He lifted his arms hopelessly and humorously, a willingly abject figure of fun. Ben certainly found it amusing. He gave himself a second, subsidiary shake, watched his two human companions leap ineffectively away from him, and then came forward for the stroking he felt was due to him from his dripping victim.
âI used to have a Labrador myself,â the man said. And Emily understood in that moment that everything was accepted and everything was forgiven. They exchanged indulgent thoughts about the Labrador breed and its production line of likeable rogues like Ben, then moved affably on their different ways.
Emily decided that she would walk as far as the next big curve in the river. That would give her a brisk round trip of four miles, though Benâs energy and curiosity had carried him at least twice as far as that already. After another two hundred yards, she would turn back and follow the path gently up-river with the autumn sun on her back. Meantime, she mused with a pleasant melancholy upon life, and her own life in particular. In another ten or fifteen years, she would be as old as that pleasant and tolerant man who had just accepted his dousing from Ben. Those years would pass very quickly, she knew. She wished that she could pin herself exactly where she was and enjoy the years she had left with all the faculties and all the knowledge she had at present. She thought she was probably happier now than she had been at any stage in her life.
These reflections were interrupted by Benâs abrupt disappearance again towards the river, at a point where there had been a little subsidence and the bank dropped away steeply towards the quietly moving waters beneath it. Emily called him repeatedly, skirting the point where he had disappeared cautiously in the belief that he would emerge at any moment and re-enact his galvanic plunging and localized shower-bath.
The dog did not respond to his name. His mistress peered cautiously down on his activity at the edge of the river. Ben was not swimming and being carried downstream, as she had expected. He was investigating something at the edge of the water. He grasped what looked to her like cotton in his strong jaws as she watched. Then, digging his paws into the wet earth behind him, he dragged his trophy first to the edge of the water and then on to the muddy lower section of the bank. His tail wagged vigorously with his excitement.
Blue clothing. Long, wet strands of childish hair. Emily Patten knew what Ben had found seconds before she gazed in horror at the pale, dead face of Lucy Gibson.
SEVEN
L ambert received the news that the girl was dead as he was driving to see her father. He listened to the first sombre details and was assured that the post-mortem examination would be done immediately. Child murder leapt ahead of the varied multitude of deaths in other minds as well as his.
Neither he nor Hook spoke for several miles as they drove up the A449. They had worked together for many years. Each knew that the other was thinking of his own children, and, in Lambertâs case, grandchildren. It wasnât long before they ran into the small town. Both of them could have used a little more time to compose themselves for the things they had to do and the news they had to give.
Dean Gibson had been discovered by the police machine. He was living not in Malvern but in the ancient town of Ledbury, some eight miles nearer to their base at Oldford. He was lodged in a mean little terrace of houses that ran away from the main street and down towards the modern wasteland of a supermarket car park. What had once been a quiet street was now a noisy and unpleasant spot, though handy for the centre of the town and its amenities.
The door needed a coat of paint. The woman who opened it would also have benefited from a little restoration. She was overweight, though not drastically so; her waist had almost disappeared, but she was shapeless rather than obese. Her hair was
âI used to have a Labrador myself,â the man said. And Emily understood in that moment that everything was accepted and everything was forgiven. They exchanged indulgent thoughts about the Labrador breed and its production line of likeable rogues like Ben, then moved affably on their different ways.
Emily decided that she would walk as far as the next big curve in the river. That would give her a brisk round trip of four miles, though Benâs energy and curiosity had carried him at least twice as far as that already. After another two hundred yards, she would turn back and follow the path gently up-river with the autumn sun on her back. Meantime, she mused with a pleasant melancholy upon life, and her own life in particular. In another ten or fifteen years, she would be as old as that pleasant and tolerant man who had just accepted his dousing from Ben. Those years would pass very quickly, she knew. She wished that she could pin herself exactly where she was and enjoy the years she had left with all the faculties and all the knowledge she had at present. She thought she was probably happier now than she had been at any stage in her life.
These reflections were interrupted by Benâs abrupt disappearance again towards the river, at a point where there had been a little subsidence and the bank dropped away steeply towards the quietly moving waters beneath it. Emily called him repeatedly, skirting the point where he had disappeared cautiously in the belief that he would emerge at any moment and re-enact his galvanic plunging and localized shower-bath.
The dog did not respond to his name. His mistress peered cautiously down on his activity at the edge of the river. Ben was not swimming and being carried downstream, as she had expected. He was investigating something at the edge of the water. He grasped what looked to her like cotton in his strong jaws as she watched. Then, digging his paws into the wet earth behind him, he dragged his trophy first to the edge of the water and then on to the muddy lower section of the bank. His tail wagged vigorously with his excitement.
Blue clothing. Long, wet strands of childish hair. Emily Patten knew what Ben had found seconds before she gazed in horror at the pale, dead face of Lucy Gibson.
SEVEN
L ambert received the news that the girl was dead as he was driving to see her father. He listened to the first sombre details and was assured that the post-mortem examination would be done immediately. Child murder leapt ahead of the varied multitude of deaths in other minds as well as his.
Neither he nor Hook spoke for several miles as they drove up the A449. They had worked together for many years. Each knew that the other was thinking of his own children, and, in Lambertâs case, grandchildren. It wasnât long before they ran into the small town. Both of them could have used a little more time to compose themselves for the things they had to do and the news they had to give.
Dean Gibson had been discovered by the police machine. He was living not in Malvern but in the ancient town of Ledbury, some eight miles nearer to their base at Oldford. He was lodged in a mean little terrace of houses that ran away from the main street and down towards the modern wasteland of a supermarket car park. What had once been a quiet street was now a noisy and unpleasant spot, though handy for the centre of the town and its amenities.
The door needed a coat of paint. The woman who opened it would also have benefited from a little restoration. She was overweight, though not drastically so; her waist had almost disappeared, but she was shapeless rather than obese. Her hair was
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