Off Minor

by John Harvey

  Stephen Shepperd backed away from the window, managed to step back into the room without once, even though she was staring at him intently, looking into his wife’s face.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” He was almost at the door, fingers reaching out.

  “Up to bed,” not turning. “It’s late.”

  “Sit down.”

  Stephen unmoving: allowing his hand to swing back to his side, his shoulders to slump.

  “Sit down and talk.”

  He wanted to ignore her, carry on through the door and not even up to the bed they shared, but out, out into the street, he didn’t know where and didn’t care, as long as he didn’t have to turn and face her.

  Once, still a boy, twelve, thirteen, nothing more, he had waited in his room for his mother to confront him. Lying there in the narrowness of his bed, sheet and blankets high above his head, muting the click of the door as it opened and closed and the slight edge of her breathing as she stood there, prepared to be patient, knowing that he could not stay like that for ever.

  “Stephen.”

  Head down, he turned back into the room and crossed towards his chair.

  The two of them sitting there.

  “What do you have to tell me, Stephen?”

  You can tell me anything, I’m your mother.

  “Stephen?”

  Anything: and slowly she had drawn the truth from him and as the words fell from his mouth he had seen the muscles of her face tense, her eyes tighten and her color change until she was suffused with shame.

  “I’m waiting. Stephen.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t not tell me.”

  “But there’s nothing to tell.”

  “Isn’t there?”

  “No.”

  She was shaking her head, slowly, the twist of her mouth might almost have suggested that she was smiling. “You know you can’t lie to me, Stephen.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  And she made that little gesture of the hands, like someone brushing away crumbs: what was he doing, imagining he might fool her? Didn’t she know him better than he knew himself?

  “I was swimming. Sunday afternoon. You know I was. Whatever it is they’re suggesting, I wasn’t there.”

  “And the drawing?”

  “We didn’t see any drawing.”

  “Other people did. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Why is it?” Voice shaking with anger, frustration, getting less than steadily to his feet. “Why is it, whatever happens, I’m the last one you’ll believe?”

  “That’s simply not true, Stephen. It isn’t fair.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “If you were out running that afternoon, why not say so? What’s the crime?”

  “Joan, listen, look at me, listen. I was not running, not on Sunday. I was at the leisure center, swimming. I don’t see why you can’t believe me.”

  “Stephen, I took your things out of the bag when you got back home. In case anything needed washing. Your costume wasn’t even damp.”

  On the drive home across the center of the city, Resnick had said little, but Lynn had felt the tension accumulating inside him. If, as seemed likely, Stephen Shepperd spent some of his spare time in his wife’s classroom, putting his now redundant skills to work, he would have come into contact with Emily; as important, she would have known him. It would have been a simple matter for him to have found her address in the register; an address sufficiently close that even a middle-aged man, not especially fit, could include it in the itinerary of his afternoon run.

  But Resnick voiced none of these things: instead he asked Lynn about her parents, her father’s health, the poultry farm. Nodding at her responses, anticipating, no doubt, the plump capon that would make the journey back from her pre-Christmas visit and find its way from the waste bin of Resnick’s office, first into his refrigerator and eventually his oven. Lynn slowed to a halt outside Resnick’s house.

  “Early start, sir?”

  “Absolutely.” A quick smile and he was gone, a blur of white as his hand came up to stroke the first of his cats to run along the wall.

  Lynn brought the car around and headed back along the Woodborough Road, the night suddenly clear and pitted with stars. Naylor’s car was parked at the curb between the Lace Market theater and the probation service car park, waiting.

  “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Nonsense. Of course you should.”

  Behind the housing association flats where Lynn lived, someone, probably the Old Angel, had applied for an extension and the throb of bass was overridden at intervals by the shrill screech of over-amplified guitar.

  “Someone’s idea of a good time,” Lynn smiled.

  Nervous, Kevin Naylor said nothing.

  There was a single can of Heineken in the fridge and Lynn offered to share it, but Naylor shook his head. She put on the kettle instead and found some music that might be more appropriate, Joan Armatrading, though she doubted it was Kevin’s cup of tea.

  “How long ago did it happen?” Lynn asked, and, as he toyed with a tipped Rothmans and his lighter, passed him a saucer and said, “Here, use that.”

  “I know it sounds stupid, but it’s hard to say. I mean, it’s not as if I came off shift one day and she’d got everything packed up and gone. It was more gradual, months. First off, she’d take the baby there, leave it longer and longer each time. Fair enough, I mean, I didn’t like it, not a whole lot, still, fair enough, she’d been, like, depressed, since the baby and she wasn’t getting much sleep, so if it was over there, well, at least Debbie caught a few hours’ rest, we both did.”

  The kettle whistled and Lynn went to the kitchen. “Don’t stop. I can hear what you’re saying.”

  But he waited, anyway, till she was back in the room.

  “Sugar?”

  “Thanks, two.”

  “You were saying, the baby was sleeping over at Debbie’s mother’s.”

  “Right. Next thing, she was staying there herself. Evenings, I’d get back …”

  After a pint or two with Divine, Lynn thought.

