Off Minor

by John Harvey

  Lorraine nodded. “I think so.”

  Jackie reached for her hands. “There’s no news about Emily?”

  Lorraine withdrew her hands, shook her head.

  “I wish there was something I could say.”

  “There isn’t.”

  Jackie gave her a printed card. “I’m staying there for the next few days, till Monday or Tuesday of next week. If anything does happen, please let me know. If I think, after talking to the doctor, that Diana’s up to if, I’ll tell her about Emily before I go back to Yorkshire. Tell her something anyway.” She looked away. “Prepare her, I suppose, for the worst.”

  Lorraine walked her to the door. The TV had been switched on upstairs, a rerun of an old Western series, the rigors of family life on the frontier.

  “Tell your husband, tell Michael, I apologize for what I said. He’s more than enough to cope with to have to put up with my jealousy and bad temper.”

  “Jealousy?”

  “All that time when, even though they’d parted, Diana was still tied to Michael, emotionally. Time I would have wanted her with me.”

  She brushed her cheek against Lorraine’s and opened the front door. “I hope there’s news of Emily soon, good news.”

  Lorraine stood there, watching Jacqueline Verdon until she was out of sight, closing the door only then and wandering off into the living room to collect the coffee things, thinking about the relationship, Diana’s and Jackie’s, how protective, how fiercely caring the older woman had seemed. She knew she should go upstairs to Michael now, even if it were simply to sit with him and watch the movement of horses, dogs and men, hold, if that were what he wanted, Michael’s hand. You’ll live to regret it, her mother had said, you mark my words. But she could never, Lorraine thought, not even bothering to stem the tears, never ever have meant this.

  Forty-two

  Naylor negotiated the tray without spilling overmuch: two teas and a coffee, sugar, packets of UHT milk, plastic spoons. Resnick was by the window, looking out. Shepperd had barely moved in his chair, shoulders slumped forward, arms extended between his legs, fingers touching but not entwined. Not long into the first session, Resnick had felt Shepperd becoming over-anxious, words stumbling into one another, the accelerated tremor near the eye, the sweat. Either he was about to shut down altogether, refuse to answer, or start asking for a solicitor, legal representation. There and then, Resnick wanted neither.

  “How’s the tea, Stephen?” Sitting opposite him, the pair of them, Naylor’s chair pulled slightly further back and round.

  “Stephen? Tea?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good.” Resnick grimaced at his own coffee, decided adding milk was the better part of valour. He angled his eyes towards Naylor and the tape machine. “All right, then, Stephen, what do you say we push on?”

  No reply.

  Naylor set the mechanism in motion, twin tapes beginning to wind simultaneously. “This interview,” Resnick said, “continued at eleven forty-seven. The same officers present.” He shuffled back in his chair, wanting to appear relaxed, needing to be comfortable. “Let’s forget about Emily Morrison for a while; let’s talk about Gloria instead.”

  Shepperd’s body jerked. “I’ve already told you …”

  “Not about Gloria, Stephen.”

  “I’ve told you, I don’t know her.”

  “Gloria.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you know who we mean?”

  Shepperd’s head was lowered towards the table, his voice indistinct. “You mean the girl who was … who was killed.”

  “That’s right. Gloria Summers.”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “But she was in your wife’s class.”

  “Not for long.”

  “Sorry?”

  “She wasn’t there for long, Joan. She was hardly there any time at all.”

  “Half a term.”

  “No.”

  “According to the head teacher, your wife taught there for almost half a term. What’s that? Six weeks? Eight?”

  Shepperd was shaking his head strongly. “She was never there that length of time, never.”

  “But while she was there, however long, you went with her, to the school.”

  “I drove her, yes, usually. She can’t drive.”

  “You carried her things inside.”

  “No?

  “Never?”

  “Not hardly.”

  “All those things infant teachers take with them; egg boxes and cartons and pictures and heaven knows what else. I can’t see you just sitting in the car and watching your wife struggle with all of that on her own.”

