No Going Back (3 page)

‘I assumed they'd started from the car park,' Daniel commented, catching up.

‘No, they came this way until they saw me coming after them, and then they took off up there,' Reynolds said.

Daniel regarded the steep, wet slope without joy. At the top of the rise, it almost looked as though the rain-laden clouds were touching the dark-brown tips of the heather. With an inner sigh he switched his mind to the matter in hand and, taking Taz to the edge of the narrow road, told him to sit. Then, straddling the dog, he bent down and held the red mitten over his long, black muzzle.

He gave no command. The dog knew exactly what he had to do and immediately began drawing in deep breaths through the fabric, familiarizing himself with the girl's unique smell. After four or five breaths, he started to fidget and Daniel waited just a few more seconds before slipping the glove into his pocket and telling the dog, ‘Go seek!'

Instantly Taz's head went down and within moments he had the scent and was away, Daniel hurrying in his wake, paying out the line so as not to hinder him.

What ensued was a gruelling test of fitness for the three men following the dog. In the rapidly failing light the uneven ground was treacherous and Daniel thought grimly that it would be a miracle if one of them didn't suffer an ankle sprain or worse before they got anywhere near their quarry.

By the time they gained the top of the first rise, Daniel was breathing deeply and could hear the other two men labouring behind him. His trouser legs were saturated with water from the 18 inches or so of dank vegetation that crowded the path, and his face and hair were wet with the fine, misty drizzle. Of all of them, the dog alone was enjoying himself, powering forward at the end of the canvas line, unaffected by either anxiety or the unpleasant conditions.

Alternating between a jog and a fast walk, the three men made good progress for ten minutes or so before the path forked and the dog paused to cast around. The moor stretched away on all sides, a wilderness of rocks, grass, heather and the occasional stunted tree. Presumably the two girls had been unsure which way to go. Daniel waited, giving the shepherd plenty of line while he worked, and finally, after a false start up one trail, Taz set off with renewed confidence on the other.

The original track had been twisting and turning, gaining height almost imperceptibly, but this new, narrower track immediately began to climb quite sharply, heading deeper into the moor and, it seemed to Daniel, towards a rocky outcrop on the far horizon.

Did they hope to find shelter? he wondered. What manner of family argument sent two young girls into such desperate flight? He could only imagine that they had never meant to come this far but had lost all sense of direction in the bleak moorland landscape. They certainly wouldn't be the first to do so.

The searchers had covered less than half a mile on the new track when conditions changed for the worse. It was Reynolds who noticed it first. Daniel was busy watching the dog work, while trying to keep his footing on the loose stones of the path, when he felt a hand tap his shoulder. Slowing his pace only fractionally, he turned his head.

‘What is it?'

Reynolds nodded significantly to their right. ‘Look!' he said urgently.

Daniel followed his gaze and had to blink and refocus. The world was shrinking. Somewhere between them and where the horizon had been just a few minutes ago, the brown carpet of wet heather now disappeared under a soft wall of greyish-white. Even as Daniel watched, the wall appeared to roll closer, swallowing up even more of the view.

‘Shit!' He wasn't worried about the mist interfering with the dog. With a sense of smell forty times sharper than a human, Taz had no need of good visibility to find the lost girls, and the trail seemed to be a good one. His concern was that the dense fog would make the already difficult terrain downright treacherous, not only for his group but also for the youngsters ahead.

‘We will keep going, yes?' Reynolds looked anxious. He held out a small handheld device. ‘We won't get lost – I have GPS.'

‘Well, we might need that before this is over, but I'd be happier if it could tell us where the bogs are.'

A flicker of alarm crossed Reynolds's face. The chance of blundering into one of Dartmoor's infamous bogs clearly hadn't occurred to him.

‘We should be all right as long as we're on the path, but you'd better tell your brother to stay close. We don't want to get separated when that lot hits us.'

Daniel picked up the pace once more, scrambling up the steep rocky path after the eager dog.

