Missing Joseph

  Lynley finally looked up without comment. Colin said, “The confusion and the false starts in the case are my fault. I wasn’t on to Polly at first, but I think this clears things up.” He passed the stapled report to Lynley, who handed the book over to St. James and began to read. He went through the pages. Colin watched him, waiting for a flicker of emotion, recognition, or dawning acceptance to move his mouth, raise his eyebrows, light his eyes. He said, “Once Juliet took the blame and said it was an accident, that’s what I focussed on. I couldn’t see that anyone had a motive to murder Sage and when Juliet insisted that no one could have had access to the root cellar without her knowledge, I believed her. I didn’t realise then that he was never the target in the first place. I was worried about her, about the inquest. I wasn’t seeing things clearly. I should have realised earlier that this murder had nothing to do with the vicar at all. He was the victim by mistake.”

  Lynley had two pages left to read, but he closed the report and removed his spectacles. He replaced them in his jacket pocket and handed the report to Colin. When Colin’s fingers were on it, he said, “You should have realised earlier…An interesting choice of words. Would this be before or after you assaulted her, Constable? And why was that, by the way. To get a confession? Or merely for pleasure?”

  The paper felt weightless beneath his fingers. Colin saw that it had slipped to the floor. He picked it up, saying, “We’re here to talk about a murder. If Polly’s turning the facts so that I’m under suspicion, that should tell you something about her, shouldn’t it?”

  “What tells me something is that she hasn’t said a word. About being assaulted. About you. About Juliet Spence. She doesn’t act much like a woman who’s trying to hide her culpability.”

  “Why should she? The person she was after is still alive. She can tot the other up as a simple mistake.”

  “With a motive of thwarted love, I take it. You must think a great deal of yourself, Mr. Shepherd.”

  Colin felt his features hardening. He said, “I suggest you listen to the facts.”

  “No. You listen. And you hear me well because when I’m done you’ll resign from policework and thank God that’s all your superiors expect from you.”

  And then the inspector began to talk. He listed names that had no meaning to Colin: Susanna Sage and Joseph, Sheila Cotton and Tracey, Gladys Spence, Kate Gitterman. He talked about cot death, a long-ago suicide, and an empty grave in a family plot. He sketched the vicar’s route through London, and he laid out the story that Robin Sage—and he himself—had pieced together. In the end he unfolded a poor copy of a newspaper article and said, “Look at the picture, Mr. Shepherd,” but Colin kept his eyes where he’d placed them the moment the man had started speaking: on the gun cabinet and the shotguns he’d cleaned. They were primed and ready and he wanted to use them.

  He heard Lynley say, “St. James,” and then his companion began to speak. Colin thought, No. I won’t and I can’t, and he conjured up her face to hold the truth at bay. Occasional words and phrases pierced through: most poisonous plant in the western hemisphere…root stock…would have known…oily juice upon cutting an indication of…couldn’t possibly have ingested…

  He said in a voice that came from so far within him he couldn’t quite hear it himself, “She was sick. She’d eaten it. I was there.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not the case. She’d taken a purgative.”

  “The fever. She was burning. Burning.”

  “I expect she’d taken something to elevate her temperature as well. Cayenne, probably. That would have done it.”

  He felt cleaved in half.

  “Look at the picture, Mr. Shepherd,” Lynley said.

  “Polly wanted to kill her. She wanted to clear the way.”

  “Polly Yarkin had nothing to do with any of this,” Lynley said. “You were a form of alibi. At the inquest, you’d be the one to testify to Juliet’s illness the night Robin Sage died. She used you, Constable. She murdered her husband. Look at the picture.”

  Did it look like her? Was that her face? Were those her eyes? It was more than ten years old, the copy was bad, it was dark, it was blurry.

  “This doesn’t prove a thing. It’s not even clear.”

