Festival, page 8
Piet studied the ground over which the van had stood. On the turf, in the slight indentation where the nearside back wheel had rested, was a tiny scrap of blue. It had either blown almost under the wheel, or perhaps on to the wheel and had fallen off when the car was moved. He picked it up – it was a scrap of material from Jo’s hair ribbon, precisely similar to the shreds found caught on a button of the dead girl’s shirt. He showed it to Inspector Lovell. ‘I think this confirms that Jo was taken in this van, and that it was the young woman now dead who took her,’ he said. ‘I’m quite sure in my own mind that this is a scrap of material from a hair ribbon Jo was wearing, and I found some similar strands round a button of the girl’s shirt. They’ll need scientific analysis, of course, but we can get on with things without waiting for that. Let’s try to work out what must have happened. Jo was on the seat beside the driver – at least, that’s what the hairs from her head suggest. The van was driven up here, which would be only a few minutes. Then the driver got out, picked up Jo, and walked off. A scrap of hair ribbon must have caught on a button when she got Jo out of the van, and a few shreds fell off then – at any rate, that seems to be indicated by finding them by the nearside wheel.
‘What did she do then? There wasn’t time for much. It was after 12.15 when she left here, and she’d got to be at Earl’s Down around 1.15, at the very latest about 1.25. Constable Farrow, who knows these Downs well – he walked them as a boy – estimates it at about a mile from the top of the Wansdyke to Earl’s Down, and it would be roughly a quarter of a mile from here to the ridge. An hour to walk a mile and a quarter – easy enough, one would think, but she was carrying Jo, and it’s steep going to the ridge.’ A dreadful thought struck him. ‘I suppose it’s possible she didn’t carry Jo, but just dumped her, perhaps hitting her first. Inspector, we’ve got to search the area. I’m starting now, to walk from here to Earl’s Down. She’d have gone pretty direct, I think, and mercifully there aren’t any woods, though there are a number of hollows and rough places. Will you go back and get at least half a dozen men sent up? It won’t be dark for some time yet, and we can cover quite a lot of ground in the time we’ve got left. And will you get a car sent to Earl’s Down to pick me up when I get there?’
‘Constable Wilkins, the officer who was on duty here, can get the search party sent out. I’d be happier to come with you – two of us can have a much better look than one.’
‘That’s good of you, Inspector, and you’re certainly right. I don’t know if you’ll find Mr Norton at headquarters, Constable – he may have left – but please see whoever is in charge, explain what Inspector Lovell and I are doing, and get a party sent up to search the Downs for, say, two hundred yards to each side of the direct line from here to Earl’s Down. And can you arrange for two more drivers, one to take the van to the forensic lab, the other to take Inspector Lovell’s car to meet us at Earl’s Down?’
‘I’ll be off at once, sir. And I’ll come back with the search party. I’d like to feel I was helping to look for the little girl.’
Again Piet felt a lump in his throat at the loyalty and kindly decency of people. He was also sick with anxiety for Jo, and wanted to begin the search that might show whether a little body was lying somewhere on the Downs. ‘Have you by any chance got a map?’ he asked Inspector Lovell.
‘Yes, sir. I’ve got the Ordnance sheet in my car.’
‘Splendid. Let me look at it for a moment, and we’ll start off.’
The contours were what chiefly concerned Piet. There was not much difficulty in knowing which way to walk to get to Earl’s Down, for if you knew where Earl’s Down was – as presumably the girl did – it was simply a matter of walking in a straight line. Piet wanted to know what you could see from the ridge, and how far you could be seen.
The map showed open, undulating country between the Wansdyke, that huge, mysterious earthwork built, perhaps, by King Arthur’s Roman Britons in their last stand against the invading Saxons, and the hamlet of Wick Earl’s at the near end of Earl’s Down. The undulations were important. From the ridge the ground ran flat for a few hundred yards, then fell away gently to climb again to another ridge of higher ground between the Wansdyke and Earl’s Down. From this secondary ridge there was another gentle descent to Earl’s Down itself. Anyone on the top of the Wansdyke could see well enough as far as the secondary ridge, but anything beyond it would be out of sight.
