“Forget that. You’re coming with me.”
I give Brett the few details I have as we clatter down the stairs. The duty officer looks up from his computer and shakes his head.
No leads then. Nothing to point us in the right direction. We’ll have to start from square one.
As we run towards our patrol car I check the time. Quarter-past eight. If we can find Natalie Hunter within the hour the odds are she’ll still be alive. As time passes the odds worsen. A day without a sighting and it’s fifty-fifty. After that we could be looking at a murder investigation. The next sixty minutes are crucial.
The golden hour starts now.
I’ve been waiting for an evening like this for a long time.
I had planned to take the Norton to the coast today. I got all my equipment ready last night. But when I woke up this morning it was wet and the rain was forecast to last for hours. It was almost certain there would be a sea fret, a “haar” as they call it in Scotland, and the thought of riding all that way in the rain to find nothing but thick white fog was unappealing and I abandoned the trip.
It’s been a frustrating day, spent staring out of the window and reading my monthly photography magazine. I read the many articles on digital techniques with deep misgivings. I’m not against the new technology. I recently invested in a very expensive digital camera and I’ve played around with images, but it feels like a form of cheating. Capturing my subject in all its natural perfection has always been the challenge for me.
With dinner eaten, the dishes washed up and put away and nothing on television but wall-to-wall rubbish, I’m lost for something to do. Since I retired from the college, if I can’t get out with my camera, time hangs heavy.
When I take the bin bag out I see that the sky is no longer a uniform grey pall. The clouds are beginning to break up and rays of sunshine, like the spokes of a fan, shoot out and touch the ground with gold. The correct name for them is crepuscular rays. Some people call them the fingers of God.
My camera bag is already packed. The motorbike has a sidecar, which Lynette never liked, but she isn’t here any more and that means there’s more room for bulkier equipment like the tripod. I’m ready to go within minutes. And all the time the sky is changing, the clouds dissolving and re-forming in unpredictable patterns.
I feel my excitement rise. Along with dawn, around sunset is one of the best times of day to take pictures. Among photographers there’s a particular term for it.
We call it the golden hour.
20.19 hours
Gunnerston Road is a steep street with houses built against the slope. The garden of number 37 is terraced to cope with the gradient – concrete beds filled with bushy heathers. There’s a steep winding flight of steps up to the front door. We’re both breathing hard by the time we get there.
The door is opened by a small plump woman around forty.
“Mrs Hunter? Sergeant Helen Brandling. And this is PC Lowery.” She doesn’t look us in the eye. She seems mesmerized by our uniforms. Then her gaze darts behind us, up and down the street.
“Can we come in?”
She steps back. A grandfather clock takes up a lot of space in the narrow hallway and we have to shuffle past it to close the door.
“Any sign of Natalie?”
“No. I’ve searched the house. I can’t find her anywhere.”
“I want you to call her friends. She may have gone off to play with someone without telling you.”
“She’d never do that.”
“It’s worth a try.” I look at Brett and nod. He starts to climb the stairs.
“Where’s he going? I told you – I’ve looked all over!”
“No harm in double-checking.”
I’ve known kids hide in the tiniest spaces – the drawer under the bed, behind the bath, the gap between the wardrobe and wall. Sometimes they’re not hiding at all – they’ve been hidden. What’s left of them.
“Is your husband at home?”
Her eyes flicker nervously, looking everywhere but at me. “No.”
“Working late?”
“He left us. About six months ago.”
“I’m sorry.” I wait no more than a heartbeat before I ask, “Have you got a recent photo of him?”
She leads me into a small cramped living room and points to the mantelpiece. “I keep it for Natalie’s sake.”
Florid complexion, receding hair, rimless glasses.
“Is he fond of Natalie? Does he miss her?”
“Of course.” She looks at me directly for the first time. “You think Gary might have…?”
“What’s his current address?”
She finds it for me. I write it down and ask her what car he drives and the registration. Then I point to the phone in the hall. “Try everyone you can think of – friends, relatives, neighbours, anyone Natalie might have gone off with. But don’t ring your husband, okay?”
I hurry down the hall to the kitchen, a gloomy sunless room with units made of dark wood. I open the back door. It’s warmer outside than in the cheerless kitchen. I phone HQ and give them Gary Hunter’s description, address and details of his car, a silver Honda Civic.
The back garden slopes upward to a high fence. It has a crowded neglected feel. A search in the thick shrubs reveals a rubber ball, the arm of a doll and a pink scrunchie, muddy and sodden as if it’s been there a long time.
The door of the rickety shed gapes open. There are empty plant pots, old bikes, a rusty pushchair. I shift the heavy bags of compost. An enormous spider runs out and scuttles across the wooden floor. There are no locked cupboards or old fridges, no hidden trapdoors.
I walk through the kitchen as Brett comes down the stairs. Mrs Hunter puts the phone down. We stare at each other blankly. Natalie’s mother is the first to look away.
“PC Lowery and I are going to start knocking on doors up and down the street.”
The grandfather clock strikes the half-hour. Fifteen minutes into the enquiry already and we have nothing.
“Don’t give up, Mrs Hunter. Somebody must have seen her.”
They call it a lake but in reality it’s a flooded gravel pit. It has a slightly bleak artificial look about it – too symmetrical perhaps and the steep sides are banks of pebbles rather than vegetation. But it has a certain wild appeal and over the years it’s become a beauty spot, a bird sanctuary, even the sailing club uses it.
I drive along the rough path beside the water. Motor vehicles are not strictly allowed but I’m in a hurry and take the chance that at this hour the place will be deserted. The rain-washed sky is filled with furiously active cloud formations which I long to capture, not to mention the shot I’ve come here for – the water gleaming like satin and boiling clouds backlit by the setting sun.
I don’t see anyone, but just in case, I park the bike off the track in a copse of trees. I can’t wait to get started. I’m not a professional photographer. I’m not interested in profit. The paps are always looking for the “money shot” – a drunken politician or a celebrity half-naked on a beach. It doesn’t seem to matter how blurred or badly composed the picture is, they can still make a small fortune from it. But that’s not my way. I only want perfection. With me it’s a labour of love.
20.37 hours
I’m doing the evens, Brett Lowery the odds. Climbing up and down the steep steps to each house is exhausting and time-consuming. This is only the third house I’ve tried. Number 24.
Male, twenties, wearing a loose tee-shirt and baggy shorts. His legs are deeply tanned and muscular, tattoos on each arm, shaven head. He smells clean and soapy as if he’s just had a shower. There’s a dog too, an Alsatian. The man hangs on to its collar even though it looks old and tired. A retired police dog perhaps. I don’t ask. There isn’t time.