“But we know all her haunts. Arbor Low. Thor's Cave. Peveril Castle.” Nan mentioned half a dozen other locations, all of them inadvertently serving to underscore the point that Julian had been attempting to make: There was no correlation between Nicola's favourite spots and their locations in the Peak District. They were as far north as the outskirts of Holmfirth, as far south as Ashbourne and the lower part of the Tissington Trail. It was going to take a team to find her.
Andy pulled a bottle out of a cupboard, along with three tumblers. Into each he poured a shot of brandy. He handed round the glasses, saying, “Get that down.”
Nan's hands circled her glass, but she didn't drink. “Something's happened to her.”
“We don't know anything. That's why the police are on their way.”
The police, in the person of an ageing constable called Price, arrived not thirty minutes later. He asked the expected questions of them: When had she left? How was she equipped? Had she set off alone? What seemed to be her state of mind? Depressed? Unhappy? Worried? What had she declared as her intentions? Had she actually stated a time of her return? Who spoke to her last? Had she received any visitors? Letters? Phone calls? Had anything happened recently that might have prompted her to run off?
Julian joined Andy and Nan Maiden in their efforts to impress upon Constable Price the gravity of Nicola's failure to reappear at Maiden Hall. But Price seemed determined to go his own way, and a painstaking, hair-tearingly slow way it was. He wrote in his notebook at a ponderous pace, taking down a description of Nicola. He wanted to know about her equipment. He took them through her activities during the last two weeks. And he seemed terminally fascinated by the fact that, on the morning before she'd left for her hike, she'd received three phone calls from individuals who wouldn't give their names so that Nan could pass them along to Nicola before she came to the phone.
“One man and two women?” Price asked four times.
“I don't know, I don't know. And what does it matter?” Nan said testily. “It may have been the same woman calling twice. What difference does it make? What's that got to do with Nicola?”
“But just one man?” Constable Price said.
“God in heaven, how many times am I going to have to—”
“One man,” Andy interposed.
Nan pressed her lips into an angry line. Her eyes bored holes into Price's skull. “One man,” she repeated.
“It wasn't you who phoned?” This to Julian.
“I know Julian's voice,” Nan said. “It wasn't Julian.”
“But you have a relationship with the young lady, Mr. Britton?”
“They're engaged to be married,” Nan said.
“Not exactly engaged,” Julian quickly clarified, and he cursed in silence as the damnable heat rose from his collar-bone to suffuse his cheeks yet again.
“Had a bit of a quarrel?” Price asked, voice shrewd. “Another man involved where you didn't like it?”
Jesus, Julian thought. Why did everyone assume they'd rowed? There hadn't been a single harsh word between them. There hadn't been time for that.
They hadn't quarreled, Julian reported steadily. And he knew nothing about another man. Absolutely nothing, he asserted for good measure.
“They had a date to talk about their wedding plans,” Nan said.
“Well, actually—”
“D'you honestly know any woman who'd fail to show up for that?”
“And you are certain she intended to return by this evening?” Constable Price asked Andy He shifted his eyes over his notes, going on to say, “Her gear suggests she might have intended a longer outing.”
“I hadn't thought much about it till Julian stopped by to fetch her to Sheffield,” Andy admitted.
“Ah.” The constable eyed Julian with more suspicion than Julian felt was warranted. Then he flipped his notebook closed. The radio receiver that he wore from his shoulder buzzed with an incomprehensible stream of babble. He reached up and turned down the volume. Easing his notebook into his pocket, he said, “Well. She's done a runner before, and this's no different to that, I expect. We'll have ourselves a wait till—”
“What're you talking about?” Nan cut in. “This isn't a runaway teenager we're reporting. She's twenty-five years old, for heaven's sake.
She's a responsible adult. She has a job. A boyfriend. A family. She hasn't run off. She's disappeared.”
“At present, p'rhaps she has,” the constable agreed. “But as she's bunked off before—and our files do show that, madam—till we know she's not doing another runner, we can't send a team out after her.”
“She was seventeen years old when she last ran off,” Nan argued. “We'd just moved here from London. She was lonely, unhappy. We were caught up getting the Hall in order and we failed to give her the proper attention. All she'd needed was guidance so that—”
“Nancy.” Andy put his hand gently on the back of her neck.
“We can't just do nothing!”
“No choice in the matter,” the constable said implacably. “We've got our procedures. I'll make my report, and if she's not turned up by this time tomorrow, we'll have ourselves another look at the problem.”