  “… and she’d not be there. In a while she’d phone, say she’d gone over to collect the baby, but she was fast off, asking for trouble to wake her, why didn’t she just stay the night, come back in the morning?” He glanced across at Lynn’s attentive face. “I’m not sure when it was she stopped coming back. I don’t know. We were snowed under. To be honest, I was glad to get home and not have to bother, not with Debbie, not with the baby, not with anything. Just sit there for a bit, you know, let your mind clear, off to bed knowing no one was going to be shaking you awake this side of morning.”

  Lynn was looking at the patterns in the rug. “Sounds to me, as if maybe you got what you wanted.”

  “It wasn’t what I wanted.”

  “You didn’t try to stop it.”

  “I told you, I didn’t know …”

  “Your own wife and kid?”

  “All right,” on his feet, “I didn’t come here for this.”

  Lynn, standing, facing him. “What did you come here for?”

  The richness of the singer’s voice, the same phrase over and over, slow build of intensity. All either of them had to do was take that first forward step, reach out and touch the other’s skin.

  “Well?” Lynn said.

  “I don’t know. I thought …”

  “Yes?”

  “No, I don’t know.” With a shake of the head, he moved back across the small room and sat down.

  “You wanted to pour it all out, how badly she’s treated you, and me to sit here and listen, agree with you.”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, what I’ve heard, I do agree with you. Up to a point. Whatever Debbie’s playing at, it doesn’t sound as if facing up to things is one of them. But it also sounds as if you let her go.”

  “She didn’t need much letting.”

  “No, maybe. But what she did need, what she just
might’ve wanted from you was somebody saying no. I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that what she was waiting for all along was for you to tell her what you felt.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know, Kevin, and if you don’t either, well maybe that’s part of the problem. But my guess is, all the time she was waiting for you to say, look, don’t do this. I want you here. I want us to be here, together.”

  Naylor lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the other.

  “When you didn’t …”

  “How d’you know I didn’t?”

  “Oh, Kevin.” Lynn shaking her head. “When you didn’t say anything, she thought that meant you didn’t want her. Her or the baby. So it was easier to stay with someone who did. And with someone who would help.”

  “I did help.”

  “With the baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “What? Helped with the feeding? Played with her? Changed her?”

  “Yes. If I was there.”

  Despite herself, Lynn knew that she was smiling.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny.”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s funny.”

  “Then what the hell’re you laughing for?”

  “I’m not laughing.” But she was; laughing until she leaned forward and steadied herself by holding his hand.

  “Oh, Lynn,” he said, voice thickening as he gave her hand a squeeze.

  “Kevin,” she said, “nice as it might be, it wouldn’t solve anything.”

  “What? I didn’t …”

  Lynn laughed again and got to her feet, releasing herself. “Have you talked to her? Recently, I mean.”

  “I’ve tried.”

  “How often?”

  “Once.”

  “Do you want me to talk to her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s our business, we’ve got to sort it out for ourselves.”

  “I don’t want to be nasty, Kevin, but it doesn’t sound as if you’re making a great job of it.”

  “Thanks very much!”

  “Kevin, you’re impossible!” Bending low, she kissed him deftly near the top of his head. “I’ll give her a call, see if she’ll meet me for coffee, a drink.”

  “She’ll only think I’ve put you up to it.”

  “So? If nothing else, it’ll mean you’re trying to do something. It’ll mean that you care.”

  Kevin sat and finished his drink and his cigarette; Joan Armatrading clicked off into silence. “I’d better make a move,” he said.

  “Sure,” Lynn said, relieved that the one he was finally making was the one towards the door.

  Stephen Shepperd turned towards the person lying beside him and slipped an arm around her, cuddling close against her warmth. “I’m sorry, Mummy,” he breathed into her back. “I’m sorry.” And although Joan Shepperd lightly stirred, it is unlikely that she heard.

  Thirty-four

  Resnick had been up since before six, padding around the house between bathroom and bedroom and back again, persuading Pepper out from the airing cupboard, where he had made a nest for himself in the deep blue of the towels. Downstairs, he unbolted the door and let Dizzy in out of the still black morning. Cats fed and coffee ground, he went in search of a clean shirt. If Stephen Shepperd had almost collided with Vivien Nathanson, why had he lied? If he had been there in the crescent, would there have been time and opportunity enough for him to have abducted Emily Morrison? Where could he have taken her and why? Resnick sliced rye bread with caraway, three small rounds, and set them in the toaster, side by side. Sighed as he saw both Dizzy and Miles eating from Bud’s bowl, the smallest of his four cats, destined to be smaller still. Push them away with his foot, they’d be back seconds later. Instead he scooped Bud up in one hand, nuzzled him under his chin and sprinkled a handful of dry food on the work surface, standing the cat down next to it to eat. Coffee not quite ready, he began to slice the Jarlsberg for his toast. What he wanted to know, what they hadn’t yet asked, exactly when that Sunday afternoon Stephen Shepperd had arrived back home, the time his wife had next seen him. He spread margarine on the toast, scraped some back off with the knife and returned it to the packet; he overlapped the cheese across, cut a chunk of garlic sausage from the fridge and put that on top; what he would have liked, a tomato, but they had all gone, what he was tempted by, a smear of mayonnaise. A hand pressed against his stomach was enough to help him to resist. What had Stephen Shepperd said about swimming being good exercise? Maybe he should take it up? A few leisurely lengths each morning before work. He must send someone along with the Identikit picture, see if they recognized Stephen, if they could remember him being there on Sunday afternoon. He carried his toast and coffee through to the other room, wondering if Skelton would be up yet, whether he should call.