  But the other two men were relentless. A simple confrontation between Kate Gitterman and her sister would tell the tale of identification. And if it didn’t, the body of Joseph Sage could be exhumed and genetic testing could be done upon it to match him to the woman who called herself Juliet Spence. Because if she was indeed Juliet Spence, why would she refuse to be tested, to have Maggie tested, to produce the documents attendant to Maggie’s birth, to do anything possible to clear her name?

  He was left with nothing. Nothing to say, no argument to propose, and nothing to reveal. He got to his feet and carried the copied photograph and its accompanying article to the fireplace. He threw them in and watched the flames take them, curling the paper at the edges first, then lapping eagerly, then consuming entirely.

  Leo watched him, looking up from his bone, whining low in his throat. God, to have everything simple, like a dog. Food and shelter. Warmth against the cold. Loyalty and love that never wavered.

  He said, “I’m ready, then.”

  Lynley said, “We won’t be needing you, Constable.”

  Colin looked up to protest even as he knew he had no right. The doorbell rang.

  The dog barked, quieted. Colin said bitterly, “Would you like to answer that yourself, then?” to Lynley. “It’ll be your wopsie.”

  It was. But it was more. The female PC had come in uniform, bundled against the cold, her spectacles flecked with moisture. She said, “PC Garrity. Clitheroe CID. Sergeant Hawkins’s already put me in the picture,” while behind her on the porch listened a man in heavy tweeds and boots with a cap pulled low on his head: Frank Ware, Nick’s father. Both of them were backlit by the headlamps of one of their two vehicles which blazed a blinding white light into the steady fall of the snow.

  Colin looked at Frank Ware. Ware looked uneasily from the PC to Colin. He stomped the snow off his boots and pulled at his nose. He said, “Sorry to disturb. But there’s a car gone into a ditch out next the reservoir, Colin. I thought I best stop by and tell you. It looks to me like Juliet’s Opel.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THERE WAS NO CHOICE BUT TO TAKE Shepherd with them. He’d grown up in the area. He knew the lay of the land. Lynley wasn’t willing to give him the freedom of his own vehicle, however. He directed him to the front seat of the hired Range Rover, and with Constable Garrity and St. James following in the other, they set out for the reservoir.

  The snow flew into the windscreen in constant banners of white, dazzling in the headlamps and blown by the wind. Other vehicles had beaten it down into ruts on the road, but ice ridged the bottom of these and made the going perilous. Even their Range Rover’s four-wheel drive was not sufficient to negotiate the worst of the curves and acclivities. They slipped and slid, moving at a crawl.

  They eased past Winslough’s monument to World War I, the soldier’s bowed head and his rifle now glittering white. They passed the common where the snow blew in a spectral whirlwind that dusted the trees. They crossed the bridge that arched over a tumbling beck. Visibility worsened as the windscreen wipers began to leave a curved trail of ice when they moved on the glass.

  “Blast,” Lynley muttered. He made an adjustment to the defroster. It was ineffectual, since the problem was external.

  Next to him, Shepherd said nothing beyond giving two-word directions whenever they approached what went for an intersection this deep in the country. Lynley glanced his way when he said, “Left here,” as the headlamps illuminated a sign for Fork Reservoir. He thought about taking a few minutes’ pleasure from mixing obloquy with castigation—God knew that Shepherd was getting off far too lightly with a request for resignation from his superiors and not a full public hearing—but the blank mask that was the other man’s face dried up the well-spring
of Lynley’s need to censure. Colin Shepherd would be reliving the events of the last few days for the rest of his life. And ultimately, when he closed his eyes, Lynley could only hope that it would be Polly Yarkin’s face that haunted him most.

  Behind them, Constable Garrity drove her Rover aggressively. Even with the wind blowing and the windows rolled up, they could hear her grinding her way through the gears. The engine of her vehicle roared and complained, but she never dropped more than six yards behind them.

  Once they left the outskirts of the village, there were no lights other than those from their vehicles and those that shone from the occasional farmhouse. It was like driving blind, for the falling snow reflected their headlamps, creating a permeable, milky wall that was ever shifting, ever changing, ever blowing their way.

