Free The Hawkshead Hostage by Rebecca Tope Page A

unworthy feelings. ‘Well, that explains why she cried over him,’ she said faintly.
    ‘How well did you know him?’
    ‘Not at all. I only met him once, yesterday. He seemed very competent. Professional.’ Melanie had used the word okay about him, she remembered. Typical British understatement, apparently. ‘Have you told Ben’s parents he’s been abducted?’ she burst out. ‘That’s what matters now. I mean – if you find him, you’ll probably find the person who killed Dan as well. Won’t you?’
    He raised two steadying hands. ‘That’s rather a leap,’ he said. ‘But yes, one of our people went down to Helm Road an hour or so ago.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Maybe a bit less than that,’ he amended.
    ‘They’ll be frantic.’
    He tilted his head. ‘I’m not so sure. They’ll be used to the boy going off on his own adventures by now. And we certainly won’t be using the word abducted to describe what’s happened.’
    ‘What else would you call it?’
    ‘Simply that nobody seems sure of his whereabouts. That we’d like to speak to him about an incident near Hawkshead.’
    Simmy sighed. ‘Well Bonnie won’t swallow that, for one. Remember Bonnie Lawson? She and Ben are going out together, or whatever they call it these days. She loves him. She’s going to be searching for him.’
    ‘So you’ve told her?’ He gave her a heavy look, like a reproachful schoolmaster.
    ‘I have.’
    ‘Oh, well.’
    ‘She’s just as likely to find him as any of us,’ Simmy said. ‘They’ve got a very special bond.’
    ‘We’ll take all the help we can get,’ he said, with a hint of a smile.
    She had to force herself to ask the next question. ‘How exactly was he killed? Dan, I mean. Was it that place on his head?’
    He understood only too well how resistant she was to this kind of detail. Detective Inspector Nolan Moxon had a habit of reading Persimmon Brown better than she would have liked him to. Where others might puzzle him, she often appeared to be clear as a diamond. It made them both uncomfortably vulnerable and exposed. She had believed initially that he was simply in love with her, while she found his physical presence faintly repellent. Now she had met his wife and seen that he had a solid marriage despite a recent spell of trouble, it was all more complicated. She liked him better now and felt less sorry for him. He had improved his appearance recently, too. Over the winter he had often seemed a trifle unwashed, his hair greasy and his clothes unchanged. There had been subsequent hints of depression and marital distance to explain all that. Furthermore, there had been an intimacybetween them that went beyond the ordinary. They had witnessed each other’s extremes and the resulting relationship could not be denied.
    ‘We can’t say for certain,’ he said carefully. ‘The police doctor is always very cautious about that until there’s been a proper examination. There is, as you say, evidence of a blow to the head. And he was moved from the attack site to the water. We found the spot where the assault took place.’
    ‘The place where we found Ben’s phone,’ she said. ‘I suppose we shouldn’t really have touched it.’
    He smiled. ‘Anybody would have done the same.’
    ‘Why would they move him, though?’ She heard the word they echoing. ‘Do you think there could have been more than one of them?’
    He nodded. ‘One person couldn’t do it alone.’
    Simmy had not even begun to consider this idea. Instantly, it made sense. ‘Of course,’ she nodded. ‘A group, perhaps? Some sort of gang? So some of them killed Dan and dumped him in the lake, while others took Ben away.’ She visualised a bunch of hooded youths, up to something dreadful in the woods when Dan came across them. Perhaps they hadn’t meant to kill him. She almost smiled. It would surely be easy for the police to catch up with a whole gang, and make them relinquish the captive Ben. But then she thought