Tristan had started to make notes on his phone.

  ‘What was your colleague called?’

  ‘I can’t remember, he was a uniform officer, quite cute,’ said Ade.

  ‘Are you still in touch?’

  ‘I can’t remember his name, so no.’ Ade carried on reading in silence for a moment. ‘Ah, yes! The grandmother. Jesus, she was a piece of work.’

  ‘Jean Julings?’

  ‘Yes. When we got there, it was a surreal sight. The sun was just coming up, and Jean and her daughter, Becky, were fighting. Physically fighting, rolling around like two WWE fighters in the long grass next to one of the tents. They were both bloodied and bruised. Joel was trying to pull them apart.’

  ‘Why were they fighting?’ asked Tristan.

  ‘Becky blamed Jean for the boy getting lost. We thought he had wandered off on the moors. However, Becky was convinced that Jean’s boyfriend was responsible for Charlie going missing.’

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ade said, consulting his notes. ‘A guy called Declan Connoly. He was there with Jean just before the boy went missing. Declan Connoly was already known to the police. A few weeks before, an officer caught him in a pub with an underage girl. Someone had rung the police saying he was buying this girl drinks. She was only twelve. The police got there before anything nasty happened, and the girl seemed to be with him voluntarily. There was some confusion at the time if she was an underage prostitute,’ said Ade, reading from neatly written notes in black ink. ‘Declan also had a prison record. He’d spent time inside for burglary and GBH. He’d been in an on-off relationship with Jean Julings for years, ever since they were young. Later that morning, one of the backup squad cars who came to help with the search found him in his car in a ditch a mile from Devil’s Way.’

  Ade looked up from his notes.

  ‘Did you say you’ve been hired by Jean Julings, the grandmother?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tristan. ‘What did the police do when they found Declan?’

  ‘They took him to Exeter A&E where they checked him over. We were in the middle of organising a search. Dartmoor National Park got involved. They recruited a big group for the search, which we conducted for the next twenty-four hours, but we never found the boy. We called in the scent dogs, and they followed it to the river, if I remember, and then the trail went dead. It led us to believe he fell into the water and was swept away. The river was churning and raging when we came down to do the search.’

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Tristan. Ade checked his paperwork.

  ‘That was as far as I went with it, but I do remember that the police took in Declan for questioning a couple of weeks later. And they found some of Charlie’s blood in his car.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the back seat, I think. The police brought in Jean for questioning, and she stuck up for Declan. He’d taken Charlie and Jean out for the day a few weeks before the disappearance. Charlie had been playing in a park and cut his hand on a piece of glass. He said that’s where the blood in the car came from.’

  ‘Did the police charge Declan?’

  ‘No. We didn’t have enough evidence. The daughter, Becky, confirmed that Charlie had cut himself.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I don’t know, Tris. I didn’t move forward with the case. I was reassigned to something else. I think that’s when things went cold. The evidence pointed towards the boy falling into the river. It was a raging muddy torrent,’ said Ade. ‘We couldn’t cross it with the sniffer dogs, and the search party made up of locals had to be very careful, too.’

  ‘Had it rained?’ asked Tristan.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ said Ade. ‘Like the Tor, the river’s called the Devil’s Way, and it runs into the Devil’s Gorge. At the base of the gorge, the water disappears into a strange sinkhole, like a bubbling cauldron.’

  ‘If Charlie fell into the river, could he have been washed down the gorge and into this sinkhole?’

  Ade sat back and thought for a moment.

  ‘The sinkhole was covered by a grate, so the boy couldn’t have gone down it. That grate would have stopped him. That’s what kept the case open and unsolved, as far as I can remember,’ he said.

  ‘Do you have the names of the other police officers who worked on the case?’

  ‘I’d have to go back over my notes. You should take a look at Devil’s Way. I’d be interested to see what you think.’

  As Tristan leafed through the photocopied notes, he could tell that Ade’s interest had been spiked about the old case.