It seemed the girls had had the good sense to stay on the path, for Taz followed it unerringly, over the next rise, down a steep incline to a stream of bright tumbling water and up an equally steep slope to the base of the rocky outcrop. The water in the stream was icy, a fact to which Daniel could unhappily testify, as the only rocks that stood above the surface proved too slippery to use as stepping stones, depositing him knee-deep in the February torrent.

Daniel cursed as his boots filled with water and he attacked the slope with legs that were beginning to burn with fatigue. From the colourful language behind, he guessed his companions had fared no better.

Halfway up the hill, the fog caught them, enfolding them in a smothering white cloud, like some huge damp duvet, deadening sound. All at once visibility was a 3-foot circle round their feet and Daniel's contact with Taz became restricted to the tug of the lead as he leaned into his harness some 10 feet ahead.

Rocks and low clumps of gorse took on sinister shapes, looming out of the gloom and just as quickly disappearing once more.

After ten minutes or so, the dog paused, and feeling his way cautiously forward, Daniel found that they were at the foot of the rocky cliff they had seen from the other side of the valley. Taz cast around the base of the rock, apparently unsure, allowing his human followers a grateful moment or two to catch their breath.

Daniel looked at his watch. They had been on the moor for almost an hour, keeping up a steady pace. Surely the two girls couldn't be very far ahead.

As if reading Daniel's thoughts, Reynolds suddenly said from close behind, ‘When we find them, you must move back with the dog, straight away. Elena will be terrified if it gets too close.'

‘I'll do my best, but the dog will naturally reach them first.' Reynolds's dictatorial tone grated on Daniel, but he didn't let his annoyance show. The man was under severe emotional strain. ‘When he does, he'll bark, but he won't touch them.'

Reynolds looked less than happy, but before he could reply, Taz picked up a strong scent to the left of the rock and surged forward.

‘Steady, Taz. I can't see a bloody thing!' Daniel told him, slipping and stumbling over the smaller rocks at the base of the outcrop, but the shepherd was excited now, his enthusiasm transmitting clearly down the tracking line to Daniel's hand. All at once the line went slack and a short, sharp bark carried back on the swirling misty air.

‘Good lad. Stay there!' Daniel began to gather up the looping canvas and feel his way towards the dog. ‘He's found them,' he said over his shoulder.

As Taz uttered another bark and then another, Reynolds barged roughly in front of Daniel and plunged ahead into the fog.

‘No, wait!' Daniel's command went unheeded, and swearing under his breath, he hurried after him, gathering in the line as he went.

After a moment, he saw Taz through the milky whiteness and, beyond him, a taller shape that was almost certainly Reynolds. Daniel heard a scream, cutting off abruptly, and then Reynolds shouted, ‘It's Elena. Take that dog away!'

When Daniel reached Taz, he was growling in a low, grumbling fashion, no doubt unsettled by Reynolds's interference – as he saw it – in the execution of his duty. Daniel calmed the dog's ruffled feelings with a word and told him what a clever boy he was, pulling a tug toy from his pocket as a reward.

As he played with the dog, the second man passed him and went to where Reynolds, just feet away, was cradling the slight figure of a child. The girl's jumper now showed as a splash of orange through the fog and Daniel caught a glimpse of a thin, white face with enormous eyes and dark, straggly hair before her father hugged her closer and snapped crossly, ‘Take that fucking dog away!'

Your daughter would still be lost if it wasn't for the ‘fucking dog', Daniel thought, keeping a lid on his temper with an effort. Police work had taught him to accept that stress can adversely affect the behaviour of the most genial of people, and he doubted that Reynolds was ever particularly genial, even on a good day. He retreated a few paces.

‘Is she all right? Are they both there?'

‘No. Katya's gone on alone. We have to find her.'

‘We can try, but it won't be easy,' Daniel warned. ‘The dog's been working for an hour or more. He'll be tired, and as far as he's concerned, the job's done.'

‘But he can do it, right?' Reynolds materialized out of the mist, empty-handed. He made a quick gesture behind. ‘Elena's OK. Just a bit cold and frightened. My brother will stay with her. I'm sorry I shouted. We must go on.'

‘Does Elena know which way her sister went?'

‘She's not sure.'