  “She knew you’d gone to London,” Shepherd finally said. “I told her. Put that into the account if you’d like.”

  “You just pray we can find her, Constable.” Lynley changed down gears as they rounded a curve. The tyres slid, spun helplessly, then caught again. Behind them, Constable Garrity sounded her horn in congratulations. They lumbered on.

  Some four miles from the village, the entrance to Fork Reservoir loomed to their left, offset by a stand of pines. Their branches hung heavily with a weight of wet snow caught in the web of the trees’ stubby needles. The pines lined the road for perhaps a quarter of a mile. Opposite them, a hedge gave way to the open moor.

  “There,” Shepherd said as they came to the end of the trees.

  Lynley saw it as Shepherd spoke: the shape of a car, its windows along with its roof, bonnet, and boot hidden beneath a crust of snow. The car teetered at a drunken angle just at the point where the road sloped upward. It sat on the verge neither coming nor going, but rather diagonally with its chassis oddly balanced on the ground.

  They parked. Shepherd offered his torch. Constable Garrity joined them and beamed hers on the car. Its rear wheels had spun themselves a grave in the snow. They lay deeply imbedded in the side of the ditch.

  “My nitwit sister tried this once,” Constable Garrity said, flinging her hand in the upward direction the road was taking. “Tried to make it up a slope and slid backwards. Nearly broke her neck, little fool.”

  Lynley brushed the snow from the driver’s door and tried the handle. The car was unlocked. He opened the door, shone the light inside, and said, “Mr. Shepherd?”

  Shepherd came to join him. St. James opened the other door. Constable Garrity handed him her torch. Shepherd looked inside at the cases and cartons as St. James went through the glove box, which was gaping open.

  “Well?” Lynley said. “Is this her car, Constable?”

  It was an Opel like a hundred thousand other Opels, but different in that its rear seat was crammed to the roof with belongings. Shepherd pulled one of the cartons towards him, pulled out a pair of gardening gloves. Lynley saw his hand close over them tightly. It was affirmation enough.

  St. James said, “Nothing much in here,” and snapped the glove box closed. He picked a piece of dirty towelling off the floor and wrapped round his hand a short length of twine that lay with it. Thoughtfully, he looked out across the moors. Lynley followed his gaze.

  The landscape was a study in white and black: It was falling snow and night unredeemed by the moon or stars. There was nothing to break the force of the wind here—neither woodland nor fell disrupted the flow of the land—so the frigid air cut keenly and quickly, bringing tears to the eyes.

  “What’s ahead?” Lynley asked.

  No one responded to the question. Constable Garrity was beating her hands against her arms and stomping her feet, saying, “Must be ten below.” St. James was frowning and making moody knots in the twine he’d found. Shepherd was still holding the gardening gloves in his fist, and his fist was at his chest. He was watching St. James. He looked shell-shocked, caught between dazed and mesmerised.

  “Constable,” Lynley said sharply. “I asked you what’s ahead.”

  Shepherd roused himself. He removed his spectacles and wiped them on his sleeve. It was a useless activity. The moment he replaced them, the lenses were respeckled with snow.

  “Moors,” he said. “The closest town’s High Bentham. To the northwest.”

  “On this road?”

  “No. This cuts over to the A65.”

  Leading to Kirby Lonsdale, Lynley thought, and beyond it the M6, the Lakes, and Scotland. Or south to Lancaster, Manchester, Liverpool. The possibilities were endless. Had she been able to make it that far, she would have bought herself time and perhaps an escape route to the Irish Republic. As it was, she played the part of fox in a winter landscape where either the police or the unforgiving weather ultimately was going to run her to ground.

  “Is High Bentham closer than the A65?”

  “On this road, no.”

  “But off the road? Cutting across country? For Christ’s sake, man, they won’t be walking along the verge, waiting for us to come by and give them a lift.”

  Shepherd’s eyes darted inside the car and then, with what seemed like an effort, to Constable Garrity, as if he were anxious to make sure they all heard his words and knew, at this point, that he’d made the decision to cooperate fully. He said, “If they’re headed due east across the moors from here, the A65’s about four and a half miles. High Bentham’s double that.”