  ‘Thank you for helping me,’ said Tristan.

  ‘I’ve got nothing better to do,’ said Ade airily. ‘And, if I’m honest, I’ve missed your ugly mug.’

  Tristan smiled.

  ‘I’ve missed yours, too.’

  ‘Cheeky.’

  ‘Can I have copies of those notes?’

  Ade looked down at the paperwork for a moment.

  ‘You are the mistress of manipulation, Miss Marple. If I let you have copies, you have to know that these don’t officially exist, understand?’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Good. Now have you got time for another cuppa before you go?’

  12

  It had been a hot day, and the sun was still shining bright when Tristan picked Kate up just after 6.30pm. She had been sleeping most of the day, and felt only a little better.

  The journey from Ashdean to Bovey Tracey on the edge of Dartmoor took about forty minutes. They rode in silence, watching the beauty of the coastline roll out. When they reached Bovey Tracey, the dual carriageway became a single-lane road for a few miles along the edge of Dartmoor. They had to go slowly for the next ten minutes as the road surface alternated between tarmac and a gravel track across the moorland. Then trees rose out of the landscape, and the road entered a tunnel of ancient oaks, blocking the sunlight. They continued driving in the gloom for a few minutes until the tunnel of trees thinned and the road banked down on a steep hill. At the bottom was a deep ford where the water was rushing across the road. Tristan slowed the car and came to a stop at the edge.

  ‘I hate fords,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ agreed Kate. She already knew they would have to drive back in the dark, and she suddenly felt uneasy. They should have left it until the next day.

  ‘We do want to see Devil’s Way in the dark. To get an idea of what it was like when they were camping,’ said Tristan, seeming to read her mind.

  Kate peered at the water in the gloom, surging silently past.

  ‘Just go very slowly,’ she said. Tristan pressed his foot down gently on the gas and steered the car into the water.

  ‘Are fords normally this deep?’ said Tristan, looking out the car window as the water spattered up the glass.

  ‘This is a mini, and it rained last night,’ Kate replied. She gripped the side of the door and felt the wheels shift under them as they reached the middle of the ford. The car lurched and seemed to leave the road and float for a moment, and then there was a roar as the wheels gripped the tarmac. Tristan regained control as they drove up and out of the water on the other side.

  The road wound down through another steep tunnel of trees, where it grew so dark with the surrounding thick foliage that Tristan flicked on the car’s headlights. And then they burst out into the hazy sunlight and open moor. It was now half past seven, and they passed a couple of tors casting long shadows. The road was now just an earth track, which threaded its way down across a broad platform of moorland stretching far away to the hazy horizon.

  ‘Okay. This up ahead should be Devil’s Way,’ said Tristan, peering at the GPS on his phone.

  ‘Is this the only route to Devil’s Way?’ asked Kate. Tristan took his phone out of its holder and handed it to her. She zoomed out of the GPS map, where the expanse of green on both sides was moving past. ‘The is the only road. The other sides of the Tor are open to the moorland and the Devil’s Way river.’

  The road straightened up as it led them down to a deep groove in the fields, and then it banked sharply up. When they reached the crest of the hill, they saw the Devil’s Tor in the distance. It stood out and looked like a giant had stacked a pile of pebbles on a raised platform of rock and grass.

  As they drew close, it grew bigger and towered above them when the dirt road ended. There was a small patch of flattened ground on the roadside of the Tor, but Tristan drove around the large grass base, and on the other side, they saw the ancient tree from the news reports about Charlie’s disappearance.

  Kate hadn’t thought much about why the place was called Devil’s Way – living in Devon and Cornwall for so long, you became blasé about these names. When they got out of the car, they looked over the short expanse of grass to the tree. It had no leaves, but the branches were ancient and thick. They reached out to make a vast canopy in all directions, so the tree cast shade even without leaves. A flock of black crows perched high on the branches at the top of the tree, and when Tristan closed his door, the sound echoed like a gunshot. The birds took flight with a collective caw across the blue sky.