  “All right, I helped, sometimes, when there was a need, I helped.”

  “And you helped around the school as well,” Resnick brisker now, beginning, lightly, to bear down. “The head teacher could scarcely stop singing your praises. All of that free time you put in, the expertise. So much there was even talk of a presentation …”

  “There wasn’t any presentation.”

  “Only because you declined.”

  “There wasn’t any presentation.”

  “They considered what you’d done worthy of one. They were deeply grateful. Equipment mended, new pegs in the cloakrooms …”

  “Look, what I did, it was nothing. Took me no time at all, that’s why I wasn’t having them give me anything for it.”

  Resnick realized that he was sitting too far forward, arms on the table; slowly, he levered himself back and smiled. “You’re a modest man, Stephen. You don’t like people to make a fuss.”

  Shepperd looked at the ceiling, slowly closed his eyes.

  “When, later on, after your wife had left the school, when Gloria disappeared, all that in the papers, everyone talking about it, your wife talking about it, as she must have done, you did know who they meant?”

  Shepperd’s hands were back between his legs, wrists locked tight.

  “When she talked to you about it, you knew who she meant?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “You did know her, then?”

  “Not know her, no, but when she said, Gloria, ’course then I knew who it was.”

  “You remembered her?”

  “Her picture was everywhere. You could hardly look in a shop window in town without it was there.”

  “And you didn’t recall her from the school, your wife’s class?”

  “No, not specially.”

  “I wonder, Stephen, can you remember what she looked like now?”

  “What for? I mean, I don’t see the point, I …”

  “What did she look like, Stephen? Gloria?”

  The nerve at the side of his head had started to tic again. “She was, I don’t know, how would you describe her? Pretty, I suppose. Fair hair, sort of long. I don’t know what else there is to say.”

  “Pretty, though, you would say that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Prettier than Emily Morrison?”

  “What?”

  “I said was she prettier than Emily Morrison? You know, of the two of them, which one would you say was the more attractive? Which did you prefer?”

  “Now you’re being stupid. You think you’re being clever, but you’re being stupid. Playing games.”

  “What kind of games, Stephen? What kind of games are these?”

  “You know damn well.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “Trying to trick me, that’s what you’re doing. Trick me into admitting something that isn’t true.”

  “Admitting, Stephen? What do you think I want you to admit? That you find one girl prettier than another? Hardly a crime.”

  “All right,” Shepperd said, pushing his chair back from the table, standing. “All right, that’s enough.”

  Resnick and Naylor looked back up at him, neither responding.

  “You asked me about Emily and I agreed, yes, I knew who she was, once or twice I’d talked to her in Joan’s class. You’ve tr
ied all manner of ways to get me to say I was near her house on the day she went missing and it hasn’t worked because I just wasn’t there. And now you want me to say I knew this Gloria, like I knew Emily, and it isn’t true. It isn’t. And that’s all there is to it. I’m not going to talk about it any more. And you said, you can’t make me. Not without you arrest me, isn’t that what you said?”

  Resnick signaled to Naylor to switch off the tape.

  “I’m asking you now,” Shepperd said, “is that what you’re going to do?”

  “Not now,” Resnick said. “Not yet.”

  “Christ, that was stupid! So bloody … he even said it himself, Shepperd, think you’re being clever, but you’re being stupid, and, God, he was right. I pushed, I prodded him too hard and in the wrong direction and what I got was the opposite of what I wanted. Now he’s not going to give us a thing without we arrest him and we can’t arrest him unless he gives us more than we’ve already got. Jesus, what a mess!”

  Skelton walked round from his desk towards the coffee machine. “The wife, Charlie. That’s where it is. The answer. If she’s the one who phoned.”

  “We don’t know that for certain.”

  Skelton shrugged. “Kellogg seemed pretty sure. You’ve got to talk to her at least. Meantime, get this down you.”

