Evan's Gate Page 23

  “You’re with the police,” she said, a satisfied smile on her face.

  “How did you know?”

  “Stands to reason, doesn’t it. The police have been round several times recently, about the little girl, I suppose. But she’s been away. He’s been there alone. A nasty bit of goods he is, if you ask me—and she’s no better than she should be—dumping the child on me when she wanted to go out and then not coming home until morning. Have you come about him?”

  “What do you think he might have done?”

  “You’re the policeman not me.”

  Evan produced his notebook. He had discovered that this somehow made an interview official, rather like the warning “everything you say may be used in evidence.” “I’m Detective Constable Evans, of the North Wales Police, madam, and what is your name?”

  “Mrs. Hardcastle,” she said. “Gloria Hardcastle.”

  “Right, Mrs. Hardcastle. If I could ask you a couple of questions?”

  “You’d better come in,” she said. “I wouldn’t want the neighbors thinking I’d done anything that required a visit from the police.”

  She led him into the front room, overdecorated with knickknacks, lots of photos, and potted plants. She pointed to the photos. “My grandchildren in Australia,” she said proudly.

  “Very nice.” Evan smiled, and the smile was returned.

  “Now, Mrs. Hardcastle—do I understand that you don’t get out much?”

  “I can’t, on account of my arthritis,” she said.

  “You say you looked after the little girl next door sometimes?”

  “Just a couple of times, when the mother couldn’t find anyone to baby-sit at the last minute. Nice little thing. I didn’t mind at all, really. It was a bit of company for me, and she was no trouble.”

  “So, Mrs. Sholokhov had no relatives in the area she could ask?”

  “Not that I know of. In fact I remember that she said her parents were both dead and she only had the one auntie left in the world. Sad, isn’t it? Still, that’s how it goes. I’ve got five grandchildren, but I’ve never even seen them.”

  “I expect you’ve heard that the little girl has been kidnapped,” Evan said.

  “I saw it on the telly,” she said. “You could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw her picture.”

  “We think her father has taken her,” Evan said. “I just wondered if you’d happened to notice any strange men hanging around here in the last few weeks—the father is a tall, blond bloke—foreign looking.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t say I saw anyone like that. In fact the only man I’ve ever noticed watching the house is that old geezer with his dog.”

  “Old geezer with a dog?” Evan looked up.

  “Yes, he used to come here a lot. I haven’t seen him lately, but for a while he’d walk that dog up and down, up and down in front of the houses, and he’d always slow down when he passed next door.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Well, he was a pleasant-enough looking man. About my age. Stout. White hair.”

  “And the dog. Was that white, too?”

  “Why, yes it was. Clever of you to guess that. Nice little dog. Well behaved. And the man had nice manners, too. I was putting the milk bottles out once, and he raised his hat and said good morning. You don’t get that type of thing much anymore, do you? Most young people are being raised with no manners at all. They push past you to get on the bus. Shocking, isn’t it?”

  Evan nodded with sympathy, but his brain was racing. “He didn’t ask you anything about the family next door?”

  “No. He didn’t say anything apart from good morning.”

  “And you say you haven’t seen him recently?”

  She shook her head. “Not for a couple of weeks, anyway.”

  Evan held out his hand. “Thank you, Mrs. Hardcastle. You’ve been most helpful.”

  “Have I?” She looked pleased.

  Evan hurried back to his car, drove around the corner, away from prying eyes, and then dialed his mobile. He was informed that Inspector Watkins was out but that Constable Davies was available. Almost immediately Glynis’s high, clear voice came on the line.

  “Listen, Glynis. I think we’re onto something,” Evan almost yelled into the phone. “There was an old man who used to walk his dog on the beach at the caravan park. Distinguished-looking old bloke, rather old-fashioned in his dress—you know, tweed hat, that kind of thing, and he had a little white dog. He asked about Ashley. He said he was staying at one of the bungalows on that road. I want you to find out about him right away. I think he could be the same one who has been spying on Ashley here in Leeds.”

