No Going Back Read online

  Now they were indeed getting to the truth of it, Daniel thought.

  ‘How old are they?’

  ‘Katya’s fifteen and her sister’s twelve. Please, Mr Whelan, you’ve got to help me. They’re all I’ve got.’

  They’re all I’ve got. The words stabbed through the defensive layers he’d so carefully gathered around him, bringing the past back with a jolt that made him physically wince. Please. She’s all I’ve got … A plea uttered by a woman at breaking point. Daniel could still clearly see the sad shake of the doctor’s head as he murmured, ‘I’m sorry – there was nothing we could do.’

  ‘Mr Whelan? Are you there?’

  Daniel dragged his thoughts back to the present.

  ‘Yes, I’m here.’

  ‘Do you have any children?’

  ‘Yes, a son.’ He looked out of the window at the blowing mist of rain and imagined Drew wandering on the moor, lost and afraid. He sighed, reluctantly coming to a decision. ‘OK, Mr Reynolds. Tell me exactly where you are and I’ll get there as soon as I can. I’ll need something belonging to the girls for the dog to scent.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I have a glove of Elena’s. Thank you so much.’

  ‘Well, I can’t make any promises. What the dog can do depends on a lot of things – including the conditions, and if this rain gets any heavier, they are going to be far from ideal. I strongly advise you to try the police again.’

  ‘I will, I will. But you will come, yes? It’s a car park on the Princetown road.’ Reynolds gave Daniel detailed directions and thanked him again profusely.

  It was nearly twenty minutes later when Daniel drove into the moorland car park of Stack Bridge, and the visibility had deteriorated further. The parking area was situated in a hollow with high rocky sides, a stunted hawthorn the only tree in sight. The delivery truck took up nearly a third of the available space.

  ‘Mr Reynolds? Any luck with Search and Rescue?’ Daniel asked as he jumped down from the cab and was met by a slim, dark-haired man in jeans and a tailored black leather coat. Another, taller man stood by a massive black 4x4 that was parked a few feet away.

  ‘I think they’ve got another emergency, over Bovey way.’ Reynolds’s accent was more pronounced in person and Daniel placed it somewhere in Eastern Europe. He was talking about Bovey Tracey, on the other side of the moor, and pronounced the word ‘Buvvy’, as the locals did. ‘They say they’ll come when they’ve finished, if we haven’t found her, but who knows when that will be?’

  ‘But … surely there’s more than one team?’

  Reynolds shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m just telling you what they said.’

  ‘OK. Well, we’ll give it a go with the dog.’

  Daniel reached back into the cab for his coat and a fluorescent tabard. After the warmth of the lorry, the drizzle-laden wind felt bitter and he wasn’t dressed for hiking. Any added protection would be welcome. Pity the youngsters out on the moor with no waterproofs.

  From a compartment under the dashboard he took a small LED torch and a large-scale walker’s map of the area, both of which he stuffed in an inside pocket. He would have liked a couple of blankets, a flask of hot tea and a backpack to stow them in, but it couldn’t be helped.

  ‘Come on, Taz. Work, boy,’ he told the German shepherd, who responded by jumping out of the cab with a whining bark of pure delight.

  Reynolds took a step backwards, eyeing the dog a little warily. Daniel took no notice – Taz was a particularly big shepherd and he was used to that kind of reaction.

  ‘It said in the paper that he’s an ex-police dog.’

  ‘Yeah, a friend of mine’s a copper,’ Daniel replied. ‘The dog was injured and had to retire. I took him on.’ Both statements were true, even if the whole was a little misleading. His years with the police had left him habitually close with information, and his reasons for leaving the service were something he certainly had no intention of sharing with a total stranger.

  ‘Your wife isn’t here?’ he asked in his turn as he took a long tracking lead and a padded black webbing harness from a holdall behind the seat. The harness was trimmed with fluorescent strips, which shone brightly in the light of the cab. Since the episode with the deaf child, Daniel had taken to carrying it with him, just in case.

  ‘No. The girls’ mother and I have separated, but my brother is here.’ Reynolds waved a hand to indicate the other man and continued, ‘I’m afraid he won’t come any closer. He was badly bitten by an Alsatian once.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Daniel gave the man a brief nod before turning back to Reynolds. ‘So, whereabouts are you from?’