  Resnick accepted the mug of coffee, holding it between both hands.

  “If it is him, Charlie, Shepperd; if it’s him and you’re right, you know what that means for the Morrison girl?”

  Nodding slowly, Resnick closed his eyes. The coffee Skelton had given him was stale and bitter and he drank it down, every mouthful.

  Diana had made a point of asking Jacqueline to fetch the photo albums and the scrapbooks from home and eventually there were no other excuses to be made. Although she’d learned the truth, a version of it, from neighbors eager to outdo one another with tales about a drunken husband, ambulances, police and knives, Jacqueline elected for a lie: some youths had broken in and left the place in a bit of mess, next to nothing taken. Together, she and Diana sat in a corner of the day room, setting the books back as close as possible to how they’d been.

  “Do you think,” Diana asked, holding a picture of Emily in one hand, “once I’m a little better, Michael will let her come to see me?”

  “I hope so,” Jackie said, inclining her face away. “I think he should.”

  Diana smiled. Of course, that was the way it had to be. After all, wasn’t it because of Emily that she was here? Because she wanted it to be all right between them; a precaution she had had to take to ensure nothing went wrong.

  “Who’s this?” Jackie asked. “I thought it was Michael at first, but now I can see it’s not.”

  Diana took the photograph and looked: a man sitting on a painted horse, a roundabout at the fair. Emily with her legs around the horse’s neck in front of him. In the whirl of movement, one thing is clear, the joy on the girl’s face as she angles back her head to laugh at the man behind her, holding her safe, her laughter and his smile.

  “Geoffrey,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Michael’s brother, Geoffrey. He used to come over every year, from where he lives, the Isle of Man, just to take Emily to Goose Fair.” Diana smiled again. She was smiling a lot today, Jacqueline noticed, the way she did when they were in Yorkshire; she took it as a good sign. “He couldn’t have been nicer to Emily if she’d been his own. I think Michael used to get quite jealous sometimes, but then isn’t that the way it always is, with brothers?”

  “Men,” Jackie laughed. “Any men will do. Brothers enough, most of them, beneath the skin.”

  Although they lived close by, Joan Shepperd hardly ever went into the rec. Oh, cutting through between Church Street and the Derby Road, especially if it was a nice day. But seldom to sit, as she was now, a bench down by the bowling green, near where the magnolia tree would blossom so beautifully in the spring. Such a shame it never lasted long. Some years one good wind was all it would take.

  She could hear the voices of children from the swings, two sets now, the one beside the green, the other further up towards the gate. Always children there, it hardly seemed to matter the weather. A lot of them knowing her, of course, calling out if she passed by, “Mrs. Shepperd! Mrs. Shepperd! Miss! Miss!” Older children playing rounders, football. Men in tracksuits lapping round the path, circuit upon circuit, timing themselves. Others, like Stephen, not out to break any records, content simply to jog slowly, watch whatever was going on.

  When she saw Resnick walking towards her, rounding the edge of the bowling green, raincoat flapping shapelessly about him, her first instinct was to look away, pretend that if she didn’t notice him then he would never recognize her. But she knew it was too late for that; knew, unlike the children she taught, that when you took your hands away from your face and opened your eyes, the bogeyman would not have disappeared.

  Resnick sat alongside her, pulling his coat free. For some little time, neither spoke. Behind them, a sprinter train carried a fortunate few towards Mansfield, a town Resnick only visited when County were in the same division and playing away. On the last occasion, the snow had clamored in off the hills aboard a wind that had made a mockery of the game and threatened to cleave Resnick in two. Only by buying pasties, one after the other, and eating them from between gloved hands, had he preserved his fingers from frostbite.

  “Somebody contacted us this morning,” Resnick said, “with some information. It had to do with your work and, by inference, your husband.”

  Joan Shepperd continued to watch a mother pushing her child, no more than three, back and forth on one of the swings. The same repetitive rhythm.