Having oriented the map, Piet and the inspector set off. ‘There’s been no rain, and the turf springs up as soon as you have trodden it, so there’s not much chance of finding tracks,’ Piet said. ‘Our main hope is to see if anything that might help us has been dropped.’
Keeping about twenty yards apart, they followed what seemed the most direct route to the ridge of the Wansdyke, scrutinising the ground. The peaceful loveliness of the place in some ways made the agony of the search worse, in other ways it helped – no one could be quite unaffected by the great arching sky and the soft beauty of the landscape, dotted here and there with standing sarsen stones. They found nothing.
Nor was there any better luck on the route from the top of the Wansdyke to the secondary ridge. Piet felt suddenly that the whole performance was futile – there was no evidence to suggest where the girl had gone. Common sense suggested that she would have made fairly directly for Earl’s Down, but she would have had time for a considerable detour had she wished. Futile it might be, but the search had to be made, and the only thing to do was to carry on.
On the summit of the secondary ridge Piet stopped for a brief consultation with the inspector. ‘It’s clear going from here to the festival site, though you can’t actually see it yet because of that rounded hill. No one has inquired yet about young women seen carrying babies around at lunchtime yesterday – there was nothing to suggest any such inquiry. We don’t know if Jo was taken to the festival, or whether she was handed over to somebody else on the way. If you were going to hand over a kidnapped child, Inspector where would you do it?’
‘Well, it might be anywhere, sir, and it would be safe enough even if someone else saw you – people often come up here with kids.’
‘Yes, but you’ve got to allow something for guilty knowledge. If you’re carrying your own child and simply hand her over to a friend, you don’t think about it – it doesn’t matter who sees you. If you’re making off with a stolen baby it still may not matter much if you’re seen, but you’re liable to think it does, and take precautions against it. If Jo was handed to anyone else, my feeling is that they’d wait to get beyond this ridge, and then look for some sort of cover. There’s quite a lot of cover in these various groups of sarsens. There’s one quite big group over there, about a hundred yards to the right of us. There are three stones standing, and three or four more fallen, surrounding what looks from here like a low mound.’
‘They’re marked on the map as “Tumulus”,’ the inspector said.
‘That means they’re recognised as some prehistoric site, though the purpose of whatever it was may be a matter of guesswork only. I think we’ll have a look at the place – it won’t take more than a few minutes. You make for it from the north, and I’ll go round and come up from the south, so we’ll get a good look round it.’
If the dry turf showed no footmarks, it did here and there have the mark of a horseshoe, where some horse’s hoof had come down hard. That meant nothing, for there is much riding over the Downs. Piet was mildly interested, though, to see hoofmarks apparently making for the tumulus – most riders, he would have thought, would have kept to open country. Near one of the stones there was a small patch of ground for some reason rather bare of turf with the chalky soil exposed, and this showed slight marks of trampling, as if a horse had been held there for a bit, or possibly tethered to the stone. It wasn’t a bad place for keeping more or less out of sight, for the view from the ridge was masked by the stones. None of this necessarily meant anything, but it encouraged Piet to search the ground thoroughly. And then he saw the purse, made of pale green leather of much the same colour as the turf, and lying close against one of the fallen stones. He called the inspector. ‘Have a look at this,’ he said.
The two men studied the position of the purse before picking it up. ‘Pity we haven’t got a camera,’ Piet said. ‘It may mean nothing – people must often lose belongings when out walking. But in case it should turn out to be important I’d like a record of precisely where we found it. Can you do a quick sketch in your notebook?’
‘Sure. The stones are marked on the map, so there’s no need to identify them beyond the map reference. I’ll just sketch in the fallen and the standing stones, and mark where the purse is lying.’
