The King's Shilling

by Fraser John Macnaught

  That meant he had an accomplice, or accomplices. But physically forcing someone off a train would not be easy. Particularly if they were resisting, or screaming. There were too many people around, passengers and train staff and station personnel… and apparently the cameras at Innsbruck station had shown nothing unusual or untoward and there were no images of anyone who looked like Sarah… The train had been thoroughly searched, so it wasn’t as if she’d been hidden somewhere, and then… and then what?

  The first question was therefore if someone else had been involved, how had they got her off the train? And if the motive was purely financial, she would have been killed by now or a ransom would have been demanded… But nothing like that had happened. It didn’t make sense. There was the possibility that some Arab sheikh had met her at a party once and fallen in love with her and had her kidnapped and paid off any awkward witnesses and she was now being held in a harem somewhere in the middle of the desert… It wasn’t impossible, but it was by no means likely. A few other equally improbable scenarios played in his mind as he finished his coffee and he wondered if he shouldn’t write a detective story one of these days…

  The other possibility was that Morgan wasn’t involved. Which perhaps meant that Sarah had disappeared voluntarily. Getting off the train deliberately might be easier if she’d planned it; she could have disguised herself, dressing up as a station porter, for example, or a nun, and nobody would have noticed her… but the simple question was, why? She’d just got married, by choice… she was on her way to Venice… by choice…why would she then choose to skip out and say nothing to her husband and simply vanish without a trace? If she’d suddenly had second thoughts or regrets or a change of heart, then she would no doubt be capable of simply saying so and explaining the situation… If she’d decided to leave Morgan and take a break or something, why hadn’t she used her credit cards or her phone? She hadn’t done anything wrong, she wasn’t on the run, she had no reason to ‘disappear’. If she’d gone running off to a friend somewhere to hide out for a while, for whatever reason, then someone would have said something. Sarah herself would no doubt have been aware of the media interest and put a stop to the panic and the massive search operation…

  Why on earth would someone decide to get off the Orient Express, on their honeymoon, and just vanish?

  Had she been taken ill? A panic attack? Memory loss?

  That didn’t make much sense either… but something had to make sense, because it had happened.

  He returned to his room and went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, cleaning his teeth. He looked at himself, white foam on his lips like a mad man frothing at the mouth. He thought about logic and reason and obsession and the hole in his head and found no answers to the questions that were spinning around it. He spat into the basin and said “Fuck it.”

  As he was leaving the pub, the woman at reception asked him if he would be staying a few more nights. He hesitated.

  “I’ll be here tonight, but I think I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

  “Very well sir, have a nice day.”

  His nice day began with a downpour. He drove along the valley, his windscreen wipers battling against the rain and the filthy spray thrown up by trucks and vans. After he’d passed the White Hart, he turned left and drove up the hill across the valley from Calderwood Hall.

  He pulled up at the entrance to the cemetery and grabbed an umbrella from the boot.

  There were fresh flowers at his parents’ grave. He had no idea who had put them there. The only person he could think of was Uncle Frank, but he didn’t even know if he was still alive and it didn’t really seem like the kind of thing he would do and it wasn’t as if it was the anniversary of their death or anything... it was a bit odd.

  The grave was relatively well-tended, compared to others around it. He looked at imposing headstones in grey marble and black sandstone, moss-stained granite and cracked slate and at smaller plaques and markers, where perhaps cost had been an issue in the choice of memorial. Many of the names were common, traditional West Yorkshire names, Sykes, Taylor, Roberts, Pearson, and others had become prevalent only in more recent times: Patel, Khan, and Singh.

  Against the grey cloud and the black stone walls and the general pervading dullness, the colours of the various flowers in jars and vases stood out bright and luminous. It was April, and there were tulips and daffodils everywhere. Some graves had plastic arrangements, and others, perennials and various bulbs in permanent bowls and pots. Even cacti.

  His Mum had loved flowers. She had planted dahlias and rose bushes and flowering shrubs all round the Cottage and she had looked after the cut-flower section of the Hartley’s green-house; tulips, lilies, irises, arums, gladioli and hyacinths... The house always had two or three vases going at once, even during the times when Mum’s concentration seemed to wane and she took long naps and sipped herbal teas that helped her sleep... or so the official version went.

  Her love of flowers had even contributed to the accident.

  His mother, Joanne Thornton, had been a beautiful woman. Light-brown hair and green eyes and a trim figure and a complexion to die for, and everyone said how lucky his father had been to snap her up. But he had very few memories of her beauty; the images that had stayed with him mostly dated from around the time he turned six, when the cruellest of his school-mates began to whisper ‘monster’ and ‘scarface’ behind his back.

  He had come home from school one day to find his father sitting at the kitchen table, his eyes red and his voice slurred and an air of underlying tension and menace about him... He wondered what he might have done and what his father was going to do to him.

  “Your Mum’s had an accident”, Dad said. “She’s at the hospital”.

  When they went to see her the next day, she was lying in bed looking like a mummy. An Egyptian mummy. Only her eyes were visible and her face was swathed in white bandages. The boy didn’t know what to say. She took his hand and pulled him towards her and hugged him and started to cry.

