While I introduce myself and get his name he looks shifty. “What’s this about?”
“A missing person enquiry. Just a routine house-to-house, Mr Corby. Nothing to worry about.”
He relaxes slightly and I ask him if he’s seen anything unusual in the neighbourhood today.
“What time?”
“This evening, around seven or eight o’clock?”
“I went to the off-licence at half-seven.” A yeasty gust of beer from his belly confirms this.
“Did you see any children playing?”
“Yeah, suppose. But I couldn’t tell you which ones. I don’t take any notice of kids.”
“Okay. Thanks, Mr Corby.” I flip my notebook shut.
“Hold on.” He scratches his neck with his free hand. “There was a car driving dead slow. Old guy on a motorbike nearly went into the back of it. I saw it on the way to the offy and again on the way home. It was going the other way then, like it was lost or something, looking for a house number. They’re hard to see ’cos of the steps-”
“A silver Honda?” I shouldn’t have said that, put words in his mouth.
“No. It was red. A Vauxhall. It was making a chugging noise, like there was a hole in the exhaust or something. Maybe that’s why I clocked it.”
“Any chance you noticed the car registration?”
“Nah.” Mr Corby lets go of the dog and it flops down with exhaustion, its tongue lolling sideways. “Apart from the letters.”
I open my notebook. “What were they?”
“E-T-C. Etcetera. Geddit? That tickled me, don’t know why.” His grin reveals even white teeth, apart from one missing canine, lower right.
“How many people were in the car?”
“Just the bloke driving.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Just a bloke, nothing special about him as far as I can remember.”
“Okay, Mr Corby.”
He comes down the top few steps to see me off the premises. That’s when he notices the police car, parked outside the Hunters’ house.
“It’s not little Natalie, is it? Has she gone missing? Has some bastard taken her?”
I fetch the tripod from the sidecar and begin to set it up. The sky is dissolving from blue-gold to mauve. As I hastily release the telescopic legs of the tripod I catch the skin of my finger and reel back with the intensity of the pain, only eased by sucking on the wound. The skin is inflamed but not ruptured, which is a great relief. I once ruined a shot of snowy mountains with a bloody fingerprint on the lens.
I attach the camera to the tripod. I’ve decided on my new digital model, a Canon that is capable of shooting eight frames a second and has an inbuilt spirit level to make sure the horizon is straight. Then I begin to compose the shot. I fiddle with the equipment until I have the exact angle I want. A sudden ray of bright sun from behind a cloud causes a burst of flare, which is normally regarded as a fault. But it can create unexpectedly interesting effects so I take the shot anyway.
The sky is tinged with pink now. It’s becoming more dramatic every second. I take a few more shots but I’m simply flexing my muscles for the big one, the image that will combine the elements of sky, cloud, water and the blood-red light of the final moments of sunset. I suppose it’s a bit like capturing the last breath of someone dying.
20.41 hours
My phone rings as I reach the bottom of the steps of number 24. They’ve traced Natalie’s father. He’s been fifty miles away all day on business. No sign of a little girl in his rented flat or in his car.
“Shit.”
Brett Lowery runs across the road towards me.
“Have they found her?”
“No such luck.”
He swivels away from me, a grim look on his face.
“Anything from the door-to-door?”
“Nothing. You?”
“Not much. A cruising car, half a registration.”
“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
“Why not? We’ve got bugger all else.”
Redness is staining the sky, most intense near the horizon, then becoming paler, like ink in water. My finger rests lightly on the shutter.
Then I hear something, a faint rattling noise that disturbs the tranquillity of the lake. It sounds like a car whose engine isn’t tuned properly. It’s getting louder. I look up from the viewfinder. After a few seconds I see it, a red car bumping along the same track I used earlier. I shrink back into the gloom of the trees. The car drives past but to my horror it stops a little way along the track, just where I have angled the camera towards the lake to capture the finest view.
I’m almost ready to shoot and there is a bright red car slap bang in the middle of my carefully composed shot.
20.49 hours
We carry on knocking on doors, all the while on tenterhooks, waiting for information on the Vauxhall. An old man keeps me talking. He doesn’t know anything, He’s just glad of the excitement. A couple of others resent being taken away from the footie on telly and can’t wait to shut the door in my face. No one except Mr Corby saw a red car cruising up and down the street around half-past seven.
My phone rings.
“I’ve got a trace on a red Vauxhall Astra, G92 ETC, probably stolen as the car is registered to a spinster lady of seventy-five.”
“Last seen when?”
“CCTV on Victoria Road at… 20.10. Again at the Mill Lane roundabout at 20.14.”
“Could you see which exit he took?”
“Going towards Steelbridge. We lose sight of him after that – he doesn’t appear on the retail-park camera a mile down the road.”
I wave frantically at Brett Lowery across the street and he comes running. We jump into the car at the same moment and I drive off with a screech of tyres.
“There’s a map on the backseat. Find the Mill Lane roundabout.”
Brett studies the map then jabs it with his finger. “Got it.”
“Take the Steelbridge exit. Now tell me what’s off that road before you get to the shopping mall.”
He traces the route. “There’s a big housing estate. He could be taking her to where he lives.”
My heart sinks. If he’s garaged the car then it’s going to be a needle and haystack job. “OK. We’ll come back to that possibility. What else?”
“Industrial park. Sixth Form College. Further on there’s a narrow lane down to a lake but it’s not much more than a track.”
“The gravel pit?”
“It says lake here.”
“Same thing.”
The roundabout is coming up. I swing on to it, taking the Steelbridge exit. I know the track to the lake. I used to go there years ago with my mates. Lager and ciggies and skimming stones on the still flat water.
“What do you think?” asks Brett.
I’m not thinking, not really. I’m relying on instinct, experience, gut feeling. All I know is that time is running out and I’ve got to make a choice.
It’s still there, a bright red blot on the landscape. And all the time the sky is changing, deepening like a developing print, rushing towards the perfect moment.
I’m tempted to go and remonstrate with the driver, but what if he turns nasty? No doubt he’s come here to see the sunset too, but I just wish he would move fifty metres along. There’s movement inside the car. Are there two of them? For God’s sake. If they’re lovers they could be here for ages. And once they start snogging they’ll miss the sunset anyway. I stand there helplessly, watching my hopes die.
But the shadow puppets inside the car shift. The door opens, a man wearing a grey tracksuit gets out. He’s pulling something. No. Someone. A little girl in a pink-and-white dress.
Father and daughter then. What are they doing here? The child is dragging her footsteps. It’s way past her bedtime. Surely they aren’t going for a walk at this time of night, leaving their car stuck in the middle of my shot?