Missing Joseph

by Elizabeth George

  “Those are your words, not mine. You’re here at your own desire, no one else’s. I’ll thank you to remember that.” He put his hand on the steering wheel, a prefatory movement to entering the car.

  “Did you look into his trip to London?” Lynley asked.

  Shepherd hesitated, his expression guarded. “Whose?”

  “Mr. Sage went to London in the days before he died. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Polly Yarkin didn’t tell you? Did you interview Polly? She was his housekeeper, after all. She’d know more about the vicar than anyone else. She’d be the one who—”

  “I spoke to Polly. But I didn’t interview her. Not officially.”

  “Then unofficially? And recently, perhaps? Today?”

  The questions hung between them. In the silence, Shepherd removed his spectacles. The mist that was falling had sheened them lightly. He rubbed them against the front of his jacket.

  “You’ve broken your glasses as well,” Lynley noted. They were, St. James saw, held together across the bridge by a small piece of tape. “That’s quite a bit of rough-housing with the dog. Up on Cotes Fell.”

  Shepherd replaced them. He dug in his pocket and brought out a set of keys. He faced Lynley squarely. “Maggie Spence has run off,” he said. “So if there’s nothing else you’d care to remark on, Inspector, Juliet’s expecting me. She’s a bit upset. Evidently you didn’t tell her you’d be going by the school to talk to Maggie. Headmistress thought otherwise, as I understand. And you spoke with the girl alone. Is that how the Yard operates these days?”

  Touché, St. James thought. The constable wasn’t about to be intimidated. He had weapons of his own and the nerve to use them.

  “Did you look for a connection between them, Mr. Shepherd? Did you ever dig for a less salubrious truth than the one you came up with?”

  “My investigation stood firm on its own,” he said. “Clitheroe saw it that way. Coroner saw it that way. Whatever connection I may have failed to see, I’ll put money on its linking someone else to his death, not Juliet Spence. Now if you’ll excuse me…” He swung himself into the car and jammed the key into the ignition. The engine roared. The headlamps flared. He ground the gears as he shifted to reverse.

  Lynley leaned into the car for another few words, which St. James couldn’t hear beyond “…this with you…” as he pressed something into Shepherd’s hand. Then the car slid down the driveway to the street, the gears ground another time, and the constable soared off.

  Lynley watched him go. St. James watched Lynley. His face was grim. “I’m not enough like my father,” Lynley said. “He would have dragged him bodily into the street, stepped on his face, and probably broken six or eight of his fingers. He did that once, you know, outside a pub in St. Just. He was twenty-two. Someone had made fast and loose with Augusta’s affections and he took care of the situation. ‘No one breaks my sister’s heart,’ he said.”

  “That doesn’t solve much.”

  “No.” Lynley sighed. “But I’ve always thought it would feel so damn good.”

  “Anything atavistic generally does, for the moment. It’s what follows that causes complications.”

  They went back down the drive where Lynley picked up the odd bits carton. Perhaps a quarter of a mile down the road, they could see the tail lights of the Land Rover gleaming. Shepherd had pulled to the verge for some reason. His headlamps illuminated the gnarled form of a hedgerow. They watched for a moment to see if he would drive on. When he didn’t, they began their walk back to the inn.

  “What next?” St. James asked.

  “London,” Lynley said. “It’s the only direction I can think of at the moment, as strong-arming suspects doesn’t appear to be something that’s going to have any appreciable effect.”

  “Will you use Havers?”

  “Speaking of strong-arming.” Lynley chuckled. “No, I’ll have to see to it myself. Since I’ve sent her to Truro on my credit cards, I don’t imagine she’ll be hell-bent on getting down there and back in the customary twenty-four police hours. I’d say three days…with first-class accommodations all the way, no doubt. So I’ll handle London.”

  “What can we do to help?”

  “Enjoy your holiday. Take Deborah on a drive. Cumbria, perhaps.”

  “The lakes?”

  “That’s a thought. But I understand Aspatria’s quite nice in January.”

