The Devil's Chair (6 page)

‘We need a list of the clothes Daisy was wearing,' she said.

Mansfield looked resigned. ‘Pyjamas,' he said. ‘They're new. Tesco's.'

Tinsley waited, pen poised.

‘White with …' Mansfield searched his memory. ‘… teddy bears on, I think,' he said. ‘Yellow teddy bears.'

‘Slippers?'

‘I think so,' Mansfield said dubiously.

‘Pink as well?'

Mansfield smiled ruefully and nodded.

‘Anything else?'

‘She was holding her little toy. She's always sucking on it.'

‘Do you have a picture of her holding it?'

Mansfield reached for his mobile phone, scrolled through a couple of pictures then passed it across to the two officers. On the screen was a picture of Daisy, tears on her cheek, her mouth full of what looked like a soft toy with a bushy tail. It looked identical to the Jellycat squirrel they'd found near the crash site in Carding Mill Valley.

Tinsley handed the phone back to Mansfield, who was watching her with guarded wariness.

With a quick glance and a nod from Talith, Tinsley affirmed what must have been going through Mansfield's mind. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘We found one like it near the car. We'll be testing it for Daisy's DNA to ascertain whether it's hers.'

Mansfield nodded, his face a sickly green.

‘There is one other thing,' Talith said quickly. ‘This is a recording of the nine-nine-nine call made to report the accident. Can you listen to it, please, and tell me whether you recognize the voice.'

‘There's a car gorn orf the Burway … Wrecked … Someone's inside 'urt … A woman.'

Neil Mansfield listened intently but his face remained baffled. Slowly he shook his head, mystified.

With a quick glance at her colleague, Lara Tinsley stood up. ‘Is there any chance we can take a look around Daisy's room?'

Mansfield jerked his head towards the staircase. ‘Be my guest,' he said with cold sarcasm.

The staircase was narrow and carpeted in pale beige which had more than a few wine stains decorating it. Daisy's room was patently the one at the top, on the left, the one with a Barbie doll beckoning them in. It was neatly decorated (presumably by Neil) in lemon wallpaper and a teddy bears' picnic frieze with a small single bed in its centre. The window was open, the bedclothes still thrown back, a damp patch on the bottom sheet bearing testimony to Mansfield's story. Toys and books were scattered around randomly, some clothes – a small pair of jeans, a flowered dress and a cardigan. Shoes but no slippers. On the wall was a poster of a Disney princess and hanging on the back of the door was a Snow White outfit, red and blue bodice, bouffant yellow skirt and plastic crown. It conjured up a picture of a very typical little princess, everyone's beautiful, innocent child. They turned away from it and headed back down the stairs. There was nothing to be gained here; they had what they needed. ‘If there is any news of Daisy we'll be in touch, Mr Mansfield. We have your mobile and landline?'

Mansfield nodded, his face haunted. ‘What do you think's happened to her?' he asked. Answers, unspoken, floated around the room, insubstantial as bubbles blown from a wand:
Daisy is dead, Daisy is not dead. Daisy is hurt. Daisy is OK. Daisy is lost. She will be found. Someone has abducted her. Daisy is frightened but Daisy is alive.

Talith gave it to him straight, with a hand on the man's shoulder. ‘The truth is, Neil, we don't know.'

Perhaps the true awfulness of the situation was just beginning to penetrate. Or maybe not. A spasm of revulsion jerked Neil's body. ‘I won't ever forgive Tracy for this,' he announced. ‘If harm's come to that little girl it's
finished
between us.' His eyes bulged. ‘
Finished
. She can do what she likes with 'erself. That don't matter. But to put little Daisy through all that … It's unforgiveable. Besides, all them rows, all that drinkin'… I thought everything'd be great,' he bleated. ‘Not like this. It's not how I thought it would be.'

‘Nothing ever is,' Tinsley muttered under her breath, the self-pity nauseating both officers equally.

There was nothing to be gained by continuing the conversation. Tinsley and Talith moved towards the door. As they opened it, Lara Tinsley couldn't resist turning to confront him. ‘And would you say you're happy now, Mr Mansfield?' she challenged. ‘Was it all worth it? Eh?'

Mansfield said nothing, but he shook his head and chewed on his lip so hard a drop of blood appeared, which he licked away as quickly as a frog swallows a fly.