‘Fine.’ The sketch took only a few minutes, and then Piet picked up the purse. It was a woman’s rather than a man’s, he thought, of the kind that women carry in their handbags, or put in a pocket if they are not using a bag. It had a standard brass twist catch, and was fairly full of oddments. There were six £5 notes, three 50p pieces, and 35p in small change. There was a lipstick, a car key and a latchkey, a couple of folded pages from a small loose-leaf notebook, and a credit card issued by the Associated Bank Group. The name embossed on the credit card was Miss Jane Partridge and the signature, ‘Jane Partridge’, was written with a ballpoint pen on the back. ‘That’s the name of the Space Orchids singer, the one who calls himself Steve Spider,’ Piet said. ‘I wonder if there’s any possible connection – Partridge isn’t all that uncommon as a name, but it’s not that common either, and it’s odd to meet two people called Partridge in a case like this who have nothing to do with each other. But the Spider/Partridge man said he didn’t know anything about the dead girl. I suppose she could be a relative who’d come to the festival without his knowledge. Or there may be no connection at all. But we’re jumping ahead. We’ve no evidence that whoever this purse belongs or belonged to had anything to do either with the Mini van, or the festival.’
‘We could try the car key, sir. If it fits the van it would be a strong indication that she was the driver. Not conclusive, I agree, but enough for a working theory.’
‘Good idea, Inspector. The police party can scarcely have got here yet, so the van’s probably not been moved. Could you nip back and see if the key fits? I’ll wait here with the purse and the rest of it. Come back straightaway. If by any chance the other officers turn up before you leave the van, don’t say anything to anybody about finding the key, or the purse. We’ll keep that to ourselves for the moment.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Inspector Lovell was fit and in good condition. He set off running back to the van.
*
Piet examined the pages torn from a notebook. Going by the signature on the back of the credit card, they seemed to be in the same handwriting. They appeared to be scribbled notes of some conversation, probably on the telephone. The writing was big, as if written hurriedly, which perhaps explained why two pages had been needed. They read,
Car park at Avebury. Then A4 to Marlborough. OK after that. Wait for big black car. Driver will explain. Will find everything in the back of the Mini. Be fixed up at festival.
He had no doubt in his own mind that the purse, the dead girl, the driver of the van and the snatching of Jo were all connected. But what did any of it mean? Where did a big black car fit in? No other car had been seen with the Mini at the end of the Downs road – or had the couple who saw the Mini van arrive simply forgotten to mention it? They would have to be seen again.
The credit card was a striking piece of luck, for not only did it provide a name, but the bank would be able to add an address. He must get on with that as soon as possible. To discover who Jane Partridge was might help to answer many questions, but to be realistic it might not get them very far. And why, why, why? What was going on to make the kidnapping of Jo seem necessary to someone? It appeared now to relate to the festival, or at least to be connected with the festival in some way, but how?
Piet’s mind was whirling with these questions when Inspector Lovell returned. He brought the news that Piet expected. ‘The key does fit,’ he said. ‘The other officers haven’t come yet, but I didn’t wait for them. You told me to come back straightaway, so I did.’
*
Piet sat on one of the fallen stones. He had come to a very hard decision. Just what it would involve he hadn’t yet worked out, but he had begun to see what he must do. First he must talk to Inspector Lovell, invoke his loyalty without explaining his own actions. Was Lovell loyal? In so far as anyone can judge another man, Piet thought so –and he had felt himself particularly close to the inspector since they’d been working together after Jo’s disappearance. Piet did not easily use Christian names for his subordinates – it came more naturally to him to call them by their ranks, and he thought that, on the whole, people preferred this slight element of formality in working relationships. Deliberately now he addressed Inspector Lovell as ‘Jack’.
‘Sit down for a moment, Jack, I want to talk to you,’ he said. With the Inspector, not sorry to rest after his run, seated on another of the fallen stones, Piet went on, ‘What do you really make of Jo’s disappearance so far?’
