Breaking Point (2 page)

So where were they going? There was nothing behind the house except a steep-sided valley. The sounds grew fainter until there was no sound at all.

Shielding the dim light from the torch with his hands, he surveyed the way ahead. It seemed he had landed in an old sheep pen, abandoned now by the look of the coarse grass and waist-high weeds. The ground was uneven and he had to steady himself by holding on to the wall as he worked his way along. He came to a wooden gate. Poked his head up for a quick look.

He could see the outline of the house as well as the outbuildings on the other side of the yard, but the cobblestoned area between them was empty No sign of the van that had preceded the cars; no cars, no people, no light in any of the windows, nothing!

Puzzled but emboldened, he decided to climb over the gate. If it hadn't been opened for a while, chances were the hinges would make a noise, and while there didn't
appear
to be anyone about, a creaking gate might well bring a swift response.

He moved cautiously along the edge of the old stone barns, ready to scuttle for cover at the first sign of life from the house. He came to a gap between the last two buildings, and saw how the vehicles had managed to disappear. A track, almost as wide as the lane leading up to the house, led from the far side of the yard down the hill to disappear into the darkness of the valley below.

His informant had said nothing about this. He'd been on the point of telling him more when he'd stopped in the middle of a sentence, slopped the drinks as he pushed the table aside, and announced that he had to go to the loo.

Not exactly surprising, considering how much the little man had had to drink – except he had never returned. Strange, very strange, because, apart from anything else, it wasn't like the man to leave a full pint of ale
and
a whisky behind.

The watcher went over the scene again in his mind. His informant had been talking in low tones about his work here, when, suddenly, he'd stopped, put both hands on the table and pushed himself to his feet.

‘Got to go,' he'd mumbled. Then, as if to reassure his companion, said, ‘just going to the loo. Back in a minute.' He'd lurched off down the tiny hallway and never returned.

Nor was the man to be found in his caravan the following day or the day after that. At least he hadn't responded to the pounding on his door. But the manager of the caravan site had said not to worry. ‘He goes off for days at a time. Sometimes it's work; sometimes it's the drink. Try the local nick. He's probably in there drying out.'

He hadn't tried the local nick. He'd decided it didn't matter. He had most of what he wanted anyway.

But standing out here now, peering into the darkness, he felt like kicking himself. Clearly, the man had been scared stiff, and he should have recognized that and tried harder to find him.

He sucked in his breath. Too late now for second thoughts; he had a decision to make. If he started down the track and someone came along from either direction, he'd be spotted for sure. There would be nowhere to hide. On the other hand, if he was to make tonight's foray worthwhile, what choice did he have?

He hitched the knapsack higher on his shoulders and stepped away from the shadow of the building.

He heard a sound; the scrape of a boot against stone. He swung round, arm raised to defend himself. A light flashed in his eyes . . .

He didn't see what hit him; didn't feel the blow that pitched him into a darkness deeper than the night itself.

‘M
orning, boss. Good to see you back,' Detective Sergeant John Tregalles said cheerily as he entered the office bearing two mugs of coffee. ‘Looks like DI Travis left everything shipshape for you,' he continued, nodding in the direction of the almost empty in tray. He set one of the brimming mugs in front of Paget, took a sip of his own as he moved back toward the door. ‘Can't stop. Got to be in court later on this morning. Shoplifting. Petty stuff, but I've probably spent more time on the paperwork than this kid will serve – that is if he doesn't get off altogether because his mum smacked him when he was two. How was the course? Nice change, was it? Straight hours. Nine to five. Bit of a holiday?'

Paget shot a hard glance at the sergeant. He was in no mood for jokes, not this morning. But there was nothing in the sergeant's manner or expression to indicate that he was being flippant. He swallowed the sharp retort that had risen to his lips, but before he could form a more reasonable response, the sergeant glanced at his watch and said, ‘Got to run.' He raised his mug in mock salute. ‘Coffee's on me this morning. Sort of welcome back. Brewed specially for you in the canteen.' And then he was gone.

