Changelings Page 15

  Again the sharp glance. ‘She wasn’t in the pond. You tied up at the towpath. That’s where we found you.’

  Donovan frowned. ‘Then why—?’

  Sarah Turner swivelled from the sink to look at him. ‘Cal, you mustn’t put too much stock in what Elphie says. She’s a dear child but she’s no more reliable than the phone. She’s eight; she looks about six; mentally she is and will remain about four years old. You need to make allowances. I don’t know why she took you to the pond. Your boat’s at Posset.’

  He changed the subject. ‘She showed me your wedding photo.’

  ‘Did she,’ Sarah said evenly, stacking the pots.

  ‘What was her mother’s name?’

  The steady clatter of plates broke momentarily before continuing. ‘Her mother?’

  ‘In the photograph.’ Donovan frowned, puzzled that she didn’t understand. ‘Next to you. I thought she was your bridesmaid.’

  Mrs Turner shook her head. ‘That’s what I mean about Elphie. The girl in the picture: she was my bridesmaid but she wasn’t Elphie’s mother. Elphie never knew her mother. I think that bothers her. I think she just picked a pretty woman in a family photo and adopted her. It’s not important, it’s not worth arguing with her. Just don’t take anything she says as gospel.’

  Donovan could understand that. ‘OK. Can I try the phone now?’

  ‘In the hall.’

  He knew as soon as he picked it up that the line was dead. Jiggling the bar didn’t help.

  Sarah stuck her head out of the kitchen as he put it down. ‘No luck?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Try again later.’

  ‘I hope my dog’s all right. He’s – a bit funny.’ He meant, if he wasn’t fed on time he might make his own arrangements.

  ‘I’m sure he’s fine.’

  Saturday mornings in the Graham household varied enormously. If there was a push on – some sort of crisis, a crime wave crashing on the beach of Castlemere – it was a day like any other and Liz would be in the office or on the road by eight o’clock. If she had the day off – which is to say she not only had the day off officially but in practice as well – she’d feed her horse at seven and then disappear back under the covers until mid-morning. It was her chance to catch up on lost sleep.

  Brian didn’t have many late nights during the week but he too tended to lie in on Saturday mornings. It was his chance to make up for lost time as well.

  Today, though, Liz fed Polly half an hour early and collected Dick Morgan from Chevening at seven. They’d visited every property on or within half a mile of the canal’s north bank last night, and found no one who’d seen Donovan or his boat between Monday and Thursday afternoon. Now they were going to doorstep the southern bank, hoping for better luck.

  It was slow work. The properties weren’t arranged in neat rows along the canal, they were scattered in ones and twos separated by stretches of towpath that could be walked but not driven. Nor did the road run conveniently parallel to the water. It wandered off through Chevening and Fletton, and hamlets half the size. They managed to tick off five addresses in the first hour, seven in the second.

  At five past nine Liz’s mobile rang. She pulled over to answer it, was surprised to find herself talking to Keith Baker, the vet.

  ‘Thought you’d want to know,’ he said. ‘Donovan’s dog died in the night.’

  Liz shut her eyes and vented a soft little pant. It wasn’t the loss of the dog that distressed her. It wasn’t a nice dog, a dog you could pat and get a wave of the tail in return, a dog you could slip half a Rich Tea biscuit under the coffee table. It was a pit bull terrier in all but name, jaws on legs, a dog that only chewed slippers to get at the feet inside. But it was Donovan’s dog, and losing it seemed to lessen the chances of finding him.

  It was nonsense, of course, the two things were unconnected; still she felt knocked back by the news.

  When she’d caught her breath she said, ‘Was it warfarin?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ drawled Baker. ‘A lot.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Can’t be too precise, but probably late Wednesday or early Thursday. This is rat bait, yeah? – it takes both quantity and a little time to inflict damage on a big dog.’

  Which was pretty much what she’d been hoping to hear, though she’d have preferred to hear it in other circumstances. ‘It had to be rat bait? There’s no other way he could have got it?’

  ‘No likely one. People take it for circulatory problems, but even if Donovan had a dicky heart it would have taken more than the odd pill dropped on the carpet to do this. No, we’re talking poison.’

