Missing Joseph Part 51

HERE 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s.

"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 head-lamps illuminated a sign for Fork Reservoir. He thought about taking a few minutes' pleasure from mixing obloquy with castigation-G.o.d 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 head-lamps, 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 cha.s.sis 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 sh.e.l.l-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."

"G.o.d 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-"

"d.a.m.n it all, I don't want your a.n.a.lysis, 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 G.o.d 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! b.l.o.o.d.y 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- "G.o.d d.a.m.n it, Shepherd, you knew she had a pistol? What's she doing with a pistol? Is she a collector? Is it licenced?"

It wasn't.

"Jesus Christ!"

He didn't think...It didn't seem at the time...He knew he should have taken it from her. But he didn't. That was all.

Shepherd's voice was low. He was identifying one more crook to the rules and procedures he'd bent for Juliet Spence from the first, and he knew what the outcome of the revelation would be.

Lynley jammed his hand against the gear shift and cursed again. They shot forward, north. They had virtually no choice in the matter of pursuit. Providing she had found the track from the reservoir, she had the advantage of darkness and snow. If she was still on the moors and they tried to follow her across by torchlight, she could pick them off when they got within range by simply aiming at the torches' beams. Their only hope was to drive on to High Bentham and then head south down the road that led to Back End Barn. If she hadn't reached it, they couldn't risk waiting for her and taking the chance she'd got lost in the storm. They'd have to set across the moors, back towards the reservoir. They'd have to make an attempt to find her and hope for the best.

Lynley tried not to think about Maggie, confused and frightened, travelling in Juliet Spence's furious wake. He had no way of knowing what time they'd left the cottage. He had no idea of the clothes they wore. When St. James said something about having to take hypothermia into consideration, Lynley shoved his way into the Range Rover and slammed his fist against the horn. Not like that, he thought. G.o.d d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l. However it ended, it wouldn't be like that.

They got no moment's relief from either the wind or the snow. It was falling so heavily that it seemed as though all of the northwest would be five feet under drifts by the morning. The landscape was changed entirely. The muted greens and russets of winter were moonscape. Heather and gorse were hidden. An endless camouflage of white upon white made gra.s.sland, bracken, and heath a uniform sheet upon which the only markers were the boulders whose tops were powdered but still visible, dark specks like blemishes on the skin around them.

They crawled along, prayed their way up inclines, rode the declivities on brakes and ice. The lights from Constable Garrity's Range Rover slithered and wavered behind them, but came steadily on.

"They won't make it," Shepherd said, gazing out at the flurries that gusted against the car. "No one could. Not in this."

Lynley changed down to first gear. The engine howled. "She's desperate," he said. "That might keep her going."

"Add the rest, Inspector." He hunched into his coat. His face looked grey-green in the lights from the dash. "I'm at fault. If they die." He turned to the window. He fi ddled with his spectacles.

"It won't be the only thing on your conscience, Mr. Shepherd. But I expect you know that already, don't you?"

They rounded a curve. A sign pointing west was printed with the single word Keasden. Shepherd said, "Turn here." They veered to the left into a lane that was reduced to two ruts the width of a car. It ran through a hamlet that appeared to consist of a telephone box, a small church, and half a dozen signs for public footpaths. They experienced an all-too-brief respite from the storm when they entered a small wood just west of the hamlet. There the trees were bearing most of the snow in their branches and keeping it relatively clear of the ground. But another curve took them into open land again, and the car was instantly buffeted by a gust of wind. Lynley felt it in the steering wheel. He felt the tyres slide. He cursed with some reverence and moved his foot off the gas. He restrained himself from hitting the brakes.

The tyres found purchase. The car moved on.

"If they're not in the barn?" Shepherd asked.

"Then we'll look on the moor."

"How? You don't know what it's like. You could die out there, searching. Are you willing to risk it? For a murderess?"

"It's not only a murderess I'm looking for."

They approached the road that connected High Bentham and Winslough. The distance from Keasden to this crossroads was a little over three miles. It had taken them nearly half an hour to drive it.

They turned left-heading south in the direction of Winslough. For the next half mile, they saw the occasional lights from other houses, most of them set some considerable distance off the road. The land was walled here, the wall itself fast becoming just another white eruption from which individual stones, like staggered peaks, still managed to break through the snow. Then they were out on the moor again. No wall or fence served as demarcation between the land and the road. Only the tracks left by a heavy tractor showed them the way. In another half hour, they too would probably be obliterated.

The wind was whipping the snow into small, crystal cyclones. They built from the ground as well as from the air. They whirled in front of the car like ghostly dervishes and spun into the darkness again.

"Snow's letting up," Shepherd remarked. Lynley gave him a quick glance in which the other man obviously read the incredulity because he went on with, "It's just the wind now, blowing it about."

"That's bad enough."

But when he studied the view, Lynley could see that Shepherd was not merely acting the role of optimist. The snowfall was indeed diminishing. Much of what the wipers were sweeping away came from what was blowing off the moors, not falling from the sky. It gave little relief other than to make the promise that things weren't going to get much worse.

They crept along for another ten minutes with the wind whining like a dog outside. When their headlamps struck a gate that acted as a fence across the road, Shepherd spoke again.

"Here. The barn's to the right. Just beyond the wall."

Lynley peered through the windscreen. He saw nothing but eddies of snowflakes and darkness.

"Thirty yards from the road," Shepherd said. He shouldered open his door. "I'll have a look."

"You'll do what I tell you," Lynley said. "Stay where you are."

A muscle worked angrily in Shepherd's jaw. "She's got a gun, Inspector. If she's in there in the first place, she isn't likely to shoot at me. I can talk to her."

"You can do many things, none of which you're going to do right now."

"Have some sense! Let me-"

"You've done enough."