Breaking Point (3 page)

‘When did she report him missing?'

‘Saturday morning.'

Paget stared at Alcott. ‘
Two days?
' he said. ‘And she goes running to her uncle? Does she have any evidence that would indicate Newman is in trouble?'

‘None, other than the fact that he missed his own birthday party, and Baker insists that he would have phoned or got in touch with her somehow if he was held up somewhere.'

‘So why doesn't the chief constable talk to Missing Persons instead of dumping it in our lap?' Paget growled.

‘Look,' said Alcott wearily, ‘you're not going to win this one, Paget. I've been through all this with Brock, so let's get on with it, shall we? You
will
go out there this afternoon and you
will
meet with Emma Baker. Just go out there and show the flag, so to speak. Take Tregalles with you, listen to what the girl has to say, make the right noises, then let Tregalles pick it up from there. This lad will probably turn up by the end of the week, anyway.'

He pushed a single sheet of paper across the desk. ‘As I said, she's a student at the Whitcott Agricultural College, but she's leaving there early today to meet you at the house she shares with several others, including this chap, Newman. It's called Wisteria Cottage. Shouldn't be too hard to find in a village of that size.'

W
isteria Cottage was not exactly Paget's idea of a cottage, but rather a very solid-looking two-storied house, with its mellow stonework almost hidden by thick, leafless vines that looked to be as old as the cottage itself. No doubt they would look much more attractive when they were covered in blossoms later in the year, but on a cold and cloudy day in early March, they looked like thick skeletal limbs clinging to the stones.

Emma Baker must have been watching for them, because she opened the door before they had a chance to knock. She was a tall, slim, fresh-faced young woman with auburn hair and hazel eyes. Older than Paget had imagined; mid-to-late twenties, perhaps? It was hard to tell. She was wearing a faded old cardigan over a sweatshirt and jeans, heavy woollen socks and Birkenstock sandals.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Paget?' she said with surprise in her voice, and grimaced guiltily. ‘I had no idea . . . I mean I hoped Uncle Bob would take me seriously, but I didn't expect him to send someone like you.' She saw his puzzled look. ‘I remember you from the pictures in the paper a few months ago, when you were attacked by that woman,' she explained. ‘I'm Emma. Please come in.'

She led them down a narrow hallway to a large kitchen at the back of the house, and like the hall, it had a flagstone floor. ‘We could use the front room,' she told them, ‘but this is the only truly warm room in the whole place.' She directed them to take a seat at a long wooden table in front of an old-fashioned Aga cooker, then went on to explain that the house had been made over into flats.

‘At least, that's what they call them. They're really nothing more than bedrooms, and not very big ones at that. Shared bathroom facilities, of course, which can be a bit of a pain, but it's affordable – just, and we can walk to the college.

‘There are four of us living here,' she continued. ‘Tom Foxworthy is the oldest; he's studying farm management. Sylvia Tyler is the youngest; she's into animal husbandry, and I'm here to study organic farming. Mark is the only one who isn't attending the college.'

‘And the last time you saw him yourself was Thursday morning?' said Paget as they opened their coats and sat down on hard wooden chairs. ‘We've read the report you filed with Missing Persons, and as I understand it, Mr Newman's work does take him off to different locations, so I can't help wondering why you are so concerned about his absence after such a short time. You say you spoke to him as recently as Thursday, yet you filed the report on Saturday morning. Would you like to tell us why? Isn't it possible that he decided to stay on somewhere, perhaps because there was work for him there, and it wasn't convenient to return?'

Emma Baker spread her hands and shook her head slowly. Paget could almost see her mentally digging in her heels.

‘That's almost exactly what Uncle Bob said when I spoke to him last night, but you're both wrong. I know Mark; he wouldn't do that. I'll admit he's still just a kid in some ways, but he would have let one of us know. All he had to do was give us a quick call. He has a mobile phone. He knew about the party we had planned for Friday night, and he was looking forward to it. Besides, I'm sure he was up to something. I've no idea what it was, but he's been acting strangely lately. He was excited about something. He kept dropping hints of a sort, but nothing specific, if you know what I mean. And then there's the fact that my camera is missing, and I'm sure he took it.'