  There was a thick silence in the air and no breeze. As Kate and Tristan stood in the quiet, the sound of running water started to echo around them.

  Tristan locked the car, and they walked up the grassy slope and around the stacked stones of the Tor. The landscape was so vast that their perception of distance was slightly skewed. Kate couldn’t work out how far they could see. The moor was twenty miles wide from east to west, and at three hundred and sixty-eight square miles, there were lots of places for a small child to get lost.

  ‘Let’s take a look at the river,’ said Kate. They walked down the grass slope on the opposite side. They passed between a cluster of granite boulders at the base and emerged next to a fast-running river winding through a rock seam. It was idyllic and surrounded by mossy boulders and grass on the banks. When they reached the water’s edge, Kate could see it was about ten metres wide and very clear. It wasn’t deep, perhaps a metre or more. Tristan slipped off his flip-flops and sat down on a rock, dipping his toes into the water.

  ‘Wow, that’s cold. Lovely and cold,’ he said. Kate followed and sat down beside him. She pulled off her shoes and sighed with pleasure as her bare feet hit the cool running water. Tristan slid off the rock and waded out.

  ‘I’m trying to remember how tall a three-year-old is?’ asked Kate, looking at Tristan. The water came up to the top of his thighs at the deepest point in the middle. She thought back to when Jake was three of four, but during this period, she’d been in the worst grip of her alcoholism. Her memory of that time was hazy.

  Tristan turned to her and exhaled, arching his back and blowing out his cheeks at the feel of the cold water.

  ‘A bit below my waist? My nephew is nine months old, and he’s about this big,’ he said, holding his hands a couple of feet apart. Kate laughed.

  ‘You’re what? Six feet tall?’

  ‘Six two.’

  ‘If Charlie had fallen in here, he could have easily drowned.’

  ‘It’s quite a gentle stream,’ said Tristan, wading back to her. ‘Ade said the water was churning and raging when they came down to do the search.’ He turned slowly in the water and trailed his fingers across the surface as it moved around him with lazy ripples.

  Kate stepped down into the water and joined him. The river bed was covered in large smooth stones and a little gravel. She waded out to a rock poking out of the middle of the stream and climbed up on it. From this vantage point, she could see that the river came from across the moors, passing the tree at a distance. It carried on for twenty metres in the other direction and then turned dramatically to the left, vanishing behind a massive outcrop of pearl-grey granite on the nearside bank.

  ‘That’s the Devil’s Gorge,’ said Kate, pointing to it. ‘Let’s have a look.’ They waded back to the bank, and Tristan helped Kate out of the water. They set off along the river bank, carrying their shoes and walking barefoot on the soft moss and grass. The ground stayed level, but as they walked, Kate saw how the water level banked down. When they reached the rocky outcrop, the banks narrowed, and the river moved fast, the water white and churning between large boulders. The terrain was growing rougher on the feet, and Kate dropped her shoes and slipped them on. Tristan did the same.

  They climbed up over the rocky outcrop, which at the top was a smooth shelf of granite. Kate grabbed Tristan’s arm when they found themselves on the edge of a steep drop. The river lurched sharply to the left where the water was forced into a narrow channel and fell into the gorge with a roar. A footpath began next to the waterfall and sloped gently down into the gorge. Tristan went first, and they picked their way down the narrow path. There was no guard rail to stop them from falling thirty feet down, and in places, Kate held onto the wall.

  As they descended, Kate felt a chill in the air in the shadow of the gorge. The waterfall roared and echoed around the rocky walls above.

  The path came level with the water at the end of the gorge and a high rock face covered in dripping moss and ferns. The trail ended a few feet from a waist-high metal barrier with a grille. Next to the path, the rushing water was funnelled into a space about a metre wide, and pushed through the grille, which was blocked in places with pieces of wood, rubbish, and strands of soggy tissue paper. On the other side of the grille, the water was swirling around in a vast pool several metres wide, and vanishing with a roar into a black void like a plughole in the centre. The sounds of the water here were so loud that Kate had to raise her voice and shout.

