?’ Eric goes up the steps to the kitchen; I grab his arm and pull him back. There appears to be blood smeared everywhere. He reels slightly, both hands to his mouth, silencing the horror. There is one set of shoe prints, tramlines of drag marks. I hear Eric mutter,
Oh, Mary
.

‘Don’t stand in that,’ I say. Something awful happened here.

I carefully step round the kitchen that Eric designed. White units, black and white marble tiles. Mary keeps it pristine. Her handbag lies on the floor, open, contents scattered as if she had dropped it. That’s how Charlie had got the phone. Fruit has spilled from the basket on the worktop and an apple has rolled as far as the toe of my shoes, leaving its own little bloody track. We are both silent. I lift a large knife from the rack. Eric looks at me, shocked, but I am not taking any chances.

He turns the phone off and we stand still, listening. I move round the central island warily. I can deal with anything if I have surprise on my side.

‘Elvie?’ Eric is still at the door, pointing. I see smears on the white tiles then notice they have been made by a foot too small to be Mary’s. It is the perfect outline of a little boy’s shoe, dragging the blood towards the kitchen cupboard next to the Belfast sink.

‘Charlie?’ I say, with as much authority as I can muster. ‘It’s Elvie. Do you want to come out?’

‘No.’

A
lex Parnell looks like any other successful businessman who’s just got out of the car after a long drive; the only sign of his stress is the play of the fingers of his right hand on the cuff of his left sleeve. He wears a well-cut lightweight suit, a brittle blue that matches the colour of his jumpy eyes. His silk tie lies loose at his neck, his polished handmade shoes click on the marble floor as he paces. He has an iPhone clasped to his ear
.

DCI Anderson retreats into the living room with the gold table and the Chinese rugs. He wasn’t at work when he got the call and is dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans. He watches Alex Parnell unobtrusively then glances at the original Howson above the door, a pastel of a bare knuckle fighter in grey and black, as if making the connection, the hard man connection. The water clock is still in its glass case, ticking away with a
drop, drop, drop
. It seems to be mocking me.

Parnell was on the phone when he first walked through the door, and has remained so ever since. Even when Charlie ran from me into his daddy’s arms, the wings of his Batman pyjamas crumpled and flapping, Parnell only interrupted his conversation briefly to bounce Charlie on the arc of his hip. I heard him whisper into his son’s ear about him being a brave boy and to be a wee bit braver for a wee bit longer. Mummy would come back. Anderson has followed me into the living room, to give the man some privacy in his own home. Only Costello, a nosey wee tyke at the best of times, remains to watch. I presume that’s part of her job. The stairway down to the kitchen is taped off; in the absence of any other explanation, it is a crime scene.

Parnell is no sooner off the phone than it rings again, and he holds up his hand in apology. Charlie is burrowing his face in Parnell’s trouser leg, gripping on to the silk with small sticky fingers. Anderson nods in acknowledgment while Costello pulls a face of ill-concealed impatience.

Parnell is saying, ‘Thanks, I’ll let you know … yes, as soon as I do … I might take you up on that … but I really have to go now …’ and on it goes. The voice at the other end rattles on. He walks up to one of the four marble statues, a Greek goddess holding a lamb, before he turns round and paces back. Costello stalks him, walking up to the same statue, bending down as if to see if there’s a price on it. She glances at the white staircase, then to the Howson, the double-opening front door, the security locks. She is clearly thinking one thing. Money. Money. Money. If Mary has been taken by the Night Hunter, Parnell might go down the
I have the money, the expertise, the contacts. I’ll flush the bastard out myself
route. The same thought went through my mind. But Mary was taken indoors, she was snatched. The others had been taken while out running. Was that a different MO or a progression of the same?

Costello wanders into the sitting room. ‘Did you ever meet Natalie Thom?’ she whispers to me as she goes past.

‘No.’

She floats away.

Parnell hangs up the phone and sticks it in his pocket. ‘Go to Elvie now,’ he tells the wee boy, and Charlie rushes over and climbs up my trousers. I see Costello’s eyes narrow. She stands like a soldier at the gates of Stalingrad. She gives Parnell no privacy. I’ve been through it, Eric has been through it. It strikes me how strange that is. Parnell, for all his wealth and power, is about to come face to face with the Not Knowing.

‘Maybe it would be better if Elvie stayed,’ says Costello. ‘Eric can take Charlie to his room, read him a story.’

Anderson nods his agreement, he is keen to get on. Parnell kisses Charlie, and Eric takes the boy away. There is a quiet, hurried conversation between Eric and Parnell that Costello cannot overhear, no matter how hard she tries.

