‘We’d better have a look,’ said Banks. ‘She might be out there, not far away. She may have run off, or simply gone for a walk. She might be hurt. Trapped.’
‘I never thought of that,’ said Ray, jumping at the idea that Zelda might be nearby after all.
‘Got a torch?’
They went downstairs and Ray fetched two torches from the utility room under the staircase. ‘They’re not much cop, I’m afraid, but it’s all I’ve got.’
‘That all right,’ said Banks. ‘The moon’s pretty bright. We might not even need them.’
To the east of the cottage, a grassy slope ran down to the edge of Lyndgarth village, about half a mile away. It was a wide-open space and hardly a likely spot for concealment. As far as Banks could see, it was uninhabited. On the other side, however, the cottage stood on the edge of moorland which stretched for miles to the west. It was rough terrain, covered in heather and gorse, with a number of dangerous bogs, several wooded areas and deep gullies. The natural light was almost enough to see by, but they carried their torches in case they came to a gully or pothole. About a mile to the south-west stood the dark ruins of Devraulx Abbey, suitably Gothic and ghostly in the moonlight.
As they walked, they called out Zelda’s name, but got only silence or the cry of a frightened bird in return. After a while, it became clear that they needed their torches to illuminate the tangle of roots under their feet, which slowed their progress.
After almost an hour’s wandering with no success, they returned to Ray’s cottage and flopped down on the living-room chairs. Ray rolled another cigarette and lit up again. ‘What if she’s further away, bleeding, or she broke her leg or something? Shouldn’t we go out again? Further, this time.’
‘I don’t think it’s very productive to start thinking along those lines, Ray. She’s not bleeding to death. There was no great amount of blood in her studio, if it’s even blood. And if she is out there hurt, it’s a mild night, and she’ll have no trouble lying low until morning. You know how quickly it gets light here in summer. By then I’ll have a search party organised.’
‘I can’t help thinking something terrible’s happened to her. Maybe she’s unconscious. Or dead?’
‘She’ll be fine, Ray. Zelda’s a lot more resourceful and resilient than you imagine. Think what she’s endured over the years. And think about this: if someone wanted to kill her, or hurt her, they could easily have done it here and just left her body in the studio. Don’t you think that’s what they would have done?’
‘Probably. But what’s happening to her? Do you think someone might be hurting her?’
Banks knew that the worst thing about dealing with missing persons was imagining the terrible things they might be suffering, such as torture — right down to fingernails being pulled, teeth extracted, electrodes attached to private parts, limbs smashed, bloody beatings, and, especially when women were involved, rape. There was no way of stopping such images for an empathetic person, which Ray clearly was. Banks felt empathy, too, but he had learned to control it over the years. Such imaginings could cloud his judgement and the procedures that had to be followed in these cases. The thing to concentrate on was finding the missing person alive and not to be distracted by what he or she might be suffering in the meantime. It was hard, but he had learned to do it most of the time. The fears only came back in the dark hours, three or four in the morning, when he lay awake and terrible images crowded his mind. Ray was already at that stage.
‘There’s no evidence that anyone harmed her in the studio,’ Banks said, ‘and I assume if it was information they wanted, they could have got it out of her there.’
‘But who could have done this? Might immigration have taken her?’
‘Well, for a start,’ Banks said, ‘they haven’t yet stooped to abducting people from their homes by force. Even they wouldn’t go that far.’ Though even as he said it, he wondered. Certainly if someone put up resistance, immigration officers might use the same sort of force as the police would to make an arrest in similar circumstances. He still very much doubted that was what had happened.
‘Do you think she might have been kidnapped?’
‘Maybe. The thing is, we don’t know. All we know is that she’s gone and that it looks as if someone took her against her will.’
‘I’ve got money. I can pay the ransom. Up to a point. I can sell more paintings.’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Ray.’
Ray stood up and started pacing. ‘But we have to do something. We can’t just sit here.’
‘I need to call it in,’ said Banks. ‘Get a team set up. Lines of inquiry. Time can be crucial in these cases, and we’ve already wasted too much.’ He didn’t want to tell Ray that most murders occur soon after a person goes missing. On the other hand, it had made sense to check the house and the surrounding countryside thoroughly before gearing up for a full missing person investigation. ‘Did you touch anything in the studio?’ he asked.
Ray shook his head. Banks hadn’t either. He had deliberately kept his hands in his pockets.
‘Did you leave it exactly as you found it?’
‘Yes. The door was open, the lights on.’
Banks reached in his pocket for his mobile. Nobody would appreciate such a call in the early hours, but it had to be done. When he connected with the comms room he asked for the duty officer and explained in clear terms what had happened, stating that, in his opinion, Zelda had been forcibly abducted by persons unknown and that AC Gervaise should be informed at once. All patrol officers should keep their eyes open for a woman matching Zelda’s description, which he gave them, with a little help from Ray. He also asked that they organise a search team for the immediate moors as soon as it was daylight, and have AC Gervaise alert the CSIs to come and search the victim’s premises. ‘And tell them to be careful driving in,’ he added. ‘There might be tyre tracks and Lord knows what else out there. Fingerprints and trace evidence in the studio.’
Ray sat pale and shaking as Banks talked on. When he’d finished, Banks put his phone away and made some notes about timing. ‘You need to know they’ll be a lot harder on you than I’ve been,’ he said. ‘The first suspect in a missing persons case is always the one who reports it, along with the missing person herself.’
‘But you know I’d never do anything like that,’ pleaded Ray. ‘Isn’t it obvious? I love Zelda. I could never harm her.’
‘Doesn’t matter what I think. And to an objective interviewer, it won’t be obvious. People kill for love as often as they do for profit or hatred. You need to tell them absolutely everything you think will help us find Zelda. And I mean everything. Don’t gloss over the row you had because thinking about it makes you feel bad, or you think it’ll make them suspect you more. Tell them. They’ll also want to know her habits, haunts, friends, and so on. Any problems or worries, too. Whether you thought she was having an affair. I know we think she was abducted from her studio after a struggle, and that’s what it looks like, but she may have run off and gone to hide somewhere, or to be with someone. Maybe she wrecked the studio herself in a fit of rage, or she decided to disappear and the mess is a red herring or a cover-up.’
‘She wouldn’t do that,’ Ray said. ‘And there’s nobody else. I’d know.’
‘The point is that we don’t know what happened. All we have to go on is guesswork. Just tell them what you know about the work she did and the people who abused and enslaved her. Her fears about Immigration Enforcement, her relationship with Annie. I know you say she didn’t tell you much about her past, and it’s possible I can fill in a few blanks myself, but tell them everything you do know. It may all be connected.’