  St. James smiled. “That’s going to be one hell of a day trip. We’ll have to be up by five. You’ll owe me for this. And if there’s nothing to be uncovered about the Spence woman there, you’ll owe me in spades.”

  “As always.”

  Ahead of them, a black cat slinked out from between two buildings, something grey and limp between its jaws. This the animal deposited on the pavement and began tapping gently in the mindlessly cruel way of all cats, hoping for more tormenting play before a final pounce ended the captive’s fruitless hope for survival. As they approached, the animal froze, hunched over its prize, fur bristling, waiting. St. James glanced down to see a small rat blinking hopelessly from between the cat’s paws. He thought about frightening the cat away. The game of death it played was unnecessarily heartless. But rats, he knew, were breeders of disease. It was best—if not most merciful—to let the cat continue.

  “What would you have done had Polly named Shepherd?” St. James asked.

  “Arrested the bastard. Turned him over to Clitheroe CID. Had his job.”

  “And since she didn’t name him?”

  “I’ll have to come at it from another direction.”

  “To step on his face?”

  “Metaphorically. I’m my father’s own son in wish, if not in deed. It’s nothing I’m proud of. But there it is.”

  “So what did you give Shepherd just before he drove off?”

  Lynley adjusted the carton beneath his arm. “I gave him something to think about.”

  Colin remembered with perfect clarity the final time his father had struck him. He was sixteen years old. Foolish, too hot-headed to think of the consequences of defiance, he had risen angrily and bodily to his mother’s defence. Shoving his chair back from the dinner table—he could still recall the sound it made as it scraped across the floor and slammed into the wall—he’d shouted, Just leave her alone, Pa! and grabbed his father’s arms to keep him from slapping her face another time.

  Pa’s rage always took root in something inconsequential, and because they never knew when to expect his anger to flare into violence, he was that much more terrifying. Anything could set him off: the condition of a beef joint at dinner, a button missing from his shirt, a request for money to pay the gas bill, a comment about the hour at which he had arrived home the previous night. This particular evening it was a telephone call from Colin’s biology master. Another exam failed, lessons incomplete, was there a problem at home, Mr. Tranville wondered.

  His mother had revealed that much over the dinner table, tentatively, as if attempting to telegraph her husband a message she was unwilling to say in front of their child. “Colin’s teacher asked if there were problems, Ken. Here at home. He said counselling might—”

  Which was as far as she’d got. Pa said, “Counselling? Did I hear you right? Counselling?” in a tone that should have told her that she’d have been wiser to eat quietly and keep the telephone call to herself.

  But instead, she said, “He can’t study, Ken, if things are in chaos. You see that, don’t you?” in a voice that pleaded for reason but only succeeded in betraying her fear.

  Pa thrived on fear. He loved to feed twigs of intimidation into its fire. He set down his knife first, then his fork. He pushed back his chair from the table. He said, “Tell me about all this chaos, Clare.” When she read his intentions and said she supposed it was nothing, really, his father said, “No. Tell me. I want to hear.” When she didn’t cooperate, he got up. He said, “Answer me, Clare,” and when she said, “Nothing. Do eat your meal, Ken,” he was on her.


  He’d only managed to strike her three times—one hand twisted in her hair and the other smacking harder each time she cried out—when Colin grabbed him. His father’s response was the same as it had been from Colin’s childhood. Women’s faces were meant to be abused with the open hand. On boy children a real man used his fists.

  The difference this time was that Colin was bigger. And while he was as afraid of his father as he’d always been, he was also angry. Anger and fear washed his body with adrenaline. When Pa struck him, for the first time in his life, Colin struck back. It had taken more than five minutes for his father to beat him into submission. He did it with his fists, his belt, and his feet. But when it was over, the delicate balance of power had shifted. And when Colin said, “I’ll kill you next time, you filthy bastard. Just see if I won’t,” he saw for an instant, reflected on his father’s face, that he too was capable of inspiring fear.