  “Wow—that’s a turn up for the books, isn’t it? I’ll get Inspector Watkins on the phone immediately. He’s down at the caravan park right now. I’ll call you back as soon as I’ve got something.”

  Evan drove to the nearest café and ordered a cup of coffee, trying to concentrate on reading the paper while waiting for the phone to ring. He finished his coffee, finished his paper, and cruised past Shirley’s house a few times. Still the phone didn’t ring. He wondered whether he should talk to Joe Bingham again and try to get a list of Shirley’s friends out of him. He rather felt it would be like pulling teeth. He brought the car to a halt beside a park and sat watching the children in the playground. The old man with a white dog could be pure coincidence, he thought, as he watched several old men walking several white dogs around the park. But on the other hand, he knew that it wasn’t unusual for a kidnapper or child molester to appear concerned and even to volunteer to help with the search.

  The sun came out, warm on his face in the car, and he closed his eyes. He was just nodding off when the phone rang, and his heart gave a great lurch.

  “Evans here,” he barked into it.

  “Listen, Evan, you’re right. You may be onto something,” Glynis said. “The old man moved out of the bungalow this weekend and went home, saying the weather was too cold for him. I’ve got the name and address he gave the landlady. He comes from Colchester in Essex. Now listen to this—you know we talked about putting together a list of unsolved child abductions and murders. Well, I’ve just been looking at it. Eighteen months ago a little girl was murdered in Colchester. They haven’t found the perpetrator, and she looks a lot like Ashley.”

  “Bloody hell! This could be it, Glyn.”

  “Inspector Watkins is calling the Colchester Police right now. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “So what does he want me to do—come straight back or wait around for Shirley Sholokhov?”

  “You haven’t seen her yet?”

  “No, she’s out—according to her live-in boyfriend.”

  “You’d better stick around until she comes back,” Glynis said. “There’s not much any of us can do here until the Essex police get back to us. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Right.” Evan hung up, feeling excited and frustrated at the same time. It was annoying to be stuck so far away when things were happening, waiting for Shirley Sholokhov to reappear in her own sweet time. He came to the decision that he had waited long enough and drove back to the house. Joe Bingham looked as if he had probably gone straight back to bed after Evan left. His stubble was more noticeable, his hair uncombed, and the unwashed smell drove Evan to take a step back, even at the doorway.

  “Oh, it’s you again. She ain’t home yet.”

  “And you’re not worried about the fact that she’s been gone for several hours.”

  Joe shrugged. “I’m not her jailer, you know. She comes and goes as she pleases. That was one of the things that drove her up the wall about her old man—he wanted to keep her in a cage, always tell him where she was going. She couldn’t stand it. So I keep my mouth shut and don’t ask questions.”

  The thought flashed across Evan’s mind that what Shirley Sholokhov was doing might not be legal, but he dismissed it. “Look, I need to talk to her today. We might have found the man who t
ook her child.”

  “Really?” He was definitely interested now, Evan could tell. “Where did you find him—in Wales?”

  “I can’t tell you any details at the moment, but I’m sure she’ll want to know and we’ll need her to identify him. So if you can give me any suggestion of where she might be—names of close friends, places she likes to hang out.”

  Joe shrugged again. “Look, I wish I could help you, but I can’t. I know she’s got some girlfriends and she likes to natter with them, but I don’t know their addresses, honest to God.”

  “Then the name of the hair salon where she works?”

  “I can tell you that all right. It’s Flair for Hair, and it’s in the big new shopping center. You’ll pass it on the right as you drive into the city center. Can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks,” Evan said. “I’m going there right now, but I’ll be back. If she comes home, you tell her she’s not to go out again until I’ve spoken to her. Got it?”

  “I never got your name, mate,” Joe said, and Evan realized that he had only flashed a warrant card at him.

