Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

He sighed and put the envelope in a plastic bag. He had the evidence for Clark’s interest in children. But Clark had been careful to keep nothing that would suggest an urge to kill them. Paulson thought with a heavy heart of all the children, many of them around twelve or thirteen, who had gone missing in the Leeds area and had never been heard of again. Often they had parents who were no more interested in them than Annaleese’s grandmother. Or indeed than Annaleese’s parents, who had made no contact with the police investigation.

Back at police headquarters he sat thinking in his chair. Nothing to connect this old man with violence or murder. But what about the daughter? Was she still alive and living at a distance as he had told the mother at the school gates? Not necessarily so: She could be dead, long dead maybe. And if there ever had been such a thing as a granddaughter, was she still alive? How on earth was he to trace either of them?

He was interrupted by the phone.

“Sir, I think this is for you. A Mr. Brown. He asked for the man in charge of the missing girl case. Yours is the highest profile.”

“Okay. Put him on.”

“Inspector Paulson, I believe?” came an elderly voice, making the Inspector wonder whether it was Charlie Clark. “I expect you know the Backleigh Golf Course?”

“Yes, of course. It’s not that far from the number forty-two bus stop, on the thirty-eight bus route.”

“That’s right. There’s a bit of waste ground the kids sometimes play on, and then the early holes. Now I’m a newcomer to golf, Inspector, and I’m not getting the hang of it very fast. I’m especially bad at teeing off. Still got the strength, but not a bit of the accuracy. They go off at all angles. That’s why my shot for the second hole went way off the green, and into a patch of trees, brambles, and plastic drink bottles between the golf course and the bit of waste ground.”

“And you found something?”

“I think so. I don’t want to look. There’s a filthy old blanket, probably been there for years and left by one of the rough sleepers. But underneath the blanket is something — not weeds or anything, but — well, I’ve felt with my iron and like I said, it doesn’t feel right. I’m there now.”

“Stay there. I’m coming right over.”

Twenty minutes later he was on the course, a bit away from the second fairway. Mr. Brown was a sharp-looking sixty-something, but there was no reason why a queasy stomach should not inhabit a strong body. They shook hands and Brown pointed with his iron to the undergrowth under some sycamore trees.

“You’ll see my ball there. I don’t think I’ll be playing any more today.”

Paulson followed the direction indicated, and saw the white ball waiting to be hit back into play. Then he looked at the brambles around it, growing with their usual speed and ferocity. Going closer, he saw that underneath the brambles were not soil or weeds but the old dirty blanket.

He went nearer. The blanket certainly covered something, and it was large enough to be a human body — not a large one, but probably a full-grown human being. No one had told him how large Annaleese was. Most of the blanket was tucked in around the object it covered, but in one place it had come away, and a fringed edge lay on the ground. Paulson stayed where he was, and used Brown’s iron to raise the edge of the blanket.

The sun obligingly pierced through the clouds and shone on the thing he had exposed to view. It was an old brown hand, the veins standing out, the knuckles skeletal, the fingers stained with nicotine.