Evan Blessed Read online

  “Ah, there you are, Evans,” Hughes said in a way that always seemed to imply that Evans had been out somewhere enjoying himself when he should have been working.

  “Yes, sir,” Evan said. “Did you want to see D.I. Watkins? He should be here any minute.”

  “I should hope so.” Hughes glanced pointedly at the clock on the wall, “since it’s one minute past eight. Standards appear to be getting very lax around here.”

  “No, sir, but we’ve all been putting in really long days on this case,” Evan said. “D.I. Watkins and I didn’t go home until ten last night.”

  “And yet apparently with precious little to show for your efforts,” Hughes said in his clipped, annoying voice. Unlike Watkins, who looked like a policeman caricature in his fawn raincoat and well-scuffed shoes, D.C.I. Hughes, who had recently been promoted to the supervisory rank in Caernarfon, would have been taken for an assistant in an upscale gents’ clothing store—always immaculately turned out in dark suit, silk handkerchief in his top pocket, starched shirt, highly polished shoes, a slim line of mustache on his upper lip, dark hair graying in a distinguished way at the sides. Fastidious and annoying, Evan thought, as he watched him brush an imaginary speck from his sleeve. He had a way of speaking that always managed to be condescending and hinted that every other member of the force was a bumbling idiot. Since he had little talent for detective work, the feeling was reciprocated.

  “Sorry I’m late, everyone,” Watkins breezed into the room, then froze when he saw the D.C.I. standing at the front. “Oh, good morning, sir. I didn’t expect to see you. Thanks for your help on procuring the profiler. I’m sure he’s going to prove most helpful. We expect his report today.”

  “Take a seat please, Watkins.” D.C.I. Hughes motioned to a chair in the front row. “I have some concerns that need to be addressed about this Shannon Parkinson case.”

  Watkins sat, giving Evan a swift glance of inquiry. Evan shrugged.

  “Last night I received a phone call from the chief constable of Merseyside Police,” Hughes said. “It seems that Mrs. Parkinson, Shannon’s mother, has become frustrated that we haven’t managed to find her daughter. She wants the Liverpool police to ascertain what has been done so far and what should have been done. Their chief constable commented that he knew we were a small force and perhaps we lacked adequate manpower to conduct a full-scale search. He offered to lend us some of his top men to make sure the task is carried out properly.”

  Hughes paused and looked around the faces that stared blankly at him. “Needless to say, I took this as rather insulting. Under the cloak of an offer to help was the insinuation that we were not up to the job. I told him that he could rest assured that every possible lead was being investigated and that outsiders with no experience in the Welsh mountain terrain would be of little use.”

  Another dramatic pause. Hughes cracked his knuckles, making Evan wince. “But having said that, I find that I have my own concerns about this case. I am wondering if perhaps too much has been left to officers who are well meaning but definitely lacking in experience.” His gaze moved from Evan to Glynis. “We may be too late to remedy any harm done through inexperience. If indeed we do have a sex offender involved and he has managed to slip through our grasp with the girl, then we may no longer be able to save her. But I can’t sit by and risk the reputation of the North Wales Police. As of now I am taking personal control of this case.”

  There was a collective intake of breath. If Hughes noticed it, he didn’t betray the fact.

  Watkins got to his feet. “With all respect, sir, we have been working exhaustively since the girl disappeared. Other than the fact that we thought we were simply looking for a lost hiker when the first search was conducted, before the bunker was found, I can’t think of anything that should have been done differently.”

  Hughes inclined his head slightly. “With all respect to you, Watkins, I see that inquiries in the field, questioning possible witnesses in Llanberis and at the National Parks Service, were left to a very junior member of your team—one only just out of training and still on probation. This kind of thing requires someone with tact and experience. And you should have called in a profiler the minute the bunker was discovered.”

  “May I state, sir,” Watkins glared at him and Evan noticed his clenched fist, “that I have complete confidence in all members of my team. And may I remind you that you were the one who pointed out to me that we didn’t actually have a crime? Maybe we still don’t, until divers can give us a negative report from Lake Glaslyn and we have teams to check out every accessible mine shaft on the mountain.”

  A flicker of annoyance crossed Hughes’s face. “I made that remark at a time when I fully expected the girl to be found. We all did. I’m going to take a look at that bunker for myself, as soon as I have given out today’s assignments, so that I can make my own assessment of the situation. And I want to see reports on the various lines of inquiry so far—Constable Davies?”

  “Yes, sir?” Glynis eyed him with a cool stare.

  “I understand that you were given the task of compiling a list of possible sex offenders, those on parole, and local mental patients.”

  Glynis winced. “I have managed to compile a list of those treated in local psychiatric facilities,” she said. “I don’t think we call them mental patients these days, sir. Not very PC.”

  Evan glanced at Glynis’s composed, confident expression with admiration and decided that none of the men present would have had the balls to give the D.C.I. a public dressing down in front of the troops. He held his breath for the explosion. Instead, Hughes gave an embarrassed half-cough. “Ah yes, Davies, you’re right, of course. Psychiatric patients. Would that be PC enough for you?”