Now all four of us are in the living room, standing on a Chinese rug that smells of money. Four white sofas sit round the large glass and gold coffee table.

‘Sorry about all that,’ says Parnell, sitting down. ‘I spent the journey here from Glasgow talking hands-free to some female detective.’

‘That was me,’ says Costello, bristling at the ‘some’.

‘I’m DCI Colin Anderson. I’ve been put in charge.’

So Costello
has
been bumped from the top of the tree.

‘Can I confirm that you have found nothing missing, no signs of robbery?’

‘Any burglar would have taken credit cards, money, artwork, but there’s nothing missing. Apart from my wife.’

‘Mary,’ says Costello, still bristling.

Anderson sits down opposite Parnell, smiling an understanding
all men in it together
smile.

‘And a housebreaker wouldn’t take my wife, I would presume. She’s been kidnapped, hasn’t she?’

‘It must be the obvious conclusion.’ Costello sits down beside Anderson. Her smile is more:
If you have anything to do with this I’ll have you.
She sinks deep in the big white leather sofa, one leg crossed over the other like she owns the place. Or wants to.

Anderson is listening to Parnell. I hear them going through Mary’s daily routine, her contacts. I’ve already done my bit. I wonder who has been on the phone telling them to pull out all the stops for Alex Parnell and his missing wife. Alex Parnell is one of the richest men in Glasgow. They will all have to be on their best behaviour. I am calculating how soon I can get away and speak to Billy.

‘Mary has a chip,’ says Parnell.

‘Pardon?’ asks Anderson.

‘Here in her arm, she has a location chip, GPS. You should know from the get-go that her actual location is not a problem. I know that it might not be appropriate just to go and get her but … we will know where she is. That must put us ahead of the game.’

‘And can you do that now?’ asks Anderson.

‘Soon.’ He glances at his watch. ‘Hence the phone calls. I’m sure after Madeleine McCann disappeared every parent thought
if only that wee girl had been chipped she’d be traceable
. If only. Well, I’m rich enough to make the “if only” a fact. I know I might be a target for certain types of crime, so I liked the chip idea. Location chipping can track kids anywhere. Thank God I made sure that Charlie had one. He was nervous having it done, so Mary sat beside him and got one as well. And I’m so glad she did.’ Parnell wipes a tear from the corner of his eye. ‘Thank God.’

‘So why are you sitting here?’ asks Anderson, carefully. ‘If it was me I’d be out there, all guns blazing.’

‘Because it needs to be activated first. And because it won’t help if they have a gun to her head, will it?’ Parnell smiles weakly.

‘Activated?’

‘The GPS needs to be activated.’ He looks at the door, but it remains closed.

‘So, just to be clear, you have your wife tagged?’ asks Costello.

‘Chipped. In here.’ He taps the top of his arm. ‘It looks like a vaccination mark.’ He jumps as the front door opens and a tall man comes into the room, laptop under arm and a page torn from a notepad in his hand.

Parnell is on his feet. ‘Gary, is that it?’

‘Yes. I’ve not tried it yet, sir.’

Parnell sits down further along the settee to let Gary sit down. I notice the beads of sweat on his forehead, the way the fingers of his right hand are coiling and uncoiling; his self-control is slipping. I almost feel sorry for him. Almost.

Anderson’s voice is gentle as he asks, ‘So this device can trace Mary wherever she goes?’

‘Yes and no. An activation request has to be made by someone who knows a code and can offer further security information. I phoned from the car and they’re getting it up and running now. It had better bloody work. This is Gary Irvine, my IT guy.’

Gary shrugs off a leather jacket and sits down beside Parnell, placing the laptop on the coffee table. ‘I’ve already typed in the activation codes they gave me, now you put in your PIN number.’ His voice is trembling. ‘I’ve never done this before.’

‘I was hoping you would never have to.’ Parnell types four numbers into the laptop with two fingertips and watches intently. ‘Mary knows that she has the tag on her, she knows that we will come to get her. She’ll be OK.’

Anderson and Costello glance at each other, then at me. I think I know what they’re thinking: if these cases are linked – and that’s a big if – then all we have to do is track Mary and she’ll lead us to the other women. Including Sophie. Costello’s distrustful eyes are boring into me.

‘All we have to do is press Enter, and he said it should just …’ Gary’s finger clicks and he sits back, eyes on the screen.

Anderson cannot resist getting up and walking round the back of the sofa and Parnell moves slightly to allow him a better view, and Costello slots in behind. Only I remain in position, watching their faces.

Gary bites on his own thumb. ‘Oh my God, it’s loading.’

