Evil Valley (30 page)

He’d given up on the letters Gibson had sent, the transcripts of the calls and his hastily scribbled note of that last message at the Scout Hut. He was sure the answer was in the letters and he’d stared at them until the words drifted out of focus. Dan had underlined some parts, sketched asterisks and question marks next to others, but still he couldn’t see a solution.

He’d tried anagrams of Denton and Hyde. The best he’d come up with were Done Thy End, Don’t Heed NY, Dyed Then No and Not Dyed Hen. None made any sense. And how could it be an anagram anyway, if Michael’s computer program couldn’t solve it? It must be something else. But what?

Manchester kept teasing his brain and he’d borrowed a road map of Britain from the Spray of Feathers, gazed at it, wondering why Gibson would mention the city. He’d even looked at Denton and Hyde again, but couldn’t see any connection to Dartmoor. They were just ordinary towns, part of the suburbs, towards the end of the M67 to the east of Manchester. So why did Gibson write about them? They knew he wasn’t there.

Dan had learned never to ignore his instincts, but eventually he’d given up, taken the map back into the pub, resisted the sweet temptation of the beer pumps and a quiet corner next to the woodburner, instead hobbled slowly back outside to rejoin Adam.

Dan leaned back against a police car, rubbed his eyes. His mind felt numb from the lack of sleep and penetrating cold. But still he worked at Gibson’s letters, all the time feeling that each second which passed was another less to find Nicola. Why did Gibson have to single him out as the one who would know how to solve the riddle? What did he do to deserve the torment of this pressure?

He stared again at his notepad, the letters and words dancing in his blurred sight, but he saw nothing. It was as if the enveloping cold and the strain had made his brain seize. The pain in his ankle stabbed at him, but he hardly noticed. He wasn’t even thinking of his bed and Rutherford any more. His mind felt blank, empty.

What did that note on the quad bike mean, that the answer was in the names and the numbers? There were no numbers in Gibson’s letters. He’d checked each, three times, scrutinised every line but couldn’t see any hint of figures. Was it some kind of code? He’d tried giving the individual letters a number, one for a, two for b, three for c and seeing if that made any sense with the first or last letters of each lines of the notes, but they meant nothing.

He’d spoken to Michael and Eleanor, but they’d come to the same dead ends and they were the experts. What chance did that give him? So why was he feeling so angry?

He knew the answer. He’d solved the Death Pictures riddle, and this couldn’t be any tougher than McCluskey’s mystery. But the Death Pictures had taken him months, and here they’d had only days, now down to minutes. He knew he shouldn’t think it, that it wasn’t fair on himself, but he felt as though he’d failed Nicola. He could solve a riddle where the prize was a painting. But not when a little girl’s life was at stake.

Adam stood in the door of the police van, staring out to the west and the dying sun, as if willing it to linger in the sky. An occasional burst of static and tinny conversation from the radio inside the van made his head snap around, look imploringly at Sergeant Wilcox, receive another slow shake of the head. He’d turn back in frustration, continue glaring at the sunset. His tie was low down his neck and his suit jacket open. He didn’t have a coat on, must have been frozen but didn’t seem to have noticed the cold.

‘We’re running out of time,’ he muttered again. ‘Running out of time.’

The sergeant’s voice drifted out of the van, gently pleading. ‘I’m going to have to call them back in, sir. There’s barely enough light left for them to see anything. I’ve got to make sure they come back safely. They’ve been out all day and they’re exhausted.’

Adam turned, his voice hoarse. ‘Just a few minutes more, Sergeant, please. We’ve got to give it every chance. Just a few more minutes.’

‘Sir, with respect, we’ve given it every chance. They won’t find anything in the dark and they’re more likely to be a danger to themselves. Sir, please. We can start again in the morning.’

Adam sat down heavily on the van’s step, his head bowed. ‘It’ll be too late in the morning. We’ll have lost her by then. I know we will. Her birthday was the deadline. All we’ll find in the morning will be a corpse.’

He looked over at Dan. ‘We’ve lost her. Tomorrow you’ll be doing your story on the discovery of Nicola’s body, and Gibson will have what he wanted. He’s humiliated us. Me in particular. I might as well write out my resignation now.’

