Missing Joseph

by Elizabeth George

  Lynley smiled. “You’re a marvel.”

  “And you’re a fine cook. If you’d only been here to do Daddy’s breakfast yesterday morning…”

  He set the handout to one side and went back to his eggs. “That can always be remedied,” he said casually.

  “I suppose.” She added milk to her coffee and spooned in sugar. “Do you vacuum carpets and wash windows, as well?”

  “If put to the test.”

  “Heavens, I might actually be getting the better part of the bargain.”

  “Is it, then?”

  “What?”

  “A bargain.”

  “Tommy, you’re absolutely ruthless.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ALTHOUGH THE SON OF SHEELAH YANAPAPOULIS had recommended a telephone call to The Hair Apparent, Lynley decided upon a personal visit. He found the hairdresser’s on the ground floor of a narrow soot-stained Victorian building that was shoe-horned between an Indian take-away and an appliance repair shop on Clapham High Street. He’d driven across the river on Albert Bridge and skirted Clapham Common upon whose north side Samuel Pepys had come to be lovingly tended in his declining years. The area had been referred to as “Paradisian Clapham” during Pepys’ time, but it had been a country village then, with its buildings and cottages spread out in a curve from the northeast corner of the common, and with fields and market gardens in place of the closely packed streets that had accompanied the arrival of the railway. The common remained, essentially inviolate, but many of the pleasant villas that once looked upon it had long since been demolished and replaced by the smaller and less inspired buildings of the nineteenth century.

  The rain that had begun on the previous day was continuing to fall as Lynley drove along the high street. It rendered the usual kerbside collection of wrappers, sacks, newspapers, and assorted rubbish into sodden lumps that seemed bled of all colour. It also had the effect of eliminating virtually all pedestrian traffic. Aside from an unshaven man in a threadbare tweed coat who shuffled along, talking to himself and holding a newspaper spread over his head, the only other creature on the pavement at the moment was a mongrel dog sniffing at a shoe that lay on top of an upended wooden crate.

  Lynley found a place to park on St. Luke’s Avenue, grabbed his coat and umbrella, and walked back to the hairdresser’s where he discovered that the rain had evidently put a damper on the hair business as well. He opened the door, was assailed by the eye-smarting odour that accompanies someone inflicting a perm upon another’s innocent head of hair, and saw that this malodorous operation of beauty was being performed on the hairdresser’s single customer. She was a plump woman perhaps fifty years old who clutched a copy of Royalty Monthly in her fists and said, “Cor, lookit this, will you, Stace? That dress she wore to the Royal Ballet must of cost four hundred quid.”

  “Gloriamus on toast,” was Stace’s reply, delivered somewhere between polite enthusiasm and heavy ennui. She squirted a chemical onto one of the tiny pink rolls on her client’s head and gazed at her own reflection in the mirror. She smoothed her eyebrows, which came to curious points on her forehead and exactly matched the colour of her ramrod, coal hair. Doing this allowed her to catch sight of Lynley, who stood behind the glass counter dividing the tiny waiting area from the rest of the shop.

  “We don’t do men, luv.” She tossed her head in the direction of the next work station, a movement that clicked her long jet earrings like small castanets. “I know it says unisex in all the adverts, but that’s Mondays and Wednesdays when our Rog is here. Which he isn’t, as you can see. Today, I mean. It’s just me and Sheel. Sorry.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for Sheelah Yanapapoulis,” Lynley said.

  “Are you? She doesn’t do men either. I mean”—with a wink—“she doesn’t do them that way. As for the other…well, she’s always been lucky, that girl, hasn’t she?” She called towards the rear of the shop: “Sheelah! Get out here. This is your lucky day.”

  “Stace, I tol’ you I was heading out, din’t I? Linus’s got a bad throat and I was up all night. I got no one on the book coming in this afternoon so there’s no point to me staying.” Movement in a back room accompanied the voice, which sounded plaintive and tired. A handbag clicked closed with a metallic snick; a garment snapped as it was shaken out; galoshes slapped against the floor.

  “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 flicked 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 fire 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 find 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 Haro
ld!”

  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 flat.” 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 five 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 nappies. 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 graffiti 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 fluffing 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 first.”

  “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.

  Sheelah was introducing them, giving a pinch here, a kiss there, a nibble on the neck, a noisy spluttering against a cheek. Philip, Gino, Hermes, Linus.

  “My lamb chop, Linus,” she said. “Him with the throat that kept me up all night.”

  “And Peanut,” Linus said, patting his mother’s stomach.

  “Right. And how many does that make, luv?”

  Linus held up his hand, the fingers spread, a grin on his face and his nose running freely.

  “And how many are those?” his mother asked him.

  “Five.”

  “Lovely.” She tickled his stomach. “And how old are you?”

  “Five!”

