John Harvey: Off Minor

Resnick got back to the station late afternoon. Millington looked up at him from where he was sitting and slowly shook his head. “Sheppard’s solicitor’s been on the phone again,” Lynn Kellogg said. “Been trying to get in touch with Sheppard’s wife. Won’t pick up the phone or come to the door.”

“Get the keys,” Resnick said.

She’d hoovered the house and dusted, later than usual, but still it had been done. Her bedtime drink she’d made for herself, rinsing out the saucepan and the cup and leaving them on the side to drain. She had poured a glass of water and taken it upstairs to bed. The two medicine bottles were empty on the cabinet.

Lynn looked at Resnick and went back down to the phone.

She hadn’t left a note. Instead, on the pillow next to her, where her husband’s head more usually would have lain, there was a yellow wallet, Stephen Sheppard’s final batch of photographs, the last few taken almost exactly a week ago: blurred but recognizable, Emily with her doll’s pram, waving from her front lawn.

The detective sergeant who met Resnick at the airport was stocky and bald, bundled into a dark green anorak, black and white trainers below heavy cotton trousers.

“Good flight?” he asked, leaving Resnick to open the passenger door.

“Short,” Resnick said.

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

The house was beyond the edge of the village, high on the headland. “Let me out here,” Resnick said.

“I’ll take you right up …”

“Here. And wait.”

Hands in pockets, he walked past low stone walls and the dark massed green of rhododendron bushes. Here and there the sea was visible through the mist; somewhere out there was Ireland. The house had been built from iron-gray stone, turrets pointing towards the flat gray of the sky: someone’s idea of a castle.

Geoffrey Morrison, a heavy Aran sweater over green cords, was leaning on his putter near the foot of the large, sloping garden, talking into a radio phone. His wife, Claire, was higher up, near the conservatory, kneeling in a padded leisure suit to tie off some new growth on the loganberry bushes. Between them, cheeks puffed out and red from the wind, Emily was working herself back and forth on a bright green metal swing.

Happy family, Resnick thought.

Geoffrey Morrison broke off his call. He had only seen Resnick once before but recognized him immediately. In the back of his mind he had been waiting for Resnick to walk around the corner, pass through that gate, Resnick or someone like him.

“How did you know?” Morrison asked.

“What you do,” Resnick said, “you and your wife. You get Emily ready. No fuss. I don’t know what you’ve said to her already, but all she needs to know for now, the holiday’s over, her mum and dad are coming to take her back. They’ll be over on the next flight. Right?”

There were half a hundred things Morrison wanted to say and he said none of them.

Resnick held out a hand. “The phone,” he said.

Morrison gave it to him and turned towards where his wife was slowly walking towards him, holding Emily’s hand.

There had been five photographs of Emily altogether, taken by Stephen Sheppard as he jogged past the Morrison house, the Sunday afternoon that he came close to colliding with Vivien Nathanson. In one of these all that could be seen of Emily was a gloved hand, continuing to wave. At the far side of that picture, visible just inside the frame, the number plate of a car, a Ford Orion otherwise unaccounted for. A computer check had shown it as a hire car, based at Birmingham Airport, less than an hour and a half away. The rest of the details had been simple to obtain.

Geoffrey Morrison sat in one of the leather armchairs, waiting for his brother and sister-in-law to arrive. Emily was upstairs with Claire, excited, packing her things. Every now and then, a peal of laughter would invade the quiet of the L-shaped room, one wall of which was double-glazed and looked out across the garden to the sea.

“He’s a loser,” Geoffrey said, “Michael, always has been. Marriage in tatters, Diana likely to spend the rest of her life in and out of bloody loony bins, any chance he ever had of a career, earning real money, down the bloody toilet. Can’t hold a thing together, act like a bloody man, why else does he go and marry some kid half his age? Nobody else’d give him an ounce of respect, that’s why. Poor bloody Lorraine, doesn’t know any better, but, mark my words, she’ll learn if she hasn’t already.”

He ignored Resnick’s disapproving look and refilled his brandy glass.

“You want to see what’s possible, look at this. Place like this, any idea what it cost? Just to keep it up’s a sight more than Michael’s pathetic little mortgage. Two fortunes I’ve made in my lifetime, two. And what’s he got to show? That wonderful brother of mine. It’s not as if I haven’t asked him, begged him. Come in with me. The two of us together, family. He wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t bloody listen. The blue-eyed boy. What’s he ended up with? Nothing.”

“Not quite,” Claire Morrison said from the doorway, one hand holding a new suitcase, the other Emily’s hand. “Not exactly.”

Geoffrey swallowed his brandy and glared.

“You couldn’t have children,” Resnick said.

Claire squeezed Emily’s band. “Ironic, isn’t it? Everything else money could buy. Oh, we had the advice, the treatment, hormone injections. And there’s Michael and Diana, half-way round the twist and one step from a pauper’s grave …”

“For God’s sake stop running off at the mouth,” Geoffrey said.

“Bingo!” said Claire. “Pregnant first time.”

“Shut up!” Geoffrey threatened, standing in front of the chair.

“Course, we could have adopted, heavens, we could have bought a child. But, no, that wasn’t good enough, not for Geoffrey, that wasn’t family, and even though poor Michael wasn’t apparently good for much else, it seemed the boy could be counted on in the sperm stakes …”

He rushed at her and Resnick grabbed his arm and held him back, but Claire stood her ground.

“I told you …” he began, but his heart was no longer in it.

“Geoffrey,” Claire said, “you’ve told me what to do for the last time. Come on, sweetheart, let’s go down to the road, see if we can see Mummy and Daddy’s car.” And she ushered Emily from the room.

Resnick released Geoffrey and watched as he subsided into his chair like yesterday’s balloon.

“I don’t know,” Resnick said, “if you ever really thought you could get away with this, or for how long. If all the money’s blinded you to the point where you think you can do whatever you want: take over a child like you would anything else, and bugger the rules. Anything to teach Michael a lesson, exact some kind of revenge.”

Morrison wasn’t looking at him, but Resnick knew he was listening all the same.

“I don’t know,” he said, “if you have the remotest idea what you’ve been responsible for, the amount of unnecessary pain.”

Resnick moved closer, willing Morrison, if only for a moment, to look him in the face. “Geoffrey Morrison,” he said, “I am arresting you in connection with the abduction of Emily Morrison. I must warn you that you do not have to say anything at this time, but if you choose to do so, anything that you say will be written down and may be given in evidence against you.”

Standing outside the house, clouds shuttling across the graying sky, Resnick watched Emily beyond the bottom of the path, holding Claire Morrison’s hand. When Claire bent towards her and pointed into the distance, Emily began to jump up and down and then ran a few paces towards the approaching car, cries of excitement rising on the winter air.