  Apparently she had been in the green house cutting flowers and gathered a whole armful of them and gone towards the door, which she had left open, but the wind had blown it shut and she had walked straight through it and fallen and the glass had more or less shredded her face into ribbons.

  When she came home from the hospital and the bandages were finally removed, the full damage was revealed and it was horrific. If he’d known how to swear at that age, he couldn’t imagine what he might have said. In reality, he may have blurted out something like “Oh, Mum!” and that was it. But it was hard to bear. Even for a young boy who loved his Mum like any boy loves his Mum it was not easy to keep on looking at her. It was like she had a dozen earthworms stuck to her face. Thick grey and pink threads from her eyes to her chin, cut with two snaking lines from her ears to her mouth and ugly, sickening zigzags on her forehead. How the greenhouse glass had done that and not blinded her was unimaginable. And it was years until the scars shrunk and became simply scars instead of thick grey and pink worms, but they never went away.

  And so Mum didn’t go out very much, and she stayed at home and drank more and more herbal tea and slept for longer and the tension and menace he had felt in his Dad intensified and became something ‘normal’ and expected instead of sporadic and startling... it became a part of their daily lives and they all suffered from it. One way or another.

  And his Mum wasn’t beautiful any more.

  He doubted whether people were still thinking how fortunate his Dad had been to snare such a beauty as Joanne Thornton... they must have been wondering what it was like to wake up next to that monster every morning, like something from a freak show, from Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors... Scarface.

  As he stood at the graveside he had to admit to himself that the memories hadn’t always been bad. Perhaps he had exaggerated them, to appease his own conscience, in a way, and to justify the distance he had taken, but despite the accident and the tension and th
e drinking and the occasional flash of violence, his parents had stuck together and he had to believe that they had loved each other, in their own way. On occasion he had come home to find them cuddling or laughing together, and they did have some fun, complicit family moments together, like normal families. But the darkness was always there. He could never foresee what moods they would be in; they could both swing from light-hearted teasing to grim, silent sullenness without warning. One minute, his father might tickle him and chuck him under the chin and tousle his hair, saying “Who’s my boy?” and the next he’d see him outside, digging the garden with a face like thunder, muttering to himself, shaking his head, as if he couldn’t understand what he’d done to deserve his lot on this God-forsaken Earth.

  His father had suffered from headaches, he was told, and he often saw him holding his head between his hands, grimacing in pain, and swallowing big white pills without any water. There were occasions when the pain was so bad that he could barely speak, and although they were usually short-lived, they were the times when it was best to avoid doing anything daft, or even to avoid being in his presence at all.

  The periods of gloom and taciturn distance were occasionally compensated for by a gift of some kind. If his father slapped him for one reason or another – losing the key to the garden shed, tearing a hole in his trousers playing football, or writing Sarah’s name on the bathroom mirror in tooth-paste – then he could expect a toy car or a box of toffees in lieu of an apology or an affectionate make-up cuddle. The present would be handed over rather sheepishly, almost grudgingly, with no ceremony, and so he came to associate gifts with feelings of guilt and remorse rather than generosity and reward.

  Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that he so prized and valued a certain emotional consistency and predictability, with the one person he could always depend on to cheer him up, to be upbeat and optimistic, welcoming and tender. Someone he could confide in, from whom there were no secrets... or not many worth mentioning...

  A true friend.

  He drove around aimlessly for a couple of hours. Flipping coins in his head when he came to a crossroads, following signposts to places whose names seemed familiar but that he couldn’t quite picture or remember with any clarity.

  He passed the school where he and Sarah had gone. He remembered his first day there, and coming home, and his Mum saying to him: “So how was it?” and he had said: “It was very nice, Mum, but I don’t think I’ll go back.”

  Again he wondered if he actually did remember that, or if he was merely drawing on the bank of family lore, oft-repeated tales that were embellished with time, the details fleshed out or glossed over depending on the audience’s interest or the teller’s patience.

  He wondered how his mother had reacted to his comment, and whether she had wanted to laugh or to cry. He had no memory of that.

  He bought a pie from a butcher’s on the Norland Road and took advantage of a brief rainless spell to sit in a small park and watch some ducks floating across an old mill-pond.

  He was leaving the park when he saw a sign across the road: “Mill Museum”, and he was intrigued and crossed the road and went in.

  It was a small museum, with a few old machines and photographs and texts about the development of the local textile industry. He saw the name Hartley several times, but he knew all he wanted to know about the Hartleys and he didn’t read the texts.

  He was about to leave when he came across a small exhibit entitled “mule scavengers”.

  The mule scavengers were small children, mostly orphans, employed from the age of four until about 8. They worked under the machines, the spinning mules, gathering the wastage that fell as the machines spun, and cleaning up oil and dust. They worked 14 to 16 hours a day and were beaten if they fell asleep. It was described as one of the worst jobs in the world and was horrendously dangerous. The machines moved constantly as they crawled on the floor below, vibrating and shaking, spitting out hot oil and stifling cotton dust and jagged shards of metal. They gathered the wastage and had to time their retreat based on the relentless motion of the heavy moving parts. Their hair would be caught in cogs and gears and if they were fortunate they were only partially scalped. Arms and legs were frequently crushed and amputation and decapitation were not uncommon. In one mill not far away there had been a death every two months. And those were the official figures.

