Sins of the Fathers by Patricia Hall

‘He was a miserable beggar but he was damn good at what he did and he didn’t charge over the odds. He serviced my lawn mower last year. How was anyone to know it’d end up like this?’
    ‘No, well, that’s what I told the copper who came calling this morning. They’d found my name amongst his records, believe it or not. I don’t think I’ve spoken to the man for six months, but he did some work on my cars for me last summer. I thought I’d paid him in cash, no questions asked about VAT and all that rubbish, but he must have made a note. Daft, that. Asking for trouble if the VAT officers come calling.’
    The two men took their drinks and turned away from the bar to take one of the tables close to the empty fireplace and Laura guessed, looking at their broad dismissive shoulders, that she would get no further with them. It was as if they and the landlord had staged that little conversation to pre-empt any further questions she might feel like asking. She shivered and fastened her coat more firmly and pulled her scarf around her neck. She feltoppressed by Staveley and the village life which had obviously had no inkling of the impending tragedy in its midst. The hurly-burly of the Gazette newsroom suddenly seemed much more inviting than it usually did.
     
    ‘An armed man, a boy and a Land Rover can’t just disappear off the face of the earth,’ DCI Michael Thackeray said angrily as he and his team reviewed the progress – or lack of it – of the Staveley murder investigation at the end of a long and frustrating day. ‘The top priority in this investigation now is to find an eight-year -old boy who, as far as we can tell, is in the company of an armed man who has already killed twice. As I told the Press conference earlier, finding Scott Christie alive is what this is about. What’s the latest on the search, Omar?’
    DC Mohammed Sharif glanced down at his notes.
    ‘All the roads over Staveley moor are open now, sir, and the snow’s melting fast,’ he said. ‘But the chopper’s still not sighted anything significant. Mobile units are up there now scouring the ground at least until it gets dark. If they’ve gone any further, we’ve had the registration number out there for the best part of the day and there’s not been a single sighting so far. Nothing from CCTV anywhere has been reported. Nothing from motorway or street cameras. A blank, in fact.’
    ‘Start working on garages. If they’ve gone far they must have stopped for petrol,’ Thackeray said.
    ‘I reckon the vehicle must be under cover somewhere,’ Sergeant Kevin Mower offered. ‘Either that or at the bottom of one of the reservoirs up there in the hills. You could sink a tank in one of those lakes and no one would be any the wiser till the next drought brought the water level down.’
    ‘We’ll have a long wait for that after this winter,’ a voice from the back of the room muttered.
    ‘I’ve asked for the search teams to keep looking until they can’t see a hand in front of their faces,’ Thackeray said, trying to fight off the immense weariness which kept threatening to overwhelm him. He was aware of Kevin Mower’s sharp eyes watching him, for signs of weakness no doubt, and was determined to give neither him nor anyone else cause to question his ability to handle this case. His own doubts, he reckoned, were his own affair.
    ‘There are barns up there that don’t see anyone for months on end at this time of the year,’ he went on, confident that if nothing else he knew the terrain around Staveley. ‘But if he doesn’t turn up locally soon I think we have to rethink the suicide theory and assume he’s made a run for it, taking the boy with him, for whatever reason. And with a powerful handgun involved that’s a serious problem. We need to alert serious crimes, other forces, whoever.’
    ‘And in that case the absence of passports in the house has to be significant,’ Mower added. ‘He’s probably taken them with