Free No Trace by Barry Maitland Page A

disappeared. She mentioned this to the desk sergeant who said, didn’t she know that those things were valuable? Apparently they were changing hands in the local pubs and market and on the internet for as much as two hundred pounds, some said, especially to foreigners. ‘Well, they’re works of art, aren’t they? Signed original Gabriel Rudds.’
    Bren looked as if he’d had little sleep the previous night. His breathing was shallow, his gaze bleary. Kathy had found him in the control room, in front of the big map. Two women working on their computers ignored them as Kathy and Bren sat together with mugs of coffee. The mugs came from a small tea-making alcove outside, and were stained and chipped from continuous use.
    ‘I’ve been over this ground so often it’s becoming a blur.We haven’t been able to come up with any convincing connection between the profiler’s magic circle and the site of the third abduction, Northcote Square. There’s one little thing I keep coming back to, Kathy,’ Bren said wearily. ‘But I can’t think straight any more, so maybe you can tell me if I’m just getting fixated or what.’
    ‘Go on.’
    Bren pointed to the red and yellow spots and the black circle. ‘We’ve interviewed every single person inside that circle, some several times. Nothing. Now Aimee and Lee went to school by bus, on different routes, from different stops. Their mums go to different shops and as far as we’ve been able to tell their paths may never have crossed . . . except there.’ He rose and pressed a fingernail to a small cross.‘This is where Aimee caught her bus, and sometimes, not regularly, if Lee and her friends missed their usual bus home, they would take a different route that comes to this same stop. There’s a row of shops there with a newsagent, where both girls have bought sweets. It’s possible that they even stood together in the same queue at the counter.’ He turned to Kathy with a look almost of appeal. ‘That’s the only place we’ve been able to find where their paths actually crossed.’
    ‘Sounds significant.’
    ‘But is it? I thought it might be, but we’ve turned up nothing.’
    He looked ashen under the glare of the fluorescent lights. She said,‘Why don’t we go there and you can show me.’
    It was at the other end of the borough, and they decided to take a car.
    The place was a nondescript section of street, busy with traffic and indistinguishable from any other. The abductor might have been passing, Bren thought, in a car perhaps or on foot, and first spotted the two girls here. At that moment, a red double-decker pulled up at the stop opposite the newsagent and Kathy looked up at several faces on the top deck gazing down at them.
    ‘Or he might live around here.’ Bren gestured to the row of houses across the street, and the windows of flats over the shops. ‘But we’ve checked everyone in the immediate vicinity and found nothing. The shopkeepers haven’t been able to help.’
    The bus moved off and they crossed the street. Pictures of Aimee and Lee stared out at them from the window of the newsagent. When they reached the doorway they turned and looked back. Above the roofs of the houses opposite, the top two floors of a tall block of flats several streets away were now visible.
    ‘What about them?’ Kathy pointed.
    Bren frowned. The fresh air had revived him a little. ‘No, I don’t think we’ve been up there.’ He checked the map he’d brought. ‘It’s outside the magic circle.’
    ‘Shall we take a look?’
    Kathy directed Bren from the map, and they drew in at the base of a tall building on the Newman housing estate. They got into the lift and pressed the button for the topmost level. It was a graffiti-coated aluminium box, and Kathy made a comment about how Fergus Tait could probably sell it as an artwork. Bren didn’t get it, and she said,‘Come to the gallery tonight.You’ll see what I mean.’
    ‘It’s cut-up sheep and stuff like