Black Dog - Stephen Booth

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knowledge than most of the rest of his shift put together. The sergeant’s job was what he wanted and needed. More – it was what his family wanted. Cooper thought of his mother, and the desperately hopeful look in her eye when he came home from work, the question as often unspoken as asked out loud. He thought about her many times a day, every time he saw someone ill or old. He thought of her seemingly endless pain and grief, and the one thing she thought might ease it. He ached to give her what she longed for, just this once.

      The line of men were deep into the trees again now, the canopy over them muffling the noise of the police helicopter that was still moving along the valley, sweeping the woods with its thermal imaging camera. The sudden transition from glaring sun to deep shade made it difficult to make out the details of the undergrowth below the trees. In places there could have been an entire SAS platoon lying concealed in the chest-high bracken and willowherb, waiting for some bobby in blue overalls to stumble into them armed with nothing but a slug-encrusted pole.

      A pheasant clattered in alarm and took off somewhere nearby. From further away, there was another sound. The trees were too thick to tell which direction it came from, or exactly how far away it was. But it was the sound of a dog, and it barked just once.

       2

      Charlotte Vernon had been in the same position for a quarter of an hour. Whether it was the effects of the tablets or the alcohol, or simply the frantic activity of her imagination, throughout the day she had been alternating between phases of restlessness and immobility. It was as though she managed to blank out her thoughts entirely for short periods before being overwhelmed afresh by surges of terror. The waiting had become an end in itself.

      Now Charlotte stood on the terrace, leaning against the stone balustrade, watching the helicopter passing overhead. She followed the movement of the rotor blades as if she hoped to read a message in their flickering blur. On a table near her hand stood a half-drunk glass of Bacardi and an ashtray filled with damp and crushed butts, their filters stained with smears of vermilion.

      She had been on the terrace all afternoon, hardly seeming to notice as the heat of the sun gradually moved away from her shoulders and dipped behind the house until she stood in shade and the stone flags around her began to whisper and contract. She had stirred only when the phone rang behind her in the house, her muscles tensing, her fingers gripping tighter on the balustrade for a few seconds each time, as Graham answered it. She would strain to catch his muttered words, then cover her ears as if she didn’t want to hear them at all.

      But all the calls were enquiries from friends. Some were even business calls, which Graham dealt with in a lowered voice, glancing towards his wife’s back as he turned guiltily away. He seemed relieved to have an excuse not to look at her as she posed against the view of the Witches, her head raised to the sky like a heroine in an Arthurian romance, waiting for news of a distant battle.

      After the latest call, Graham replaced the phone and turned back towards the windows.

      ‘That was Edward Randle from AET,’ he said. ‘He sends his thoughts. And he wanted to know whether he and Martina should still come tomorrow night.’

      Graham waited for Charlotte to speak. But he could only hear the faint buzzing of the fans and the distant bark of a dog somewhere down in the village.

      ‘I told him of course they should come. We can’t put people off, can we? Life goes on.’

      Graham wondered whether she had heard what he said. She was in some world of her own where Allied Electronics and other such trivialities didn’t exist. Graham moved closer to her, wondering whether he should offer to touch her, whether it would be what she wanted just now, or whether it would only make things worse. He couldn’t tell.

      When he stepped on to the terrace, he could smell the sun oil on her body. Her bleached hair hung straight on her neck, falling slightly on to the collar of her wrap. The backs of her slim, well-tanned legs were visible to the edge of her bikini, her muscles tense and stretched. Graham felt a surge of physical desire, but tried to suppress it. Maybe tonight his wife would be restored to her usual receptive mood. Maybe tomorrow.

      ‘Did you hear me, Charlie?’

      ‘I wish we could take the phone off the hook.’

      ‘But then we wouldn’t hear … if there was news.’

      ‘When they find her, you mean.’

      Charlotte’s voice was tired now, the strain of the past forty-eight hours taking its toll, though she would be reluctant to admit it.

      ‘They will find her, won’t they, Graham?’

      ‘Of course they will.’

      Graham repeated the same reassurance he had been giving for two days. He put as much sincerity as he could into his voice, though he doubted his wife really believed him. He certainly didn’t believe it himself.

      The helicopter started to turn, its rotors dipping and fading from sight against the hillside behind it. Charlotte looked dejected at its disappearance, as if she had failed to decipher the message because she had not tried hard enough. From the terrace, none of the houses in the village were visible. The only human habitation in view consisted of a couple of farms high on the opposite slope, their weathered stone walls blending into the hillside as if they had grown there. No wonder Charlotte hadn’t wanted the helicopter to go away. It was the only sign of life she could see from the Mount.

      ‘You hear of girls running off and disappearing for ever,’ she said. ‘To London. Would she go to London, Graham? How would she get there?’

      ‘She’s only fifteen,’ he said. ‘They would bring her back.’

      ‘How would she get there?’ she repeated. ‘Where would she get the money? She could have hitched, I suppose. Would she know how to do that? Why didn’t she take any clothes?’

      For two days she had asked too many questions that Graham couldn’t answer. He would have liked to tell her that he was sure Laura could have got no further than Bakewell, and that the police would pick her up before the night was over. He had tried to tell her, but the words dried up in his throat.

      ‘Don’t you want to come in now? It’s time to eat.’

      ‘Not just yet,’ she said.

      ‘It’s starting to go dark. You’ll want to change at least.’

      ‘I want to be out here,’ she said.

      ‘Charlie –’

      ‘As long as they’re still looking,’ she said. ‘I want to be out here.’

      A book had been turned face down on to the table. Very little of it had been read, but it didn’t need to be. Graham could see from the cover that it was the latest in a best-selling series about an American pathologist who was for ever dissecting dead bodies and catching serial killers. The illustration showed a barely identifiable part of a naked body, set against a dark background.

      ‘I can’t think of anywhere else that she might have gone,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’ve been trying and trying, racking my brains. But we’ve tried everywhere, haven’t we, Graham? Can you think of anywhere else?’

      ‘We’ve tried them all,’ said Graham.

      ‘There’s that girl in Marple.’

      ‘We’ve tried there,’ said Graham. ‘Her parents said she was in France for the summer.’

      ‘Oh yes, I forgot.’

      ‘If she’s met up with the wrong sort of people …’

      ‘How could she?’ said Charlotte quickly. ‘We’ve been so careful. How could she meet the wrong people?’

      ‘We have to face it, it does happen. Some of her friends … Even if they’re from the best families,

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