Free Tyack & Frayne Mysteries 01 - Once Upon A Haunted Moor by Harper Fox

did meet the traditional copper’s requirement of having great big feet. Isolde’s leash had been neatly hung on its hook. Briefly Gideon indulged a fantasy where Lee had heard him coming down the lane and run back upstairs to bed, where he was now waiting seductively.
    He was a forthright soul, but Gideon didn’t think that was quite his style. He went up to have a look anyway. The stupid thing was that he’d have had to turn him down. He couldn’t believe that, after so many uneventful years, he had a lover to deal with on the same day as a child abductor. He looked around the bedroom. “Lee?”
    The chair where Lee had set down his holdall was vacant. The pile of his clothes was gone. In the bathroom, only Gideon’s own spartan kit of washing and shaving gear stared back at him. The house was empty.
    Gideon went back downstairs. He checked that Isolde had fresh water, then he shrugged into his uniform waterproof and locked up the house behind him. Bowing his head against the rain, he went to get the Rover from her car port round the side of the house. He’d been headed out to Joe Kemp’s pastures, and that was where he had to go.
    Nothing had changed. Something very ordinary had happened, that was all – a sweet but impulsive man had spent an hour or so alone, cooling off on a rainy morning after. He’d kindly washed up and walked the dog, but then he’d packed up his things and left. He would know that Gideon could track him down through the Truro police, but he’d conveyed his plea to be left alone by not leaving a note. All this was normal, far more the way of the world than passion and companionship out of nowhere, a magical end to being alone. In fact Gideon’s night with Lee Tyack now felt far more like a fairytale than the idea of the Bodmin Beast. Gideon sat in the damp silence, the scents of his waterproof and the Rover’s upholstery – vinyl, strong hint of dog – catching at the edges of his attention. Given his treatment of James, his long failure to stand up for his lover, for himself and his life, he supposed this was pretty much what he deserved. Yes, everything as right and grim as Bodmin rain, except...
    Except for Lee. Gideon had only known him for twenty four hours, but he couldn’t fit this exit, this quiet, neat departure, with what he’d seen of the man. It was too...
    Too tidy. The wet windscreen dissolved, and suddenly Gideon was back in Sarah Kemp’s house two years before. He was looking around the bedroom she’d occupied with Alf. She hadn’t been heartbroken by his departure – a bit relieved, maybe. She’d turned to Gideon with a tired, resigned smile. Well, that’s him gone, I suppose. At least he left everything tidy. Not like him at all.
    It was like Lee. Gideon thought about the shoes he’d politely taken off before curling up on the sofa, the wellingtons left on a sheet of newspaper in the porch. No incongruity there. What was odd was the state of the bed. Lee hadn’t touched it, not even pulled the duvet back to air. It had still looked as though orangutans had wrestled away a night there.
    Incongruity, a thing that didn’t fit. Mute messages – a tidy room left by an untidy man, and a rumpled bed left by...
    Gideon leaned forward, clenching one hand on the wheel. “Oh, God, Joe. No!”
     
    ***
     
    He radioed Liz and asked her to call the local taxi firm, as well as the inveterately nosy Mrs Poldue, whose house overlooked the bus stop – also to find any numbers listed on Lee Tyack’s website and call those. By the time he had driven back to the station, Liz was on the steps to meet him, hands spread wide. “No, Gideon. He’s not answering. And nobody’s seen him – nobody at all.”
    Up the street, cars were pulling to a halt. Two were unmarked but a third had all lights blazing, livery glowing bright in th e rain. The Truro detective inspector emerged from it, fastening up his coat. He held out a hand. “Hear you’ve had a breakthrough in the Lorna