  If there was sarcasm in the remark, Glynis didn’t seem to notice it. She grinned. “Yes, sir. That would be most appropriate. Would you like to see the list?”

  “It’s not the list I’m interested in, Constable, it’s your deductions from the list. A trained eye can pick out those who warrant further investigation.”

  “I’ve already checked on those who would have had the right sort of psychological profile, the means to build a bunker, and the time to be on the mountain that afternoon,” Glynis said, “and the results have been negative.”

  “You’ve double-checked their alibis for that particular afternoon?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hughes waited for further explanation. Hearing none he said, “Right. Good work.” Hughes cleared his throat. He hated being one-upped.

  “And Evans—you were detailed to investigate possible sightings of the girl, both in Llanberis and among National Parks Service employees? Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.” Evan’s flat tone matched Glynis Davies’s.

  “And yet you turned up nobody who recalled seeing her?”

  “If you go to Llanberis you’ll find the place teeming with holidaymakers,” Evan said. “A large portion of them are young hikers who look just like Shannon Parkinson. The shop and café owners are so overworked that there is no way they’d recall anything unless it was completely out of the ordinary. If a man had come down the mountain with an unconscious girl over his shoulder, then maybe they’d have noticed.”

  Hughes frowned at him. “So you suspect she may still be on the mountain, hidden somewhere?”

  “It’s hard to say, sir. If she is, she’s well hidden. Our dogs didn’t manage to sniff her out. But I have reason to think she is still alive.”

  “Why is that, Constable?”

  “Because somebody has been sending me musical clues.”

  “Musical clues? What musical clues?”

  Evan related the facts on the sheet of music and the radio request.

  “Why wasn’t I informed about these?” Hughes demanded, glaring at Watkins.

  “Because I opened the letter yesterday evening after you’d gone home, sir,” Evan said. “Then I took it for testing at our forensics lab. It was only when we found no finger
prints on it, apart from mine and my fiancée’s, that we knew we must have something relating to our crime scene.”

  “I see.” Hughes was silent, digesting this. “This does put a new complexion on things, doesn’t it? The question is, where we go from here?”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Evan said, glancing across at Watkins, who sat sullen and silent, “but it seems to me that we have something concrete to work with for the first time. We’re dealing with someone who wants us to play his game. He wants us to come and find the girl. He’s giving us tantalizing hints he wants us to follow up on. We know music is important to him or he’d never have sent musical clues. And we have a name—Deb. Deb somebody has been killed because our man thought she deserved to die.”

  Evan was conscious of the complete silence in the room.

  “Then the first thing to do is to conduct a search on the national crime databases,” Hughes said. “Find out if any girls called Deborah are listed as murdered or missing.”

  “Already been done, sir,” Watkins couldn’t resist saying. “We only have one name and she doesn’t seem to fit the bill. A fifteen-year-old in Birmingham accepted a lift in a strange car and hasn’t been seen since. She’d had a drug problem and fought with her parents, so is being considered a runaway.”

  “Ah.” Hughes fell silent again.

  “This need not necessarily be a currently open case, need it?” Glynis asked. “This could be something that happened years ago, that is not on anybody’s computer list, but resides in a cold case file in someone’s basement.”

  “Good point, Davies.” Hughes actually smiled. Glynis had been his protégée at one stage and apparently he had forgiven her former insubordination. “Can we leave the task of calling individual police forces and digging up cold case files in your capable hands, then?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  “And Watkins?”

  “Sir?”

  “You’re very quiet. What are your priorities for this morning?”

  “I was rather waiting for you to tell me my duties, sir.”

  Hughes’s face gave a twitch of annoyance. “Good God, no. It’s not like that at all. Just because I felt that I should add my expertise to this team doesn’t mean that your own roles are in any way diminished. Good Lord, no. We’re a team here, people. Partners against crime, right? Every one of us should feel free to speak up, make suggestions and express opinions. So please feel free to speak up, Watkins. I hope I’m not an intimidating personality and you don’t only see me as an authority figure.”

  Evan heard the muttered “pompous twit” escape with Watkins’s breath.

  “Right, sir. I’ve got to pick up the profile, which should be ready by midday. I also thought I should double-check with the Birmingham police about their missing girl case.”

  “I find it hard to believe that nobody saw our missing girl,” Hughes said. “Apart from sending Constable Evans out to interview people in Llanberis, what has been done to alert the general public to the girl’s disappearance?”

  “We put up posters, sir,” Watkins said. “And we ran the girl’s picture in the local newspapers.”

  “Presumably that was before we had definitely come to the conclusion that we were dealing with an abduction.”

  “We still haven’t come to that conclusion one hundred percent,” Watkins said. “We have a missing girl, we’ve found a bunker, unused, and Constable Evans has received a couple of weird musical messages. But are they all linked or just strange coincidences of timing?”

  “I think we have to assume that they are linked, until we find otherwise, don’t we?” Hughes said, looking around at the group for general assent. “We have to go forward as if a girl’s life is at stake and every second counts. We need more media, Watkins. Get the girl’s picture on the television tonight. Suggest that she may have been in the company of an older man.”

  “We don’t know that he’s necessarily older,” Evan ventured.