  ‘Bristol.’

  ‘Do the girls normally live with you?’

  ‘No. With their mother.’

  Reynolds’s reply was terse and Daniel reined in his curiosity; after all, he was no longer a policeman and it was no business of his.

  Eager to work, Taz pushed his head through the harness when Daniel held it out, and it only took a moment to clip it on.

  As he straightened up, he glanced around. ‘It’s quite a remote spot. What brought you out here?’ He directed his question at the second man, but it was Reynolds who answered.

  ‘We came for a walk and a picnic. There was a bit of a disagreement, something quite trivial – you know what kids are – but Katya stormed off, taking Elena with her. I thought they’d be back when they’d cooled down, but when they didn’t come, I started to get worried …’

  ‘What about a mobile phone?’

  Reynolds shook his head. ‘They haven’t got one.’

  Daniel was surprised. A teenager without a phone was a rarity these days, especially as the 4x4 signified that money probably wasn’t an issue.

  ‘Oh well, it can’t be helped. Mobile coverage on the moor can be a bit hit and miss, anyway. In a steep-sided gully or on the wrong side of a tor, there’s no signal at all. Look, could they possibly have found their way home – to where you’re staying, I mean? Where is that?’

  ‘A caravan park. Er … The Pines.’ Reynolds waved his hand vaguely. ‘No, it’s miles away, and anyway, they set off in the wrong direction.’

  ‘You said on the phone that one of them isn’t strong? In what way? Is she ill?’

  ‘Elena has asthma.’

  ‘And you told the police that?’ Daniel probed, still more mystified about their apparent indifference.

  ‘No … Yes, I think so … I can’t exactly remember. I got rather angry,’ Reynolds admitted.

  Daniel zipped his leather jacket up to the neck and fastened the Velcro tabs of the high-visibility waistcoat. ‘Well, we’ll make a start, but I suggest you get back on the phone and explain your daughter’s condition. I’d be very surprised if it didn’t make a difference. Besides, it must be over an hour now. OK, where’s the glove you said you had?’

  ‘My brother has it.’ Reynolds turned and beckoned to the other man, who came forward cautiously, holding out a red mitten. He didn’t take his eyes off Taz for a moment. Perhaps responding to his fear, the dog growled deep in his throat, but quieted when Daniel put a hand on his head.

  ‘Thanks.’ Daniel took the woollen mitten and paused, looking the two men up and down. They were dark-haired, olive-skinned and looked to be in their late thirties. Both wore jeans and designer trainers, but where Reynolds had a jumper and leather coat, his taller companion sported a red hooded sweatshirt and some sort of canvas baseball jacket.

  They were both woefully unprepared for a trek into the wilderness of Dartmoor, and Daniel viewed the whole rescue mission with growing misgivings.

  ‘OK,’ he said briskly. ‘When we get started, I need you to stay directly behind me. Keep as quiet as you can, and whatever you do, don’t crowd me or the dog. Now, show me where you last saw the girls.’

  ‘This way.’ Beckoning, Reynolds left the car park and walked 20 or 30 feet back down the road. Crossing the narrow stone bridge that gave the beauty spot its name, he stopped at the point where a narrow sheep path wound uphill through the heather on to the moor.

  ‘I assumed they’d started from the car park,’ Daniel commented, catching up.

  ‘No, they came this way until they saw me coming after them, and then they took off up there,’ Reynolds said.

  Daniel regarded the steep, wet slope without joy. At the top of the rise, it almost looked as though the rain-laden clouds were touching the dark-brown tips of the heather. With an inner sigh he switched his mind to the matter in hand and, taking Taz to the edge of the narrow road, told him to sit. Then, straddling the dog, he bent down and held the red mitten over his long, black muzzle.

  He gave no command. The dog knew exactly what he had to do and immediately began drawing in deep breaths through the fabric, familiarizing himself with the girl’s unique smell. After four or five breaths, he started to fidget and Daniel waited just a few more seconds before slipping the glove into his pocket and telling the dog, ‘Go seek!’