Anderson leans forward looking at the screen; a map of the UK disappears to be replaced by a map of Scotland, then Glasgow. A tiny blue dot appears, consistently pulsing, then it starts to spawn ever-growing circles. The dot floats north from Glasgow, then stops over Argyll. The blue turns red. The pulsing stops.

Parnell puts his finger on the screen, a gentle pressure like a kiss, and says quietly, ‘Mary.’

Three hours later the red dot has not moved. It remains on a green part of the map, above the treeline of Glen Lyon, very near the Rest and Be Thankful, too near to be a coincidence. Less than an hour from the Parnells’ house by road, much less by a powerful car at this time of night. But there is no car in the lay-by at the bottom of the hill, so why is the red dot coming from up a mountain? Anderson looks down over the loch, at the surface of the water, grey and pockmarked with the speckles of warm summer rain. There are more clouds ready to close in. The grass verges of the old road are full of cars, two Land Rovers, the dog unit and the small minibus with the armed response team. Anderson hopes they will not be needed. He looks again at the small dot sending out the ever-expanding circles; it is not moving, so Mary is either not moving or is not being moved.

Parnell had insisted that I should be here. I am the fittest, Mary knows me and I am medically trained.

Arty Simon, the search team leader, just noted the number on my high-visibility vest and nodded. Now he holds his arm up, signalling that we’re ready to go. The group gathers. Simon takes charge of the palm-held device and its flashing signal.

‘The dog goes first. Then those with torches. If the first contact is in any way problematic then we fall back. The target has not moved, not a good sign. We need to keep Parnell at the back of the group.’

‘I’ll be down here. Costello will keep Parnell with her, don’t worry,’ said Anderson.

‘And you had better keep your head, stay calm – no matter what.’ As Simon checks the medical pack on my back he says quietly, ‘I have no idea what we might be walking into.’ He looks round at the line of dark grey mountains. ‘We have to go. Has Parnell got the scent source? Tarka is better than any electronic device, so if Mary is up there, the dog will find her.’

‘The locator will take us to within two metres,’ says a gravel voice behind us. Alex Parnell stands on the broken tarmac of the single track road. ‘I have the pyjama top she slept in.’ He holds out a slightly bulky plastic evidence bag, sterile so the scent would not be contaminated.

Anderson and I watch them walk away, Simon introducing Parnell to the dog handler. Simon then comes back, moving into tactical command mode. He checks the palm-held device; the signal is strong, and the battery has plenty of charge left. He then lifts his arm and the rest of the team fall in line. Eight men in all. And Costello and me.

Tarka and her handler move to the front of the line. The Alsatian bitch pulls gently on her lead, her tongue panting, the rain making crystal baubles on the black diamond hair of her back. She sets off up the path, nose sniffing the air.

Parnell speaks to Anderson. ‘But the locator is telling us that Mary is over there. Why are we following the dog in the wrong direction?’

Anderson pats him on the arm. ‘Just let the dog do her job, she’ll take us the way Mary was taken. We’ll end up in the same place, don’t worry. If the dog goes quickly then Elvie can keep up.’ He gestures to me to get going and I go past. Costello’s grey eyes narrow as she puts up her hood; she is suspicious of me even being here.

Parnell shakes his head. ‘Oh no, I have to be there.’

‘You will stay at the back with me,’ says Costello, no argument.

Suddenly we are moving. Tarka sets off up the narrow path through the trees, pulling on ahead, her nose twitching as she works. She keeps her head steady as she follows the airborne scent. I wonder how the dog can smell anything in the heavy, damp air that is already thick with the smell of pine cones, but Tarka appears to have no trouble at all. The handler follows her confidently. There is no path that I can see but the SOCO on the search keeps flashing his camera at broken twigs and disturbed pine needles on the ground. I notice that the handler is walking slightly to the side of the marks of Mary’s path, leaving any evidence uncontaminated by his feet.

The dog handler holds up his hand, stopping us. I am surprised at how spread out we are already; the lead group is moving much quicker than the rest. He says to me, ‘They were moving in single file, running from the look of it.’

‘Running?’ The thought of Lorna being chased by a dog crosses my mind.

We quicken our pace. We walk through the constant pitter-pat of rain against the trees accompanied by the brush of nylon sleeves against tunics, feet through undergrowth. The dog pulls us along through a dense part of the forest and out the other side, older trees, wider spread, then she stops and sits. The handler raises his arm … I stop. While we wait for the others to catch us up I hear Costello mutter from somewhere in the darkness that she is bloody knackered.

The handler points, asks for someone to shine a torch. He crouches down. ‘There’s something here.’

I see it in the beam of the torch, covered by grass and a fine scattering of pine needles, some of which had been exposed longer than others. It is a flat black shoe, like a trainer but with a Velcro fastener.