Gideon knew that. He hadn’t asked Joe why he’d been out. He wished he hadn’t seen his twitch, and he pushed it as far out of his mind as a good copper could let it go: the fond family uncle was almost too easy a suspect in a missing-child case, and Gideon and the CID team had already checked out his movements around the time of Lorna’s disappearance. Gideon had known the whole Kemp family from his childhood. Anyone in Joe’s situation would be twitching by this time. “I know that,” Gideon said gently. “What I wondered was – you didn’t hear anything unusual, did you? Up on the crags near the Cheesewring?”
Joe smiled wanly. He shook his head. “Don’tyougo imagining things on us now, Constable. There’s always strange noises up there. It’ll be the wind through the rocks, or one of Bill Prowse’s mangy cattle giving birth.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” Gideonmanaged a smile, grateful for Joe’s attempt at humour. “Look, I should go. Tell Sarah I’m liaising with a DNA profiling expert at Scotland Yard. He should be sending one of his team down later this week – just in case Derek Acorah through there doesn’t manage to crack our case for us.”
Chapter Three
Gideon spent the rest of the morning talking to Dark’s rich collection of gossips, attention-hungry time wasters whose story mutated with every telling, and the kindly, solid foundation souls of his community, who knew nothing at all but felt so much pain for Sarah Kemp that they waylaid Gideon with tales of every shadow they’d seen move that night, every shift in the wind – anything rather than admit to themselves that they were helpless. Gideon listened carefully, took notes. It only took one gleam of gold in all this mud to light up a vein somewhere else.
When he’d listened till his pen and his patience were both scraping dry, he went to give his routine road-safetyclass to the kids at Dark Primary. Normally this was an ordeal, the glove-puppets and jingling rhymes a special kind of torment to him, the little monsters whose hides he was meant to be preserving sensing his embarrassment and running rings around him. Today in the warm classroom, surrounded by the debris of Halloween craft sessions, for once he enjoyed his half-hour – even little Morwenna, who, having made a truly repulsive zombie mask, was determined to wear it for all educational purposes. Gideon didn’t argue. He let her be the victim of Tommy Poldue’s go-kart speeding accident, but restrained her when she lurched back to life demanding to eat the poor lad’s brains. She was a wicked little devil though: as Gideon was packing up, she came to stand three feet away from him and demanded, loudly as she could, “Is it true, then? Did the Beast get Lorna Kemp? Did he eat her all up?”
Gideon sighed. Jenny, the youngest Kemp child, burst into terrified howls. Gideon held out an arm for her. He wasn’t great with kids, but they knew when to make to him for safety, a place of higher ground. She darted over to him and he scooped her up, good little teaching aid that she was. “Do you see this child?” he asked, his tone stern enough to stop the pack in its scramble for the door. He waited until he had their full attention. “This child is crying. Somebody said a bad thing to her. Why was it bad? Morwenna?”
“Because Jenny’s sister is missing,” theshameless brat said promptly. “And the Bodmin Beast is just a – a...”
Hands were shooting up. Gideon nodded encouragingly, and the replies came all at once.A story, Mr Constable! A legend!Somebody managedmythological, and he tipped his cap at that young scholar in respect. “Right,” he said, hushing them. “Now, I know how it is. You’re all growing up in this village, and your parents tell you stories, and maybe your aunts and uncles sell models of this beast of ours to silly tourists – what do we call those, Jen?”
The child in his arms, quite enjoying her central role by now, gave a tremendous sniff. “Emmets.”
“Right, silly emmets, though not to their faces, or they won’t buy our stuff. So I know how hard it is for all you kids to remember our beast is just as much a story as...” He paused. What the hell were kids watching on TV these days? “As Spongebob Squarepants, although I reckon if he was chasing me about on the moors, I’d be proper scared.” Jen Kemp snorted wetly into his face. “So we should mind our thoughts, and mind what we’re saying, just like Pastor Jeffrey says.”
