Gardener and Reilly left the room and crossed the lobby, heading for the pool car in the car park. As they were leaving the building, Colin Sharp was walking in.
“Oh, sir.”
“I’m sorry, Colin but we have to nip out.”
Sharp was persuasive. “I’ve found something you might want to hear.”
Gardener stopped and listened. Sharp was good, very good. If he thought it important, it would be.
“Go on.”
“Chris Rydell. He had a younger sister, by the name of Samantha.”
“Had?”
“She disappeared without trace… years ago, in the mid-nineties.”
“Disappeared without trace?”
“According to what I’ve found out, which isn’t much because I only came across the information half an hour ago. She was only five years old when she disappeared. She’s never been seen since.”
“Get in the car,” said Gardener.
Chapter Fifty-nine
“See anything?”
Gardener shook his head. The shop windows were cluttered with displays of almost everything a chemist would have. The blind had been drawn down over the door.
Gardener glanced behind him: seven o’clock on a warm Tuesday evening. Morrisons was busy.
He stared up at the window above the shop, where he knew Vincent lived. It was closed, with no sign of life. He realized then that he didn’t have a landline number for him.
“Let’s go round the back,” said Reilly.
“Colin, can you wait at the front of the shop?”
Sharp nodded, and the pair of them walked off towards the library.
It occurred to Gardener that he had not seen any mode of transport that resembled the machine Rydell owned.
“I just can’t imagine we’re going to find Rydell in here,” said Gardener.
“Nor me. There’s been nothing to link him with either the chemist or Vincent.”
“The only person connected to either of these two is Raymond Allen, and to be perfectly honest, he must be long gone by now.”
“If he was ever here in the first place.”
The pair of them rounded the corner to an alley between the library and the end shop. Gardener glanced upwards, peering above the wall.
“It must be that one with the fire escape. Looks like the flat door at the top is open.”
“Now would you look at that,” said Reilly, “some kind soul has left a bunch of pallets outside this gate for us. Make things easier to climb over.”
As they did so, Gardener noticed the back door of the chemist was ajar.
On the other side of the gate, a number of large wheeled bins stood to the right. Gardener lowered himself onto one, and then down to the ground.