Ross Raisin - Gods Own Country

A Danby schoolgirl, who went missing from her parents’ home on Sunday, was seen yesterday in the North York Moors village of Garside with the man police say may have abducted her.

They were seen as the man, Sam Marsdyke, 19, robbed a local grocery store.

Josephine Reeves, 15, was reported missing by her parents on Monday afternoon, and police intensified their search later that evening, when it became apparent that Mr Marsdyke had also disappeared from his parents’ farmhouse only half a mile away from the girl’s home.

This is not the first recorded incident involving Mr Marsdyke. Three years ago, a previous charge of molestation was brought against him.

Police believe he may have been planning to accost Miss Reeves for some weeks. He had been seen with her a number of times in the month leading up to the disappearance.

Until yesterday’s incident at the grocery store, police had been limiting their search to Danby High Moor and > page 2

I turned over. There was a block of writing continued down the right side the page, split in two by another photograph, this one of me. I was sitting in the tractor with a big grin on my chops. It wasn’t a recent photograph, not near, it must’ve been took five years back, because it was the day we got the new tractor, and Jess was still a whelp — she was stood on my lap, poking her head through the steering wheel, she didn’t look older than two months. Father looked happy as a sandboy. He was stood next the tractor with his hand on the engine and a catie-cornered smile straggling his face. Janet had come round that day, I remembered, she took the photograph. It must’ve been her gave it the police.

…the surrounding area.

According to a witness, Mr Marsdyke stole groceries from the store before forcing Miss Reeves to leave with him and smashing the windows of the store on his exit. The owner, Michael Stainthorpe, described the girl as ‘nervous and tired, but in good health’.

He added: “He’d forced her into the robbery, because she got my attention while he wasn’t looking and she told me he was going to rob my store. Then he threw a tin of Heinz beans through my window.”

Miss Reeves’ mother made this plea: “We knew immediately what must have happened, and then when we heard what he did to that poor girl before — we just don’t know what that boy’s capable of. Somebody must have seen them.”

Mr Marsdyke’s parents declined to comment.

Police are appealing for anyone who might have seen the pair to come forward. Mr Marsdyke is described as tall, thin, and wearing a torn brown jacket.

The search continues today.

I folded up the newspaper and slid it in my bag, behind the food. Then I made back to the wood. So, here was another I’d forced against her will, then. I didn’t know why he was glibbing about her saying that. She told me he was going to rob my store . That capped it all, that did. It was me had told her to get his attention, daft bald sod, he was just twined because I’d thrown the beans through his window. She’d laugh when I showed her it.

Whitby was out now. We’d be spotted, certain. Only choice now, to my telling, was to hide out on the Moors, and then ship off overseas. Do a Sidney Swinbank and disappear into the ocean. I was walking back, listening to the distant peck, peck, peck of a woodpecker, when I stiffened up, sudden, as a thought snagged in my brain. I couldn’t show her the newspaper. She’d see about what happened with Katie Carmichael. There I’d been, gibbering about kissing and giggling and wagging lessons together, I couldn’t have her reading I’d a previous charge of molestation brought against me. I started getting something flowtered, thinking what to do, until I realised it was no bother, I wouldn’t show her the newspaper, I’d just tell I didn’t have time to take it because the shopkeeper had copped on to me. I could tell her what the article said, myself. I felt easier then, and I shaped up the story in my head as I neared the wood.

It was near midday, a humdinger of a sun up, and I was mafted from walking so quick with all that weight of scran and water on my back, so it felt fresh and cool stepping into the shade of the wood. The light slatted through the treetops, scattering shadow patterns all around. It minded me of the disco-ball hung up to the ceiling at the End of Year Party, twisting rods of light round the canteen, over the dancing throng and over me stood next the stack of chairs and dining tables, my new shirt flashing red. I looked a right bobby-dazzler, Mum’d said. I looked a right bugger, more like. I smiled, thinking on it. That was another item I could tell her. She might think I was touched again, mind, saying the wood looked like a disco, and truly speaking it wasn’t too similar — there were no lasses chundering in the deep-fat fryer, for one thing, and I didn’t have a bloody nose from clogging with David Arckles.

I came into the thicket where we’d camped up, but she wasn’t there, she’d gone for a stretch of her legs in the sunshine. I set my bag down and went out the wood. I looked around a moment, then I returned to the thicket, for she was off on a more distant wander and I couldn’t see her.

It was probably best not telling her about the newspaper. It was too maggot-eaten with lies. Once I’d left out the part about a previous charge of molestation, and Chickenhead’s statement, and that she was nervous and tired and I’d been planning to accost her for weeks, there wasn’t a mighty lot else left. Only the bald sod glibbing about what she’d said to him, and the police were searching for us, but I wasn’t mooded for telling her any of that, neither.

There was a worn piece of ground she’d been laying on, and a mangled clump of burdock, all bent and broken from where her bag had been. We had to find a new hideout now, I knew. There wasn’t choice but to keep moving, covering our tracks, now they were on to us.

♦

We’d need to steal a boat. Unless we stowed away in a liner, or on a mighty great tanker going out to the oil rigs. That was no good, mind, we couldn’t live on an oil rig, stranded, middle of the North Sea in a city on stilts, with the wind battering away and a hundred lusty black-hands ogling a bikini calendar. When was the last time you saw a woman, eh? A real one, do you remember? Not me — last thing I rutted was a skate’s mouth. No, an oil tanker wasn’t suited for us, it’d have to be a liner, from Whitby or Scarborough, one of them big buggers taking folk over to Europe, there’d be plenty enough of them, certain.

I got up and trod over to the edge the wood, glegging out at the landscape. It was a cracking day, still. I let the sun warm my chops a moment, eyes shut, feeling the heat on my lids, then I went back to the clearing and got the newspaper out.

Mr Marsdyke’s parents declined to comment . That was one good thing, at least. Sod knows what they’d have said if they had. Bone idle, allus in trouble, nowt t’ do wi’ us. I wondered if the newspaper had sent someone round to the house, toe-ending their way through the sheep shit to the front door? Mum appearing in her housecoat — we an’t nowt to say to you. Father sat glaring at the television behind, listening. They’d have had the police round and all, asking questions. When did you last see him? Where do you think he might be? Has he been behaving strangely of late? Course ‘e’s been behaving strangely, ‘e’s alius behaving strangely, the nazzart.

It was gone two o’clock. I took a walk to the viewpoint over the plain. I could see Garside Manor more clear today, the sun slapping against its great sandy walls and the glint of light reflecting off the windows like flies on a sponge cake. I looked out over the oilseed fields, and Garside, where the bald sod was in his shop gabbing at any as’d listen — oh, all the newspapers have been here, that’s right, the shop’s never been so busy — and I looked out further at the small dark gash of Whitby on the coast. Then I turned round and scanned over the Moors, but there wasn’t sight of her.