  “It’s Evans,” he said. “Detective Constable Evans.”

  A look of scorn crossed the man’s face. “You mean I’ve been wasting all this time speaking to a bleeding constable?”

  “If you’re not careful, I’ll bring you in for questioning next time, and you can wait in a cell until I’m good and ready to talk to you.”

  “Go on! Pull the other one. You can’t do nothing unless your boss tells you to. Constables are ten a penny.”

  “We’ll see when I come back,” Evan said. He hoped it looked as if he was sauntering back to his car, but his pulse was racing. He wondered just what he’d do if he tried to bring someone in and they refused. Call for backup, obviously, but the only backup he could count on was a hundred miles away.

  He drove to the shopping center, located the hair salon, but got nothing out of the girls who worked there. Shirley had taken time off work because her kid was poorly and she hadn’t said when she’d be back. They hadn’t even heard about the kidnapping. Both the girls seemed so clueless that Evan couldn’t believe they were lying.

  He walked through the shopping center, past the heavy beat blaring from music stores, past the bright lights and the prams and gaggles of teenage girls. Smells of frying onions and cinnamon enticed him from the food court, reminding him that he hadn’t had lunch yet, so he stopped to grab a slice of pizza. He was halfway through it, with a full mouth, when his phone rang again.

  “Evans,” he mumbled.

  “Evan, it’s Glynis. No news yet on our Mr. Johnson in Colchester, but something else has come up. I’m not sure if it’s even relevant now, but we got a call from some hikers in Yorkshire who have just seen a little girl who looks like Ashley. And since you’re our man on the spot, so to speak, the D.I. thought you should follow up on this.”

  Evan wrote down the mobile phone number. As soon as she hung up, he dialed it.

  “Look, this may be a false alarm,” the man who answered him said with an embarrassed laugh. He had a smooth, well-bred voice and Evan was unable to trace a regional accent. “But my wife was very insistent that we call you, so—”

  “I appreciate your calling, sir,” Evan said. “It’s always better to be safe than sorry, isn’t it? Too many opportunities are lost because the public doesn’t want to get involved. If I could have your name, please?”

  “Francis,” the man said. Evan was about to ask for his last name when he continued, “Rodney Francis. My wife and are currently hiking the Pennine Way.”

  “Oh, that’s great. I’m a hiker myself,” Evan said. “So, Mr. Francis, you say you saw a child who could be Ashley Sholokhov?”

  “My wife did. We stayed the night in a village called Newby on the A65,” the man said, “and then we hiked up and over Ingleborough. I don’t know if you are familiar with the area, but that’s one of what they call the Three Peaks. It’s a big, flat slab of rock—very bleak and wild. We stopped for lunch high up on a shelf of limestone, and my wife was looking through the binoculars—she’s very keen on birding, you know. She spotted this child, playing outside a cottage down in the valley—she was a little thing with long, blonde hair. Then a woman came out, grabbed her arm, and dragged her back inside, as if she was doing something wrong. My wife thought this was strange, and then she remembered the picture we’d seen on the news of the girl who was kidnapped. So she thought we ought to report this as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you. We’ll certainly go and take a look straightaway,” Evan said.

  “It may be nothing.” The man said. “The child may well have just been misbehaving and outside when she should have been doing chores, but my wife says the woman looked around nervously as she dragged the child back inside, as if she was afraid they’d been seen. And my wife is not the kind of woman given to dramatic fancies.”

  Evan thought that somebody who hiked the Pennine Way probably wouldn’t be.

  “Right.” He took a deep breath. “If you could give me the location of this cottage.”

  “The problem is that we only saw it from above. I can tell you the route we took. The trail started in a village called Clapham, just off the A road. It was signposted to the Ingelborough Caves, past the Gaping Gill, then up and over the mountain. I’m pretty sure we were looking due west from the limestone outcropping down at this cottage. It was quite remote, not near any village and not even on the road, I think. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but we have to press on to our next destination by nightfall, or we’ll fall behind our schedule.”