Daniel sighed. ‘I wish they'd stayed together. It's so important.'

Leading the dog on a little further, away from the confusing scent of his first quarry, he gave him the command to ‘seek on'.

At first, Taz was unenthusiastic, casting about in a half-hearted way before coming back to Daniel with his ears flattened and his tail held low. He was clearly unsure of what was expected and Daniel repeated the command. Obediently the shepherd dropped his nose once more and began to quarter the area. In spite of the unpleasant conditions and the desperate urgency of the search, Daniel felt a warm glow of pride for his dog. He was fairly young and relatively inexperienced, but he was trying hard.

Just when it seemed that all his efforts were going to be in vain, Daniel saw Taz's tail come up and begin to wave, and with a renewed sense of purpose he set off once more, pulling into his harness as he moved away along a ridge.

‘Good lad!' Daniel exclaimed low-voiced, paying out the lead and starting to jog.

For perhaps ten minutes Daniel could tell by the pull on the tracking line that the scent was strong. In the ever-thickening fog he and Reynolds hurried in the dog's wake, slipping and sliding down a patch of scree, across an open space of knee-high heather and dead bracken that threatened to trip them at every stride, and down to a rocky stream. Here, the dog faltered and the line went slack.

‘Why have we stopped?' Reynolds wanted to know, catching up, breathing hard.

‘He's lost the scent,' Daniel said quietly, watching Taz come and go in the whiteness as he tried, without luck, to recover the trail. ‘It happens. It seemed quite strong, but she obviously didn't come straight out on the other side of the stream. We'll try following the bank.'

They walked upstream for some minutes without success, and when the dog drew a blank downstream as well, Daniel was forced to concede defeat.

‘But we can't stop now,' Reynolds stated. ‘We have to go on. Get the dog to try again.'

Daniel shook his head. ‘I'm sorry – it's pointless. We don't know whether she's gone upstream or down. We could walk for hours in the wrong direction. We'd do better to shout for her. She may not be far ahead.'

They shouted as loudly as they could for several minutes, pausing every few moments to listen, but the all-encompassing fog seemed to swallow their voices and no answering call was heard.

Shaking his head sadly, Daniel put a hand on the other man's shoulder. ‘We'd better go back. Elena needs to get into the warm. Call Search and Rescue again. At least you've got coordinates on the GPS. They can start from here.'

Reynolds protested, but Daniel was adamant and they turned to retrace their steps. As they rejoined the others and began the weary trek to Stack Ridge, Reynolds's phone picked up a signal and he dropped back to make the call for help.

Reynolds's brother carried Elena, who clung to him under cover of his baseball jacket, her dark eyes just visible through her fringe. She looked cold, miserable and frightened, and Daniel's heart went out to her, but when she realized he was watching her, she quickly hid her face against the big man's shoulder.

Daniel noticed that the hand that supported the girl was heavily scarred, and remembering the dog attack Reynolds had spoken of, he kept Taz at a distance.

Back at the car park, Daniel checked that Reynolds still had his mobile number and asked to be informed when the older girl was found. Then, with nothing more he or the dog could do to help, he elected to get the lorry back on the road before the rescue vehicles blocked it in.

Just under half an hour later, Daniel let himself into his flat, dried the German shepherd's thick coat as best he could, fed him and ran a bath for himself.

Sinking wearily into the steaming water and feeling the circulation come tingling back into his toes, Daniel closed his eyes and prepared to enjoy a relaxing soak, but after a few moments, he knew it wasn't to be. Although his body was ready to call it a day, his mind was still buzzing and he found he couldn't banish the image of the child's pitiful face from his consciousness.

Sure, she'd been through the mill that afternoon, and she was almost certainly worried about her missing sister, but Daniel didn't feel that that completely accounted for the haunted expression in her eyes.

In the course of his career he had seen countless teenagers caught up in events beyond their control and he knew the face he had seen – that he was still seeing, in his mind's eye – was that of a child who had reached the end of her tether. Her expression had been compounded of fear, desperation and hopelessness, and to Daniel it begged the question just what
had
the girls been running from?