‘It’s hard to say, sir. It still seems to me sheer, pointless cruelty.’
‘Do you think it could have been to take my mind off something else?’
‘You mean to stop you from taking proceedings of some sort? Well, I suppose it could have been, but wouldn’t there have been a telephone call or something, telling you what to do, or rather, what not to do?’
‘Not necessarily. You see, I might not even know what I was supposed to do nothing about.’
‘I don’t understand, sir.’
‘I’m not putting things very well. Assume – it’s got to be pure assumption – that there’s something going on at this festival that some people want very much not to be investigated. Kidnapping my daughter could be expected to take up all my time and attention, as well as a great deal of general police time.’
‘It’s possible, sir. It would be clever, too. If something like that is the case, does it mean, do you think, that you’ll get your daughter back unharmed?’
‘I don’t know. If there is anything in the suggestion I’ve just made I’m afraid I’d take a very grave view of the possible consequences. Once you’ve gone to the length of stealing a baby it may not be hard to go farther if the child becomes tiresome or dangerous to keep.’
‘Why bring in the festival, sir?’
‘Because the dead girl is linked both to the festival and to the van, and thanks to your work the van is linked with the taking away of Jo. I don’t know, but I strongly suspect that the girl was murdered. If we can find out why she was murdered, we may discover why Jo was taken. It’s straining probability to assume that the two sets of events are quite unconnected.’
‘You’re right enough there, sir. Have you been able to form any idea of just what is going on?’
‘I have a sort of half-theory, but it’s so tentative that it would be misleading to go into it now. I want you, Jack, to do something that it’s hard to ask any police officer to do, particularly a good detective.’
‘I don’t know about that. What do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to conceal evidence for the moment. I do not want anybody else to know that we have found this purse, or traced the driver of the van towards the festival. The police search of this part of the Downs is reasonable –having traced Jo to the van, we must search the area for a possible body. But nobody must know about what we’ve found – and I mean nobody, not even our own officers. If any senior officer asks for a report on what you did today, just say you helped me search the Downs. I may decide to go away for a time, and if so you may have to report to other officers. Will you trust me?’
‘There’s no need to ask, sir.’ He held out his hand, and Piet took it. ‘Thank you, Jack,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we are both in for a time that’s going to stretch our nerves to the uttermost. Well, we must just have faith.’
‘I don’t get everything you mean, but I can understand the need for keeping quiet about what we’ve found. If there’s anything in what you said about the festival, we don’t want whoever it is to know what we do know. And if even the police don’t know, he can’t know.’
‘I said you were a good detective, Jack, and I now say that you’ve got the most valuable quality of all – a creative imagination. If I do go away I may need to get in touch with you. I shall ring you at home. I won’t give my name, I’ll just say, ‘It’s Bill’. Perhaps you’d tell your wife that she may get a call from a friend of yours called Bill. She won’t know my voice over the phone, so she won’t know who Bill is.’
‘Shall be done, sir.’
‘Oh, and there’s one small point that I forgot to ask you. When you got prints from the pram in the garden yesterday, you were going to check to see if any of them belonged to our own people who might have handled the pram. Did you?’
‘Yes, sir, I asked Records, who have files for the whole Force. None of the prints belonged to our chaps.’
‘I didn’t think they would, but it’s as well to make sure, to know what to rule out. Now I think it’s about time we made our way to Earl’s Down.’
*
The two men separated again, to continue their search to each side of the route the van driver might have followed. Piet was nervous about what he had done, and still more nervous about what he might have to do next. He was building a hell of a lot on one small discrepancy – a discrepancy, moreover, that might not be one at all, and turn out to have a perfectly logical explanation.
V
The Syringe
PIET’S DRIVER HAD turned up at the festival site, so the police there knew that he was on his way. Victor Norton and Inspector Donaldson were walking down the rutted road to meet him. ‘We’ve found the syringe,’ Norton said.
