Gods Own Country

by Ross Raisin

A Danby schoolgirl, who went missing from her parents’ home on Sunday, was seen yesterday in the North York Moors village of Garside with the man police say may have abducted her.

  They were seen as the man, Sam Marsdyke, 19, robbed a local grocery store.

  My eyes flipped further down the column:

  …a previous charge of molestation was brought against him.

  I snatched up the newspaper and hurried out the shop. The old girls were still nattering, but I didn’t hear them. My mind was jenny-wheeling. The man police say may have abducted her. Abductor. That was a new one. Add that on the list. Man – that was a new one and all.

  The school-lad had gone, picked up by the bus. He’d probably took the bug on with him to show his mates. That was all he had to think about, catching bugs, he didn’t have to worry about abducting and robbing grocery stores and previous charges of molestation, he was too young yet. I upped pace, leaving the village and following the path halfway up the hillside until it levelled out into a small clearing. There was a scrap of burnt ground one side of it, beer cans lying about. I gave one a kick down the hill. Any town or village you went, there’d always be idleback nimrods around, getting puddled. I checked I was alone, then I sat down and laid the newspaper on the ground. There was another article down the side – FALCONRY CENTRE IN ASYLUM SCANDAL – but the main story was us, her face part-way down the page, staring up at me, look how happy I was before I met you, Lankenstein.

  A Danby schoolgirl, who went missing from her parents’ home on Sunday, was seen yesterday in the North York Moors village of Garside with the man police say may have abducted her.

  They were seen as the man, Sam Marsdyke, 19, robbed a local grocery store.

  Josephine Reeves, 15, was reported missing by her parents on Monday afternoon, and police intensified their search later that evening, when it became apparent that Mr Marsdyke had also disappeared from his parents’ farmhouse only half a mile away from the girl’s home.

  This is not the first recorded incident involving Mr Marsdyke. Three years ago, a previous charge of molestation was brought against him.

  Police believe he may have been planning to accost Miss Reeves for some weeks. He had been seen with her a number of times in the month leading up to the disappearance.

  Until yesterday’s incident at the grocery store, police had been limiting their search to Danby High Moor and > page 2

  I turned over. There was a block of writing continued down the right side the page, split in two by another photograph, this one of me. I was sitting in the tractor with a big grin on my chops. It wasn’t a recent photograph, not near, it must’ve been took five years back, because it was the day we got the new tractor, and Jess was still a whelp – she was stood on my lap, poking her head through the steering wheel, she didn’t look older than two months. Father looked happy as a sandboy. He was stood next the tractor with his hand on the engine and a catie-cornered smile straggling his face. Janet had come round that day, I remembered, she took the photograph. It must’ve been her gave it the police.

  …the surrounding area.

  According to a witness, Mr Marsdyke stole groceries from the store before forcing Miss Reeves to leave with him and smashing the windows of the store on his exit. The owner, Michael Stainthorpe, described the girl as ‘nervous and tired, but in good health’.

  He added: “He’d forced her into the robbery, because she got my attention while he wasn’t looking and she told me he was going to rob my store. Then he threw a tin of Heinz beans through my window.”

  Miss Reeves’ mother made this plea: “We knew immediately what must have happened, and then when we heard what he did to that poor girl before – we just don’t know what that boy’s capable of. Somebody must have seen them.”

  Mr Marsdyke’s parents declined to comment.

  Police are appealing for anyone who might have seen the pair to come forward. Mr Marsdyke is described as tall, thin, and wearing a torn brown jacket.

  The search continues today.

  I folded up the newspaper and slid it in my bag, behind the food. Then I made back to the wood. So, here was another I’d forced against her will, then. I didn’t know why he was glibbing about her saying that. She told me he was going to rob my store. That capped it all, that did. It was me had told her to get his attention, daft bald sod, he was just twined because I’d thrown the beans through his window. She’d laugh when I showed her it.