  “That’s all right, sir. We’ll take it from here. Thanks again for your help.”

  “I hope it turns out to be your kidnapped child,” the man said. “We’ve got two daughters at boarding school. My God, if anything happened to one of them …”

  “I hope so too, sir.”

  The moment the phone call ended, Evan found the nearest WH Smith stationery store and bought a map of Yorkshire. His knowledge of English geography was somewhat hazy, and he was amazed to locate Ingelborough so far west that it was only a few miles from the West Coast. He had always thought of Yorkshire as a strictly eastern county. Now he was impressed by its size, and by the distance from Leeds to Ingleborough. At least it was on an A road, even if that road did climb up and over the crest of the Pennines. He traced the route with his finger. As he did so, names leaped off the page at him, first one and then another—names that had not made sense before because he wasn’t looking at a map. Skipton—that was where the chemist had reported that Ashley’s prescription had been filled; then a little farther along, just off the A road, was Settle, where there had been a report of someone who sounded foreign and looked like Ivan Sholokhov a couple of weeks ago. Both of them on the A65 leading to Ingelborough. It couldn’t possibly be coincidence.

  Chapter 29

  It took a frustrating hour driving through one-way systems and clogged traffic before Evan located the A65 and was finally clear of the city. At any moment he expected the phone to ring with instructions that he was to return home and that the matter was being handled by someone with more seniority and experience. Suburban sprawl went on and on. One housing estate after another, one factory after another, and still he hadn’t even reached Skipton. Then at last houses gave way to moors. The A65 wound up hill and down dale, through patches of woodland and past signs to such tantalizing places as Ilkey, famed of song, where you were supposed to catch your death of cold by going out bar tat.

  Skipton came at last, and the road skirted around it. It looked like a fair-sized town, and Evan wondered whether he should stop to check in with the local police or at least with his own D.I. He knew that protocol demanded that he report to local police when he came onto their turf, and he’d certainly have to do so if he needed to obtain a search warrant. But he kept on going, telling himself that there was time for that kind of thing later. He was consumed by a great sense of urgency. Although his rational
self knew that the child had only been spotted through field glasses, he couldn’t help fearing that the spotters had themselves been observed and plans were being made to move her elsewhere.

  After Skipton the country became truly wild. Bleak hills rose on either side as the road followed a valley steadily upward toward the spine of the Pennines. There were no more villages, just the odd, remote house built in solid gray stone to survive the worst of the weather. The few trees he passed were bent by the force of the wind, and even in May they were only just coming into leaf. A patch of daffodils in front of a cottage lent the one splash of color in a gray-green landscape. As in Wales, there were few sheep to be seen in the fields. Foot-and-mouth disease had passed this way too.

  The sun was sinking on the western horizon so that he caught it full in the face, almost blinding him at times. How long could this bloody road go on? He must have been driving at least two hours and still he had seen no signs to either Newby or Clapham or Ingleborough. Momentary panic set in that he had passed them and would wind up on the Lancashire Coast any second. Then he spotted the sign to Ingleborough Caves almost too late and had to jam on the brakes. The village of Clapham was off on a small road to the right, a pretty cluster of stone houses, sheltered by trees and with enough tearooms and souvenir shops to show that the caves attracted some tourism. Evan parked the car, crossed the rushing mountain stream by way of a footbridge, and followed the signs to the footpath. An old man sitting on a bench outside a row of cottages shook his head as Evan walked by.

  “If tha’s hoping to visit t’cave, tha’s too late.” He looked pleased at delivering this bad news. Evan was tempted to sound him out about a possible cottage that might now contain a visiting child, but decided not to. He couldn’t risk putting one foot wrong from now on. But he did say, “Is there a police station in the village?”

  “Not no more. Used to be when I were a lad. Closest copper is in Ingleton now.”