An hour later, Evan stood in the forensics lab at police headquarters in Colwyn Bay, watching impatiently as the technician tested the sheet of paper. The technician had already gone home for the day and had to be called back in. He wasn't too happy about it.
“It's a piece of music,” he said in disgust as Evan handed him a manila file containing the page. “What sort of crime are we looking at?”
“Not sure,” Evan said. “I'm asking for a rush on this just in case it has anything to do with the missing girl on the mountain and the bunker we found.”
“That bunker was pretty clean of prints. Only the one good set, and you've already spoken to that bloke, haven't you?”
Evan nodded. “And ruled him out, I believe. This may be something quite different, but just in case ⦔
“Two sets of prints on it.” The technician looked up. “Both pretty clear.”
“Those would be mine and Bronwen's,” Evan said. “We both handled it. What about the envelope?”
“Multiple sets on that, of course, but if your man has been careful
to wear latex gloves when handling the paper, he'll have kept them on when he touched the envelope too.”
“Right,” Evan said, disappointed. “So we're none the wiser. There's no other way of finding who might have sent it?”
“If he licked the stamp, we can probably extract DNA, but that's no use to us unless we have his DNA on file. And we're not likely to have that unless he's already been arrested for a sex crime.” He put the sheet of paper back into a file. “What we need is to have everyone's DNA registered when they're born. It would save us a lot of trouble. They'll get around to it eventually, I suppose.”
Evan left the lab, and drove to meet Inspector Watkins in Caernarfon. He had also been on his way home when Evan called him.
“This better be good,” he said as Evan came in through the police station door. “I thought I was finally going to get a hot meal on time tonight.”
“Me too,” Evan said. “And to tell you the truth, I don't know what to make of it.”
He handed Watkins the sheet of paper, plus another sheet on which he had written the letters spelled out by the music. “Pretty ingenious,” Watkins said. “That's the first time in my career that anyone has sent us a message in music. How did you find out what it said?”
“Pure luck. Bronwen played the tune and thought it was badly written music. So she said the notes out loud.” He shrugged. “It may just be some kind of sick joke, of course. It is the summer holidays. Maybe some local kids have got nothing better to do with their time.”
“But whoever created this took the trouble to wear latex gloves, right?” Watkins shook his head. “Would you go to all that trouble for a prank? And the bloke who dug the bunker wore latex gloves too. My feeling is that we have to take this seriously until proven otherwise.”
“And since it's music, sir, it made me wonder if there was any connection to that other musical thing yesterday.”
“What thing?”
“Remember they were laughing about it at the station? Someone requested a piece of music to be played in honor of my upcoming wedding on Bore Da North Wales.”
“Right. What was the piece?”
Evan shrugged. “It didn't mean anything to me. Some heavy classical Russian thing. Bronwen will remember what it was.”
“You'd better get a copy and see if the notes spell anything out,” Watkins said.
“Good idea. And we finally have something to work on, don't we? Someone called Debbie or Deborah has been killed, and maybe it's her dad as well.”
“Or maybe it's the sicko's dad. The Deb part will be easier to work on. We can contact the national crime center and see what unsolved cases they have on their files.”
“Not necessarily unsolved,” Evan said. “Our man could have been released from jail or a facility for the insane. The cases could be decades old.”
“True enough,” Watkins said. “We'll have Glynis do her flying fingers bit on the computer in the morning.”
“If you don't mind, I'd like to do what I can, right away,” Evan said. “I keep thinking about the missing girl, you see. I mean, if the divers don't find her in the lake, it means that she could be with him and still be alive.”
“I know what you mean,” Watkins said. “I've been feeling the same way. This case is really getting to me. I keep thinking what her family must be going through.”
“It's so frustrating not knowing what to do next,” Evan said.
Watkins nodded in agreement. “Tell me about it. We've searched. We've put her picture in the paper, we've contacted other police regions, but it seems that we should be doing more.”
“Now we finally do have something to go on,” Evan said. “Someone is leaving me musical clues. That must mean that music is important to him. We can work on that, can't we? I mean, check local
music societies and choirsâsee who buys classical music at local record shops.”
“Yes, we can do all that,” Watkins said, “but I'm not optimistic. If you ask local music societies if they have any loner male members who might be a bit odd, I bet they'll name you quite a few.”
“We can follow up on them.”
“We can. But men who dig bunkers probably are not joiners.”
“One of my National Parks workers sings in a choir. I suppose I'd better recheck him, even though he wasn't working on the day in question.”
“It wouldn't hurt, I suppose.”
Evan sighed. “And I'll go and see what I can dig up on girls called Deborah, Debbie, or Deb.”
“Check out the name on the list of missing girls, too,” Watkins said. “She might never have been found, like this girl now.”
Evan felt sick. He couldn't get the image of those handcuffs in the bunker out of his mind. No girl would be that tall, which meant she'd be hanging thereâ
“Right,” he said, switching his mind back to business.
Watkins went to move away, then suddenly clapped him on the shoulder. “Hold it, Evans. We've neither of us had anything to eat. Let's pop across to the pub first and grab a pint and a meat pie.”
“It's a bugger, isn't it?” Watkins commented as he took a long swig from his beer glass in the Ship across the street. “Between you and me, Evan, I don't know about this one. They tell us to go for the facts, and if you examine the facts, we don't have a crime. The girl could have run off with a young man she met at the hostel. She could have dropped her glove. The bunker could have been made for an amateur film. The musical clues could be some of your mates having a laugh ⦔
“And yet you don't think so?”