Paget picked up the steaming mug and sat back in his chair. Nice change? Bit of a holiday? Hardly. Seconded to Training with less than forty-eight hours' notice, and even less for preparation time, he'd had to step in to run a course on race relations and sensitivity, when he'd only just finished the course himself. There hadn't been much sensitivity in the way they'd handled that!

‘They're short-staffed,' Superintendent Alcott had said as if that explained everything.

‘And we're not?' he'd shot back. ‘God knows we're barely keeping up with things as it is. Why can't they use some of their own people? There were two instructors on the course I took, so why can't they use them?'

‘Because,' Alcott explained, ‘it's been decided that in order to demonstrate how important this course is, and how seriously it is to be taken by everyone, they are going to start at the top and work their way down. The next four courses will be attended by senior officers only: some of our own, some from West Mercia, and there'll be some from Dyfed-Powys as well. Which means that the instructor has to be a senior officer. So, to put it bluntly, Paget, you've had the course; you are a trained instructor, so I'm afraid you're it.'

Alcott leaned forward and adopted a conciliatory tone. ‘I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I've now been told that the course you were on was a shakedown course, a trial run if you like, and you, along with several others, were being evaluated. And you,' he continued as he sat back and pulled a cigarette from the packet on the desk, ‘came out on top. And the fact that you've had previous experience in Training clinched it. Sorry, Paget, but there it is. I don't like it any more than you do, but I haven't been given any choice.'

A flicker of annoyance and disapproval crossed Paget's face as the superintendent lit the cigarette and blew smoke into the air. Alcott saw the look and ignored it. It would take a lot more than that to convince him to give up his cigarettes, no matter what the regulations. Neither was the superintendent going to give ground on this course assignment, so there was nothing to be gained by arguing.

‘So, when do I start?' he asked.

‘First thing Monday morning,' Alcott said, avoiding Paget's eyes as he pushed a thin folder across the desk. ‘Course schedules are in there.'

‘
This
Monday? And you're telling me at four o'clock on Friday afternoon?'

The superintendent had at least had the grace to look uncomfortable as he said, ‘I know it's short notice, Paget, but you'll have the weekend, and I'll have DI Travis keep an eye on things while you're away.'

Travis had kept an eye on things all right, thought Paget sourly, but that was about all he'd done. The DI had left a note on his desk, and a batch of marked folders in the file cabinet, with only the briefest of explanations before taking off last Friday night to spend three weeks' leave in Spain. If Paget hadn't suspected that something like that might happen, and come in on Saturday, he would have been snowed under this morning.

‘Just going in to check,' he'd told Grace, although he would have much preferred to spend the time with her after being away in Worcester five days out of seven every week for the past month. ‘Be back in time for lunch.' Instead he'd wound up spending most of the weekend at work clearing the backlog and bringing himself up-to-date.

Paget sniffed at the coffee, then set it aside. Tregalles had lied. As he'd suspected, this foul-tasting brew had come straight from the machine down the hall, and it smelt more like tar than coffee.

The phone rang. ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector,' Alcott's secretary, Fiona, said crisply when he answered. ‘Welcome back, sir. Superintendent Alcott asked me to call and say he would like to see you in his office as soon as possible.'

Paget glanced at the long list of notes he'd made of things he should look into, and sighed. Alcott always wanted everything ‘as soon as possible'. ‘Look, Fiona,' he said, ‘I've got a lot of catching up to do. Unless it's
really
important, tell him I'd like to put off whatever it is until after lunch.'

‘I can tell him if you wish,' Fiona said, lowering her voice, ‘but I believe it has something to do with a call Mr Alcott received from Chief Superintendent Brock a few minutes ago. His actual words to me were, “Get Paget up here on the double”, sir, so I rather doubt if he will consider the time negotiable.'

