‘I can’t imagine when.’
‘When I’m asleep. And also when I’m—’
‘Spare me the grisly details of your sex life, Sergeant.’
Troy maintained a dignified silence. He had been going to say, ‘When I’m reading to Talisa Leanne.’ He rolled the chocolate wrapper into a pellet and flicked it into the waste basket.
Thinking of his daughter reminded him of ‘chortling’. He had indeed looked the word up in her dictionary and found it to be a cross between chuckling and snorting. Pretty stupid, Troy decided. Why not the other way round? Hey, let’s hear it for the snucklers.
Everyone in Room 419 was sitting up and looking alert, notebooks open, print-outs everywhere. Only Inspector Carter appeared crumpled as if he hadn’t been to bed and rather depressed. Perversely, Barnaby decided to start with him.
‘Piss all, actually, sir,’ responded Carter, having been asked what he’d got. ‘We did a very thorough house-to-house in all three villages, going back in the evening to catch anyone at work during the day.’
‘And those who were in the pub?’
‘Oh, yes. No one seems to have heard any disturbance last Sunday night. All inside, curtains drawn, watching the telly. One person, a Mr . . . um . . . Gerry Lovatt was out walking his greyhound, Constanza, just yards from the weir at quarter to eleven and he heard nothing either.’
‘That is surprising,’ said Barnaby.
‘There was that lady—’
‘Yes, I’m coming to you, Phillips. Thanks very much.’
‘Sorry, Inspector.’
‘Carry on then.’
Constable Phillips’s Adam’s apple bobbed nervously. He blushed and Sergeant Brierley gave him a kindly, encouraging smile. Troy, entranced simply by being in the same room with the girl he fancied rotten, sent his own smile winging across the desk tops. He had named his daughter’s kitten Audrey merely for the pleasure of constantly repeating her name. That ignored him as well. Maybe he should rechristen it Constanza.
‘A Miss Pleat,’ began Constable Phillips.
‘I’ve met Miss Pleat,’ said Barnaby. ‘You’re not telling me I’m going to meet her again, are you?’
‘Not necessarily, sir.’
‘Thank God for that.’
There was a certain amount of nervous laughter in which Constable Phillips laggardly joined.
‘Only I think she might have something. Not facts, I’m afraid, just ideas.’
‘Don’t tell me, the ebb and flow of the human heart?’
‘Something like that, sir. Well, she seems to think that Valentine Fainlight, the man in that amazing—’
‘I know who Fainlight is.’
‘Sorry. That he’s in love with the girl who ran away, Carlotta.’
‘Valentine Fainlight is a homosexual, Constable Phillips.’
‘Oh. I didn’t realise. Sor—’
‘On what does Miss Pleat base this remarkable assumption?’
‘He goes over to the Old Rectory night after night and stands looking up at her window.’
The room exchanged amused but slightly wary glances, holding back any vocal expression of mirth. Watching the chief, waiting to see which way the wind blew.
After a few moments during which he appeared lost in thought, Barnaby said, ‘Is that all?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Constable Phillips, praying that it was.
‘Right. What’s next?’
Print-outs were consulted. Barnaby was informed that according to hospital and police information no person matching Carlotta Ryan’s description had been found dead, in or out of water, accidentally or on purpose, during the past seven days.
The search of the river bank was hardly fruitful. On the whole it was pristine but a rough patch of scrub and thorn bushes owned up to a few crisp packets and Cola cans, an old motor tyre once used as a swing and the frame of a baby’s pushchair. A retired brigadier, chairman of the Ferne Basset Conservation Society, presented himself at the search and began explaining that the ‘cess pit’ under observation was used as a dumping ground by council house tenants. It was cleared every week by a member of the Society and was promptly fouled again. Courteous requests to refrain from this habit had been ignored. He insisted that a note to this effect be added to the police report. Village pride was at stake.
Responses to the station’s television appeal were still being followed up. The usual attention seekers were being weeded out and what was left was not encouraging.
Sergeant Jimmy Agnew and WPC Muldoon, checking up on the background of Lionel Lawrence, had come up with what was surely the dullest CV on record. Born in 1941 in Uttoxeter, grammar school education with O levels in five subjects, including Religious Education. Dip. Theology at the Open University. Not even a suspicious passion for scouting.