  It had been a source of pride to Colin that his father had never struck his mother again, that his mother had filed for divorce a month later, and most of all that they were rid of the bastard because of him. He’d sworn he’d never be like his father. He’d never again struck a living soul. Until Polly.

  On the side of the road leading out of Winslough, Colin sat in the Land Rover and rolled between his palms the piece of material from Polly’s skirt which the inspector had pressed into his hand. All of it had been such a pleasure: feeling the sting of her flesh against his palm, tearing the material so easily from her body, tasting the salty sweat of her terror, hearing her cries, her pleas, and especially her choked sob of pain—no moan of sexual arousal now, Polly, is this what you wanted, is this how you hoped it would happen between us?—and finally accepting the triumph of her numb defeat. He slammed into her, he ploughed her, he mastered her, all the time saying cow bitch sow cunt in his father’s voice.

  He’d done it all in a storm of blind rage and desperation, frantic to keep the memory and the truth of Annie at bay.

  Colin pressed the piece of material to his closed eyes and tried not to think about either of them, Polly or his wife. With Annie’s dying, he’d crossed every line, violated every code, wandered in the dark, and lost himself entirely, somewhere between the valley of his worst depression and the desert of his blackest despair. He’d spent the years since her death caught between trying to rewrite the history of her torturous illness and trying to recall, reinvent, and resurrect the image of a marriage that was utterly perfect. The resulting lie had been so much easier to face than the reality that when Polly tried to obliterate it forever in the vicarage, Colin struck out in an effort to preserve it as much as in an attempt to hurt her.

  He’d always felt he could continue to cope and move forward in life as long as he had the falsehood. It comprised what he called the sweetness of their relationship, the sure knowledge that with Annie he’d had warmth and tenderness, complete understanding, compassion, and love. It also comprised an account of her illness, one filled with the details of her noble suffering, replete with illustrations of his efforts to save her and his eventual calm acceptance of the fact he could not. The falsehood depicted him at her bedside, holding her hand and trying to memorise the colour of her eyes before she closed them forever. The falsehood declared that as life was taken from her in vicious bits and pieces, her optimism never faltered and her spirit stayed whole.

  You’ll forget all this, people had said at the funeral. Given time, you’ll remember only the beauty of what you had. And you had two wonderful years with her, Colin. So let time work its magic, and watch what happens. You’ll heal and look back and still have those two years.

  It hadn’t happened that way. He hadn’t healed. He’d simply rearranged his recollection of what the end had been like and how they’d got there. In his revised version of their history, Annie had accepted her fate with grace and dignity while he had been unfailing in his support of her. Gone from memory were her descents into bitterness. Excised from existence was his implacable rage. In the place of these was a new reality that masked everything he couldn’t face: how he hated her in moments as much as he loved her, how he despised his marriage vows, how he embraced her death as his only possible escape from a life that he could not bear, and how in the end all they had to share in a marriage that had once been joyful was the fact of her illness and the day-to-day horror of having to cope with it.

  Make it different, he had thought, after she had died, make me better than I was. And he had used the past six years to do so, seeking oblivion instead of forgiveness.

  He rubbed the gauzy material against his face, feeling it snag on the scratches that Polly’s nails had left. It was stiff in places with Polly’s blood and musty with the scent of her body’s secrets.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Polly.”

  He’d been steadfast in his unwillingness to face Polly Yarkin because of what she represented. She knew the facts. She also forgave them. But her knowledge alone made her the single contagion he had to avoid if he was to continue to live with himself. She couldn’t see this fact. She was incapable of grasping the importance of their leading completely separate lives. She saw only her love for him and her longing to make him whole once again. If she’d only been able to understand that they’d shared too much of Annie ever to be able to share each other, she would have learned to accept the limitations he’d imposed upon their relationship after his wife’s death. Accepting these, she would have allowed him to go his own way without her. Ultimately, she would have rejoiced in his love for Juliet. And, thus, Robin Sage would still be alive.

