Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

would have a location for him. Last time, the receptionist at the Arrow had blown him off. Not this time.

34

‘Your director, Francis Overeem, has also been reported missing. Thames Valley Police got a missing person report on Tuesday night from his girlfriend, down in Oxford. No contact, phone dead, no bank activity. They logged the vehicles parked near his home and one of them is registered to Lorraine Cross. Also, they tried to locate two other people he went to the Peak District with, a John Crickmer and Betty Crute. Their vehicles were also parked near Overeem’s house. No one knows where they are, either, and their phones are also out of action. There’s a watch out for Overeem’s motorhome, but it hasn’t been clocked by a camera since entering the Peak District early on Sunday morning. That was just outside Rowsley, about five miles south-east of Lampton.’

Bennet had pulled into the side of the service road by Lake Stanton to take the call. Tall, thick shrubbery lined the right side, while the lakeside woodland towered above him on the left, condemning the road to eternal gloom. The two-lane tarmac road had indeed been newly laid, but the surface had been torn up in places even more recently: two staggered lines of holes, much like a movie might have employed to show the footsteps of a passing tyrannosaur. Bennet had to drive down the centre line to avoid them.

The lakeside trees lurked beyond a chain-link fence and, behind it, the remnants of a brick wall. He figured the wall, far more ancient than the road or the fence, was something left over from a land boundary. In places the brickwork was stubs and towers poking up like a line graph; in others giant jigsaw-piece shapes remained. Bennet had no idea how high the wall had been until he parked to answer his phone. There was a whole segment that had endured the passage of years, with arches ten feet high. This location had no chain-link fence, but portions of such material had been used to block the arches. In places the woodland was thin and the sparsity behind the arches allowed him to see flashes of the lake, some fifty metres away. A peaceful site on any other day, when he hadn’t just taken a call that chilled his heart.

He’d been fighting his own brain since yesterday, but now the battle was over. And paranoia had won. How could he now deny that something terrible had happened to Lorraine? Four people had met at Overeem’s place in Oxford on Sunday and taken his CaraHome north, and after being run out of Lampton they’d vanished. Four people out of contact, phones dead. It was fruitless to try to continue hoping there was an innocent explanation. Bennet was very worried now.

He continued driving. A little further on, there was a break in the shrubbery on his right. A stone cottage sat about thirty metres back in a clearing filled with garden ornaments hung with price tags. A sign on a stake said, ‘Anders Gardens’. The fairy-tale aura of the cottage was marred only by a big CCTV camera on a pole on the roof and a sporty Audi convertible out front.

Bennet’s phone rang. It was his boss, Superintendent Hunter. Bennet pulled up across the garden centre. He’d been waiting for this call, but not in a good way.

‘Liam, what’s going on? I got a prick. And now I find out one of my DCIs filed his own missing person’s report, about his own ex-partner no less, and designated it of the highest urgency. And then made himself investigating officer.’

‘I did it for my son. That’s his mother,’ Bennet said. ‘Look, David, I know what I did was off protocol, but I have good reason to think something bad has happened to Lorraine and the film crew she was with. I cut past the basics because I’ve effectively been investigating this for a day and a half, and I know something is badly wrong. Four people, all missing, all with their phones dead and no activity on social media or at their banks. We needed to get boots on the ground as soon as possible and mine have been there all day.’

‘This is totally out of order. If anyone finds out Lorraine is your son’s mother…’

‘I know. Look, Thames Valley Police have their own missing person’s investigation running, and you can allocate another officer to ours. But not yet. I just need a couple of hours.’

‘No, Liam. You’re running a murder investigation, and you can’t just gallivant off to look for your ex-partner.’

Bennet could have argued that he was off the clock, but knowing this didn’t halt the guilt. Most of the senior detectives he knew didn’t turn off just because they weren’t on duty. He could have spent his free time on the Buttery Park stabbing, same as every other moment since the start of the investigation. Nor did it help to try to convince himself that this missing person’s enquiry was also important: he’d been chasing Lorraine down way before it became a matter of urgency. The result of his tumbling emotions was frustration.

‘Article two of the European Convention on Human Rights gives her the right to life, and I as a police officer, am obliged to safeguard these rights.’

‘Oh, come on, Liam. You say something like that? To me?’

Bennet took a breath, ashamed of himself. What had come over him? ‘I’m sorry. Look, David, I let bad events get a head start on me. If I’d known more information yesterday, I could have had a proper head start, or even fixed this by now. I was delayed by… I didn’t do this as an officer of the law, and I wish I had. You know the last thing I said to Lorraine? Stay away. She might not have if I’d not said that. She might have come to see Joe. And now it’s too late. If she’s dead.’

Hunter paused.