  “Tha’s right.” She took off her mackintosh and handed it to Gino, saying, “Let’s move this confab into the kitchen. If Philip’s making mash, I got to see to the bangers. Hermes, put that drum away and help Linus with his nose. Christ, don’t use your bleeding shirttail to do it!”

  The boys trailed her into the kitchen, which was one of four rooms that opened off the sitting room, along with two bedrooms and a bathroom jammed with plastic lorries, balls, two bicycles, and a pile of dirty clothes. The bedrooms, Lynley saw, looked out on the companion tower block next door, and furniture made movement impossible in either: two sets of bunkbeds in one of the rooms, a double bed and a baby cot in the other.

  “Harold ring this A.M.?” Sheelah was asking Philip when Lynley entered the kitchen.

  “Naw.” Philip scrubbed at the kitchen table with a dish cloth that was decidedly grey. “You got to cut that bloke loose, Mum. He’s bad news, he is.”

  She lit a cigarette and, without inhaling, set it in an ashtray and stood over its plume of smoke, breathing deeply. “Can’t do that, luv. Peanut needs her dad.”

  “Yeah. Well, smoking’s not good for her, is it?”

  “I’m not smoking, am I? D’you see me smoking? D’you see a fag hanging out of this mouth?”

  “That’s just as bad. You’re breathing it, aren’t you? Breathing it’s bad. We could all die from cancer.”

  “You think you know everything. Just—”

  “Like my dad.”

  She pulled a frying pan from one of the cupboards and went to the refrigerator. Two lists hung upon it, held in place with yellowing cello tape. RULES was printed at the top of one, JOBS at the top of the other. Diagonally across both, someone had scrawled Sod You, Mummy! Sheelah ripped the lists off and swung round on the boys. Philip was at the cooker seeing to his potatoes. Gino and Hermes were scrambling round the legs of the table. Linus was dipping his hand into a carton of corn flakes that had been left on the floor.

  “Which of you lot did this?” Sheelah demanded. “Come on. I want to know. Which of you bloody did this?”

  Silence fell. The boys looked at Lynley, as if he’d come to arrest them for the crime.

  She crumpled the papers and threw them on the table. “What’s rule number one? What’s always been rule number one? Gino?”

  He stuck his hands behind his back as if afraid they’d be smacked. “Respecting property,” he said.

  “And whose property was that? Whose property did you decide to write all over?”

  “I didn’t!”

  “You didn’t? Don’t give me that rubbish. Whoever causes trouble if it isn’t you? You take these lists to the bedroom and write them over ten times.”

  “But Mum—”

  “And no bangers and mash till you do. You got it?”

  “I didn’t—”

  She grabbed his arm and thrust him in the direction of the bedrooms. “I don’t want to see you till the lists are done.”

  The other boys shot sly looks at one another when he’d gone. Sheelah went to the work top and breathed in more smoke. “I couldn’t go it cold turkey,” she said to Lynley in reference to the cigarette. “I could do with other stuff, but not with this.”

  “I used to smoke myself,” h
e said.

  “Yeah? Then you know.” She took the bangers from the refrigerator and slid them into the frying pan. She turned on the burner, looped her arm round Philip’s neck and kissed him soundly on the temple. “Jesus, you’re a handsome little bloke, you know that? Five more years and the girls’ll be mad for you. You’ll be beating them off you like they was flies.”

  Philip grinned and shrugged her arm off him. “Mum!”

  “Yeah, you’ll like that plenty when you get a bit older. Just—”

  “Like my dad.”

  She pinched his bottom. “Little sod.” She turned to the table. “Hermes, watch these bangers. Bring your chair here. Linus, set the table. I got to talk to this gentleman.”

  “I want cornflakes,” Linus said.

  “Not for lunch.”

  “I want them!”

  “And I said not for lunch.” She snatched the box away and threw it into a cupboard. Linus began to cry. She said, “Stow it!” And then to Lynley, “It’s his dad. Those damn Greeks. They’ll let their sons do anything. They’re worse than Italians. Let’s talk out here.”

  She took her cigarette back into the sitting room, pausing by an ironing board to wrap a frayed cord round the bottom of an iron. She used her foot to shove to one side an enormous laundry basket spilling clothes onto the floor.

  “Good to sit down.” She sighed as she sank into a sofa. Its cushions wore pink slipcovers. Burn holes in them showed the original green beneath. Behind her, the wall was decorated with a large collage of photographs. Most of them were snapshots. They grew out in a starburst pattern from a professional studio portrait in the centre. Although adults were featured in some of them, all of them showed at least one of her children. Even photographs of Sheelah’s wedding—she stood at the side of a swarthy man in wire-rimmed spectacles with a noticeable gap between his front teeth—also contained two of her children, a much younger Philip dressed as ring bearer and Gino, who could not have been more than two.

  “Is that your work?” Lynley asked, nodding at the collage.