  Colin knew what had happened and how she had done it. He understood why. If keeping the knowledge to himself was the only way he could make amends to Polly, he would do that. Scotland Yard would unravel the skein of events in good time once they looked into her access to Cotes Fell. He would not betray her while he himself bore so much responsibility for what she had done.

  He drove on. Unlike the previous night, all the lights were on in the cottage when he pulled to a stop in the courtyard of Cotes Hall. Juliet ran out as he opened the car door. She was struggling into her pea jacket. A red-and-green scarf dangled from her arm like a banner.

  “Thank God,” she said. “I thought I’d go mad with the waiting.”

  “Sorry.” He got out of the Land Rover. “Those blokes from Scotland Yard stopped me as I was leaving.”

  She hesitated. “You? Why?”

  “They’d been to the vicarage.”

  She buttoned the coat, wrapped the scarf round her neck. She fished gloves from her pocket and began drawing them on. “Yes. Well. I’ve them to thank for this, don’t I?”

  “They’ll be off soon, I expect. The inspector’s got the wind up about the vicar going to London the day before he…you know. The day before he died. He’ll no doubt be on the trail of that next. And then on the trail of something else afterwards. That’s how it goes with these types. So he won’t be bothering Maggie again.”

  “Oh God.” Juliet was looking at her hands, taking too much time about adjusting the gloves. She was smoothing the leather against each finger in an uneven motion that betrayed her anxiety. “I’ve phoned the police in Clitheroe, but they couldn’t be bothered to take me seriously. She’s thirteen years old, they said, she’s only been gone for three hours, madam, she’ll turn up by nine. Kids always do. But they don’t, Colin. You know it. They don’t always turn up. And not in this case. Maggie won’t. I don’t even know where to begin looking for her. Josie said she ran off from the schoolyard. Nick went after her. I must find her.”

  He took her arm. “I’ll find her for you. You’ve got to wait here.”

  She twisted from his grasp. “No! You can’t. I need to know…I just…Listen to me. I must be the one. I’ve got to find her. I must do it myself.”

  “You need to stay here. She may phone. If she does, you’ll want to be able to fetch her, won’t you?”

  “I can’t just wait here.”

  “Y
ou’ve no choice.”

  “And you don’t understand. You’re trying to be kind. I know that. But listen. She isn’t going to phone. The inspector’s been with her. He’s filled her head with all sorts of things…Please. Colin. I’ve got to find her. Help me.”

  “I will. I am. I’ll phone the instant I have any news. I’ll stop in Clitheroe and get some men out in cars. We’ll find her. I promise you. Now go back inside.”

  “No. Please.”

  “It’s the only way, Juliet.” He led her towards the house. He could feel her resistance. He opened the door. “Stay by the phone.”

  “He filled her head with lies,” she said. “Colin, where’s she gone? She has no money, no food. She’s got only her school coat to keep her warm. It’s not heavy enough. It’s cold and God knows—”

  “She can’t have got far. And remember, she’s with Nick. He’ll watch out for her.”

  “But if they hitchhiked…if someone picked them up. My God, they could be in Manchester by now. Or Liverpool.”

  He ran his fingers against her temples. Her great dark eyes were tear-filled and frightened. “Sssh,” he whispered. “Let the panic go, love. I said I’ll find her and I will. You can trust me on that. You can trust me on anything. Gentle, now. Rest.” He loosened her scarf and unbuttoned her coat. He caressed the line of her jaw with his knuckles. “You make her some dinner and keep it warm on the cooker. She’ll be eating it sooner than you can know. I promise.” He touched her lips and her cheeks. “Promise.”

  She swallowed. “Colin.”

  “Promise. You can trust me.”

  “I know that. You’re so good to us.”

  “As I mean to be forever.” He kissed her gently. “Will you be all right now, love?”

  “I…Yes. I’ll wait. I won’t leave.” She lifted his hand, pressed it against her lips. Then her forehead creased. She drew him into the light of the entry. “You’ve hurt yourself,” she said. “Colin, what have you done to your face?”