The Doll's House - [41]

The beach presented in a very different light from the last time Helen had been here. When they had found Pippa, the weather had been incongruously glorious, the sun beating down on the SOC officers as they’d completed their painstaking forensic work. Today the sun had disappeared behind looming grey clouds, hiding its warmth and cheer from the scene. Even the sea seemed to be getting in on the act, raging and crashing on the surf nearby.

DS Fortune sneaked a look at his watch.

‘How many hours of daylight do we have left?’ Helen asked him.

‘About seven,’ he replied quickly. His voice was clipped, infused with the anxiety of a man serving two masters.

‘Seven hours before we can bring this charade to an end,’ Harwood added. ‘Are you planning on staying down here all day, DI Grace? Or do you have some police work to do?’

‘I’ll stay as long as is necessary,’ Helen replied evenly. She wasn’t going to embarrass herself by squabbling with Harwood in front of a junior officer. ‘After all, we only have limited time.’

Harwood didn’t respond, so Helen took this as her cue, heading down to the water’s edge. Once there she turned, taking in the full panorama of Carsholt beach. Harwood and Fortune were chatting easily – more relaxed now Helen had left them – in sharp contrast to the men and women from Kent, who had worked out a grid and were now combing every inch of it.

Helen felt the tension within her rise as she watched their patient, diligent work.

Had she been too hasty in ordering the search? She had little credit with Chief Constable Fisher and even less with Harwood, so it would be hard now to ask for extra resources later in the investigation, if today’s search proved fruitless. For a moment, Helen berated herself for her characteristic impatience. It was like an obsession for her, the desire to chase down leads, to complete the story, to find out what had happened. Once you climbed inside an investigation of this magnitude and urgency, it was hard to wrench your mind from it, as you constantly checked and double-checked your assumptions to see if there was something you could be doing better or faster. Sleep was hard to come by and it was almost impossible to relax, but that was as it should be. You didn’t come into this line of work for an easy life – you did it because you wanted to make a difference.

Helen snapped out of her daydreaming, because one unit of the POLSA team had suddenly stopped. They weren’t combing any more, they were digging. Helen raced across the sand, making it to the quartet of officers, just before DS Fortune. The look on their faces said it all.

‘We’ve found something.’

70

Southampton Common looked bleak and sinister under the grey clouds. A suitable place for a killer to roam, DC Lucas thought to herself. She was new to Southampton and still didn’t know it well, so she’d brought as many uniformed officers as she could muster. Good, honest guys who knew every inch of this terrain and could be her guides.

Fanning out, they set about their task, stopping joggers, mums, businessmen, even council workers cutting the grass, asking them what they were up to and who they’d seen on the Common that morning. The vast majority were baffled by the questions, others were taciturn and suspicious, afraid of getting dragged into something that was nothing to do with them. It was an exhausting and potentially fruitless endeavour – so many people used the Common during the course of the working day. But he was here somewhere.

The mobile signals had sprung to life just under forty-five minutes ago. If Lucas hadn’t had to face down DC Sanderson, she would have been here even sooner, but she was still pleased by the speed of their response. She now had six CID officers in addition to herself and fifteen uniformed officers combing every inch of the Common. They might get lucky, they might not. But something in her waters told Lucas that they would be lucky today.

She had ventured off the beaten track now, walking away from the body of the search party into the denser undergrowth near the Wildlife Centre. It was oddly beautiful here, despite the grey sky that framed the woods. The trees were old with characterful hanging branches and thick foliage. And they were full of birds, who called to each other as Lucas picked a careful path deeper into the woods.

Crunch.

Lucas froze, her senses suddenly alert. She cast around her, but couldn’t see anything.

‘Police. Who’s there?’

Still nothing. A silence that seemed to go on for ever, then:

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Where was the sound coming from? She strained hard to hear, but, finding it impossible to locate the cause, made a snap decision and plunged through the foliage to her right.

Suddenly it happened. A figure bolted. The crunch, crunch had obviously been him creeping away, but now he was in full flight. Lucas was after him in a flash, sprinting over the forest floor and hurdling fallen logs in pursuit. Lucas had always been a good sprinter and she needed every ounce of her ability now, as the fugitive darted gracefully under branches and round bushes, intent on escape. He knew the forest far better than her, so while he seemed to glide unimpeded through the woods, Lucas was whipped by thorns and branches, scratching the skin from her face and arms. The trees were thinning now, however, and Lucas spotted her chance.