Paget glanced at Tregalles. Emma Baker didn't strike him as someone who would panic easily. ‘I think you had better start at the beginning,' he told her. ‘Give us some background on Mark Newman, who he is, his job, how long you've known him, and most of all why you are so convinced that something may have happened to him.'

Emma's dark eyes held Paget's own for a long moment, as if trying to assess whether he was merely humouring her. She nodded slowly, and the tension seemed to drain from her face. ‘I'll put the kettle on,' she said as she rose to her feet. ‘The water's hot. It will only take a few minutes to bring to the boil.'

Mark Newman, she told them a few minutes later when they each had a steaming mug of tea in front of them, had come to live at Wisteria Cottage about three months ago. He had come into the local pub one evening after doing a job in the village and asked if anyone knew of a cheap place he could rent for a few months, because he knew he could find enough work in the area to keep him there for a while.

‘I work part-time behind the bar of the Red Lion to help pay for my tuition and my room here,' Emma explained, ‘and he couldn't have come in at a better time, because Tania, one of the original four of us, had just packed it in and gone back home after failing one of her exams And that had left us in a bind. You see, the rent here remains the same whether all the rooms are rented or not, so with one person gone, it meant the three of us had to make up the difference. So, Mark was something of a godsend.'

‘What, exactly, does he do for a living?' Tregalles asked. He had his notebook out.

‘Almost anything that pays,' Emma told him. ‘He cleans windows, he's quite good at painting, and not a bad carpenter. He'll paint your house, clean out your attic, take rubbish to the tip, or walk your dog if there's a bit of money to be made. He's a willing worker, and he's not doing badly. His aim, of course, is to get enough money to take his next year of journalism. He took one year on a scholarship, but he ran out of money, so he decided to work for a year and make enough to continue his studies.'

‘Has he ever been gone for two or three days before?' asked Paget.

‘Oh yes, but he's always let one of us know if he expects to be away for any length of time. He's very good that way. We live pretty frugally here, and it's important that we know who is going to be here for dinner.'

‘But he didn't say anything this time?'

‘No. But even if he didn't know ahead of time, he could have phoned to let us know how long he expected to be away. Which is why I'm worried that something has happened to him.'

‘Does he have any other friends or relatives? A girlfriend, perhaps, who might know where he's gone?' Paget asked.

‘Not that I'm aware of. As far as relatives are concerned, the only ones I've ever heard him speak of are his parents. They live somewhere on the south coast – Portsmouth or Plymouth, I think – but he doesn't get along with them, so I'm sure he hasn't gone there. And I spent much of the weekend phoning all the hospitals in something like a thirty-mile radius of here, without result.'

‘Is there anyone we can talk to who would know more about who his parents are and where they live?'

‘No one around here, I'm sure,' said Emma. ‘I have asked the others, but they don't know any more than I do. All I can tell you is that Mark didn't get on with them. He once said that his father wanted him to go into the family restaurant business, but when he refused and said he was going in for journalism, they had a big fight about it, and his father more or less threw him out, so I don't think he's gone home.'

‘Even so, if we don't hear from him soon, I think we had better try to contact them,' Paget told her. ‘There may be something in his room that will tell us where they live. But before we go there, I'd like to go back to what you said earlier about his acting strangely and being excited about something. Can you be more specific?'

Emma frowned. ‘I'll try,' she said, ‘and I'll tell you what I think, but I don't know if it will make as much sense to you as it does to me. You see, I'm almost sure it has something to do with Mickey Doyle, and some story or other he was telling Mark last Saturday night in the pub. Not this
last
Saturday,' she amended, ‘but a week ago Saturday. They had their heads together like a couple of conspirators for the longest time, and Mark kept buying Mickey drinks, which isn't like him at all. He's pretty tight with his money – he has to be because he's going to need every penny if he is to get back into university in September – so he must have expected to get something out of it. I suspect he believed he was on to a story.'

