No Good Reason (26 page)

Meg rubbed her back. “What was it?”

“Gamekeeper, illegally trapping predators. But, Jesus, for a few minutes I was so sure it was Rachel.”

“Did you speak to Eleanor?”

“Yes, she—”

A cough from the bed made Sanne break off and raise her head. In the dim light, Josie was beginning to look around. Her lips moved, but she didn’t yet seem capable of speech. Reacting first, Meg dropped a straw into a cup of water and held it for her to take cautious sips.

“Shit,” Josie whispered, wiping up a dribble of water with her good hand. “Did I have another bleed?”

“No. Dr. Maxwell gave you something to help you sleep,” Meg said. “You were only out for an hour or so.”

“You’re Meg, aren’t you? From A&E.” Josie shaped the words slowly, obviously struggling to recall the details. She relaxed a little when she noticed Sanne. “Hey. Sorry if I scared you.”

Sanne waved away the apology. “I’m just glad you’re okay. Do you remember why you called me?” At Josie’s nod, she left her chair and sat on the edge of the bed. “I spoke to my boss on the way here, and she’s decided not to ask the CPS—that’s the Crown Prosecution Service—for another extension on Ned Moseley’s custody.”

“What does that mean? Are you letting him go?”

“It means he’ll be granted bail tomorrow and released.” She held up a hand to stop Josie from interrupting. “I’m telling you this in strictest confidence. DI Stanhope will speak to you tomorrow, but she gave me the go-ahead to come and see you tonight. We’ll be keeping him under surveillance twenty-four seven, and the hope is that he’ll slip up and lead us to Rachel.”

The operative word there was “hope,” and it was a slim hope at that. All too aware of previous kidnap cases where victims had starved to death after the arrest of their assailants, however, the brass were keen to give surveillance a chance. Three teams would monitor Ned around the clock, with Sanne and Nelson supervising the first night shift. The investigation and searches would continue in the meantime, but Ned Moseley remained their only suspect.

Josie had pushed herself up, her eyes bright and alert as she digested the information. Sanne didn’t warn her that Eleanor doubted Ned would leave the house and suspected that, even if he did, all he would lead them to was a body. For the sake of Josie’s health, Sanne wanted her to think positively until she had a definitive reason not to.

“No blabbing, I promise.” Josie mimed zipping her mouth shut. “Oh, hey, you’d better warn your boss that I’m being downgraded to High Dependency in the morning. I think I should’ve gone today, but they didn’t have a free bed.”

The news lightened Sanne’s mood. “Congratulations.”

“Yeah. I don’t care where they put me as long as it has a window.” Josie grimaced at the four blank walls surrounding her.

“HDU definitely has windows,” Meg said. “And I know a few of the nurses on there, so I might be able to get you a bed with a view.”

It was such a simple proposition, but it made tears shine in Josie’s eyes. “I can’t remember the last time I saw the sky,” she said.

*

“Has your bum gone to sleep, or is it just mine?”

The car rocked as Nelson slid the driver’s seat backward and shuffled around until he was satisfied with his new position.

“I’ll give you half an hour.” Sanne set the alarm on her phone and propped it on the dash. “If you can keep still for that long, you win a bag of Haribo.”

“Half a bloody hour? That’s not fair, San. My legs are longer than yours.”

“Half an hour, or no little jelly eggs for you.” She placed the sweets next to her phone, settled back into her seat, and crossed her legs at the ankles. “We’ve only been here for ninety-seven minutes, and your wriggling is already doing my head in.”

Nelson hid his face in his hands. “Ninety-seven minutes? Is that all?”

“How long did you think it was? It’s not even dark.”

“Hours. It feels like it’s been hours.”

“Well, it hasn’t. Have a nap or something. I’ll keep watch.”

Satisfied that an accord had been reached, she turned her attention back to Ned’s house. As planned, he had been released on bail mid-afternoon, and a taxi had brought him straight home. He had remained in the house for two hours before walking to the corner shop, buying a pizza and four cans of lager, and walking back again. The most exciting event the surveillance team in the alley had observed was Ned throwing the pizza box into his bin. At no point had he appeared to realise he was being monitored. The trace on his phone showed that his mum was the only person he had contacted since his release, and no one but his lawyer had called him. Although he had a full driving licence, the only vehicle registered in his name was a scooter, which would have been completely impractical for moving Rachel. One of the uniforms was looking into his access to off-road or four-wheel-drive vehicles, but as yet nothing had come up.