A
lex Randall had returned to the Long Mynd and was standing on the Burway, looking down into the crash site and Carding Mill Valley. An icy wind seemed determined to pierce his coat so he held it tighter around him as he studied the area. It was all too was easy to follow the trail of destruction the car had left: broken bushes, deep furrows in soft, muddy turf ending three hundred feet below at the bottom in a large oil slick. The wrecked car, which had been treated by the fire service with as little respect as a tin of baked beans, lay drunkenly on its side. Jagged shards of metal showed where Tracy Walsh had been cut out of her eight-year-old, post-office red VW Polo. Police tape fluttered everywhere, keeping the general public out though they peered from all four sides of the valley, curious. The area was as alive and busy as an ant hill but the Burway was firmly shut and would remain so until they had extracted every single piece of forensic evidence from the area and found the child. Found the child? Randall's face froze.

What was the hope, realistically? That they would come across a small body thrown from a car wreck? A body? It had always been a dim possibility and even that was fading fast. No. That wasn't the answer. In his heart Randall had little hope of finding Daisy Walsh alive and a cold, milky sun did little to lighten the proceedings and give him hope. He observed the scene from the top and felt a heavy misgiving which was almost a dread. He could not erase his image of the child, injured and frightened, crawling in the cold and the dark through the terrain, unseen by the officers, who from this vantage point looked as small as pygmies, combing every bush and tree until they found her. Or some sign of her. A few officers in fisherman's waders paddled up the stream, lifting stones and pulling water weeds out of the way. The general public would be excluded for a little while longer yet. Daisy had now been missing for thirty-six hours and the truth was that however thorough the search was they were unlikely to find a frightened child shivering behind a bush. If Daisy had been in the car the search now was for a body. Randall frowned. Or else she had been abducted from the scene, probably by their mystery caller. His underlying dread was that they would find nothing. Ever. They would never be certain what had happened to the little girl.

The weather was cool but as Randall took a few steps down into the valley the wind dropped and it became muggy. Tonight there would be more thick fog. The Devil's own weather, it was said amongst the locals. The damp folded him into it like a blanket and for a moment it misted out the view so he felt he was alone and the other personnel somewhere else behind a thick screen. It was disorientating. He could not say exactly where he was. He was aware he must be careful not to step over the edge and, like the VW, tumble down into the valley. Then the mist cleared a little so he could look around him. The surrounding colours were muted: soft greens and browns, as gentle as English – or Welsh – countryside. This was, after all, the border between the two countries. In this blanketing fog even the voices of the officers were muted, their shouts softly distant and less staccato.

Randall took a few more steps up the Burway, rounding the corner and climbing the steep slope to where Roddie Hughes, ex-SOCO, now an independent crime scene investigator, was ignoring the damp to kneel on the floor. Dressed in a white forensic suit, he was measuring tyre skids with a woman, presumably a colleague, at his side, filming the proceedings. Roddie specialized in vehicular crime scenes. He stood up and grinned as Randall approached him.

‘Afternoon, Alex.'

Randall returned the greeting and focused his attention on the tyre marks. Roddie scratched his head and looked ruefully at the damp knees of his forensic suit. Doubtless underneath he would be wearing a smart city suit and at a guess that too would have damp knees.

‘She was doing about fifty,' he observed, looking around him.

Alex grimaced. Fifty might be reasonable on a straight road or a dual carriageway but on this narrow, winding and precipitous road it was breakneck speed.

Roddie continued: ‘She wasn't even driving straight on the way up but when she came around this corner she must have had a bit of a shock.' He took three steps backwards. ‘Here,' he said, stamping his foot down on a thick spread of rubber. ‘It must have been right
here
. Which means …' He stepped forward ten, twenty yards and looked down at the road surface, ‘… whatever she saw must have been around here.' His voice tailed off. Neither man could see any sign of activity at this point.

Randall frowned. While there were clear tyre marks where Tracy had slammed on her brakes, there was no corresponding skid beneath Roddie Hughes' feet on the road. ‘It can't have involved another car,' he said slowly, ‘or we'd see more marks.'