She noticed the quizzical raising of Paget's eyebrows. ‘As I told you,' she said, ‘Mark was taking journalism, and he desperately wanted to get a job with one of the local papers in order to gain some practical experience. Apparently, someone there told him that if he could come back with a good, top-notch story, they'd consider taking him on. Mark was always going on about it and I can't help wondering if that was what he was going after last week. It might also account for his wanting to borrow my camera.'

‘Which you believe he stole,' said Paget.

Emma wrinkled her nose. ‘I don't think he
stole
it – at least I doubt if he thought of it as stealing. But I think he took it, just the same, and probably hoped to return it before I realized it was missing. I know he was disappointed when I told him I couldn't lend it to him, but I thought he understood. You see, the camera doesn't belong to me. It belongs to my sister, and it is quite an expensive one. She loaned it to me for a project we are doing at the college, so, as I explained to Mark, it wasn't mine to lend. He said he understood, and said he would try to find one somewhere else, but I think he must have waited until I left for class, then sneaked into my room and taken it.'

‘This is a digital camera, is it?' Tregalles asked.

‘No. It's a 35mm SLR. An Olympus. I don't know how much it's worth, exactly, but I know my sister paid quite a lot for it three or four years ago, and I'm almost as worried about what I'm going to tell her as I am about Mark.'

‘When did you realize the camera was missing?'

‘Thursday afternoon when I came home from class. I might not have realized it was missing right away if we hadn't been talking about it that morning, but I noticed it was gone as soon as I opened the door of the closet. It normally hangs on a peg in there. Mark – at least I'm assuming it was Mark – had pulled the clothes over to one side to cover the peg, and that's what drew my attention to it.'

‘So Mark was still here when you left that morning?' Tregalles said. ‘What time would that be, Miss Baker?'

‘I prefer Emma, if you don't mind, Sergeant,' she said. ‘And I'd say it would have been about ten to eight. Classes begin at eight, but I remember I was a few minutes late that morning, mainly because of stopping to talk to Mark.'

‘Is anything else missing?' asked Paget.

‘Not that I'm aware of.'

‘Did he say why he wanted the camera?'

‘To tell you the truth, he was wittering on while I was trying to get ready for class, and I wasn't paying as much attention as I suppose I should have, but I do recall him saying something about making someone sit up and take notice. As I said, I was running late, and he was holding me up, so I more or less shut him out. Perhaps if I'd paid more attention to what he was saying we wouldn't be having this conversation now . . .'

Emma fell silent for a moment frowning into the distance. ‘There was something . . .' she began hesitantly, then snapped her fingers. ‘I'd forgotten it until now, but Mark asked me if I had any high-speed film, and if I knew where he could get infrared film.'

‘Which suggests night photography,' said Paget thoughtfully. ‘Does that make any sense to you? Had he spoken of anything like that before?'

‘No.'

‘Assuming there is something to your idea that this chap, Doyle, put Mark on to a story, where can we find him?'

Emma shook her head. ‘I've tried that route already,' she said. ‘I went round on Saturday to ask Mickey if he had any idea where Mark might have gone, but he wasn't home. Lou Cutter, the man who owns the caravan park where Mickey lives, said he hadn't seen Mickey recently. He assumed he was away on a job somewhere – or on one of his benders. Mickey's a joiner by trade,' she explained. ‘He works for himself. I'm told he does beautiful work, doing up the inside of old houses and that sort of thing, and people are always after him. Mr Cutter told me that Mickey would have a thriving little business if he could stay away from the drink, but every so often he'll disappear for a week or two, then end up spending the night in custody on a drunk and disorderly charge.'

Tregalles flipped back a page in his notebook. ‘Let me see if I have this right,' he said. ‘Are you saying that Doyle may be missing as well?'