  ‘That just may be good news,’ said Liz. ‘Donovan didn’t poison his dog, so someone else was on the boat. It may be that person knows where he is, what happened to him.’

  Baker was reluctant to sully the silver lining she’d managed to find in the cloud of misfortune. But it needed saying. ‘Inspector – if you’re thinking that person may be holding him, I’m not sure that is good news. I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy in the hands of someone who’d kill a dog with rat poison.’

  7

  Saturday morning’s post brought a letter for Shapiro.

  It was a very short letter. ‘I want my money. If you don’t act soon I will.’ He’d used the same stencil and felt-tip as before. The first-class stamp was franked in Cambridge the previous day.

  While he was waiting for Sergeant Tripp to collect the letter, Shapiro found himself thinking not about the contents but the author. He was beginning to build up a picture of him.

  He was a realist. A million pounds was the right sum to ask for. He could have asked for more but he’d have had less chance of getting it. Half a dozen major retailers could raise that money between them without difficulty. The insurers for just one big one might look at the demand, and the risk of litigation if someone died, and decide to pay up. For five million pounds they’d have fought; for one, in purely financial terms it might be cheaper not to.

  He felt to be in command of the situation. He knew the effect he’d had on this town, knew the terror any further episodes would provoke. He believed that ultimately Castlemere would put its safety above its bank-balance.

  He was watching developments. He knew no efforts were being made to gather the ransom, and he blamed Shapiro. That wasn’t particularly perceptive: detectives are paid to catch criminals, not make deals with them. Everyone else involved was entitled to take a pragmatic view, but Shapiro would negotiate only if he believed the alternative was untenable. The one thing worse than paying ransom was seeing hostages die. By addressing his demands to the senior detective the blackmailer was saying he was willing to go that far.

  And he was meticulous. The envelope was addressed to ‘Detective Superintendent F. Shapiro, CID, Queen’s Street Police Station, Queen’s Street, Castlemere’. He prided himself on getting the details right.

  If anyone had asked Frank Shapiro his opinion of psychological profiling he’d have sunk his double chin on his chest, smiled his avuncular smile and said that, while these new-fangled ideas had their place, it was hard to beat good old-fashioned police work as a means of bringing criminals to justice. He liked to think of himself as a good old-fashioned policeman.

  But actually he’d absorbed a lot of new ideas and psychological profiling was something he did rather well. If Liz had been here he’d have bounced his ideas off her, but she was on important business too and up against the clock even more than he was. Today he’d have to bounce them off himself, like a solo game of ping-pong.

  So what else did he know about the blackmailer? Well, he knew that he was a headcase. Obsessive, compulsive, megalomaniac. Clever, and proud of it. This man might not have a criminal record – not for blackmail, not for anything. He was clever enough and confident enough to go straight for the big one. He didn’t need to start small and learn from his mistakes: he’d pride himself he wouldn’t make any.

  ‘And so far you haven’t made many,’ Shapiro mu
rmured aloud. One of the advantages of seniority is that while people may doubt your sanity they don’t often challenge it.

  But there was someone out there who knew what the man was capable of. Family – not friends, he wouldn’t have any, but acquaintances, workmates. They knew he was dangerous, even if he’d never done anything to prove it. They might feel silly for being afraid of him, but they knew instinctively that he was a man to avoid, not to cross. Rooms would go quiet when he walked into them. People would stand rather than sit next to him on buses.

  ‘A socialized psychopath,’ said Shapiro judiciously.

  ‘Pardon, sir?’ said Sergeant Tripp, standing patiently in the doorway.

  ‘Just thinking aloud,’ said Shapiro, defensive in spite of himself.

  ‘What kind of psychopath?’ asked SOCO.

  ‘A socialized one. It means he knows better than to wear his hat sideways and claim to be Napoleon. He can conform to any standards of behaviour required of him, but it’s an act. He has no sense of right and wrong. He wants something, he takes it. He has no sense of sharing the world: he thinks it’s here for his convenience, that he has a right to use it as he chooses. He neither knows nor cares how other people feel. In a very real sense he’s unaware of their capacity for feeling.’

