The Finisher

16

Hartley the beagle was enjoying Combe Down more than anyone, straining at the limit of his retractable lead. He’d met and greeted all the humans and now he was into serious exploration. Paloma was finding him difficult to control. Already he’d collapsed the drone’s stand by catching one of the legs with his lead. Good thing the drone hadn’t been in place yet.

The so-called pilots from The Sky’s No Limit, a likeable duo called Noah and Naomi, had come early to set up. Conditions were difficult for them in a keen east wind, even without an excited dog.

When Paloma succeeded in getting Hartley back on a short leash, he protested by barking.

And continued.

Paloma shouted to Diamond over the din, “This was a mistake.”

“The mistake was mine.”

“I’ll take him for a run and try and tire him out.” She must have anticipated this because she was wearing tracksuit and trainers.

“You might miss the drone flight.”

“It won’t break my heart.”

Diamond watched them head away across the field. He was starting to regret this adventure. “Bleak spot,” he said to Halliwell.

“You chose it, guv,” Halliwell reminded him.

“Can’t argue with that. I wish they’d get on with it.”

“We can’t start without the ACC. Where is she?”

“Georgina? Probably gone to the wrong place and wondering where we are.”

“Did you give her coordinates?”

“Do I look as if I’m capable of giving anyone coordinates? I offered to meet at the Hadley Arms, if that’s what you’re getting at, but she said she’d find her own way here. She thought I was touting for a drink.”

“Were you?”

“It crossed my mind.”

They were south of the village, at the top of a steeply sloping uneven field off Summer Lane that would be a good testing ground for the drones. The hazards included trees, stone walls and bushes.

“Did your Other Half come through here?” Halliwell asked.

Diamond was fazed for a moment.

“The runners.”

“They did, but no one will have seen them.” He could be enigmatic, too. “They will have gone beneath us.”

“Yes?”

“The route goes through Combe Down tunnel, which passes under the village.”

“Why are we up here, then?”

“Put yourself in Belinda’s shoes, if you can, with a berk like Pinto running beside you for mile after mile, trying to chat you up.”

“I’d tell him to get lost.”

“You might, but she wouldn’t. She’s painfully shy, according to her friend Bella and her landlady. He was still at her side when they went through the ten-K mark.”

“Where’s that?”

“Monkton Combe, near enough. She’d know the tunnel is ahead and a mile long and she wouldn’t want to be in there with him. I think she’d quit the race before she got there and head this way along one of the footpaths towards the village.”

“He’d follow her, wouldn’t he?”

“If I know anything about him, yes.”

“I’m with you now, guv. If he attacked her, it would be somewhere out here. We know he finished the race about an hour later than the people he was running with. Plenty of time to carry out an assault and maybe silence her forever, not wanting another long spell in prison.”

“Some big assumptions there, Keith.”

“Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

“Broadly, yes. It’s my duty to think the worst and hope for the best.”

“If there’s a body in the fields, the drone might spot it.”

“Possibly. But don’t hold your breath.”

“Does Georgina know why we finished up here?”

“No — and don’t you tell her.”

They went to see how the preparations were going. The drone, a strange-looking silver contraption made of some alloy material and with four propellers, was on its stand and the operators were testing the electronics.

“No pressure, but how much longer?” Diamond asked.

“We want to make sure everything is right,” Naomi told him. “Didn’t you say someone else is coming?”

“The Assistant Chief Constable, yes.”

“And the other lady, with the dog? Is she coming back?”

“I hope so. But don’t let that hold you up.”

“We were wondering if you were planning to test us out, using the UAV to find them.”

“Hadn’t thought of that.”

“We have a thermal imager with us.”

“A heat-seeking device?”

“Yes. The heat-sensing camera would show the location of a living person, say if they’d had an accident and were lying somewhere in the open.”

“I hope it hasn’t come to that.” Diamond weighed his options. “What if the person we were looking for is dead?”

“Pessimistic.”

“Hypothetically, I mean.”

“We’d need to use normal imaging for that. There’s a technique using NIR — near infrared — for detecting decomposition, but we don’t have the equipment. It would probably find a body in a shallow grave. Would you like us to show the heat sensor at work? It will almost certainly pinpoint the position of the lady with the dog.”

He pictured Paloma’s annoyance at having the drone hovering above her like a hungry falcon. “No, thanks. We’ll settle for a straightforward aerial view. Can you do that?”

“With an optical camera. Certainly.”

“And can we cover the area fully?”

“If that’s what you wanted, you should have said.” She made him feel like a five-year-old. “We’d use a grid system to make a search.”

“Let’s try that.”

“Can’t be done today. This UAV uses a lot of battery power because it’s a quadcopter. If I’d known you wanted a systematic search, we’d have brought a fixed-wing drone.”

A gleeful smile spread across his face. “Like the model planes I flew as a boy?”

“No,” Naomi said. “These are far more sophisticated. I expect yours were driven by elastic.”

“Excuse me, they had little motors.”

“Simple two-stroke glow engines using methanol or nitromethane?”

“I couldn’t tell you, but you could get high on the fumes.”

“And do yourself untold damage. Didn’t anyone tell you the fuel is toxic?”

“I survived.”

“These days you’d wear a gas mask.”

“Health and safety,” he said in a tone that left no doubt what he thought.

“As a policeman, I thought you’d know better than that.”

“I was talking about my childhood.”

“And I’m talking about UAVs that are battery-powered. And they don’t fly in circles on control wires. They use satellite navigation.”