  Instantly Taz’s head went down and within moments he had the scent and was away, Daniel hurrying in his wake, paying out the line so as not to hinder him.

  What ensued was a gruelling test of fitness for the three men following the dog. In the rapidly failing light the uneven ground was treacherous and Daniel thought grimly that it would be a miracle if one of them didn’t suffer an ankle sprain or worse before they got anywhere near their quarry.

  By the time they gained the top of the first rise, Daniel was breathing deeply and could hear the other two men labouring behind him. His trouser legs were saturated with water from the 18 inches or so of dank vegetation that crowded the path, and his face and hair were wet with the fine, misty drizzle. Of all of them, the dog alone was enjoying himself, powering forward at the end of the canvas line, unaffected by
either anxiety or the unpleasant conditions.

  Alternating between a jog and a fast walk, the three men made good progress for ten minutes or so before the path forked and the dog paused to cast around. The moor stretched away on all sides, a wilderness of rocks, grass, heather and the occasional stunted tree. Presumably the two girls had been unsure which way to go. Daniel waited, giving the shepherd plenty of line while he worked, and finally, after a false start up one trail, Taz set off with renewed confidence on the other.

  The original track had been twisting and turning, gaining height almost imperceptibly, but this new, narrower track immediately began to climb quite sharply, heading deeper into the moor and, it seemed to Daniel, towards a rocky outcrop on the far horizon.

  Did they hope to find shelter? he wondered. What manner of family argument sent two young girls into such desperate flight? He could only imagine that they had never meant to come this far but had lost all sense of direction in the bleak moorland landscape. They certainly wouldn’t be the first to do so.

  The searchers had covered less than half a mile on the new track when conditions changed for the worse. It was Reynolds who noticed it first. Daniel was busy watching the dog work, while trying to keep his footing on the loose stones of the path, when he felt a hand tap his shoulder. Slowing his pace only fractionally, he turned his head.

  ‘What is it?’

  Reynolds nodded significantly to their right. ‘Look!’ he said urgently.

  Daniel followed his gaze and had to blink and refocus. The world was shrinking. Somewhere between them and where the horizon had been just a few minutes ago, the brown carpet of wet heather now disappeared under a soft wall of greyish-white. Even as Daniel watched, the wall appeared to roll closer, swallowing up even more of the view.

  ‘Shit!’ He wasn’t worried about the mist interfering with the dog. With a sense of smell forty times sharper than a human, Taz had no need of good visibility to find the lost girls, and the trail seemed to be a good one. His concern was that the dense fog would make the already difficult terrain downright treacherous, not only for his group but also for the youngsters ahead.

  ‘We will keep going, yes?’ Reynolds looked anxious. He held out a small handheld device. ‘We won’t get lost – I have GPS.’

  ‘Well, we might need that before this is over, but I’d be happier if it could tell us where the bogs are.’

  A flicker of alarm crossed Reynolds’s face. The chance of blundering into one of Dartmoor’s infamous bogs clearly hadn’t occurred to him.

  ‘We should be all right as long as we’re on the path, but you’d better tell your brother to stay close. We don’t want to get separated when that lot hits us.’

  Daniel picked up the pace once more, scrambling up the steep rocky path after the eager dog.

  It seemed the girls had had the good sense to stay on the path, for Taz followed it unerringly, over the next rise, down a steep incline to a stream of bright tumbling water and up an equally steep slope to the base of the rocky outcrop. The water in the stream was icy, a fact to which Daniel could unhappily testify, as the only rocks that stood above the surface proved too slippery to use as stepping stones, depositing him knee-deep in the February torrent.

  Daniel cursed as his boots filled with water and he attacked the slope with legs that were beginning to burn with fatigue. From the colourful language behind, he guessed his companions had fared no better.

  Halfway up the hill, the fog caught them, enfolding them in a smothering white cloud, like some huge damp duvet, deadening sound. All at once visibility was a 3-foot circle round their feet and Daniel’s contact with Taz became restricted to the tug of the lead as he leaned into his harness some 10 feet ahead.

  Rocks and low clumps of gorse took on sinister shapes, looming out of the gloom and just as quickly disappearing once more.

