Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“I wanted to be close.”

“We are close, Mag. Come on. Let me hold you.” He urged her back down. “It feels good just like this, lying here, you and me.”

“I only wanted—”

“Shh. It’s okay. It’s nothing.” He opened her coat and slipped his arm round her. “It’s nice just like this,” he whispered against her hair. He moved his hand to her back and began

caressing the length of her spine.

“But I only wanted—”

“Shh. See. It’s just as nice like this, isn’t it? Just holding? Like this?” His fi ngers pressed in long, slow circles, stopping at the small of her back where they remained, a tender pressure that relaxed and relaxed and relaxed her completely. She finally slipped, protected and loved, into sleep.

It was the dogs’ movement that awakened her. They were up, about, and dashing outside at the sound of a vehicle coming into the farmyard. By the time they were barking, she was sitting up, fully awake, aware that she was alone on the blanket. She clutched it to her and whispered, “Nick!” frantically. He materialised from the darkness by the window. The light from above was no longer shining. She had no idea how long she had slept.

“Someone’s here,” he said unnecessarily.

“Police?”

“No.” He glanced back at the window. “I think it’s my dad.”

“Your dad? But how—”

“I don’t know. Come here. Be quiet.”

They gathered up the blankets and crept to one side of the window. The dogs were sending up enough noise to announce the Second Coming and lights were snapping on outside.

“Hey there! Enough!” someone shouted roughly. A few more barks and the dogs were silent. “What is it? Who’s there?”

Footsteps sloshed across the yard. Conversation ensued. Maggie strained to hear it, but the voices were low. A woman said quietly, “Is it Frank?” at a distance and a child’s voice cried, “Mummy, I want to see .”

Maggie pulled the blanket closer round her. She clutched on to Nick. “Where c’n we go? Nick, can we run?”

“Just be quiet. He ought to…Damn.”

“What?”

But she heard it herself:

“You don’t mind if I have a look round, do you?”

“Not at all. Two of them, you said it was?”

“A boy and a girl. They’d be wearing school uniforms. The boy might have had a bomber jacket on.”

“Never saw a hair of anything like that. But go on and have a look. Let me get my boots on and I’ll join you. Need a torch?”

“Got one, thanks.”

Footsteps went in the direction of the barn. Maggie grabbed Nick’s jacket. “Let’s go, Nick. Now! We can run to the wall. We can hide in the pasture. We can—”

“What about the dogs?”

“What?”

“They’ll follow and give us away. Besides, the other bloke said he was going to help in the search.” Nick turned from the window and looked around the shed. “Our best hope is to hide out in here.”

“Hide out? How? Where?”

“Move the sacks. Get behind them.”

“But the rats!”

“No choice. Come on. You’ve got to help.”

The farmer began to tromp across the yard in the direction of Nick’s father as they dropped their blankets and started pulling the sacks away from the wall. They heard Nick’s father call out, “Nothing in the barn,” and the other man say, “Have a go with the shed, here,” and the sound of their approach spurred Maggie into a fury of pulling sacks far enough from the wall to create a burrow of safety. She had retreated within it — Nick had as well — when the light from a torch beamed in through the window.

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Nick’s father said.

A second light joined the first; the shed became brighter. “The dogs sleep in here. Can’t say as I’d want to join them even if I was on the run.” His torch clicked off. Maggie let out her breath. She heard footsteps in the muck. Then, “Best to have a closer look, though,” and the light reappeared, stronger, and shining from the doorway.

A dog’s whine accompanied the sound of wet boots slapping on the floor of the shed. Nails ticked against the stones and approached the sacks. Maggie said, “No” in despair without making any sound and felt Nick move a step closer.

“Here’s something,” the farmer said. “Someone’s messed with that chest.”

“Those blankets belong there on the fl oor?”

“Can’t say they do.” The light darted round the room, corners to ceiling. It glinted off the discarded toilet and shone on the dust on the rocking chair. It came to rest on the top of the sacking and illuminated the wall above Maggie’s head. “Ah,” the farmer said. “Here we’ve got it. Step out here in the open, youngsters. Step out now or I’ll send the dogs in to help you make up your minds.”

“Nick?” his father said. “That you, lad? Have you got the girl with you? Come out of there. Now.”

Maggie rose first, trembling, blinking into the torchlight, trying to say, “Please don’t be angry with Nick, Mr. Ware. He only wanted to help me,” but beginning to weep instead, thinking, Don’t send me home, I don’t want to go home.

Mr. Ware said, “What in God’s name were you thinking of, Nick? Get out here with you. Jesus Christ, I ought to beat you silly. You know how worried your mum’s been, lad?”

Nick was turning his head, eyes narrowed against the light that his father was shining into his face. “Sorry,” he said.

Mr. Ware harumphed . “Sorry won’t go far to mend your fences with me. You know you’re trespassing here? You know these people could’ve had the police after you? What’re you thinking of? Haven’t you no better sense than that? And what were you planning to do with this girl?”

Nick shifted his weight, silent.

“You’re filthy.” Mr. Ware shone the light up and down. “God almighty, just look at the sight of you. You look like a tramp.”

“No, please,” Maggie cried, rubbing her wet nose against the sleeve of her coat. “It isn’t Nick. It’s me. He was only helping me.”

Mr. Ware harumphed again and clicked off his torch. The farmer did likewise. He’d been standing to one side, holding the light in their direction but otherwise looking out the window. When Mr. Ware said, “Out to the car with both of you, then,” the farmer scooped up the two blankets from the fl oor and followed them out.

The dogs were milling round Mr. Ware’s old Nova, snuffling at the tyres and the ground alike. The exterior lights were shining from the house and in their glow Maggie could see the condition of her clothes for the fi rst time. They were crusted with mud and streaked with dirt. In places the lichen from the walls she’d climbed over had deposited patches of grey-green slime. Her shoes were clotted with muck out of which sprouted bracken and straw. The sight was a stimulus for a new onslaught of tears. What had she been thinking? Where were they supposed to go, looking like this? With no money, no clothing, and no plan to guide them, what had she been thinking?

She clutched Nick’s arm as they slogged to the car. She sobbed, “I’m sorry, Nick. It’s my fault. I’ll tell your mummy. You didn’t mean harm. I’ll explain. I will.”

“Get in the car, the both of you,” Mr. Ware said gruffly. “We’ll do our deciding about who’s at fault later.” He opened the driver’s door and said to the farmer, “It’s Frank Ware. I’m at Skelshaw Farm up Winslough direction. I’m in the book if you discover this lot did any damage to your place.”

The farmer nodded but said nothing. He shuffled his feet in the muck and looked as if he wished they’d be off. He was saying, “Funny blokes, out of the way,” to the dogs when the farmhouse door opened. A child of perhaps six years old stood framed in the light in her nightgown and slippers.