  ‘Where does it go? Does that lead to an underground stream?’

  Tristan pointed to a battered metal sign tacked to the rock above.

  THIS IS THE DEVIL’S WAY was written in tall black letters.

  13

  Kate and Tristan stood beside the roaring water for a long time. The metal grille was made of thick iron and coated with layers of paint. It was a metre high, and if either one had stepped into the rushing water, the grille would protect them from being pulled into the pool and the sinkhole on the other side.

  ‘Do you think Charlie could have climbed over this grille?’ said Tristan, having to shout over the sound of the water. He moved closer to the top of the grille. There was a waist-high metal bar halfway up, running horizontally with a rusting padlock in the centre. The bar was a way of stepping up, like over a farm gate. Tristan used it to pull himself up, straddling the grille effortlessly.

  Kate moved closer. She could smell the dampness in the air, and here the gorge’s walls were covered with dripping green moss, adding to the gloom and infusing the air with a chill, despite the summer weather.

  Still straddling the grille, Tristan pulled a till receipt from his pocket, folded it in half, and made a small paper aeroplane. He threw it over, and the paper plane swooped down and landed on the idling water at the pool’s edge; it floated for a moment before it was grabbed by the swirling current. They watched as it spun anti-clockwise, moving faster as it was pulled towards the centre. It became a blur as it turned, and then it vanished into the black hole.

  Kate thought of Charlie. If he’d wandered off alone and ended up here, could he have climbed over the grille and fallen into the pool? Had he gone down into the sinkhole, never to be seen again? She shivered in the cold and dark of the gorge.

  ‘Please, come down, and let’s go,’ she said. Tristan stepped down, and they started to climb back up the trail. The walk back to the river seemed more protracted, and where the fronds of moss and ferns had appeared so summery before, they were now cast in shadow, and a couple of times, Kate thought she saw movement, a fleeting glance of someone or something. When they were back at the top of the smooth rock, Kate saw the sun was now low on the horizon. It was eight-fifty, and the sun would soon set.

  ‘It must be creepy here the second it gets dark,’ said Tristan, echoing her thoughts. Kate looked across past where the river took a turn into the gorge. A narrow footpath on the other side of the river led further away to a thick wall of gorse and foliage. Beyond this were dense trees.

  They walked back along the riverbank to the car, and by the time they were back at Devil’s Tor, the sun had set, and Dartmoor stretched out in front of them in the darkness. The moon was a pale silvery disc, and several stars appeared in the blue-black sky. The river sounded quieter now, shifting past them here like black ink. Kate shivered. She loved the water, the sea, lakes, and streams during the day, but open water in the darkness terrified her.

  The Tor seemed taller in the failing light, like a vast skyscraper with no windows, reaching high above the stars. It made Kate think of a sci-fi movie, and for a moment, she wondered if the legends were true and if strange creatures, like goblins and elves, lived inside. This was the problem with the deepest moors – legends played on your mind. And at night, rationality left you.

  They moved around the grass platform to Tristan’s car. Like the Tor, the ancient oak tree now seemed immense in the twilight.

  ‘How can anyone want to camp here?’ said Tristan. ‘It’s bloody creepy.’

  ‘Jean and her family had no money, and it was free,’ said Kate.

  ‘Do we really think a three-year-old would wander off alone here at night? I’d be too scared to leave the tent for a pee.’ Kate nodded. It was a good point.

  ‘Jean and Charlie slept in their tent under the tree. It’s not a great distance between the two. Joel and Becky pitched theirs next to the car at the base of the Tor.’

  She took out her phone and found Jean’s photos. Tristan came around to look at the screen. One photo had been taken from a similar angle to where they were standing. A small, green, domed tent was pitched under the tree, and closer to the camera, next to the Tor was an identical tent in blue with Joel’s car parked next to it.