He set his armful down, gave her a little shove and watched her tumble off with the others towards the lunch room. The school was a modern one, sealing off its occupants in bright, safe boxes. Every timehe went past it or into it, all Gideon could think of was its one empty seat – at assembly, at lessons, at meals. And for all his rage at self-proclaimed psychics and those who believed in them, Gideon had only one real source of anger and pain – a child was gone, and it had happened on his watch.
***
Gideon fixed himself a perfunctory lunch, then took his dog for a walk. This was her favourite time of the day, though for Gideon it could become an ordeal. She was only not dangerous to sheep, goats and rabbits because she’d forget halfway through her pursuit why she’d started it. She barrelled along at Gideon’s side, shooting him occasional looks of devotion. “It’s all very well,” Gideon told her. “Where are you when there’s a bloody monster on my heels, you shiftless lump of fur?”
She beamed up at him, tongue lolling out so far that the tip of it was flapping in her ear. Then her head jerked round. Gideon got ready to fasten her onto her leash. She took a while to shift mental gears when she’d seen something new, and she generally gave him a moment.
Not this time. “Kye!” he yelled, as she sprang out from under his hands. What the hell had she fixed on now? She’d used to chase cars, a habit Gideon had painstakingly broken her of. She was heading full-throttle for the road, though, the junction between the lane and the main street. There wasn’t much traffic, but it would be just her luck... “Kye! Kye, stop!”
Someone stepped out from the kerb. That was enough to divert her, and she changed course like a poorly guided missile. Gideon began to run. She was harmless to humans except by force of her momentum...
But the man at the junction crouched down to meet her. He took her impact gracefully, only putting out one arm to brace against the wall behind him. With his free hand he ruffled her scruff in a way guaranteed to send her into witless ecstasies, and she duly dropped onto her side, legs flailing wildly at the air.
“Sorry,” Gideon gasped, catching up. “She’s got no more brains than a... Oh. It’s you.”
Lee Tyack straightened up unhurriedly. He brushed grit and moss off the knees of his jeans. The dog, now lost in her own private world of delight, wriggled herself round to lie on his feet. “She’s a nice beast,” he said. “What do you call her?”
“Kye,” Gideon said helplessly, though it was no business of Tyack’s, and he wasn’t half tempted to ask why he didn’t already know. “Do you mind if I ask what you’re still doing here?”
Tyack didn’t look as if he minded anything. His gaze was far-off and very serene on Gideon’s, as if he’d been watching a fine sea view, not a grumpy and suspicious local bobby. He wore a silver chain around his neck, just a very plain one, but it picked up the lights in his eyes. “Well, I finished talking to Mrs Kemp. And before I left, I had something I wanted to say to you.” He didn’t wait for Gideon to prompt him or show interest: continued calmly, “I do charge money for the shows I do down in Falmouth and places like that. I have to make a living – apart from that, I work at the marina in the summer. I have a winter pub job too. I never charge a penny for any of the work I do for the police or anyone I see privately, like Mrs Kemp. I know what she’s going through.”
“I don’t really see how you can,” Gideon retorted. “I’m glad you don’t take payment, but I still don’t think it’s right for anyone to...”
He paused. It was difficult for him to rip a strip off anyone watching him so kindly, all the while scrubbing his dog’s round, grizzled belly with his foot. “Kye,” Lee said thoughtfully, into Gideon’s silence. “Isn’t that just the old Cornish word for...”
“Fordog. Yes. She isn’t really mine.”
“She looks as if she thinks she is.”
Gideon shook his head. Kye was anyone’s for a belly-rub, and would have gone with Tyack now without a backward glance. “She used to belong to a farmer at Rilla, but he fired her. Dogs like this tend to be super-intelligent or dumb as gravel. He stopped feeding her.”
“Jesus.”
“Well, they’ve got to earn their keep, you know? I opened my door one night and she was just... there.”
“Doesn’t she have to earn her keep with you?”