Hughes shrugged. ‘Not,' he said, ‘if the other car was already stationary.' He hesitated. ‘It might have been nothing. She'd been drinking heavily. She might have
thought
she saw something without there being anything really there. It might even have been …' His eyes drifted upwards towards the Devil's Chair looming through the mist. Then he looked back at DI Randall. He was watching the detective very intently as he spoke. Alex felt something uncomfortable in his gaze and turned to look at him. ‘Oh, surely, Roddie, you can't believe all that …' His mouth opened and he was tempted to laugh. ‘Not all that Devil stuff, folklore, surely?'

Again, Roddie shrugged. ‘She might have
thought
she saw something like that. You have to admit,' he said, looking around him as the mist danced, ‘this is an eerie place, particularly at night. Strange, inexplicable things do happen here.'

As he was speaking the woman straightened up and Alex met a pair of very fine grey eyes fringed with long, curling black lashes. She was tall and long-legged, with silky brown hair and a very forthright stare. She gave Hughes a swift, prompting glance and he flushed. ‘This is, erm, this is Sophie,' he said with more than a hint of embarrassment. The girl's eyebrows lifted and she watched him with an amused expression. Hughes drew in a deep breath and finished the sentence with resignation. ‘My fiancée,' he said.

Randall felt his mouth twitch. Last he'd heard Roddie Hughes had been married to a teacher and had two teenage kids. As he shook the girl's hand and congratulated his colleague, Randall still felt bemused. Did no one stay married for the long haul anymore? The hollow answer returned like an echo, to mock him.
No one except you
,
Alex
. He felt his mouth tighten primly. Of all life's little ironies, this one dropped a bright red cherry right on top of the cake. As the happy couple busied themselves collecting samples, measuring distances and taking a hundred and one more photographs, stills and movies, DI Alex Randall felt he could have stood there, on that big damp hill for a long, long time, pondering life matters, particularly his own, but he was distracted by a shout. Someone, at the bottom of the valley, was holding something high, like a trophy. Randall quickened his step and slid down the bank. Please God, let it be something that leads us to the child, he prayed. Had he been a Catholic he would likely have crossed himself too. He almost did anyway.

As he got nearer he recognized the officer as PC Gethin Roberts, who was holding something small, sodden, grubby and pink in his hand, rivulets of stream water trickling down his arm on to the grass. It was a child's sodden slipper with wet nylon fur. Roberts looked pleased with himself. They had the Jellycat squirrel and now they had a slipper. Both were signs that the child had been here. Holding it in his gloved hand, Gethin Roberts approached Randall. ‘Sir,' he said.

Randall studied it. It looked about a four-year-old's foot size, as far as he was an expert on the size of children's feet.

Don't go there, Alex.

On the front was a worn plastic moulding of a Barbie doll. He took out his phone and connected with DS Talith.

‘Are you still with Mansfield?'

‘Just left, sir,' Talith replied. ‘We're on our way back to Shrewsbury. Not that we learnt anything,' he enlarged grumpily, ‘except that Tracy and Neil were a dysfunctional, miserable, drunken couple. And,' he added bitterly, ‘it sounds as though Mr Mansfield is up to his old tricks again.'

‘You mean …?'

‘Doing a bit of decorating, if you get what I mean, sir.'

The way Talith had uttered the words Randall
got what he meant
all right.

‘We've found something, Talith,' he said. ‘A little girl's slipper that looks about the right size for Daisy. I want you to go back,' he instructed. ‘We've only found the one – so far. Don't tell him it's turned up. Just ask him what Daisy's slippers were like. This one's pink with a Barbie doll on the front.'

‘Righto, sir. Yes, sir.'

‘Don't tell him that we've found it,' Randall repeated, although he knew Neil would guess. ‘Just ask and then get back to me.'

The sodden slipper was placed in an evidence bag and the team began to search for the other. As they focused on the area along the stream an orange flashing light strobed up the valley. The recovery truck had arrived. Noisily beeping its intention it reversed into position, the driver climbed out and started talking to the officers. The wrecked Polo would now be winched on to the low loader then taken to the police pound – every inch of it scrutinized and analysed to yield its story. Randall watched it gravely. He had his doubts that any evidence from the car would tell him the whereabouts of the little girl. A drunk driver falling off the Burway – Tracy wasn't the first and she wouldn't be the last. He wanted to find Daisy. The rest was no real mystery. In some ways he almost agreed with Abel Faulkener's well-voiced opinion. It really was as though the child had been spirited away by fairies.