‘Some woman?’
‘I didn’t say so.’ Charles Hafferty shrugged his thick shoulders. ‘How far did you go?’ she said.
‘Through the woods, then along about a quarter-mile. I didn’t go any further along the road; if he’d got hurt there, he’d have been found by passersby.’
She nodded. ‘D’you think that’s what’s happened? That he’s in the woods and hurt? There are some bad places.’
He muttered indecisively.
They paused, looking out across the orchard, the blackness accentuated beyond the torch-beam with which Charles Hafferty kept searching the darkness.
‘Should I get Bill?’ he said.
‘A fat lot of use,’ she said. ‘He’d be afraid of getting his feet wet.’
They listened to the hiss of the wind blowing in from Sandwich Flats.
At last: ‘Ought we to tell the police?’
It was Marie who spoke, and her husband let out his breath in a long sigh. ‘Telling a copper, just because someone’s late back from a walk?’
‘They’d know what to do,’ she said. ‘Whether to start searching or wait a little longer.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘We could phone, and see what they said.’
He gave her a nod, then he turned and went back to the house. She followed. They went in by the side-door, shutting out the night with a slam.
Tea had not yet been cleared away. Anxiety hadn’t diminished anyone’s appetite, Marie thought, noting the emptied plates; Bill Parker was cramming a piece of bread and butter in his mouth. Olivia was halfway through a slice of fruitcake.
Only Helen Hafferty sat staring across the room, her cup of tea and lemon untouched beside her.
All eyes came up to Charles. He said flatly: ‘I didn’t find him.’ He looked across at his mother.
‘Think we ought to get on to the police?’ she said.
Bill Parker choked, until tears started into his eyes. Olivia made a vaguely protesting noise. Her mother stood up and moved to Charles, standing uncomfortably in the centre of the room.
‘What do you think?’ she asked him.
He had always been her favourite, Marie thought inconsequentially. Maybe it was because he was so quiet and steady, not moody like Nicky, and Olivia, too, she could be a little morose at times.
‘It wouldn’t do any harm to give them a ring,’ Charles said, awkwardly. He added unconvincingly: ‘They would know the drill.’
Bill Parker had recovered his composure. ‘I don’t think it’s anything to bother the police with,’ he said. ‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. If a man can’t go off on his own without everybody chasing round trying to find him.…’ His voice trailed off.
Charles Hafferty looked at him stolidly. ‘He’s my father.’
‘If you mean I don’t care what happens to him, that’s nonsense,’ the other said. He got to his feet, covering a slight belch with his hand. ‘I’m as concerned about him as much as everyone else. Only I think you’re in too much of a hurry, that’s all. He’ll turn up soon, and then we’ll look fools.’
Charles Hafferty looked at Marie, then across at his mother. ‘Shall I ring up?’
His mother’s voice trembled a little. ‘If you think it’s best.’
It was Olivia who gave Charles the telephone number of the local police station, and Bill Parker looked up at her sharply as if surprised she should know it. As Charles moved to the hall, the door opened and Bess was there to clear away the tea things. She stood silently watching Charles as he went into the hall.
They could hear him lift the receiver and ask for the number; then a pause.
Then he began talking to someone at the other end.
Trust Charles to get it all back to front, Marie thought irritably, as he stumbled his way through his account of how Tod Hafferty had gone for his walk. Good job the local cop to whom she supposed Charles was babbling on knew the Hafferty family quite well, she thought. He’d be able to fill in the gaps her husband was leaving.
They heard the click of the receiver replaced.
Charles Hafferty was perspiring a little as he came back into the room. They could see the perspiration shining on his face.
‘Well?’ Marie rapped at him.
‘He’s going to report Tod’s disappearance to the police station at Eastmarsh. He’ll call out here as soon as he can.’
‘And then?’ Bill Parker asked.
‘Then we’ll start a proper search,’ Charles said. He crossed to Helen Hafferty, who stood, her face stiff, her slim figure tensed. ‘Unless—’ He broke off and then said unconvincingly: ‘Unless Tod turns up before the cop does.’
CHAPTER THREE
P.C. Frank Jarrett had promised himself a quiet Saturday evening. A few official reports to clear up, then some reading, and early to bed. Charles Hafferty’s telephone-call had caught him with his shoes off, his toes curling before the fire. P.C. Oxley had answered the phone in the office and then came back to the sitting-room.
‘This sounds like yours,’ he said.
When he hung up, Jarrett came back in his socks, and began to put on his shoes again. Oxley’s eyebrows went up. ‘Trouble?’
‘Old man Hafferty,’ Jarrett said. ‘Gone and got himself lost, or something.’
‘Tod Hafferty?’
Jarrett nodded. ‘Seems he hasn’t got back.’ He reached for his overcoat. ‘I could do it in a couple of minutes on your motorbike,’ he grumbled.
‘Maybe they’ll reconsider it after your last report,’ Oxley said. ‘You knocked up enough miles, last month.’
Jarrett went out of the warm sitting-room, muttering over his shoulder at this arbitrary allocation of motorcycles. If that lot over at Sandwich had to manage on a push-bike they’d soon change their ideas.
A few minutes later he was riding out of the handful of houses and cottages which comprised Eastmarsh, along the road towards Asshe. By now his head was no longer full of the inconvenience of having to use a bike instead of Oxley’s motorcycle; his thoughts revolved round the business of the previous afternoon, and the couple he had kept an eye on, and which had haunted him ever since.
When P.C. Jarrett had first noticed the girl and the way she wore her flashy clothes, a way well ahead of her years, which made her technically at any rate under the age of consent. He had thought it would not be long before she caught some male roving eye. But he had not expected that it would turn out to be the man he had seen her with six weeks or so ago.
There may have been others before him, but Jarrett knew nothing about that.
He didn’t require much experience to realize that this sort of case was difficult to handle. It would have been the last sort of job he wanted to take on, anyway, but the identity of the man complicated the whole thing even further.
He had seen him and the girl on three or four occasions after the first one. Once under the shelter of a hedge, then, a haystack, the edge of a cornfield; he had watched them once disappear into a clump of bushes.
But until he saw them yesterday afternoon, when he was off-duty, in plainclothes, on their way to Eastmarsh railway-station, he had no evidence to support his suspicions. It was in the middle of the Friday afternoon at an hour when passenger traffic was slack; and it seemed to him that an empty railway compartment was probably