  “It was helpful, of course it was. We were truly grateful. Only I’m not sure it’s going to be enough.”

  The mother was careful, Joan noticed, never to let the swing sail too high so that the child might become frightened, never to push it too hard.

  “I would never give evidence against my husband, Inspector, even if I were convinced he had done wrong. Even if he had done terrible things. I could never bring myself to do that. Not in court and not to you. I’m sorry.”

  Resnick sat there several moments longer, testing all the questions he might further ask inside his head. When he was sure none of them were right, he got to his feet and walked away.

  Forty-three

  This was the bit of the city Raymond hated most, from Millets and Marks all the way down to where Sara worked, past C & A. And as the week wore on it got worse. What with the veggie lot outside the church, pushing petitions in your face about political prisoners or factory farming, all the lefties expecting you to pay good money for a paper that didn’t have sport or tell you what was on telly, and then the cranks carrying placards and reading from the Bible, it was a regular nightmare. “Whole bloody lot of them,” his dad said, “want locking up.” Raymond didn’t usually go a bomb on what his father had to say, but in this case he’d got it about right.

  He didn’t spot Sara at first, disappointed, thinking maybe she’d taken the day off, but then there she was, coming into the shop from the storeroom at the back. Raymond waited till she was refilling the sections before going inside.

  Sara, who’d already seen him, seen him through the glass, carried on with what she was doing, even when he was standing at her shoulder.

  “What’s going on?” Raymond asked.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Why aren’t you talking to us?”

  “You can see,” using the metal scoop to round out the strawberry delights, “I’m doing this.” Turning to face him: “Raymond, I’m busy.”

  “I was only saying hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “Seemed stupid hanging around at home, you know, I was ready. I thought I’d come and see you, hang around outside.”

  Sara glanced over at the manageress who was watching them with a face like alabaster; she moved along three bins and began to restock the old-fashioned bu
ll’s-eyes. “There’s no need you waiting around anyway,” she said.

  “I thought we were going out?”

  “Yes, well, we’re not.”

  “What d’you mean …?”

  “Raymond, keep your voice down, do.”

  “You said tonight was all right.”

  “So it was. Only now it’s not.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve got to help my mum.”

  Raymond grabbed hold of her arm. “You mean you don’t want to see me. That’s it, isn’t it? Except you haven’t got the guts to come right out and say it.”

  The manageress was coming towards them, a beeline across the floor, Raymond’s fingers were poking hard into her arm and she was sure they’d left a bruise already.

  “Sara?” the manageress called.

  “Tomorrow,” Sara said. “After work tomorrow. I promise. Now go. Go.”

  “Sara,” the manageress said, “you know we have a rule about this sort of thing.”

  “Yes, Miss Trencher,” Sara said, coloring visibly.

  Miss Trencher, Raymond thought, was an ugly cow in need of a good shagging. From behind, face down in a tub of tripes. Hands in pockets, Raymond slouched towards the exit, taking his time.

  “Is he a friend of yours, Sara?”

  “Not really,” said Sara, still blushing.

  “Because I don’t want him in this shop again. Apart from anything else, he smells.”

  Some days Resnick was happy enough to stand in line at the delicatessen counter while one or other of the assistants chattered in Polish to an elderly man in an ill-fitting suit, a plump woman with a string shopping bag, choosing seven different kinds of sausage and telling the latest about her cousin in Lodz. This particular afternoon, he fretted and fussed and finally interrupted, earning himself no goodwill observing that the sell-by date on marinaded herrings might be reached before he got the chance to buy them.

  By the time he lowered his carrier bag—half a pound of herring, three-quarters of liver sausage, a quarter of black olives, cheese cake, sour cream—to the floor by the coffee stall and climbed on to his stool, he was in no mood to find Suzanne Olds smiling her supercilious smile from the opposite side of the counter.