  After ten minutes or so, the dog paused, and feeling his way cautiously forward, Daniel found that they were at the foot of the rocky cliff they had seen from the other side of the valley. Taz cast around the base of the rock, apparently unsure, allowing his human followers a grateful moment or two to catch their breath.

  Daniel looked at his watch. They had been on the moor for almost an hour, keeping up a steady pace. Surely the two girls couldn’t be very far ahead.

  As if reading Daniel’s thoughts, Reynolds suddenly said from close behind, ‘When we find them, you must move back with the dog, straight away. Elena will be terrified if it gets too close.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, but the dog will naturally reach them first.’ Reynolds’s dictatorial tone grated on Daniel, but he didn’t let his annoyance show. The man was under severe emotional strain. ‘When he does, he’ll bark, but he won’t touch them.’

  Reynolds looked less than happy, but before he could reply, Taz picked up a strong scent to the left of the rock and surged forward.

  ‘Steady, Taz. I can’t see a bloody thing!’ Daniel told him, slipping and stumbling over the smaller rocks at the base of the outcrop, but the shepherd was excited now, his enthusiasm transmitting clearly down the tracking line to Daniel’s hand. All at once the line went slack and a short, sharp bark carried back on the swirling misty air.

  ‘Good lad. Stay there!’ Daniel began to gather up the looping canvas and feel his way towards the dog. ‘He’s found them,’ he said over his shoulder.

  As Taz uttered another bark and then another, Reynolds barged roughly in front of Daniel and plunged ahead into the fog.

  ‘No, wait!’ Daniel’s command went unheeded, and swearing under his breath, he hurried after him, gathering in the line as he went.

  After a moment, he saw Taz through the milky whiteness and, beyond him, a taller shape that was almost certainly Reynolds. Daniel heard a scream, cutting off abruptly, and then Reynolds shouted, ‘It’s Elena. Take that dog away!’

  When Daniel reached Taz, he was growling in a low, grumbling fashion, no doubt unsettled by Reynolds’s interference – as he saw it – in the execution of his duty. Daniel calmed the dog’s ruffled feelings with a word and told him what a clever boy he was, pulling a tug toy from his pocket as a reward.

  As he played with the dog, the second man passed him and went to where Reynolds, just feet away, was cradling the slight figure of a child. The girl’s jumper now showed as a splash of orange through the fog and Daniel caught a glimpse of a thin, white face with enormous eyes and dark, straggly hair before her father hugged her closer and snapped crossly, ‘Take that fucking dog away!’

  Your daughter would still be lost if it wasn’t for the ‘fucking dog’, Daniel thought, keeping a lid on his temper with an effort. Police work had taught him to accept that stress can adversely affect the behaviour of the most genial of people, and he doubted that Reynolds was ever particularly genial, even on a good day. He retreated a few paces.

  ‘Is she all right? Are they both there?’

  ‘No. Katya’s gone on alone. We have to find her.’

  ‘We can try, but it won’t be easy,’ Daniel warned. ‘The dog’s been working for an hour or more. He’ll be tired, and as far as he’s concerned, the job’s done.’

  ‘But he can do it, right?’ Reynolds materialized out of the mist, empty-handed. He made a quick gesture behind. ‘Elena’s OK. Just a bit cold and frightened. My brother will stay with her. I’m sorry I shouted. We must go on.’

  ‘Does Elena know which way her sister went?’

  ‘She’s not sure.’

  Daniel sighed. ‘I wish they’d stayed together. It’s so important.’

  Leading the dog on a little further, away from the confusing scent of his first quarry, he gave him the command to ‘seek on’.

  At first, Taz was unenthusiastic, casting about in a half-hearted way before coming back to Daniel with his ears flattened and his tail held low. He was clearly unsure of what was expected and Daniel repeated the command. Obediently the shepherd dropped his nose once more and began to quarter the area. In spite of the unpleasant conditions and the desperate urgency of the search, Daniel felt a warm glow of pride for his dog. He was fairly young and relatively inexperienced, but he was trying hard.

  Just when it seemed that all his efforts were going to be in vain, Daniel saw Taz’s tail come up and begin to wave, and with a renewed sense of purpose he set off once more, pulling into his harness as he moved away along a ridge.