  ‘Really, sir,’ said Tripp stolidly. ‘So we’re not looking for a minister of the cloth, say:

  Any time Shapiro felt to be rooted in the past, the history of police detection rather than its future, talking to Sergeant Tripp cheered him up immensely. ‘Probably not,’ he agreed. ‘Or a doctor, a teacher, a writer or a musician. He could be an engineer or a scientist. He could be a financial genius. But he won’t be a professional gambler because he can’t read faces.’

  SOCO pulled out a chair and sat down. He was getting interested in this. ‘Not a family man, then. More of a loner.’

  Shapiro nodded. ‘He may live alone. Or some poor woman may have taken him at his own valuation long enough to come under his sway; in which case she’ll be with him until he’s tired of her because she’ll be too afraid to make the break herself. So he could be a family man with a house full of children. But I bet he never goes to parent-teacher meetings, takes them fishing or cheers from the sidelines as they shoot past the post.’

  That struck a chord with him; in fact, two. ‘I must check with Castle High and see if any parents were attending matches for the first time.’ What he thought and didn’t say was: The sort of father I was, in fact.

  A movement in the doorway made him look up. DC Scobie had joined them. ‘Forensics on the phone for Sergeant Tripp, sir.’

  Shapiro excused him with a nod. ‘Tell them there’s another letter on its way to them. We might get lucky: he might have left something on the paper.’

  ‘Or the stamp,’ said Tripp.

  Shapiro frowned. ‘The stamp?’

  Sometimes Sergeant Tripp wondered about the people they made up to superintendent these days. ‘Probably he licked it; he explained, as if to a child. ‘If he’s a secretor – if markers for his blood-group appear in his saliva – that’s a physical link between him and the crime.’

  ‘Will there be enough genetic material for them to work with?’ asked Shapiro, impressed.

  ‘Won’t know that till they’ve tried, sir,’ Sergeant Tripp said heavily.

  Shapiro waved Scobie inside. ‘Talk to the sports teachers at the school. I want to know if any of the parents shocked everyone rigid by turning up to watch.’

  Scobie nodded pensively. Pensive was not something usually associated with the largest detective constable in Castlemere. ‘It might not have been the first time. It might have been the second.’

  Shapiro raised an enquiring eyebrow.

  ‘He could have been at the last match too. To check the layout, the timings, whether he’d be noticed if he went near the shower block. And so he wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb when it mattered.’

  ‘Good thinking, constable,’ said Shapiro. But it was disconcerting to be out-thought twice in one morning. Tripp he could understand, the man was a specialist in his own field, but Scobie? Being out-thought by Scobie was like losing a game of Snap to Stevie Wonder.

  Then he went downstairs to see Superintendent Giles, and after that he called another meeting. Same guest list; pretty much the same subject.

  ‘He’s getting impatient. He wants his money.’

  The Mayor sucked in a deep breath, the Chief Executive nodded, the chairman of the Chamber of Trade sniffed. Kenneth Simpson looked at Tony Woodall who looked, edgily, at Mitchell Tyler.

  Tyler said baldly, ‘But he isn’t going to get it, is he?’

  Shapiro folded his hands on the table before him. ‘My advice hasn’t changed. But I promised to keep you apprised of developments, and this is one.’

  ‘We’re going to have to pay,’ said the Mayor, looking round the table for support. ‘Aren’t we? Sooner or later we’re going to have to pay. We can’t let people die.’

  ‘It really isn’t that simple,’ murmured Shapiro.

  ‘Then let’s make it simple,’ said Tyler tersely. ‘Sav-U-Mor will not contribute to any pay-off. It will instruct its insurers not to make a contribution on its behalf, and warn them that it will take its business elsewhere – all its business – if they make a contribution on anyone else’s behalf. We won’t pay ransom, or condone payment by any other party.’ His teeth glittered wolfishly. ‘That clear enough?’

  A shock wave travelled round the table. These were important people in Castlemere, they weren’t used to being mugged. A lot of throats were cleared, several sentences begun and aborted.