  Children under the age of 14 continued to work in mills and factories until 1918.

  Paul looked at the engravings and drawings and tried to imagine how the men whose names were honoured and hallowed in these parts, with streets and stations and fine buildings and museums and even whole towns named after them, could have inflicted such torture and horror on innocent unwanted children. And why they were allowed to do so.

  As he drove back towards the centre of Halifax, he thought of some of the reasons men inflicted pain and suffering on each other. Profit was one, perhaps the main reason. Fear was another.

  For a brief, guilty moment, he wondered why he himself had been the victim of pain and suffering. Had either profit or fear been involved? Fear of what?

  Then he scolded himself for his self-absorption and self-pity and resolved not to go down that road again and he concentrated on where he was going and looked for somewhere to park.

  It was four o’clock and time for the press conference.

  He flashed his press card to two or three minders at the entrance to the Calderdale Police HQ and was ushered down some steps and into a large space that looked more like a gym than a conference suite. He heard Italian and German and French voices and watched as camera crews jostled and elbowed for position and photographers tussled for the best angles just before the low stage and a long table up front. There was a large photograph of Sarah fixed to a white-board on the wall. She was smiling, the freckles across her nose heightened by a deep tan. Her blonde hair was lighter than he remembered it, but her eyes were the same. Almond-shaped and deep green… He blinked a couple of times and checked out the room. There were a dozen rows of seats in the room and they were all full or being filled or reserved and people were already standing at the back with still more pressing to get through the door. He found a seat near the back and waited.

  A man appeared and he tapped at some microphones and did the one-two-one-two routine and waved to somebody behind him and gave a thumbs-up.

  “Two minutes!” someone shouted, and people bustled and fiddled with mobile phones and tablets, connecting to various networks and websites so they could send out hastily written reports that would be published even before everyone had left the room.

  Five men walked in from a door off to his left. Two senior-looking police officers in uniform, then Neil Morgan, followed by two lawyer types in pinstripes carrying briefcases. They sat down and looked around and then the older of the two officers stood up and asked for quiet. He made sure the cameras were rolling then he sat down again and leant towards the mike.

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, we’re here today to bring you an update on the situation involving the disappearance of Mrs Sarah Morgan, the former Sarah Hartley, from Calderwood Hall in the Upper Valley district. I’m Chief Constable Brian Hardacre, to my right is Superintendent Jim Mellor, to my left is Mr Neil Morgan, and to his left are his and the family’s legal advisors, Mr Trevor Brownlow and Mr David Digby. We’ll be giving a brief overview of the current position in the investigation, then handing over to Mr Morgan, who’ll make a statement, and there’ll be time for some questions. Jim?”

  “Well, right... as you know....”

  Superintendent Mellor gave a quick rundown of what had happened in Austria and Italy and what the various police forces - all working with “the most efficient levels of cooperation and professional expertise” - had actually achieved so far, which basically amounted to zilch. They’d found nothing. Film from CCTV cameras at Innsbruck station had been examined and provided no clues. It appeared that nobody even vaguely resembling Sarah had taken a bus or a
train or a taxi from Innsbruck or the surrounding area. Hotels, boarding houses and various other forms of accommodation had been visited and led nowhere. Her credit cards had not been used, her mobile phone was switched off and had not made or received any calls, and no clothing or personal belongings had been located. The staff on the Orient Express and at Innsbruck station had been vetted and interviewed, everyone who knew Sarah had been contacted, including old school friends from Switzerland and fellow students from Paris and New York, and no-one had anything significant to contribute to the investigation. There had been no outside contact, via telephone, email or by letter, and there was no reason to believe she had been abducted. There was no evidence of foul play at all, and if you read between the lines it was more or less assumed that Sarah had decided to disappear of her own accord.

  Hands went up and a barrage of questions were yelled out as Jim Mellor concluded his report but Chief Constable Hardacre waved them down and invited Neil Morgan to make his statement.

  Morgan stood up and looked around the room and held his arms out. The room fell silent. He was a handsome man, and Paul had to make a serious effort to stop himself from thinking “and he knows it”. He had the boyish charm and blue-eyed appeal of a young Robert Redford and he spoke with a posh accent, although there were underlying East England rural tones to it from time to time... Lincolnshire maybe, or Norfolk...

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it is unbelievably difficult to stand before you here today and to admit that I wish I had never seen your faces...”

  He heard a muffled laugh behind him.

  “What I mean is that one just cannot imagine ever being obliged to face this sort of situation, where it feels as though the entire world is watching, poring over one’s every move and presenting one’s life and most intimate secrets to all and sundry. And yet I am more than grateful to you all, and I believe and hope and pray that your efforts may help to bring this nightmare to an end. I trust that you will do your duty, your very utmost... to ensure that every man and woman and child is looking for my beloved wife... that no stone be left unturned...”