Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“Use him for your work?” Lynley asked.

“No. Just for hunting.”

Shepherd nodded to a coat rack that stood at one end of the elongated entry. Beneath it, three pairs of gumboots lined up, two of them smeared with fresh mud on the sides. Next to these, a metal milk basket stood, with an empty cocoon of some long-departed insect dangling by a thread from one of its bars. Shepherd waited while Lynley and St. James hung up their coats. Then he led the way down the corridor in the direction the retriever had taken.

They went into a sitting room where a fi re burned and an older man was laying a small log on top of the flames. Despite the years that separated them in age, it was obvious that this was Colin Shepherd’s father. They shared many similarities: the height, the muscular chest, the narrow hips. Their hair was different, thinning in the father and fading to the colour of sand in the way that blonds do as they move towards grey. And the long fi ngers, sensitivity, and sureness of the hands in the son had in the father become large knuckles and split nails with age.

The latter man slapped his palms together briskly as if to rid them of wood dust. He offered his hand in greeting. “Kenneth Shepherd,” he said. “Detective Chief Inspector, retired. Hutton-Preston CID. But I expect you know that already, don’t you?”

“Sergeant Hawkins passed the information on to me.”

“As well he ought. It’s good to meet you both.” He shot a glance at his son. “Have you something to offer these good gentlemen, Col?”

The constable’s face did not change its expression despite the affability of his father’s tone. Behind his tortoiseshell spectacles, his eyes remained guarded. “Beer,” he said. “Whisky. Brandy. I’ve a sherry here that’s been collecting dust for the last six years.”

“Your Annie was a one for her sherry, wasn’t she?” the Chief Inspector said. “God rest her sweet soul. I’ll have a go with that. And you?” to the others.

“Nothing,” said Lynley.

“Nor for me,” St. James said.

From a small fruitwood side table, Shepherd poured the drink for his father and something from a spirit decanter for himself. As he did so, Lynley glanced round the room.

It was sparsely furnished, in the manner of a man who shops at jumble sales when a pressing need arises and doesn’t give much thought to the look of his possessions. The back of a beleaguered sofa was covered by a handknit blanket of multicoloured squares that managed to hide most of the large but mercifully faded pink anemones that decorated its fabric. Nothing beyond their own worn upholstery covered either of the two mismatched wing chairs, the arms of which were threadbare and the backs of which were permanently dented from serving as the resting place for generations of heads. Aside from a bentwood coffee table, a brass floor lamp, and the side table on which the liquor bottles stood, the only other item of interest hung on the wall. This was a cabinet that housed a collection of rifl es and shotguns. They were the only things in the room that looked cared for, no doubt companion pieces to the retriever who had sunk onto an ancient, stained duvet in front of the fi re. His paws, like the gumboots in the hall, were clotted with mud.

“Game birds?” Lynley asked with a look at the guns.

“Deer at one time as well. But I’ve given that up. The killing never lived up to the stalking.”

“It seems that it should. But it never does, does it?”

His sherry glass in hand, the Chief Inspector gestured towards the sofa and chairs. “Sit,” he said, sinking into the sofa. “We’ve just come in from a tramp ourselves and can do with taking a load off our feet. I’m off in about a quarter of an hour. I’ve got a sweet young thing of fifty-eight years waiting dinner for me at the pensioner’s flat. But there’s time enough for a natter fi rst.”

“You don’t live here in Winslough?” St. James asked.

“Haven’t in years. I like a bit of action and a bit of willing, soft girl-flesh to go with it. There’s none of the first to be found in Win-slough and what there is of the second’s long been tied up.”

The constable took his drink to the fire, squatted down on his haunches, and ran his hand over the retriever’s head. In response, Leo opened his eyes and moved to rest his chin against Shepherd’s shoe. His tail skittered in contentment against the fl oor.

“Got yourself in the mud,” Shepherd said, giving a gentle tug to the retriever’s ears. “A fine mess you are.”

His father snorted. “Dogs. Christ. They get under your skin about as bad as do women.”

It was an opening from which Lynley’s question rose naturally, although he was as certain the Chief Inspector hadn’t intended it to be used that way as he was certain the man’s visit to his son had little to do with an afternoon’s hike on the moors. “What can you tell us about Mrs. Spence and the death of Robin Sage?”

“Not exactly a Yard concern, is it?” Although he said it in a friendly enough fashion, the Chief Inspector’s response came too quickly upon the heels of the question. It spoke of having been prepared in advance.

“Formally? No.”

“But informally?”

“Surely you’re not blind to the irregularity of the investigation, Chief Inspector. No CID. Your son’s attachment to the perpetrator of the crime.”

“Accident, not crime.” Colin Shepherd looked up from the dog, his glass clasped in an easy grip in his hand. He remained squatting next to the fire. A countryman born and bred, he could no doubt maintain the position for hours without the slightest discomfort.

“An irregular decision, but not illegal,” the Chief Inspector said. “Colin felt he could handle it. I agreed. Handle it he did. I was with him through most of it, so if it’s the lack of CID input that’s got the Yard in a dither, CID was here all the time.”

“You sat in on all the interviews?”

“The ones that mattered.”

“Chief Inspector, you know that’s more than irregular. I don’t need to tell you that when a crime’s been committed—”

“But no crime was,” the constable said. He kept one hand on the dog, but his eyes were on Lynley. He didn’t move them. “The crime-scene team came out to crawl round the moors and overturn stones, and they saw the situation well enough in an hour. This wasn’t a crime. It was a clear-cut accident. I saw it that way. The coroner saw it that way. The jury saw it that way. End of story.”

“You were certain of that from the fi rst?”

The dog stirred restlessly as the hand on him tightened. “Of course not.”

“Yet aside from the initial presence of the crime-scene team, you made the decision not to involve your divisional CID, the very people who are trained to determine if a death is an accident, a suicide, or murder.”

“I made the decision,” the Chief Inspector said.

“Based upon?”

“A phone call from me,” his son said.

“You reported the death to your father? Not to the divisional headquarters in Clitheroe?”

“I reported to both. I told Hawkins I would handle it. Pa confi rmed. Everything seemed straightforward enough once I’d talked to Juliet…to Mrs. Spence.”

“And Mr. Spence?” Lynley asked.

“There is none.”

“I see.”

The constable dropped his eyes, swirled the liquor in his glass. “This has nothing to do with our relationship.”

“But it adds a complication. I’m sure you see that.”

“It wasn’t a murder.”

St. James leaned forward in the wing chair he’d chosen. “What makes you so certain? What made you so certain a month ago, Constable?”

“She had no motive. She didn’t know the man. It was only the third time they’d even met. He was after her to start going to church. And he wanted to talk about Maggie.”