  Whitby was out now. We’d be spotted, certain. Only choice now, to my telling, was to hide out on the Moors, and then ship off overseas. Do a Sidney Swinbank and disappear into the ocean. I was walking back, listening to the distant peck, peck, peck of a woodpecker, when I stiffened up, sudden, as a thought snagged in my brain. I couldn’t show her the newspaper. She’d see about what happened with Katie Carmichael. There I’d been, gibbering about kissing and giggling and wagging lessons together, I couldn’t have her reading I’d a previous charge of molestation brought against me. I started getting something flowtered, thinking what to do, until I realised it was no bother, I wouldn’t show her the newspaper, I’d just tell I didn’t have time to take it because the shopkeeper had copped on to me. I could tell her what the article said, myself. I felt easier then, and I shaped up the story in my head as I neared the wood.

  It was near midday, a humdinger of a sun up, and I was mafted from walking so quick with all that weight of scran and water on my back, so it felt fresh and cool stepping into the shade of the wood. The light slatted through the treetops, scattering shadow patterns all around. It minded me of the disco-ball hung up to the ceiling at the End of Year Party, twisting rods of light round the canteen, over the dancing throng and over me stood next the stack of chairs and dining tables, my new shirt flashing red. I looked a right bobby-dazzler, Mum’d said. I looked a right bugger, more like. I smiled, thinking on it. That was another item I could tell her. She might think I was touched again, mind, saying the wood looked like a disco, and truly speaking it wasn’t too similar – there were no lasses chundering in the deep-fat fryer, for one thing, and I didn’t have a bloody nose from clogging with David Arckles.

  I came into the thicket where we’d camped up, but she wasn’t there, she’d gone for a stretch of her legs in the sunshine. I set my bag down and went out the wood. I looked around a moment, then I returned to the thicket, for she was off on a more distant wander and I couldn’t see her.

  It was probably best not telling her about the newspaper. It was too maggot-eaten with lies. Once I’d left out the part about a previous charge of molestation, and Chickenhead’s statement, and that she was nervous and tired and I’d been planning to accost her for weeks, there wasn’t a mighty lot else left. Only the bald sod glibbing about what she’d said to him, and the police were searching for us, but I wasn’t mooded for telling her any of that, neither.

  There was a worn piece of ground she’d been laying on, and a mangled clump of burdock, all bent and broken from where her bag had been. We had to find a new hideout now, I knew. There wasn’t choice but to keep moving, covering our tracks, now they were on to us.

  ♦

  We’d need to steal a boat. Unless we stowed away in a liner, or on a mighty great tanker going out to the oil rigs. That was no good, mind, we couldn’t live on an oil rig, stranded, middle of the North Sea in a city on stilts, with the wind battering away and a hundred lusty black-hands ogling a bikini calendar. When was the last time you saw a woman, eh? A real one, do you remember? Not me – last thing I rutted was a skate’s mouth. No, an oil tanker wasn’t suited for us, it’d have to be a liner, from Whitby or Scarborough, one of them big buggers taking folk over to Europe, there’d be plenty enough of them, certain.

  I got up and trod over to the edge the wood, glegging out at the landscape. It was a cracking day, still. I let the sun warm my chops a moment, eyes shut, feeling the heat on my lids, then I went back to the clearing and got the newspaper out.

  Mr Marsdyke’s parents declined to comment.
That was one good thing, at least. Sod knows what they’d have said if they had. Bone idle, allus in trouble, nowt t’ do wi’ us. I wondered if the newspaper had sent someone round to the house, toe-ending their way through the sheep shit to the front door? Mum appearing in her housecoat – we an’t nowt to say to you. Father sat glaring at the television behind, listening. They’d have had the police round and all, asking questions. When did you last see him? Where do you think he might be? Has he been behaving strangely of late? Course ‘e’s been behaving strangely, ‘e’s alius behaving strangely, the nazzart.

  It was gone two o’clock. I took a walk to the viewpoint over the plain. I could see Garside Manor more clear today, the sun slapping against its great sandy walls and the glint of light reflecting off the windows like flies on a sponge cake. I looked out over the oilseed fields, and Garside, where the bald sod was in his shop gabbing at any as’d listen – oh, all the newspapers have been here, that’s right, the shop’s never been so busy – and I looked out further at the small dark gash of Whitby on the coast. Then I turned round and scanned over the Moors, but there wasn’t sight of her.

