“Always has done,” Andy replied. “You know Nicola.”
How well he did. “Where? Did she take the proper gear?”
Andy turned from storing his knives. Obviously, he heard something worrying in Julian's tone. “She wouldn't have gone without her gear. She knows how fast the weather changes out there. At any rate, I helped her stow it in the car myself. Why? What's going on? Did you two have a row?”
Julian could give a truthful answer to the last question. They hadn't had a row, at least not what Andy would have considered a row. He said, “Andy, she should've been back by now. We were going to Sheffield. She wanted to see a film—”
“At this time of night?”
“A special showing.” Julian felt his face getting hot as he explained the tradition behind The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But Andy's time undercover in what he always referred to as his Other Life had exposed him to the film long ago, and he waved the explanation off. This time, when he reached for his moustache and stroked it thoughtfully, he frowned as well.
“You're certain about the night? She couldn't have thought you meant tomorrow?”
“I should have preferred to see her last night,” Julian said. “It was Nicola who set the date for tonight. And I'm certain she said she'd be back this afternoon. I'm certain.”
Andy dropped his hand. His eyes were grave. He looked beyond Julian to the casement window above the sink. There was nothing to see but their reflections. But Julian knew from his expression that Andy was thinking about what lay beyond them, in the darkness. Vast moors populated only by sheep; abandoned quarries reclaimed by nature; limestone cliffs giving way to screes; prehistoric fortresses of tumbling stone. There were myriad limestone caves to entrap one, copper mines whose walls and ceilings could collapse, cairns whose hotchpotch of stones could snap the ankle of an unwary hiker, gritstone ridges where a climber could fall and lie for days or weeks before being found. The district stretched from Manchester to Sheffield, from Stoke-on-Trent to Derby, and more than a dozen times each year Mountain Rescue was called to bring in someone who'd broken an arm or a leg—or worse—in the Peaks. If Andy Maiden's daughter was lost or hurt somewhere out there, it was going to take the effort of more than two men standing in a kitchen to find her.
Andy said, “Let's get on to the police, Julian.”
? ? ?
Julian's initial impulse also was to phone the police. Upon reflection, however, he dreaded the thought of everything phoning the police implied. But in this brief moment of his hesitation, Andy acted. He strode out to the reception desk to make the call.
Julian hurried after him. He found Andy hunched over the phone as if he intended to shelter himself from potential eavesdroppers. Still, only he and Julian stood in Reception while the Halls guests lingered over coffees and brandies in the lounge at the other end of the corridor.
It was from this direction that Nan Maiden approached just as Andy's connection to the Buxton police went through. She came out of the lounge bearing a tray that held an empty cafetiére and the used cups and saucers of coffee for two. She smiled and said, “Why, Julian! Hullo. We weren't expecting …” but her words petered out as she took in her husband's surreptitious appearance—huddled over the phone like an anonymous caller—and Julian's accomplice-like hovering nearby. “What's going on?”
At her question, Julian felt as if the word guilty were tattooed on his forehead. When Nan said, “What's happened?” he said nothing and waited for Andy to take the lead. Nicola's father, however, spoke in a low voice into the phone, saying, “Twenty-five,” and completely ignoring what his wife had asked.
But twenty-five seemed to tell Nan what Julian wouldn't put into words and what Andy avoided. “Nicola,” she breathed. And she joined them at the reception desk, sliding her tray onto its surface, where it dislodged a willow basket of hotel brochures that tumbled to the floor. No one picked them up. “Has something happened to Nicola?”
Andy's answer was calm. “Julian and Nick had a date this evening, which she's apparently forgotten,” he told his wife, left hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “We're trying to track her down.” He offered the lie ingenuously, with the skill of a man who'd once made falsehood his stock-in-trade. “I was thinking that she might have gone to see Will Upman on her way home, to pave the way for another job next summer. Everything all right with the guests, love?”
Nan's quick grey eyes darted from her husband to Julian. “Exactly who're you talking to, Andy?”
“Nancy …”
“Tell me.”