Dan stood up and hobbled over to his friend, put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Nothing like it, Adam, nothing like it. Don’t talk like that. You did as much as you possibly could. More than that in fact. You did everything. It was me who failed. Gibson picked me to solve his riddle and I couldn’t do it. I failed, not you. Let the searchers come home for now. We can look again in the morning. There’s still hope.’

Adam stared down at the dusty ground. The land was losing its colour as the light faded.

‘It’ll be too late then. It was today or never. We’ve lost her. And to think he stood in front of me and did his act and I never saw it. I could have stopped all this if I’d been thinking. It’s my fault. A little girl’s out there dying and it’s my fault. I could have saved her.’

‘Come on, come on.’ Dan gently shook Adam’s shoulder. ‘Let them come back in.’

Sergeant Wilcox stepped down from the van, looked at Adam who stared at him, then, finally, gave the slightest of nods.

‘Come and sit in the warm of the Spray of Feathers for ten minutes and let me get you a beer,’ said Dan. ‘You haven’t stopped all day and there’s absolutely nothing you can do while the searchers come back in. Come and sit down in the warm for a few minutes. It’ll do you good.’

Adam got slowly to his feet and walked alongside Dan, each step laboured and heavy with defeat. He could hear the sergeant on the radio in the van, calling the search teams home.

Dan bought them a couple of pints of Prison Ale, Princetown’s finest. He carried the drinks over to the black slate table next to the woodburner where Adam had slumped. The detective was staring down at the table, tracing patterns in the stone with his finger.

‘We’ve run out of time,’ he mumbled. ‘We’ve lost her.’

Dan passed the pint across. ‘Not yet. Not yet. There’s still hope. There’s always hope.’ He wasn’t sure how much belief he managed to force into his voice. ‘There are plenty of people out there, still keeping an eye open for her. We’re not lost yet.’

Adam took a long sip from his beer, then another. ‘We’ll start searching again tomorrow at first light, but I reckon we’ve missed Gibson’s deadline. And I don’t want to think about what that means for Nicola.’

‘Have we any leads left?’

‘None. The dogs didn’t pick up a scent from the scout hut. The helicopter’s found nothing. The house-to-house inquiries found nothing. There was nothing around the reservoir. The search teams combed most of the section of moor where Gibson could have been and found nothing. There were a few tents without people in, but none were suspicious. There was no trace of Nicola. I’m starting to wonder if he is still on the moor with her, or if he’s escaped somewhere else. Anything could have happened. He could have killed her, dumped her body and made off in a car he’d hidden somewhere. We’d struggle to find a child’s body. There are so many places he could have hidden it.’

Dan sipped at his pint and thought. ‘No … that doesn’t fit. First of all, and I know you won’t agree with this, but the guy’s not a killer. He said so in one of his letters, that he didn’t want anyone harmed. And his actions bear it out. He hasn’t actually hurt anyone …’

‘Yet,’ interrupted Adam bitterly.

‘OK, fair enough. But I certainly don’t think he’s set out to hurt anyone. And for him, all this is about getting at the police isn’t it? It all seems to be building up to some climax, some kind of showdown. I can’t believe he’d simply run and not have his moment of insane glory. That doesn’t fit. I’m sure he’s still around here somewhere and we’ll soon find out what the end of his great plan is. He wouldn’t allow us not to.’

Adam managed a tired and weak smile. ‘That’s one of the things I like about you, Dan. You always try to think the best of people. Whereas, me, I’ve been a detective for long enough to usually think the worst.’

‘I’m not trying to paint him as some sort of misguided victim hero type. I don’t believe in that stuff. I’m just giving you my best guess about what he’s thinking and how he’ll behave.’

Dan lifted his ankle onto his knee and gave it a quick massage. It was still aching, but not as badly. Another wave of tiredness soaked his body. He imagined Rutherford waiting at home and his cosy flat. When Nicola was finally found, he’d sleep for a whole day, he promised himself. Then he’d take his beloved dog for a good, long walk, ankle permitting.

‘I’d better get back outside in a minute,’ he told Adam. ‘I’ve got to do a live broadcast tonight to update the viewers about the search for Nicola. I don’t know what I’m going to say.’

‘You might as well tell it like it is, mate. That there’s no progress and we’re getting desperate. You were right at lunchtime. I’m sorry if I snapped at you, but it’s just the pressure getting to me.’