Watkins shook his head. “If I trust my gut, then my gut gives me a bad feeling about all this. Maybe it's the fact that he's been meticulous
in not leaving fingerprints. Nobody goes to that amount of trouble unless it's important.”
“We can't give up until we find her body, anyway.”
“No, we can't do that.” Watkins took another swig of beer. “This is a bloody awful job sometimes. I wish I'd listened to my old mother and gone into accounting.”
“You'd have died of boredom.” Evan chuckled.
“Maybe I would. Right, then. Let's down the rest of this and get back to work.”
It was after ten o'clock when Evan finally arrived home. Their search had produced only one DeborahâDebbie Johnson, age fifteen, who was last seen trying to hitchhike home after missing the last bus from a cinema near Birmingham. It seemed that Deborah was not a popular name among those to be murdered or abducted. Evan let himself into his house and stood in the hallway, savoring the silence. He went through to the living room and discovered Bronwen, fast asleep in his armchair with her coat over her. She looked so young and peaceful, like a princess from a fairy tale, that Evan stood there, gazing down at her. She must have sensed his presence because her eyes fluttered open. “What time is it?” she asked with a sleepy smile.
“Just after ten.”
“I must have fallen asleep.” She sat up. “I came to make us some dinner. Luckily I arrived about ten minutes before your mother and I'd taken possession of the stove so there wasn't very much she could do, except to look at my mushroom risotto as if I was feeding you monkey brains or cooked dog. Accompanied, of course, by a recitation about how your father always had a proper meal when he came home. I don't know what she'd have done if I'd told her I used to be a total vegetarian.” Bronwen chuckled.
“So what did she do?”
“When she saw she wasn't going to be allowed near the stove she stumped back to Mrs. Williams in a huff, muttering that Mrs. W. had made her famous steak and kidney pie and if you still felt peckish you could always visit her later.”
“I do feel peckish, come to think of it,” Evan said. “D.I. Watkins and I grabbed a meat pie and a pint earlier, but the pie tasted like cardboard.”
“I can warm up some of the risotto,” Bronwen said. She got up and headed for the kitchen. “So, I'm dying to hear about the piece of music. Did they think it was some kind of clue or threat?”
“We're definitely taking it seriously,” Evan said. “There were no fingerprints on the paper. To my mind, that must tie it in with the bunker. Most of the items there had been wiped clean, and the only good prints came from a stockboy at the supermarket.”
“The same person, eh?” Bronwen lit the gas and spooned rice into a saucepan. “Why do you think he contacted you particularly?”
“Perhaps he thinks I'm the not too bright one on the team, so he'd rather deal with me.”
“Or the other way around. He's read about some of the cases you've solved in the paper and he thinks you are the one worthy of matching wits with him.”
“Oh come on, Bron.” Evan looked embarrassed.
“No, I mean it.” Bronwen looked up from stirring rice. “You've had some publicity about some of the cases you've solved. Why else would he send you clues if he didn't want to match wits with you?”
“It's strange, isn't it? If he's managed to spirit away a girl with no trace, you think he'd be glad to get away with it, not draw attention to himself and risk getting caught.”
“They do say criminal types often have big egos, don't they?” Bronwen said. “Perhaps he can't bear the fact that the police seem to have made no progress. He's giving you a little help.”
“And if he's the type who clearly enjoys taking risks, which he must do by constructing that bunker almost under the noses of everybody who hikes on the mountain, he might get his kicks from being one jump ahead of the police. Leading us by the nose only to show how clever he is.”
Bronwen nodded. “Which presupposes he still has the girl alive, do you think?”
Evan considered this. “There would be no point in leading us on if
the girl was already dead. He wants us to come and find her. And if we get too close, then he'll dispose of her.” Evan took a deep breath. “God, I feel so angry about this, Bronwen. Watkins feels the sameâthat we should be doing more, but we aren't sure what to do.”
“Can't they extract DNA from evidence these days?”
“They can. The lab tech said they can extract DNA from the saliva if he licked the stamp, but if the bloke's DNA isn't on file anywhere, then how do you match it?”
“Of course.” Bronwen stopped stirring and looked up. “And what about that music on the radio yesterday? Do you think it's the same person sending you another message?”
“I suspect it has to be. Two musical clues in two days is more than coincidence, isn't it? And why ask for some classical piece to be played for us? I'm not known for my love of classical music.”
“Neither am I, really,” Bronwen said. “I like some of it, but I wouldn't call myself a music buff.”
“I'm going round to the radio station in the morning to see if they have the request letter on file there, or if it was called in, the number it was called from. What was the piece again? It didn't mean anything to me so I couldn't remember when Watkins asked me. A shipwreck, wasn't it?”
“It was from Rimsky-Korsakov's
Sheherazade
symphonic suite. I've heard it before but it's not anything I know terribly well. I wonder if the title is important? He must have chosen it for a reason.”
“What does âSheherazade' mean? What's it about?”
“It's Tales from the Arabian Nights.”
“Weren't they all tall tales about giant birds and genies in bottles?”
“That kind of thing.”
Evan shook his head. “Well, I can't see a connection thereâunless we're dealing with an Arab. What about the shipwreck part? Could he be holding the girl on a boat? There are some old wrecks around the shoreline here. I suppose we'd better take a look at them in the morning.”