  “They’d be able to get a ride on the A65, sir,” Constable Garrity pointed out. “It might not be closed yet.”

  “God knows they’d never be able to make a nine-mile hike northwest in this weather,” St. James said. “But they’ve got the wind directly in their faces going east. There’s no bet they could even make the four and a half.”

  Lynley turned from his examination of the darkness. He shone his torchlight beyond the car. Constable Garrity followed his lead and did the same, heading a few yards in the opposite direction. But snow obscured whatever footprints Juliet Spence and Maggie might have left behind them.

  Lynley said to Shepherd, “Does she know the land? Has she been out here before? Is there shelter anywhere?” He saw the flicker cross Shepherd’s face. He said, “Where?”

  “It’s too far.”

  “Where?”

  “Even if she started before dark, before the snowfall got bad—”

  “Damn it all, I don’t want your analysis, Shepherd. Where?”

  Shepherd’s arm extended more west than north. He said, “Back End Barn. It’s four miles south of High Bentham.”

  “And from here?”

  “Directly across the moors? Perhaps three miles.”

  “Would she know that? Trapped here, in the car? Would she know?”

  Lynley saw Shepherd swallow. He saw the betrayal bleed out of his features and settle them into the mask of a man without hope or future. “We hiked it from the reservoir four or five times. She knows,” he said.

  “And that’s the only shelter?”

  “That’s it.” She’d have to find the track that led from Fork Reservoir to Knottend Well, he told them, a spring that was the midway point between the reservoir and Back End Barn. It was marked well enough when the ground was clear, but a wrong turn in the dark and the snow could take them in circles. Still, if she found the track they could follow it to Raven’s Castle, a five-stone marker that joined the tracks to the Cross of Greet and the East Cat Stones.

  “Where’s the barn from there?” Lynley asked.

  It was a mile and a half north from the Cross of Greet. It sat not far off the road that ran north and south between High Bentham and Winslough.

  “I can’t think why she didn’t head there in the car in the first place,” Shepherd said in conclusion, “instead of coming out this way.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s a train station in High Bentham.”

  St. James got out of the car and slammed the door home. “It could be a blind, Tommy.”

  “In this weather?” Lynley asked. “I doubt it. She’d
have needed an accomplice. Another vehicle.”

  “Drive this far, fake an accident, drive on with someone else,” St. James said. “It’s not that far removed from the suicide game, is it?”

  “Who’d have helped her?”

  All of them looked at Shepherd. He said, “I last saw her at noon. She said Maggie was ill. That was it. As God is my witness, Inspector.”

  “You’ve lied before.”

  “I’m not lying now. She didn’t expect this to happen.” He flicked his thumb at the car. “She didn’t plan an accident. She didn’t plan anything but getting away. Look at it straight. She knows where you’ve been. If Sage discovered the truth in London, you did as well. She’s running. She’s panicked. She’s not being as careful as she ought to be. The car skids on the ice and puts her in a ditch. She tries to get out. She can’t. She stands here on the road, just where we are. She knows she could try for the A65 across the moors, but it’s snowing and she’s afraid she’ll get lost because she’s never made the hike before and she can’t risk it in the cold. She looks the other direction and remembers the barn. She can’t make it to High Bentham. But she thinks she and Maggie can make it there. She’s been there before. She sets off.”

  “All of which could be what we’re intended to think.”

  “No! Bloody Christ, it’s what happened, Lynley. It’s the only reason why—” He stopped. He looked over the moors.

  “The reason why…?” Lynley prompted.

  Shepherd’s answer was nearly taken by the wind. “Why she took the gun with her.”

  It was the open glove box, he said. It was the towelling and the twine on the floor.

  How did he know?

  He’d seen the gun. He’d seen her use it. She’d taken it from a drawer in the sitting room one day. She’d unwrapped it. She’d shot at a chimney pot on the Hall. She’d—