  “Not exactly a lot to go on, Charlie. Our word against his he was there at all. And if he was, what does it prove?”

  “If he was,” Resnick said, “why’s he lying?”

  “Someone else, perhaps, illicit assignation. Last thing he wants to do, admit the truth in front of his wife.”

  “The whole of Lenton couldn’t have been at it, sir, Sunday afternoon.”

  “According to my wife, who sees the world increasingly through the eyes of Andrea Newman’s novels, it’s what most people are doing any afternoon.”

  Skelton knew the dangers of making the wrong move too soon. Set against that, the almost certain knowledge that the more time passed before finding the girl, the less chance there was of finding her alive, and the more likely he was to come under criticism.

  “We’ve not come up with a lot else, have we, Charlie?”

  Slowly, Resnick shook his head. “Sod all, sir,” he said.

  Lorraine Morrison opened the door to Lynn while her finger was still pressed to the bell. Whatever Lorraine had tried doing to her hair that morning hadn’t worked; a green and yellow rugby shirt hung loose outside her jeans, sports shoes on her feet.

  “Have you found her?”

  Lynn shook her head.

  “But you’ve got some news?”

  “Not really, not much.”

  “We saw the drawing last night on the news; it was in the paper as well. There must be something.”

  “A lot of phone calls, yes. We’re sorting through them now.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Lorraine, what you have to realize, people who respond to items like that, they do so for, oh, a whole lot of reasons. Some think it’s a way to get noticed, some want to get their own back on their neighbors, others call in and suggest something stupid just for a joke, a laugh. Never mind somebody has to check them all out.”

  The disappointment in Lorraine’s face was so palpable you could reach out and touch it.

  “There is one possibility, though. Look, I mean, nothing to get your hopes up about, not really. But we think we might have a line on somebody. Probably only a witness, though, at best.”

  Now it was clear Lorraine didn’t know what to feel and Lynn, who knew she’d overstepped the line saying anything this early, felt responsible for offering the girl something that she’d immediately taken away.

  “How’s Michael?” she said.

  “He went to work. Decided last night and then, this morning, changed his mind. I had to push him out of the house in the end, but anything will be better for him than moping around.”

  Lynn glanced at her watch. “How about a quick coffee, then? I’ve just got time.”

  There was no doubting the small look of pleasure on Lorraine’s face as Lynn eased the front door to and they started towards the kitchen.

  “Michael’s brother phoned not long before you came,” Lorraine said. “I was glad Michael was out. I suppose he’s full of the right intentions, but all Geoffrey seems to do somehow is put Michael into an even worse mood.” She gestured for Lynn to sit down. “But perhaps that’s the way families are? I don’t know, I was the only one
. How about you?”

  “Afraid so,” Lynn said. “Just me.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “When you’re growing up, I suppose it’s not so bad. All that love and attention. It’s when you’re older, when your parents are getting older, that’s when it can get a bit more worrying.” That’s when, she thought, the chickens start coming home to roost.

  Joan Shepperd had woken that morning to the faint electrical sound of drilling, pushed out a hand and felt the pillow on her husband’s side of the bed, still damp. Down in the cellar which he had equipped as a workshop, Stephen was bending, not over a drill, but a plane, turning lengths of timber. On one of the shelves his old portable radio was tuned to Radio Two, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstein, that song that used to be so popular all those years ago. They must be dead now, the pair of them, Joan thought, either that or in their seventies. Eighties, even. She seemed to recall hearing that one of them had died, couldn’t for the life of her remember which one.

  “Stephen, do you want any breakfast?”

  Very well, let him pretend he hadn’t heard. Stay down there all day if that was the way he felt. She closed the cellar door as the whine of the tool Stephen was using drowned the final chorus of the song.

  “Passing Strangers,” is that what it had been?

  Today, Joan thought, would be a good day for All-Bran and some dried fruit, apricots and prunes.

  “What d’you call that?” Millington had asked, setting the Mail aside to lean over the book his wife was looking at so earnestly.

  “What the artist calls it is Double Nude Portrait.”

  What Millington could see, opened out over their breakfast table, was a middle-aged woman, not a stitch on her, leaning back in front of a gas fire, breasts sliding sideways in either direction, legs apart and one knee raised. Seated behind her and gazing down through a pair of round-framed spectacles, was this equally naked bloke with a vaguely hairy chest and what looked like the leftovers of an erection.

  “Nice thing to have on the breakfast table,” Millington said.

  “I think they’re on the floor, Graham.”

  “I can see that, toasting themselves in front of the gas.”