“I haven’t heard a thing.” She grinned at her own remark and pointed to the phone. “It lights up when a call comes in.”
“He did two days with them,” Gilbert said, “and then went AWOL.”
“Alcohol?” No question she was seriously deaf.
“Absent without leave.”
“They told me. I tried calling him and got a message saying he couldn’t be reached.” She looked at the screen again. “He’s forty-two, unmarried, lodging at Fairfield Park.”
“I know. I’ve been there.”
She was being as helpful as she could. “His truck was returned at the end of the day.”
“He drove a truck?”
“One of ours. With the equipment in, scaffolding, track rails and that. My riggers take more stuff than they ever need when they’re on location.”
“Charmy Down, in this case?”
“I treat them all the same, my dear. Some of them try it on, but they soon find out I’m a married woman who won’t take nonsense from anyone.”
She hadn’t heard properly.
“Charmy Down, the old airfield.”
“Airfield? Are you talking about Charmy Down? Is that what you said? You have to speak up with me. Yes, that’s where they were filming. They’ve moved down to Pulteney Weir now.”
“Did you see him the evening he returned the truck?”
“Have a heart, darling. They finish after dark. The grips are always first to arrive and last to leave.”
“How would he have got home to Fairfield Park from here?”
“Say that again, would you?”
He did so.
“There’s no need to shout. Just don’t mumble. They park their own transport here while they’re working. If you look up the far end, you’ll see some private cars and motorbikes. His blue Vespa isn’t there now.”
He’d learned as much as he was likely to get from Able Mabel. He wrote down a number to call if she got any news of Jake.
On the moped again, not much wiser about the missing rigger, he started back towards Bath on the A46. Charmy Down was only two miles down the road, so it made sense to visit the place where Jake had last been seen alive. As a boy, Gilbert had gone there a few times to fly model aircraft with friends. He’d heard that Beaker people from the Bronze Age had been the first to live here, but the barrows had been levelled in 1940 when the Ministry of War had taken over and constructed a base for the night fighters of 87 Squadron. The old airfield was on a plateau about 600 feet above sea level with a main runway almost a mile long. The RAF had given up the place soon after the war.
He’d visited there only once since his childhood, as a police officer, to help deal with a rave. The enterprising youth of Bath and Bristol had managed to get a generator up there, a sound system, stages and strobe lighting, not to mention a supply of illegal substances. Complaints about the noise in the small hours of Sunday morning had come in from seven miles away.
Silence reigned now. The exposed landscape made the airfield a desolate and windswept scene. Gilbert wished he’d asked where exactly the TV shoot had taken place.
He dismounted and followed the fence along the southwest side until reaching a grey stone block with an inscription like a memorial. He hadn’t heard of much loss of life in action and there were no names on it. The stone turned out to be a recently erected memorial to the airfield and all the units and personnel who had served here. These, he knew, included members of the American Air Force, based here in 1944 before the D-Day invasion. For many years after the war, US veterans would visit to see where they were once stationed.
Until the Americans arrived, this had been a night fighter station. One of the main perils wasn’t the Luftwaffe; it was the feature Gilbert had admired from Cold Ashton. St. Catherine’s Valley was notorious for updraughts that bedevilled the landing approach for the main runway. So many casualties occurred that the pilots called it Death Valley. Up to twenty aircrew were killed in training battling those air currents. In comparison, the number who died in action against the enemy was seven.
An older relic than the memorial was one of the pillboxes he remembered from his visits here as a boy. He climbed on top for a better view. The runways were grassed over now, hunting territory for flocks of birds. To his left was the control tower, a derelict four-square, two-storey structure with a small viewing tower on the roof. He guessed this might have appealed to the TV director as an image, so he wheeled his moped in that direction.
On the turf ahead was a cross-hatch of recent tyre tracks made by heavy vehicles. Spinning wheels had made ruts of mud that convinced him this was where the TV transport had parked, not right up against the control tower, which would have spoiled the shoot, but thirty yards away.
He gave himself a virtual pat on the back. His deductive skills were coming in useful. You don’t get to be the investigating officer without noticing stuff like that.
The tower was in a poor state, with every window smashed and parts of the brickwork gone. Even so, it conjured thoughts of Hawker Hurricanes and Westland Whirlwinds revving up, barrelling along the flare-lit runway and taking off into the night sky to do battle with the Luftwaffe.
His thoughts had a sudden interruption — the sound of barking. What could a dog be doing out here? There wasn’t one in sight.
It could only be from inside the control tower. If there was a dog, there might also be an owner. As investigating officer, Gilbert knew where his duty lay.
A disturbing memory from his childhood surfaced. Caught in a narrow alleyway, he had been attacked and bitten by a spaniel that was probably as terrified as he had been.
From the deep pitch of the barking, this animal was no spaniel. It must have heard him coming.
He couldn’t shirk it.
The entrance was above ground level, up some steps. The door was long gone. The barking had stopped, as if the dog was listening. It could be lying in wait, ready to leap on him.
Gilbert decided it would be a mistake to creep upstairs. Better to announce his presence. He reached the first step and shouted, “Anyone there?”
Another outbreak of barking and quite an echo with it.
“All right, all right,” Gilbert said, feeling anything but all right.
The dog hadn’t yet appeared at the doorway. Gilbert mounted more of the steps, repeating the same words of reassurance. He was hoping his friendly tone would make an impression.
He crossed the threshold.
And heard growling, a low, vibrating note of menace, definitely from inside the building. Surely any dog guarding its territory would have made an attack already.
Could it be tied up? Or trapped?
He was in the main passageway, getting accustomed to near darkness. On each side were open doorways to rooms whose original purpose he could only guess. The one to his right was empty except for some disconnected wires and cables. Probably the communications officer using a teleprinter would have been housed on this level.
He checked the next.
Empty.
The main control room would have been upstairs for better views of the sky, but he didn’t think the sounds had come from above.
The growling had stopped — or had it? He thought he could hear something from a room to his left. He took a step forward, felt his foot strike some piece of rubble. The sound was answered at once by a bark from the room opposite.
No dog would wait so long to check on an intruder. It had to be tethered. Gilbert repeated those hollow words, “It’s all right,” stepped across the passageway and looked inside.
The biggest dog he had ever seen hurled itself at him, teeth bared and snarling.
He went rigid with shock.
By a few inches he escaped having his throat torn open.
The dog had reared up to head height, forced to its hind legs by the length of the rope that held it.