Parked on Prospect Street, Sanne and Nelson were keeping watch at the front of his house, while also managing the two units situated in the back alley. A new team would relieve them at seven a.m.

Two hours of unrelenting tedium later, Sanne was watching the light of Ned’s television flickering behind his living room curtains, when a spicy aroma made her mouth water and reminded her that half a bag of Haribo made a poor substitute for an evening meal. She looked around to find Nelson sharing out two portions of curry and rice onto plastic plates.

“Is that what I think it is?” She took the napkin he offered her and stuffed it into the front of her shirt.

He grinned. “Abeni thought our first all-night stakeout would be the perfect occasion.”

For months, he had been promising to bring in a flask of his wife’s famous goat curry, but the opportunity had never arisen. The aversion of Sanne’s dad to anything foreign meant she had been raised on a strict English-food-only diet, and she had consequently spent her adulthood sampling the cuisine of as many different cultures as she could, but she had avoided Caribbean food for the past year, after Nelson’s boast early in their partnership that no one cooked it as well as Abeni.

“It smells amazing,” she said, scooping a generous amount of rice and meat onto her fork.

Nelson laughed at her enthusiasm, holding off on his first taste to await her verdict. It came with two thumbs up and another forkful stuffed into her mouth.

“Good, isn’t it?”

“Fab.” She chewed more slowly, savouring the spices and the tender meat. “She’ll have to give me her recipe.”

He waggled his fork at her. “I’ll ask, but it might be a family secret.”

“Fair enough.” She found it very difficult to hold a grudge with a full stomach.

“Maybe we can do a deal.” He popped the top off a can of ginger beer and held it out to her. “You tell me how you got your name, and I’ll get hold of the Balewa family goat curry recipe for you.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and for a moment he seemed on the verge of recanting, afraid that he had broached too sensitive a subject. Then she smiled and tapped her can against his.

“Okay, deal. But I’m finishing my tea first.”

They took their time eating, as the setting sun turned the sky purple and pink, making even the grotty terraced houses look appealing. Sanne washed down her last bite with ginger beer and dabbed her mouth with her napkin.

“Please pass my compliments to your lovely wife.”

“Will do. Can I interest you in an after-dinner mint?” Nelson asked in a ridiculously posh voice, while proffering a packet of Polos.

“Thank you, kind sir.” She sucked her mint for a couple of minutes, letting him put away their plates.

“So…” he said, once he had settled in a comfortable position.

“So.” She stuck her feet up on the dash and cracked her knuckles in preparation for her tale. “’Twas a dark and stormy night…” She paused for effect and bit her mint in half.

He laughed. “You’ve missed your calling. You could’ve been an actor.”

“Yeah, yeah. Where was I? Right, dark and stormy, blah blah, back in nineteen-eighty-something or other, when my mum and dad got married. You know my dad’s an inveterate alky, don’t you?”

“You have mentioned that on occasion.”

“Well, he hid it pretty well when my mum first started to date him. I’m sure she was aware that he liked a drink, but she didn’t really have a clue what she was getting herself into. A year later, they were engaged, and my mum had her wedding all planned—nice ceremony, lots of friends and family, dress like a meringue, bridesmaids in turquoise, and a dream honeymoon cruise to the fjords of Norway.”

“Ah,” Nelson said, a connection obviously beginning to form.

“Yeah.” She sighed and tucked her hands between her thighs, no longer able to maintain her jocular tone. “Mum got her wedding, but the reception was at a crappy local pub, her dress was a hand-me-down, and my dad had already drunk all the money she’d saved for their honeymoon cruise. He took her to Blackpool for a weekend instead, and she ended up pregnant with me. I’m not sure he was even there when I was born, but I know he told my mum that he didn’t give a shit what she decided to call me. So, she chose the name Sanne because that’s what her beloved Norwegian cruise liner was called.” Sanne looked up at Nelson and shrugged hopelessly. “I’m named after the honeymoon my mum never got to go on.”

“Oh, San.” He sounded mortified, but she shook her head and managed a smile.