He groaned inwardly. It would hardly be good news if Morgan Brock was involved. ‘In that case,' he said with an audible sigh of resignation, ‘you can tell Mr Alcott I'm on my way. And thanks for the warning, Fiona.'

‘I have the month-end reports for February,' Fiona said as she entered Superintendent Thomas Alcott's office and dropped them in his in tray. ‘They have to be in today, so if you could sign them as soon as possible, I'll make sure they're sent over to New Street this morning. And Mr Paget is on his way up.'

‘Good, but don't leave them there,' Alcott told her. ‘I don't have time to deal with them right now. I have to get this business with Paget done straightaway, and then I have a meeting at ten. You deal with them, Fiona. You know what to look for. Just mark any questionable ones, and I'll look at them when I get back.'

‘Just as long as you don't expect me to forge your signature on them as well,' the matronly woman said tartly as she picked up the reports again. She and the superintendent had been together a long time, and it was on occasions such as this that Alcott sometimes wondered which one of them was really in charge.

‘Morning, Fiona. Morning, sir.' Paget stood to one side to let the secretary pass as he entered the office. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, lean-faced – although not as lean as it had once been, thought Alcott. He hadn't realized until recently how much the DCI had changed in the last two or three months. He certainly looked a hell of a lot better than he had after his encounter with Mary Carr. Even the scar was fading, although part of it was still visible above the collar. But more importantly, his temperament had changed as well; he was more relaxed, less intense. But that, Alcott decided, probably had more to do with Grace Lovett and the DCI's new lifestyle than anything else.

Alcott waved Paget to a seat, then leaned back in his own chair and locked his fingers behind his head. ‘Courses go all right, did they?' he asked, then answered his own question. ‘I have the report from Training here. They were impressed. They say the critiques were most favourable, so congratulations. Reflects well on all of us over here.'

Paget had a horrible feeling that this was leading up to another secondment to Training. ‘Thank you, sir, but if you are even
thinking
about sending me back there . . .'

‘No, no, no. Absolutely not!' Alcott assured him. ‘No, you did a commendable job over there, but that's the end of it, so you have no need to worry on that score.'

Despite the assurance, warning bells continued to ring in the back of Paget's mind as he said, ‘So what, exactly, did you wish to see me about, sir?'

‘Ah!' Alcott pursed his lips and frowned as if to emphasize the importance of what he was about to say. ‘I had a call from Mr Brock this morning, regarding a young man by the name of Mark Newman, who seems to have gone missing. Newman was last seen on Thursday morning when he went off to work in his van – he does odd jobs, window cleaning, a bit of carpentry and such – and he hasn't been seen since. Normally, no one would have thought much about it, but when he failed to turn up for his own twenty-first birthday party on Friday night at the local pub, his friends became worried about him.'

‘So why are you telling
me
this?' Paget asked. ‘From what you've said so far, this barely qualifies for a Missing Person report. You say this chap is an itinerant worker. He has a van, so he probably goes wherever there's work to be had, and he's been held up somewhere. He's young, possibly met a girl, decided to stay on wherever he happens to be, and didn't give a thought to letting his friends know.'

‘You may well be right,' Alcott conceded, ‘but whether you are or not, Mr Brock has asked us to look into it. He's arranged for you to meet with a young woman by the name of Emma Baker in Whitcott Lacey at three this afternoon. She's a mature student at the Whitcott Agricultural College there. She has all the details.'

‘
He's
arranged . . .?' Paget shook his head in disgust. ‘Does he really think we're that short of work that we have time to go running off to talk to some girl who goes all a'twitter when her boyfriend doesn't turn up? I'm trying to catch up after being away for a month, and I have cases sitting there that—'

‘Believe me, I'm well aware of the situation, thank you, Paget,' Alcott broke in sharply, ‘and so is Mr Brock; I made sure of that. But this is not a request. It comes directly from the chief constable. It seems that this young woman, Emma Baker, is Sir Robert's niece, and she spoke to her uncle because she didn't think she was being taken seriously by Missing Persons.'