Hey there Craig, here’s a clue! IC

Rainy flicked through the video, which was of Beatrice playing the Sibelius violin concerto at a church hall in Streatham, South London, last November. There was nothing obviously different about it, except the unusual personalisation of the message. She would forward it for his attention.

The back roads around Westmeare led to some of the most rural areas of the county. Craig Gillard and Claire Mulholland sat in his unmarked Vauxhall, parked in the bus stop from which Beatrice Ulbricht may well have disappeared, raking over what little evidence they had. They had been driving around for an hour, looking for any clues to what an angry young woman might have decided to do after leaving a nearby house.

‘All right,’ Claire said, looking down at her list. ‘Mobile reception is pretty poor just here, I’ve only got one bar on mine. There is a taxi firm in the village, a one-man band who was on an airport run on the evening in question. He claims not to have received any calls from Beatrice, and of course that checks out with her own mobile. The next nearest firms are in Guildford, ten to fifteen minutes away.’

Gillard nodded, his fingers gripping and ungripping the steering wheel. ‘We’ve got thousands of hits on the ANPR cameras around Earlsfield, not surprisingly, but the nearest camera to here is four miles away on the A25. We haven’t had any number plates that crop up on both. There are only three CCTV cameras in the village, one covering the pub car park and two at private homes. Uniforms are checking to see if they picked up any passing traffic.’

She leafed through the various sheets. ‘Mr Edward Lightfoot, seventy-seven, driving his van, said he saw a young woman with a hat, scarf and violin standing at the bus stop in Shere Road in the pouring rain a bit before eleven p.m. He guessed that there wouldn’t be any more buses that day, and had considered stopping to give her a lift, but decided not to.’

‘Why?’

‘He didn’t want any accusations, that’s what the statement says. “I felt guilty even considering it. But after what happened I feel even worse.” He says he’s got a granddaughter of Beatrice’s age.’ She looked up at Gillard.

‘Do we have the number plate of his van?’

Claire shook her head. ‘Not on here.’

‘What idiot did the interview?’ He looked across at the uniformed officer’s name, but didn’t recognise it. ‘Okay, let’s get it and find out if the van flashed up on any ANPR in Earlsfield on Tuesday afternoon.’

‘Not got much, have we?’ Claire asked.

‘Let’s pray for forensics first thing tomorrow.’

Gillard drove Claire back to her home at Staines that evening. It was raining heavily yet again, and while stuck in heavy traffic they listened to the Lysander Quartet’s first and only CD, which he had bought for ten pounds from Karen Ellsworth when he last interviewed her. He was no expert on string quartets, but he found himself enraptured by the beauty of the playing.