Adam paused, swirled the last inch of beer around his glass. ‘He has got to me you know. Gibson that is. I realised it this afternoon. I’ve been taking this personally. He’s got to me, with his plan and his riddles. And he’s winning. He’s been ahead of us all along. He’s got what he wanted. He’s humiliated us.’

‘I don’t know about that. You’re doing all …’

‘Oh, bollocks to him anyway,’ interrupted Adam, his voice suddenly stronger. ‘Sitting here feeling sorry for ourselves isn’t going to help. Come on, you’re the one who cracked McCluskey’s bloody code. Haven’t you got any ideas about what Gibson meant with those riddles of his? I’ll take any guesses at this stage. Anything.’

Dan shook his head, finished his pint. ‘Not a bloody clue. I’ve been trying to work on it all afternoon, but I haven’t come up with a thing. I had this hunch the stuff he said about Manchester was important, but I can’t work out why.’ Dan got painfully to his feet, his ankle protesting at being forced to take his weight. ‘I’m off to the loo, won’t be a minute.’

He limped out of the pub and into the toilets. One of the things he liked about the Spray of Feathers was the pleasant distraction they offered from the mundane chore of relieving yourself. On the wall above the row of urinals was a large ordnance survey map of Dartmoor.

Dan glanced idly over it, picking out Princetown and Dartmoor Prison in the middle, then going south and west to the Scout Hut where Gibson had hidden. He followed the green line of the old track up to the abandoned Eylesbarrow tin mine, where he’d taken Claire and Rutherford for their last walk. Another walk together this weekend would be very welcome. Some quality time was long overdue. It would be just what he needed, normality and affection, somewhere to hide from these six days of insanity.

The tiredness enveloped him again and he yawned, closed his eyes for a few seconds. He’d present tonight’s outside broadcast, then get straight home to a bath and bed. Lizzie was bound to want a follow up story tomorrow and if Adam was right, it could be very bad news. He needed to get some sleep.

Dan was about to leave the toilets when he stopped, turned back to the map. Afterwards, he could never explain what made him do it, just that his subconscious mind must have seen something and prompted him to take another look. He stared at it again. What was he looking for? There was something here he’d missed, something important. He knew it. But what?

The tiredness fled, beaten away by the sudden flare of hope. He was on to something, he knew it. But what? What was it? His instincts said there was something on this map that was telling him where Gibson was. It was so simple, but what was it? He knew it was there, but he couldn’t quite see it.

Dan forced himself to look again at the route he’d followed just seconds before. Slowly he traced it across the printed paper. Princetown. No, nothing there. The prison, nothing there. The Scout Hut. Gibson had hidden there, they knew that, but so what? Eylesbarrow tin mine. Nothing there. What was it that he’d seen?

He stared at the map, willing it to tell him. A man walked in and settled into the neighbouring urinal, but Dan didn’t notice, just stared on. What was it on the map that was telling him where Gibson was?

What had Gibson said in that final note, the one to Adam? That it was in the names and the numbers. The names didn’t mean anything, he couldn’t see any connection to where Gibson might be. What about the numbers? The only numbers on the map were the heights of various tors, a couple of roads and the grid references.

His eyes wandered over the tors. Higher Hartor Tor, 420 metres above sea level. Crane Hill, 471. King’s Tor, 380. Sheeps Tor, 369. Dan stared at them, but couldn’t see anything that gave him a clue.

He raised a finger and traced the few roads crossing the moor. The A386 to Tavistock, the B3212, the main east-west road across Dartmoor, the B3357. He tried to jumble the numbers in his mind, to see if they could mean anything. Nothing.

He felt the brief shot of hope start to wane. One last chance.

Dan traced the grid references along the side of the map. Horizontally they began in the 50s, then moved into the 60s. Vertically they ran from the 60s to the 70s.

Something triggered in his brain. What was familiar about those numbers? The man who had been using the urinal walked past him, out of the door, casting a suspicious look back over his shoulder. Dan didn’t see it, was oblivious to everything except the map and his resurgent thoughts. He stood back, leaned against the wall. What was important about those numbers?

It was something recent, something he’d only been thinking about in the last few hours.

But what?

Slow seconds ticked by. Nothing came. He screwed up his eyes, stared harder at the map. Dartmoor, the great wilderness, all hills and valleys, streams and forests. What was it?