  She’d be fine on her own for the time. She was too smart for them to catch her. And anyhow, I felt calm on my tod, with her off someplace else a while. It bated me yearning her. It was worse, somehow, when I was with her.

  ∨ Gods Own Country ∧

  22

  I bided in the wood as the shadows of trees crept round the clearing. She’d been gone two hours since I’d got back, and a thought was settling, something had happened.

  I shouldered my rucksack and set off, bugger knows where to, she might’ve been anyplace. Lain on the heather, her leg broke from slipping down a buckle in the ground, or lost, her bearings swallowed up by the Moors. I hadn’t a sign of her, as I scanned out again from the viewpoint, she could’ve been sat next the idlebacks’ bonfire for all I knew, giggling herself daft as they larked about telling jokes and chucking stones at beer cans.

  I walked a wide circle around the wood, one eye busy for clues of what direction she’d gone – a footprint, or something dropped to the ground – but a half-hour later I was back at the viewpoint, thinking what to do. If she was down there on the plain, she’d need be careful. By now all the villages would be crawling with police, and an uprising of shopkeepers. Could’ve been she was hid waiting behind a wall or a bush for them to clear off, that was why she’d took so long. They’d have her if she wasn’t patient, and then it’d all be over, some copper marching her to the door of a police car – there, that’s one of them caught! Now, you can’t keep quiet forever, lass, where is he? Where’s Lankenstein, then? A small smile showing on her lips. You’re a mentalist if you think I’m telling you. Right, if that’s the way you’re going to be, you can get in the car and we’ll see what Chickenhead has to say about it when you get back, shall we? He opens the door all stern-faced, waiting for her to climb in the back – and look who’s there, sat aside the window. Stone the crows if it isn’t old Greengrass, spluttering his innards into his mucky red neckerchief. The door locks behind her and the copper’s face appears at the window, giving the nod toward Greengrass. We found him up at the manor house, he says, he was leading the tourists on a trip round the grounds.

  I decided I’d search otherways from the plain and the coast, into the Moors. That was the only way she could’ve gone, else I’d have seen her. I set off across the small moor leading toward Goathland and the great expanse beyond.

  The problem was, my brain was in a nazzartly mood, playing tricks, befuddling me with doubt. Are you sure you hadn’t made a plan with her before you left, to meet up someplace else? You must’ve forgot because you were upshelled seeing the newspaper. I closed my eyes, trying to remember what I’d said, and I was fair sure, last thing I’d told her was to wait there while I got breakfast. My brain could riddle with me all it liked, but that was what I’d said, certain, and I felt a spark of anger she’d ignored me. Why’d she gone off bogtrotting, when I’d told her to wait? She was too mooded for doing as she liked, was why. I’d have to put her right. She couldn’t go behaving like that any more, we had to be more careful now the police were looking for us. She didn’t know that yet, mind, I had to give her that.

  I pressed on, a muck-lather of sweat greasing my forehead and itching at my pits. It was a teasing piece of moorland, this, small enough I could see the limit of it all sides, yet it’d still take another hour getting past, even at the crack I was on. And each step, I knew I might’ve been going the wrong direction, moving away from her. There was a dirty smirk of chimney smoke up ahead, over Goathland. Some cloth-head had a fire going, no matter it was a mafting hot afternoon. I headed toward it, though I wasn’t minded for going in the village, I didn’t think she’d likely be there – I’d skirt round instead, get on to the Moors proper, where I could scan out over the vast. I quickened onward. This wasn’t real moor, this part. The Moors laid themselves bare to boulders of wind that had swelled for miles, gathering and gusting and preventing all but the deepest-rooted, thickest-skinned articles from surviving. This cosy stretch of land here was coddled with woods and villages protecting it. Most of it wasn’t even heather, it was lush blankets of long grass swooning in the druft.