  Though he wasn’t wearing it, Derek Dunstan felt the weight of the mayoral chain pressing him to respond. ‘Mr Tyler, there’s more at stake here than Sav-U-Mor’s profit margin. I appreciate that’s why you’re here, but you must appreciate that the safety of the people of Castlemere is what concerns the rest of us. If they can best be protected by finding the money, then find it we must.’

  Donald Chivers was a successful businessman, he hadn’t achieved that by virtue of his timid nature. He came to his feet like a disturbed bear. ‘You may not be aware, Mr Tyler, that the Castlemere outlet of Sav-U-Mor is a member of the Chamber of Trade and as such is bound by decisions of the Chamber. If the traders of this town decide to pay up, Sav-U-Mor will abide by that decision. Don’t think you can save your share of the cost by taking the moral high ground. If the police can’t catch this man there’s only one way to go, and the big players aren’t going to walk off and leave the little men to foot the bill. Any attempt to shirk your obligations and we’ll be obliged to take legal advice.’

  Shapiro had to admire the man. Sav-U-Mor was a multinational; Mitchell Tyler was the man they employed to remove obstacles to their progress; and Donald Chivers, managing director of Chivers Sporting Equipment, with two stores and a pitch at the weekly market, was marking his card. He must have known about the Grand Jury hearing. Perhaps he thought the police station was the only place he could threaten Tyler with impunity.

  As an officer of the local authority Dick Travis had spent much of his career throwing buckets of cold water over scrapping councillors. He did it automatically now, like a mother making peace between rowing children. ‘I’m sure it’s premature to consider the legal position. I’m sure we can find a consensus – in fact, we have to. The people in this room have to decide on the best way forward. It’ll be unfortunate if we reach the wrong decision but worse if we fail to reach any decision at all. The people of Castlemere are looking to us for guidance.

  ‘Last time we spoke we agreed to hold out. Recent events seem to have shaken that resolve. But I don’t suppose anyone would want to pay if an arrest was imminent. So – Mr Giles, Mr Shapiro – can we ask, what are the chances?’

  This was by its nature a CID matter. Superintendent Giles looked across the table, and even at that distance Shapiro could read his mind. Please, he was saying, whatever you tell them, don’t tell them �
��Two – small and none!’

  Shapiro eased himself to his feet with a sigh. ‘Mr Travis, I’d love to tell this man where to go on the grounds that we’re going to have him in custody before he can do any more harm. But I don’t want to mislead you. We have a number of suspects. We may have to eliminate them all from our inquiries as the evidence mounts; or we may be able to narrow the list down to one, clap him on the shoulder and say, “Ah-ha, chummy, got you bang to rights”.’

  Most of the men round this table had known each other for years. Shapiro’s brand of gentle irony was as familiar to them as the 1950s B-movies on which it drew. But Mitchell Tyler only met him this week, had never known anyone like him before. One eyebrow climbed.

  Shapiro waved an apologetic hand. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Tyler, you must think you’ve stumbled into an episode of the Keystone Cops. Actually, though Castlemere may be a hick town by your standards, statistically we have a good clear-up rate. We will get this man. I just can’t tell you when.’

  ‘And in the meantime,’ said the Mayor, ‘people are dying.’

  Tyler turned towards him like radar. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Mr Dunstan exaggerates,’ gritted Shapiro. ‘People have certainly been hurt, and one man is missing. Initially we believed he was a victim of the blackmailer; now we’re less certain. He may still be alive; and either way, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with this.’

  Dick Travis’s gaze was touched with compassion. ‘That is good news, Superintendent. We’ll all be hoping for the best.’

  Tyler picked up a subtext and turned his searchlight gaze on Shapiro. ‘Your sergeant?’

  Shapiro nodded. ‘Inspector Graham is investigating, I hope to know more later today.’

  ‘Superintendent – I thought Inspector Graham had a case.’

  Shapiro’s voice dropped the half-octave that said he was running low on tolerance. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Tyler, nothing will take priority over the vital importance of protecting Sav-U-Mor’s investment. But I also intend to use some of my resources to try and establish whether a young man who’s repeatedly risked his life for this town has finally run out of luck.’