"Routine," he replied. "It was opened in '73 when she came to UCLA, presumably because of her drugs conviction. They were heady days back then, and all sorts of cuckoos were coming in and causing trouble. Miss Youngman, it says here, had friends in Paris who were believed to be attached to the Red Brigade. They were a bunch o' left-wing loonies based in Italy. She left the US a year later, re-entered in 1989 and immediately made contact with a militia group in Tennessee. That's about the size of it. Did you say this fire was back in '75?"
"Yes."
"Gee! Don't you guys ever give up?"
"Just catching up with my workload, Mike. I thought these militia groups you have were right-wing."
"Right-wing, left-wing, what's the difference? Do you subscribe to the theory that the world is round, Charlie?"
"Er, yes."
"That's a concept that a farm boy from Iowa like me has difficulty grappling with. Apparently if you walk far enough in one direction you'll find yourself coming back the other way. It's just the same with these groups; they all widdle in the same creek. If the guns are big enough and it messes with the government, they'll join."
"I get the message. Do you know where she is now?"
"Youngman? No, but I reckon we could find her without breaking a sweat. You want her back?"
"I'm not sure. We might one day, but at the moment we're only gathering background, acquaintances, you know the thing."
"Well, just let me know if you do, and I'll put her on the next plane with a liddle label around her neck."
"She sounds a delightful lady, I can hardly wait. Thanks for your help, Mike, and I'll be in touch."
"My pleasure, Charlie. Adios."
"Adios."
Adios. I liked that. I replaced the phone and said it again. "Adios.
Adios. Adios, amigo." So Melissa was in America, running through the woods with a bunch of rednecks whose wives had backsides bigger than their pickups and whose idea of entertainment was arm-wrestling with a bear. Should be right up the street of an ex-head girl of Beverley Cathedral Grammar School, I thought.
Chapter 8
The anti cyclone re-established itself over the Bay of Biscay, pushing the threat of unsettled weather back over Russia, where it belonged.
Dave finished his painting, the M62 was closed for two hours by grass fires, and I mowed my lawn. A judicious grass fire would have saved me the bother. Once again the bright tables and umbrellas sprang up all over the precinct, like toadstools in a book of fairy stories, and commerce slowed to a standstill. Crime didn't. Lust is mercury-filled; it rises and falls with temperature. Hot afternoons, scant clothing, walks in the meadows; it's a potent mixture. Add lunchtime drinking outside the pub with the new girl from Telesales and you have all the ingredients for rape, and we had several. Not by the inadequate loner, waiting for a victim, any victim, and striking violently. These were between semi-consenting couples who were carried away by the moment. Two of them were mothers complaining about the boys next door and their daughters, and one housewife thought that inviting the builder in for a beer was normal behaviour, even if she was wearing a bikini and had spent all morning sunbathing topless. We had a rubber stamp made that said: "She was asking for it," to speed up the statements.
The druggies changed their modus operandi, too. Open windows facilitated the taking of tellies and videos, but demand was down.
Garden tools, barbecue furniture and big chimney pots, plants for growing in, became the new currency. It added some variety to the job and the wooden tops had to learn how to spell some new words.
"Ta-da!" Dave fan fared as he came into my office on Wednesday morning, his smile broader than a seaside comedian's lapels.
"What?" I said, lifting the pile of papers in my in-tray and sliding the request for next year's budget underneath.
He sat down and grinned at me.
"Go on," I invited, 'or is that it?"
"That Piers Forrester is a really nice bloke," he told me.
"He's a supercilious twat," I replied.
"He's been very helpful."
"He wears a dickie bow."
"Oh, so he's a supercilious twat because he wears a dickie bow, is he?"
"Yes."
"And Graham's OK, too."
"He's all right, I suppose."
"Because he doesn't wear a dickie bow?"
"He wears Yves St. Laurent short-sleeved shirts. That must say something about him."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. You're the detective, I'm just the office boy. What have you found out?"
"Right," he replied, eagerly. "We've cracked it."
"Go on."
"Melissa went to grammar school in Beverley, didn't she?"
"Yep."
"And then on to Essex University."
"Mmm."
"So Graham has paid them a visit to have a look at her classmates there, like I did for Duncan in Leeds. And guess what?"
"I'm all ears."
"There was another girl enrolled there at the same time, from the same school in Beverley. She was called Janet Wilson. She's bound to have been in the same class as MeliSSa, don't you think? She must know her."
I let my glum look slip, but only briefly. "What do you mean by was called Janet Wilson?" I asked.
"She's married, that's all. She's now called Janet Holmes, and lives at the Coppice, Bishop's Court, York. We could be there in an hour."
You can learn a lot about a person from the pictures they have on their wall. This one was a tinted drawing, larger than average, of a circular construction. It looked Moorish at first glance, and I expected it to be called something like jn the Courtyard of the Alhambra, but when I looked closer I realised it was biological. What I'd taken as tiles or pieces of mosaic were individual cells.
"Do you like it?" Mrs. Holmes asked as she came into the room, carrying a tray.
"It's not what it seems," I replied, 'and that intrigues me. It's also very attractive."
"Your sergeant's call certainly intrigued me," she replied. "Please, sit down."
"Constable," Dave corrected.
There was a caption and a signature under the picture. They read:
Ascaris lumbricoides and J. Holmes. I said: "Did you do this, Mrs.
Holmes?" sounding impressed.
"It's what I do for a living," she answered. "I'm a technical illustrator. I took a few liberties with the colour on that one, but it's not great art."
"The inspector's into painting," Dave told her. "Went to art college.
He does all our wanted posters."
"Really?" she replied.
"He jests," I told her. "So what exactly is an ascaris what sit "It's a nasty little parasite that lives in pigs and occasionally in humans."
"You mean, like a tapeworm?"
"Very similar, but they only grow to about a foot in length."
"Only a foot!" Dave exclaimed. "Blimey! So how long does a tapeworm grow?"
"Oh, the common tapeworm can reach twenty feet," she told him.
"Urgh!" he responded. "I'll never have another bacon sandwich."
Mrs. Holmes poured the tea and suggested we help ourselves to milk and sugar. "Now, what is it you want to know about Essex University in the early seventies?" she asked. "I'm totally fascinated."
She was a good-looking woman, easier to imagine addressing a class or opening a fete than looking through a microscope. I sat down and took a sip of tea from the china cup. She'd also supplied scones which looked homemade and more in character with her appearance.
"Do you work from home?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied. "My husband left me two years ago, as soon as the children were off our hands. Traded me in for a younger model; and more streamlined." She patted her hips, which looked perfectly reasonable to me. "I'd always been an illustrator, which was considered something of a cop-out for someone with a degree, but now there's a bigger than ever demand for my services. I do lots of computer animation, too, of course, but a good animator can name her own price, almost."