Tyack & Frayne Mysteries 01 - Once Upon A Haunted Moor Read Online Free PDF Page A

him up here. This is what happens when you put your trust in crackpots and wishful thinking. “No. I had a lead from somewhere else. Mr Tyack here was with me when the call came in, and he offered to come and help us search. That’s all.”
    “Is it worth it, then – searching up here?”
    “One of the dogs gave a signal, but we don’t think it meant anything. Listen – any time that you can afford to give to searching any part of these moors is worth it to me, Dave. All of you.” He turned to Tyack and asked quietly, “ Will you help us out for a while? Do it the...” The hard way , he’d been about to say, but the marks of strain around those pale eyes testified that nothing about Tyack’s methods was easy. “The conventional way?”
    “I’d be happy to. Why’d you let me off the hook?”
    “Like you say, you need time to get a feel for a place. Maybe something’ll come to you. And...” He set off towards the waiting group. “I don’t know why you did it, but you tried to let me off poor Sarah Kemp’s hook. So we’re quits.”
     
    ***
     
    Gideon called off the search at dusk. Dave and the Salthouses had kids to be getting home to, and Gideon didn’t want any children alone at night if he could help it. He was also reluctant, with a keen anxiety he couldn’t pin down, for anyone, child or adult, to be on the moors after dark. It was Halloween Eve. He shivered, unlocking the Rover. The spirit of the season must be getting to him.
    Kye greeted him with her usual burst of hysteria, as if sh e hadn’t seen him for a week and couldn’t quite remember why she’d wanted to. Gideon didn’t like keeping her locked up, but she couldn’t be trusted not to pick a fight with a sniffer dog or tumble down a mine shaft herself. “Sorry,” he muttered as she transferred her attentions to Tyack, squeezing through the gap between the seats to scramble into his lap. “Kye! Get down.”
    “She isn’t called Kye,” Tyack said breathlessly as she wriggled round to face him. She put the end of her nose against his, and Gideon looked at the pair of them curiously: the attractive unknown quantity of a man and the all-too-familiar lump of dog, staring into one another’s eyes. “She says she’s called Isolde, and she’s a descend ent of King Arthur’s hunting hounds.”
    Gideon shifted nervously. “You can... You can tell that?”
    Tyack broke into laughter. “Of course I bloody can’t. Dog is a lousy name for a dog, that’s all. I’m sure she’d behave better if she had a proper one.”
    “You think you’re funny, don’t you?” Gideon thought so too, despite himself: a reluctant chuckle underscored his words. “All right. Isolde it is. Though I’m gonna feel a right prat shouting that down the lanes at midnight, aren’t I?”
    “Only if someone shouts back Tristan . Look, I should get out of your hair now. I’ve still got to pick up my gear from Mrs Radnor’s B and B – can you drop me off near there, and I’ll catch a bus into Bodmin town?”
    “You’ll be lucky to get one now. Don’t you drive?”
    Tyack shivered. “No. And if you knew what passes through the mind of the average Cornish motorist, nor would you.”
    “Is that for real? Or just to wind up the copper?”
    “Real. They’re lunatics.”
    Gideon watched the taillights of the other cars beginning to vanish ahead of them. “Well, it’ll be dark soon. I’ll take you by Mrs Radnor’s to get your things, and then you can stay over with me if you want.”
    “Isn’t it... inappropriate any more?”
    “Possibly. But I owe you for helping out today, and it’s not a police house as such – we don’t run to one of those. It’s just a house with a policeman living in it. Mrs Waite was right. I do rattle around.”
    Tyack regarded him calmly. “Thank you,” he said. A tension seemed to go out of him, and he leaned back in the passenger seat as Gideon started the engine. Kye – Isolde – got off his lap and for the first