Gideon frowned. He wasn’t sure how he’d ended up chatting about his dog with this unwanted stranger, and he felt as if an admission that Kye did nothing but eat and fart by his fireside would mean more than it should. “Did you find somewhere to stay?” he asked gruffly, pushing his hands into his pockets.
“Not yet. Everywhere’s booked up for Halloween parties, I think.”
“How long are you planning to be here?”
“Just a day or so. Until I get a feel for the place.”
“Is that what you were doing at Sarah Kemp’s windows – getting a feel?”
The sea-grey eyes darkened. Gideon wasn’t surprised. He might as well have accused the man of casing the joint. Had he always been so hostile? No – with James around to mitigate him, tease him out of his bouts of hereditary gloom, he’d had friends, a social life of sorts.
Well, he’d blown all of that, hadn’t he? “I’m sorry. That came out worse than I meant it.”
“You’re a copper. You’re meant to protect your people from con men and burglars. Just so you know – I check out the obvious first, just like you do. One couple called me in to find their kid and hadn’t noticed a trail of footsteps to their slurry tank, you know? But it wasn’t just that. I think windows are significant in this case.”
“Windows? You’re barking up the wrong tree there. The kid disappeared on the moor, not from her home.”
“I know. I read the newspapers.” He sighed. “Look, I’d better get going, if you could get your dog off my foot.”
“Oh. Right.” Gideon had to lift her bodily: her eyes were closed, her thick club of a tail sweeping slowly back and forth in the dust. “There’s a bus at two o’clock from the main road. It goes through Bodmin town – you might find somewhere to stay there.”
To Gideon’s embarrassment, he had to carry the dog away. She dive-bombed people because herding instincts were still firing in her poor twilit brains, but she’d seemed devoid of attachments otherwise. Now, though, she leaned her chin on Gideon’s shoulder, emitting faint sounds of yearning back the way they’d come. For all their unemotional relationship, Gideon supposed he must have become attuned to her on some level: he wanted to turn around too. Well, there was no harm in it – just to see that this intruder, with his raincloud eyes and charming, diffident smile was going in the right direction, out of Gideon’s town.
Lee Tyack was sitting on the grass verge. He looked as if something had knocked him onto his backside there – something much bigger than Kye. Something he couldn’t foresee or brace against... He was pressing his palms to his brow. Gideon set the dog down and ran. Before he could get near, Tyack jerked his head up. His warm olive colours had drained to chalk. “Catherine,” he called out, trying to scramble to his feet. “Is there someone called Catherine?”
“A few billion, I should think.” Automatically Gideon began to help him up. Tyack had looked frail for a moment down there on the verge, but he wasn’t: he was warmly packed with muscle, and Gideon could well believe that he worked on the boats to make ends meet. “Where would you like us to start?”
“Not a person. A place. Is there a watermill, or a... I’m seeing wheels.” His grip closed tight on Gideon’s arms, sending a weird hot surge through him. “Wheels. Not images – letters, and they’re not even spelled right... Fuck!” He thumped his head against Gideon’s shoulder, as if he’d known him for years, hung on to him in frustration all the time. “I’m losing it. It’s fading.”
Wheels, not even spelled right.Gideon was a north-country Cornishman. Tyack sounded as though he might be from Falmouth, or one of the other southwest-coast towns where fishing, not mining, had been the population’s mainstay.Wheal, the old Kernowek word for a mine. Their founders had named them for their wives or daughters, or the fortunes they hoped they might get from them. Wheal Jane, Wheal Abundant... “Wheal Catherine,” he said, half to himself, his mind caught up in the warm scent of Tyack’s hair. “Can’t be. It’s too far.”
Tyack looked up, eyes wide. “Wheal Catherine? What is it – an old mine shaft?”
“Yes, but it’s been covered over for years. And it’s miles away from here, way further than the kid could have got by herself.”
“She wasn’t by herself. The monster took her out of thewindow and put her down the mine. Oh, God...” Tyack shoved Gideon away and recoiled against the wall. “Not monsters. No. Tell me something, quickly.”
“What the devil’s wrong with you?”
“Talk to me.” Tyack looked ready to faintor to run for his life. “Anything. Your name. Why the bloody hell are you called Gideon, in this day and age?”
“Never mind that. Did you see something about Lorna?” Gideon couldn’t believe he was asking. “Lorna and a monster?”
“Help me make him into a man. Your name – please!”
“Okay. My father was a Methodist minister, that’s all. My brother’s called Ezekiel. I...”
Tyack gave a strangled laugh. “You think you got off lightly? No, you didn’t, Gideon – not other than the name. He was cold to you, your father, cold. Wheal Catherine mine shaft...” Tyack pushed his fingertips hard against his brow, as if in response to an intolerable pressure. “We have to go there. Now.”
Chapter Four
The village’s one police Land Rover bumped up the track towards the mine. The settlement there had died along with the tin industry, and only three old towers remained to mark its existence, strange desolate epitaphs like dozens of others on these moors. Once they had housed the engines for the pits. Now only stonecrop and thrift flowers colonised the tumbledown remains. The ravens preferred the crags, and even the unfussy jackdaws and magpies seemed to give the place a wide berth. Gideon usually did the same. He gripped the steering wheel as the last of the tarmac petered out to turf and rutted mud.
He glanced uneasily into the rearview mirror. At first all he could see was Kye’s thick head, as she stared out the back window in her usual uneasy two-legged stance. What use was a dog that cared more about where it had just been than where it was meant to be going? Then he made out another four-by-four jouncing along in his wake. He’d been glad when two dog-handler officers from Bodmin had been able to respond to his call. They hadn’t asked any questions – just assumed fresh information, a new lead.Behind them was a pickup truck sometimes used by the North Moors cave-rescue outfit. The team was out on an exercise, but their supervisor had offered his services straight away.
All this was good. Gideon was honoured that his lightest word would merit such a response. Lee Tyack had been right about that much, back in Sarah’s kitchen – Gideon had worked all his days to protect and assist the people of the moors. Nothing spectacular: just loyalty and hard-earned trust. What was he supposed to say in his report, or to the K-9 guys or the rescue expert, when they asked him why they’d all been hauled out to Wheal Catherine, surely one of the bleakest corners of creation, even by the standards of a Methodist God?
It all depended on results, he supposed. If he found Lorna Kemp, no-one would give a damnwhy he’d come here in the first place. He shot a glance at Lee Tyack, who had scrambled uninvited into the Rover’s passenger seat and appeared to fall asleep there straight away. He was wide awake now. “This is the place, isn’t it?”