  “Evans, the girl is seventeen years old. If she was abducted by a seventeen-year-old boy, he certainly wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. What teenage boy do you know who would stock a bunker with classical music? No, if it had been a boy her age, he would have raped her, bashed her over the head, and dumped her down the nearest mine shaft.”

  Evan couldn’t disagree with this assessment. He nodded. “But the words older man’ make me think of someone”—he was about to say “your age” but stifled it just in time—“someone maybe fifty or more. This bloke doesn’t need to be that old.”

  “Older than she is, Evans. Let’s not split hairs.” Again the twitch of annoyance on Hughes’s face.

  “Ted Bundy wasn’t an older man. He was young and good-looking,” Watkins commented, probably wanting to back up Evan against Hughes.

  Hughes looked startled. “We’re talking serial killer now, are we? What makes you jump to that conclusion?”

  “The musical clues do say that Deb and Dad are dead,” Evan said. “That’s two to start with.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting we’re looking for a serial killer necessarily,” Watkins said. “Just that criminals don’t always look the part.”

  “Quite so.” Hughes agreed. “But you’ve brought up an interesting point, Watkins. Has the modus operandi been checked? Have we been in touch with the National Criminal Intelligence Service to find out if they have any similar abductions on the books? This man may have tried it before and enjoyed it enough to want to repeat it.”

  Evan glanced up at the apparently nonchalant way Hughes said this. It’s a girl’s life we’re talking about, he wanted to shout.

  “I did contact them, sir,” Glynis said. “They could come up with plenty of abductions, but no bunkers dug underground.”

  “It need not have been underground last time,” Watkins pointed out. “He could have tried a shed or a garage or an abandoned building before and found that was too risky. Or perhaps his fantasies are getting wilder and he liked the extra element of being trapped underground.”

  “Quite possibly,” Hughes said. “I think I’d better get onto NCIS myself right after I’ve seen the bunker, just to make sure we don’t overlook anything this time.”

  Evan and Glynis exchanged looks.

  “And I think we should send some boys in blue out to requestion people in the Llanberis area.” He held up his hand as Evan half rose from his seat in protest. “Someone may have noticed a young girl in the company of an older man, especially if she was being coerced into going with him.”

  “If she was still alive and had her wits about her, I don’t see how she could have been coerced,” Evan said. “She could hardly have walked down the mountain with a gun in her back.”

  “So how do you propose finding her, Constable?” Hughes demanded.

  Evan flushed. “I think we should follow up on the musical angle. Talk to any local music societies, choirs, and maybe see if we can locate the shop where the CD player and the classical CDs were purchased. If by any chance our man bought that whole stack at once, someone might have remembered.”

  “The music angle. Yes, that’s worth pursuing. In fact, why don’t you do that this morning, after you’ve shown me the bunker.”

  Evan’s face fell. A morning in the company of D.C.I. Hughes was not what he would have chosen. He was itching to follow up on his own leads—the music shops, the societies and choirs. And Roger Thomas of the National Parks who sang in a choir should have his alibi for last Tuesday double-checked. Then there was Rhodri Llewelyn, whom he had been told to ignore, but couldn’t.

  “Very good, sir,” he said in a resigned voice. “Would you like to go right away?”

  They set off in silence. Evan was conscious of D.C.I. Hughes sitting beside him. Even his breathing managed to sound critical. Evan felt annoyed with himself that Hughes always managed to put him on the defensive.

  “So tell me, Evans,” Hughes said after a long silence. “I’m curious. Why do you think that the bugger chose you to send the mus
ical messages to?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” Evan said cautiously. He didn’t repeat Bronwen’s suggestion that he was the brightest of them. “I was wondering if it’s because I was born in this area and know it better than anyone else. I’m a local. I speak Welsh.”

  “Then why wasn’t the musical message in Welsh?” Hughes demanded.

  “You’re not a Welsh speaker yourself, are you, sir?” Evan asked.

  “I manage fairly well. I’ve taken courses.”

  “You try writing anything in Welsh using only the first eight letters of the alphabet,” Evan said.

  “Point taken,” Hughes said. “So you think he’s singling you out because you should know something that happened locally, or you might even know him?”

  “It’s the only reason I can think of.”

  “And you can’t come up with any suspects?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It’s certainly very strange,” Hughes said. “This whole case is the strangest thing I’ve ever encountered in my years on the force. It’s almost as if someone has thrust us into a script and is expecting us to play our parts.”

  Evan looked at Hughes with surprise and respect. Hughes had hit the nail on the head. That’s exactly how he had been feeling about the whole thing.

  “Do you reckon it might be a setup, sir? That someone is having a good laugh at our expense over this? A group of students trying to fool the police by dropping a series of weird and wonderful clues?”

  “It did cross my mind, Evans. Maybe we are being made fools of. When we’ve run ourselves ragged, they’ll come forward and let us know that they’ve been filming the whole thing, like Candid Camera. I don’t know.” He let out a long sigh.

  “Except that Shannon Parkinson really has disappeared,” Evan said.

  “Except for that,” Hughes agreed.

  “So we have to keep plugging along until we find her, don’t we?” Evan asked.