Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“He’s good-looking, Sheel,” Stace said with another wink. “You wouldn’t want to miss him. Trust me, luv.”

“Is that my Harold, then, having a bit of fun with you? ’Cause if it is…”

She came out of the room, drawing a black scarf across hair that was short, artfully cut, and coloured a white blonde that came only from bleaching or being born an albino. She hesitated when she saw Lynley. Her blue eyes fl icked over him, taking in and evaluating the coat, the umbrella, and the cut of his hair. Her face became immediately wary; the birdlike features of her nose and chin seemed to recede. But only for a moment before she lifted her head sharply, saying,

“I’m Sheelah Yanapapoulis. Who is it exactly wants to make my acquaintance?”

Lynley produced his warrant card. “Scotland Yard CID.”

She’d been in the process of buttoning a green mackintosh, and although she slowed when Lynley identified himself, she did not stop. She said, “Police, then?”

“Yes.”

“I got nothing to say to you lot about anything.” She adjusted her handbag on her arm.

“It won’t take long,” said Lynley. “And I’m afraid it’s essential.”

The other hairdresser had turned from her client. She said with some alarm, “Sheel, want me to ring Harold for you?”

Sheelah ignored her, saying, “Essential to what? Did one of my boys get up to something this morning? I’ve kept them home today if that’s supposed to be a crime. The whole lot of them got colds. Did they get up to mischief?”

“Not that I know.”

“They’re always playing with the phone, that lot. Gino dialed 999 and yelled fi re last month. Got thrashed for it, he did. But he’s nothing so much as pig-headed, like his dad. I wouldn’t put it by him to do it again for a giggle.”

“I’m not here about your children, Mrs. Yanapapoulis, although Philip did tell me where to fi nd you.”

She was fastening the galoshes round her ankles. She straightened with a grunt and drove her fists into the small of her back. In that position, Lynley saw what he had not noticed before. She was pregnant.

He said, “May we go somewhere to talk?”

“About what?”

“About a man called Robin Sage.”

Her hands flew to her stomach.

“You do know him,” he said.

“And what if I do?”

“Sheel, I’m ringing Harold,” Stace said. “He won’t want you talking to the coppers and you know it.”

Lynley said to Sheelah, “If you’re going home anyway, let me drive you there. We can talk on the way.”

“You listen. I’m a good mother, Mister. No one says different. You just ask anyone around. You c’n ask Stace here.”

“She’s a bleeding saint,” Stace said. “How many times you gone without shoes so those kids of yours could have the trainers they wanted? How many times, Sheel? And when was the last time you had a meal out? And who does the ironing if it isn’t you? And how many new frocks d’you buy last year?” Stace drew a breath. Lynley seized the moment.

“This is a murder investigation,” he said.

The shop’s sole client lowered her magazine. Stace drew her chemical bottle to her breast. Sheelah stared at Lynley and seemed to weigh his words.

“Whose?” she asked.

“His. Robin Sage.”

Her features softened and bravado disappeared. She took a long breath. “Right, then. I’m in Lambeth, and my boys are waiting. If you want to talk, we got to do it there.”

“I’ve a car outside,” Lynley said, and as they left the shop, Stace shouted after them, “I’m still ringing Harold!”

A new cloudburst erupted as Lynley shut the door behind them. He opened his umbrella, and although it was large enough for them both, Sheelah kept her distance from him by opening a small, collapsible one that she took from the pocket of her mackintosh. She didn’t say a word until they were in the car and heading towards Clapham Road and Lambeth.

And then it was only “Some motor, mister. I hope it’s got an alarm system on it, else there won’t be a bolt left when you leave my fl at.” She gave the leather seat a caress. “They’d like this, my boys.”

“You have three children?”

“Five.” She pulled up the collar of her mackintosh and looked out the window.

Lynley gave her a glance. Her attitude was streetwise and her concerns were adult, but she didn’t look old enough to have borne fi ve children. She couldn’t yet have been thirty.

“Five,” he repeated. “They must keep you busy.”

She said, “Go left here. You need to take the South Lambeth Road.”

They drove in the direction of Albert Embankment and when they hit congestion near Vauxhall Station, she directed him through a maze of back streets that finally took them to the tower block in which she and her family lived. Twenty floors high, it was steel and concrete, unadorned and surrounded by more steel and concrete. Its dominant colours were a rusting gun metal and a yellowing beige.

The lift they rode in smelled of wet nap-pies. Its rear wall was papered with announcements about community meetings, crime-stopping organisations, and crisis hot lines covering every topic from rape to AIDS. Its side walls were cracked mirrors. Its doors comprised a snake nest of illegible graffi ti in the middle of which the words Hector sucks cock were painted in brilliant and unavoidable red.

Sheelah spent the ride shaking off her umbrella, collapsing it, putting it into her pocket, removing her scarf, and fl uffi ng up the top of her hair. She did this by pulling it forward from the crown. In defiance of gravity, it formed a drooping cockscomb.

When the lift doors opened, Sheelah said, “It’s this way,” and led him towards the back of the building, down a narrow corridor. Numbered doors lined each side. Behind them music played, televisions chattered, voices rose and fell. A woman shrieked, “Billy, you let me go!” A baby wailed.

From Sheelah’s flat came the sound of a child shouting, “No, I won’t! You can’t make me!” and the rattle of a snare drum being beaten by someone with only moderate talent for the occupation. Sheelah unlocked the door and swung it open, calling, “Which o’ my blokes got a kiss for Mummy?”

She was instantly surrounded by three of her children, all of them little boys eager to oblige, each one shouting louder than the other. Their conversation consisted of:

“Philip says we have to mind and we don’t, Mum, do we?”

“He made Linus eat chicken soup for breakfast!”

“Hermes has my socks and he won’t take them off and Philip says—”

“Where is he, Gino?” Sheelah asked. “Philip! Come give your mummy what for.”

A slender maple-skinned boy perhaps twelve years old came to the kitchen door with a wooden spoon in one hand and a pot in the other. “Making mash,” he said. “These lousy potatoes keep boiling over. I got to keep watch.”

“You got to kiss your mum fi rst.”

“Aw, come on.”

“ You come on.” Sheelah pointed to her cheek. Philip trudged over and pecked at his duty. She cuffed him lightly and grabbed on to his hair in which the pick he used to comb it stuck up like a plastic headdress. She plucked it out. “Stop acting like your dad. Makes me crazy, that, Philip.” She shoved it into the rear pocket of his jeans and slapped his bottom. “These’re my boys,” she said to Lynley. “These are my extra-special blokes. And this here is a policeman, you lot. So watch yourselfs, hear?”

The boys stared at Lynley. He did his best not to stare back at them. They looked more like a miniature United Nations than they did the members of a family, and it was obvious that the words your dad had a different meaning for every one of the children.