Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

Lynley pulled the Bentley into the street, drove to the corner, and made the turn to head back into the centre of the town. It was possible, he thought. But at this point so was anything else. He was running before his horse to market. Rule One was crucial. There was no doubting that. But it could not overshadow Rule Two.

He began to look for a phone.

HEAR THE SUMMIT OF COTES Fell, from above the standing stone they called Great North, Colin Shepherd gathered what he hadn’t previously added to his storehouse of facts surrounding the death of Robin Sage: When the mist dissipated or when the wind made it drift, one could see the grounds of Cotes Hall quite clearly, especially in winter when the trees bore no leaves. A few yards below, leaning against the stone for a smoke or a rest, one was limited to viewing the old mansion’s roof with its mishmash of chimney-pots, dormer windows, and weathervanes. But climb a bit higher to the summit and sit in the shelter of that limestone outcropping that curved like the punctuation of a question which no one would ask, and one could see everything, from the Hall itself in all its ghoulish decrepitude, to the courtyard it surrounded on three sides, from the grounds that crept out from it, reclaimed by nature, to the outbuildings intended to serve its needs. Among these last was the cottage, and it was to the cottage and into its garden that Colin had watched Inspector Lynley go.

While Leo dashed from one point of canine interest to another at the summit of the fell, led by his nose into a happy exploration of scent, Colin followed Lynley’s movements across the garden and into the greenhouse, marvelling at the clear vista he had. From below, the mist had looked much like a solid wall, impedimentary to movement and impenetrable to vision. But here, what had seemed both impassable and opaque proved to have the substance of cobwebs. It was damp and cold but otherwise of little account.

He watched everything, counting the minutes they spent inside the greenhouse, taking note of their exploration of the cellar. He fi led away the fact that the kitchen door of the cottage had been left unlocked behind them when they made their way into the courtyard and across the grounds, just as it had been unlocked while Juliet worked in solitude in her greenhouse and when she opened it to fetch the cellar key. He saw them pause for conversation upon the terrace, and when Juliet gestured towards the pond, he could have predicted what would follow.

Throughout it all, he could hear as well. Not their conversation, but the distinct sound of music. Even when a sudden gust of wind altered the density of the mist, he could still hear that spritely march playing.

Anyone who took the trouble to climb Cotes Fell would know of the comings and goings at the Hall and at the cottage. It wasn’t even necessary to take the risk of trespassing on the Townley-Young land. The hike to the summit was a public footpath, after all. While the going was occasionally steep — especially the last stretch above Great North — it wasn’t enough to tax the endurance of anyone Lancashire born and bred. It was especially not enough to tax the endurance of a woman who made it a regular climb.

When Lynley had reversed his monster of a car out of the courtyard in preparation for the return drive through the potholes and mud that kept most visitors away, Colin turned from the view and walked over to the question-mark limestone outcropping. He squatted in its shelter, thoughtfully scooped up a handful of shards and pebbles, and let them spill back onto the ground from his loosened fi st. Leo joined him, giving the exterior of the outcropping a thorough olfactory examination and dislodging a miniature landslide of shale. From his jacket pocket, Colin removed a chewed-up tennis ball. He played it back and forth beneath Leo’s nose, hurled it into the mist, and watched the dog trot happily in pursuit. He moved with perfect sure-footed grace, did Leo. He knew his job and had no trouble doing it.

A short distance from the outcropping, Colin could see a thin, earthen scar marking the hardy grass that was indigenous to the moors and the hillsides. It formed a circle approximately nine feet in diameter, its circumference delineated by stones that were spaced out evenly, perhaps twelve inches apart. At the circle’s centre lay an oblong of granite, and he didn’t need to approach and examine it to know it would bear the leavings of melted wax, the scratches made by a gypsy-pot, and the distinct etching of a fi ve-pointed star.

It was no secret to anyone in the village that the top of Cotes Fell was a sacred place. It was heralded by Great North, long reputed to be capable of giving psychic answers to questions if the questioner both asked and listened with a pure heart and a receptive mind. Its oddly shaped outcropping of limestone was seen by some as a fertility symbol, the stomach of a mother, swollen with life. And its finial of granite — so like an altar that the similarities could not be easily ignored — had been well-established as a geological oddity in the early decades of the last century. This, then, was a place of ancients where the old ways endured.

The Yarkins had been chief practitioners of the Craft and worshippers of the Goddess for as long as Colin could remember. They had never made a secret of it. They went about the business of chants, rituals, candle or cord spells, and incantations with a devotion that had garnered them, if not respect, at least a higher degree of toleration than one would normally expect from villagers whose circumscribed lives and limited experience often promoted a conservative bias towards God, monarch, country, and nothing else. But in times of desperation, anyone’s infl uence with any Almighty was generally welcome. So if illness struck a beloved child, if a farmer’s sheep were dropping with disease, if a soldier was due to be posted in Northern Ireland, no one ever declined Rita or Polly Yarkin’s offer to cast the circle and petition the Goddess. Who really knew, after all, which Deity listened? Why not hedge one’s religious bets, cover every one of the supernatural bases, and hope for the best?

He’d even done it himself, allowing Polly to climb this hill time and again for Annie’s sake. She wore a gold robe. She carried laurel branches in a basket. She burned them along with cloves for incense. With an alphabet he couldn’t read and didn’t truly believe was real, she carved her request into a thick orange candle and burned it down, asking for a miracle, telling him that anything was possible if the heart of the witch was pure. After all, hadn’t Nick Ware’s mum got her boy-child at last, and her all of forty-nine years old when she had him? Hadn’t Mr. Townley-Young seen fit to grant an unheard of pension to the men who worked his farms? Hadn’t Fork Reservoir been developed to provide new jobs for the county? These, Polly said, were the boons of the Goddess.

She never permitted him to watch a ritual. He wasn’t a practitioner, after all. Nor was he an initiate. Some things, she said, couldn’t be allowed. So if the truth be faced, he never knew what she actually did when she reached the top of the fell. He had never once heard her make a request.

But from the top of the fell, where from the wax drippings on the granite altar Colin knew she still was practising the Craft, Polly could see Cotes Hall. She would have been able to monitor movements in the courtyard, on the grounds, and in the cottage garden. No arrival or departure would have gone unnoticed, and even if someone headed from the cottage into the wood, she could see that from here.

Colin stood and whistled for Leo. The dog came bounding out of the mist. He carried the tennis ball in his mouth and dropped it playfully at Colin’s feet, his snout a mere inch or two away, ready to snatch it back should his master reach for it. Colin entertained the retriever with the bit of tug-and-pull that he wanted, smiling at the artificiality of the dog’s protective growls. Finally, Leo released the ball, backed off a few steps, and waited for the throw. Colin hurled it down the hillside in the direction of the Hall and watched as the dog gambolled after it.