“I asked her once if I made her sad—y’know, reminding her of what she’d missed—but she just said, ‘I have no regrets about anything your dad has done, because without him I wouldn’t have you.’”

“Your mum’s a remarkable lady.”

Sanne stared at a streetlamp, letting the orange glow fill her vision. “She’s too bloody proud to take any money from me, so I’ve never told her that I’m putting fifty quid aside for her every month. She’s going on that cruise as soon as that bastard finally kicks it. Maybe she can take his ashes and dump them into the North Sea.”

Nelson snorted. “There’d be something poetic about that.”

“Aye.” She thought of her dad, huddled by the gas fire even in the height of summer, his pinched fingers stretched out to the red-hot bars. “It’d be perfect for him. He fucking hates being cold.”

The uneven path crunched beneath Sanne’s trainers, so that she had to concentrate on where she placed her feet, rather than on the weariness pervading her body. She had managed to snatch only a few hours of sleep after her night shift, before the warmth of her south facing bedroom had combined with an unsettling, barely-remembered dream to force her awake. Reluctant to lie there tossing and turning, and eager to get back into the office that afternoon, she had opted for a run to clear her head. Now, six and a half miles into the eight-mile loop, her head did feel clearer, but her legs were on the verge of mutiny.

Slowing her pace as the path widened, she looked up at the hills that rose out of the valley. Bright sunshine lit their summits and sparkled off the brook alongside her track. Swelled by the recent rain, foamy streams zigzagged through the vegetation, and sheep roamed freely, helping themselves to bilberries. She wiped sweat from her eyes and pushed on. The serenity of her surroundings couldn’t distract her from the fact that this was her first run since she found Josie. There was no doubt that she was more cautious now. She kept scanning the horizon with a wary eye, and her phone—something she rarely carried on a low route—was tucked into her pocket. Whenever a grouse broke for cover right under her feet, it frightened her half to death. She couldn’t bear to sacrifice the moors, though. It would be too much like admitting defeat. Instead, she considered every step a small victory, a chance to reclaim the peaks for those who loved them.

Thinking about the case reminded her of an idea she had had during the previous night’s fruitless stakeout. Techs working on Ned Moseley’s computer had unearthed no history of any pornographic sites or mail-order companies related to the stash discovered in his house. He had no PayPal account, as far as they could tell, and his debit card statements indicated that nothing but a few harmless video games had been purchased over the Internet. The DVDs and magazines had been found wrapped in supermarket shopping bags, as if they had been delivered in person rather than mailed. It made Sanne wonder about a local supplier. That part of the investigation had been handed over to the Sexual Offences and Exploitation Team, but they were an under-resourced unit unlikely to drop everything in order to give it precedence. She hadn’t discussed any of this with Nelson, who was also unlikely to consider it a priority, but at this point even the slightest lead was worth following up on. Fortunately, she happened to know someone very well connected. She made a mental note to call Keeley about it when she got back to the cottage.

The plan gave her a burst of energy. She leapt across a puddle stretching the width of the path and made quick work of the last mile, sprinting along the home straight. At her gate, she bent double to catch her breath, and as she panted for air, a hint of smoke caught in her nostrils. She raised her head to see a grey cloud drifting from her kitchen window, which would have been more alarming were Meg’s car not parked in the drive.

The shrill bleep of a smoke alarm halted her at the back door. “Raise your hands and step slowly away from the stove,” she said, attempting to sound stern, though too breathless to carry it off.

“Just in time! Go and have a shower.” Meg silenced the alarm by knocking the battery out of it, and slid the over-heated frying pan from the gas ring.

“Just in time for what? And are you planning to burn down my house while I wash?”

“Eggy bread, and no, I don’t think so.” With a dubious expression, she surveyed the oil sizzling in the pan. “I hope not, anyway.”

Sanne filled a glass with water and took a long drink. “How about we eat first and then I shower?”

“Fine, but I’m cooking. I wanted this to be a surprise.”

“Consider me surprised.”

Meg looked downcast. “I fixed your washer and that dripping tap for you.”

Swallowing the last of her water, Sanne took a proper look around the kitchen. Meg’s tool kit was still open at the side of the washing machine, with a towel spread out beneath the cupboard that housed the plumbing. On the unit, a dish held eggs cracked in readiness beside a fresh loaf and two mugs.