“It’s another world.” He stared across the field at a substantial female figure in uniform complete with the policewoman’s bowler hat heading rapidly towards him, every stride eloquent of displeasure. “That’s my boss. I’m not her blue-eyed boy by the look of her. Do me a favour and get the thing in the air as soon as possible and she’ll be off my back.” He turned away and went to meet Georgina.

“Nice timing, ma’am,” he said before she got a word in. “We’re almost ready for liftoff.”

“I’ve been driving round this godforsaken village for the past hour,” she said. “Your directions were useless. Is your phone switched off?”

It was. He dug deep for an excuse. “Were you trying to reach me? I didn’t want to cause a problem for the drone pilots, messing up their signals. Is yours turned off?”

Georgina looked ready to implode. Good thing she was as ignorant of the technology as Diamond was. She took her phone from her pocket and switched it off. “I doubt if it makes a jot of difference.”

“Drones are like dormice, sensitive creatures,” he said with no authority whatsoever.

She returned to the attack. “It was no thanks to you I saw the cars at the side of the road and recognised yours.”

“The unwashed one. But you haven’t missed a thing. Naomi and Noah are still setting up. Do you want to meet them?”

Somehow, he’d succeeded in deflecting the worst of the onslaught.

The next ten minutes were passed in what Noah insisted on calling the cockpit, the space in front of a screen protected by a sunshield — although there was little sun today. The brother and sister went to a lot of trouble to explain how the drone could work in a variety of conditions and how simple it was to operate. Georgina mellowed and made approving murmurs. Introducing drone technology to Avon and Somerset would look splendid on her CV.

Finally, the object of all this attention took to the air with a vertical take-off and hovered twenty feet above them.

“That’s you,” Georgina said to Diamond.

“What?”

Unlike him, she was looking at his on-screen image on the tablet Naomi had put in front of them. “A bird’s eye view you never thought you’d see. Doff your hat to the future of policing, Peter.”

He didn’t want his baldness brought to stark attention, so he kept his trilby on and showed two fingers to the future instead, and watched himself on the screen.

Georgina was handed the remote control.

“Try it,” Naomi said. “It’s child’s play.”

Georgina bridled at the way the invitation was phrased, but allowed herself to be shown the basics, working the two sticks on the transmitter to achieve changes in movement using gyro stabilisation. Naomi spoke about roll, pitch, yaw and throttle as if they were as familiar as bread and butter. The drone responded well.

“Can I send it down the field and back?”

“Farther, if you like.”

Naomi showed how it was done and the flying machine headed off at speed.

“How do I stop it hitting the trees?” Georgina said in some alarm.

“Don’t worry. It has its own collision avoidance system. Sensors detect any obstacles and adjust the movement.”

“Clever. Let’s bring it back. Are you following this, Peter?”

“You bet I am.” He was enjoying the interplay of pride and panic on Georgina’s face as she played with the new toy.

Naomi said, “Watch the screen, Mr. Diamond.”

“Isn’t he paying attention?” Georgina said, still working the sticks. “Careful, Peter. I may be handing the controls to you.”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you, ma’am. You’re coping brilliantly. I’m sure to crash it.”

Naomi said, “It’s smarter than either of you. It won’t allow that to happen.” For someone promoting a product, she wasn’t doing well. Without intending to, she had this unfortunate knack of belittling her potential customers.

But Diamond didn’t complain. Machines in general got the better of him, most recently an electric toothbrush Paloma had suggested he should try. With no electric socket in the bathroom for the charging stand, he had plugged it into the nearest one outside the door, low down near the skirting board. On the second morning, he’d forgotten it was there, stepped on it and snapped the brush into two pieces.

“If you’d been watching the screen as I said,” Naomi told him, “you’d have seen the lady with the dog who was here earlier.”

He was fully alert now. “In the field? I can’t see her.”

“The eye in the sky did. The ground dips quite steeply. She’s definitely coming this way.” She took the remote back from Georgina, put the drone into reverse and restored first Hartley to the screen and then Paloma, who looked up and raised her arm. It wasn’t clear whether she was waving or flapping her hand in protest.

“Magic,” Diamond said. “Can you do some more sweeps of the whole field? Let’s suppose you were searching for a, em—” He stopped himself saying the word on his lips. “—lost child.”

“No problem.”

The drone travelled across the field and back again several times.

This time Diamond followed the progress on screen and saw nothing but grass and clumps of weeds. Duller than watching CCTV footage.

“I don’t want to do this indefinitely,” Naomi said. “We’ll soon run out of power.”

“I don’t need any more convincing,” Georgina said. “If you’re willing to work with the police, we can discuss the arrangements.”

Naomi looked relieved. She brought the drone back and allowed it to hover above them. Then she slowly cut back the throttle and let it descend. The landing was perfect.

“Nicely done,” Georgina said. “I couldn’t manage anything as complex as that.”

“Nonsense. It’s simple, and you work the transmitter like a professional.”

“How kind.” Georgina basked in the praise. “But when we ask for your help, you’ll be here to work the controls yourselves, I hope?”

“That goes without saying. This little beauty is our livelihood.”

“One thing, ma’am,” Diamond said to Georgina. “When you sign up to this, be sure to include the model aircraft in the deal.”

“The fixed wing UAV,” Naomi corrected him.

He didn’t argue. He’d sighted Paloma’s head and shoulders coming up the slope. In seconds she was fully visible and so was Hartley.

He stared at her and felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

She was carrying something red.

He left the others and started running towards her.

Hartley barked.

“Is this what you were looking for?” Paloma asked when he got near enough.

“What is it?”

“Hartley found it,” Paloma said. “I had to fight him off to stop it being chewed to shreds.”

She handed him a red T-shirt with the British Heart Foundation logo and a race number fixed to it with safety pins.