  I was nearing Goathland, close enough to see the bright-coloured movements of tourists tantling about, but something made me stop a moment – my brain wasn’t done niggling at me still. A thought floated into my head, simple and innocent as a bird flying through the kitchen window. What if she’d snuck away on purpose? It certain wasn’t a stretch of the legs she’d gone for, it didn’t need half a day for that. And I’d know if they’d found her, there would’ve been plenty enough footmarks around the wood, they’d have been waiting there to catch me anyhow. It started panicking about my head. I should’ve thought it earlier, I was soft in the brain, waiting all that time for her to come back. It was the bracelet still. I shouldn’t have left her, I should’ve seen she was mardy again – what if they found her before she came to her senses? It was his fault. What did he think, he’d bought her a gradely present, a sneck-lifter, she’d let him do what he liked after he gave it her? The great nimrod. I had a picture of her sat on a hump of ground, bluthering, her face all smeared and the bracelet turning round and round in her fingers, why did he have to do it? Everything would be fine if he hadn’t broken it.

  I passed through the wood by the side of Goathland, hiding once behind a tree when I thought I heard a tourist near, strayed from the village. I waited, listening for voices, until it turned out to be a squirrel scraffling in the undergrowth and I carried on, careful down a dip, over the railway, then up the other side to the top, where the Moors bulled up in front of me. Well, ramblers, it’s a gradely day for it, there’s no doubting. The clearest yet – the twitchers will be out in force, an afternoon like this, the hides’ll be full. Oh, they will, you’re right about that. And what are you spotting for, yourself, Lankenstein? Meadow pipits, is it? Grouse? The heather’s thriving with them right now, before the shooting season starts. I looked away over the Moors. No, no, it’s a different breed I’m after. Girlspotting is what I’m at. Is that right? Well, good luck to you, you don’t see a great many of them round these parts, I must say. Not really the habitat, what with the wind and the cold and blather, blather, blather – I stopped listening then, my senses locked on something else, for I had a sighting.

  Two miles off, a prick of blue was creeping northward. Back the direction we’d come. She was off home, then. Found her way smart enough, I had to give her that, I didn’t know how she’d managed it. Maybe she’d left herself a trail. Oldest trick in the book, I should’ve thought of that one – dropping a stone, or a balled-up sweet paper, every few yards when I wasn’t looking. What was that? I narrow my eyes at her, suspicious. Nothing. Here, would you like a sweet? Smart as she was, mind, she didn’t think things out enough sometimes. She was too stubborn-minded. Flighting off because she had a munk on. What, did she think everything w
ould fettle up normal again, did she? Back to the visits up the field, watching the progress of the lambs, and going down the Betty’s Sister for a drink? Oh, she’d like that, would Chickenhead, she’d be filling her boots.

  ♦

  I kept my eyes on the blue mark up ahead, moving quick away. She had a fair steam on. It was strange thinking we’d been running through Goathland the day before yesterday, a pair of convicts, and now she was here, a blue mark escaping home. She’d forgot all that now. She was too busy thinking on the tea she was going to eat, and her comfy bed with its fresh sheets and snug of pillows all plumped up ready for her. She’d half forgot about me – I was shoved away to the dust-cupboard of her brain, with Greengrass, and the bald sod, and all the other leftovers of her memory. A mole’s skull; elegant strawberries; a tin of beans flying through the air, glass shattering everywhere. Oi, Greengrass, budge over, will you, you’re taking all the space, you fat bugger. The bald sod pushes forward, straining for a view out the cupboard door. Who’s that through there? he says, there’s someone in the front with her look, he’s got all the space he wants in there. That’s the Cyclist, I say. I can see him, grinning, talking to her. Said something funny, have you? She thinks he has anyhow, she’s laughing her arse off at him as he sidles over and whispers something in her ear. She’s still at the giggles when he stretches her arms up and slides her shirt over her head, Greengrass and the bald sod clambering over each other for a gawp, their lollickers hanging out their mouths.

  I could see the outline of her now. She’d come to a fork in the path and stopped, hmm, which one was it, someone’s moved the sweet papers. I slowed up, ready to duck to the floor, but she didn’t look round, she was on the move again, thinking to herself, now, what am I going to tell them? Thought I’d go on a little holiday for a few days, get away from it all, see the countryside – really, you shouldn’t have worried. Chickenhead lifts an eyebrow. Did you now? And what were you thinking, bringing him with you? You don’t know what that boy’s capable of. But I didn’t know any of that, I’d not heard about Katie Carmichael. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known that. Well, anyway, it’s all over now, there’ll be nothing to worry about once you’re back in London, thank God.