Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

CONTENTS

FOR
DEBORAH

Acknowledgements

I owe many thanks to the people in England who assisted with background material for this book. Most particularly, I thank Patricia Crowther, author of Lid off the Cauldron, who allowed me to visit with her in her home in Sheffield and who kindly provided me with a foundation in the Craft of the Wise; the Reverend Brian Darbyshire of St. Andrews Church in Slaidburn, who counselled me on the ways of the Church of England and let me rub elbows with his congregation; John King-Wilkinson, whose familys abandoned Dunnow Hall became the model for my Cotes Hall; and Tony Mott, my remarkable English editor who never loses patience and who, for this book, provided me with everything from a copy of Mists over Pendle to the location of train stations.

In the United States, I thank Patty Gram for helping out with all things English; Julie Mayer for reading yet another rough draft; Ira Toibin for recognizing the process, respecting the effort, and always acting the part of both husband and friend; Kate Miciak for offering editorial encouragement, wisdom, and enthusiasm; and Deborah Schneider, for always being there. This is for you, Deborah, in friendship and with love.

I have done nothing but in care of thee,
Of thee my dear one, thee my daughter, who
Art ignorant of what thou art, naught knowing
Of whence I am

THE TEMPEST

C APPUCCINO. THAT NEW AGE ANSWER to driving ones blues momentarily away. A few tablespoons of espresso, a froth of steamed milk, an accompanying and generally tasteless dash of powdered chocolate and suddenly life was supposed to be all in order again. What drivel.

Deborah St. James sighed. She picked up the bill that a passing waitress had slid surreptitiously onto the table.

Good Lord, she said and she stared, both dismayed and disgusted, at the amount she was going to have to pay. A block away, she could have ducked into a pub and acknowledged that importunate inner voice saying, Whats this chi-chi rot, Deb, lets just have a Guinness somewhere. But instead, shed made her way to Upstairs, the stylish marble-glass-and-chrome coffee shop of the Savoy Hotel where those who imbibed in anything beyond water paid heavily for the privilege. As she was discovering.

Shed come to the Savoy to show her portfolio to Richie Rica, an up-and-coming producer employed by a newly formed entertainment conglomerate called L.A.SoundMachine. He had travelled to London for a brief seven days to select the photographer who would capture for posterity the likenesses of Dead Meat, a five-member band from Leeds whose most recent album Rica was shepherding all the way from creation to completion. She was, he told her, the ninth frigging photog whose work hed seen. His patience, apparently, was wearing thin.

Unfortunately, it gained no girth from their interview. Straddling a delicate gilded chair, Rica went through her portfolio with all the interest and the approximate speed of a man dealing cards in a gambling casino. One after another, Deborahs pictures sailed to the floor. She watched them fall: her husband, her father, her sister-in-law, her friends, the myriad relations shed gained through her marriage. There was no Sting or Bowie or George Michael among them. Shed only got the interview in the first place through the recommendation of a fellow photographer whose work had also failed to please the American. And from the expression on Ricas face, she could tell she was getting no further than anyone else.

This didnt actually disturb her as much as seeing the black-and-white tarpaulin of her pictures grow on the floor beneath Ricas chair. Among them was her husbands sombre face, and his eyesso grey-blue light, so much at odds with his jet-coloured hairseemed to be gazing directly into hers. This isnt the way to escape, he was saying.

She never wanted to believe Simons words at any moment when he was most in the right. That was the primary difficulty in their marriage: her refusal to see reason in the face of emotion, warring with his cool evaluation of the facts at hand. She would say, God damn it, Simon, dont tell me how to feel, you dont know how I feelAnd she would weep the hardest with the greatest bitterness when she knew he was right.

As he was now, when he was fifty-four miles away in Cambridge, studying a corpse and a set of X-rays, trying to decide with his usual dispassionate, clinical acuity what had been used to beat in a girls face.

So when, in evaluation of her work, Richie Rica said with a martyred sigh at the monumental waste of his time, Okay, you got some talent. But you want the truth? These pictures wouldnt sell shit if it was dipped in gold, she wasnt as offended as she might have been. It was only when he jockeyed his chair around prior to rising that her mild ember of irritation feathered into flame. For he slid his chair into the blanket of pictures hed just created, and one of its legs perforated the lined face of Deborahs father, sinking through his cheek and creating a fissure from jaw to nose.

It wasnt even the damage to the photograph that brought the heat to her face. If the truth be told, it was Ricas saying, Oh hell, Im sorry. You can print another of the old guy, cant you? before he heaved himself to his feet.

Which is largely why she knelt, keeping her hands steady by pressing them to the floor as she gathered her pictures together, placing them back into the portfolio, tying its strings neatly, and then looking up to say, You dont look like a worm. Why is it you act like one?

Whichthe relative merit of her pictures asideis even more largely why she hadnt got the job.

Wasnt meant to be, Deb, her father would have said. Of course, that was true. Lots of things in life are never meant to be.

She gathered up her shoulder bag, her portfolio, her umbrella, and made her way out to the hotels grand entry. A short walk past a line of waiting taxis and she was out on the pavement. The mornings rain had abated for the moment, but the wind was fierce, one of those angry London winds that blow from the southeast, pick up speed on the slick surface of open water, and shoot down streets, tearing at both umbrellas and clothes. In combination with the traffic rumbling by, it created a whip-howl of noise in the Strand. Deborah squinted at the sky. Grey clouds roiled. It was a matter of minutes before the rain began again.

Shed thought about taking a walk before heading home. She wasnt far from the river, and a stroll down the embankment sounded lovelier than did the prospect of entering a house made tenebrous by the weather and rebarbative by the memory of her last discussion with Simon. But with the wind dashing her hair into her eyes and the air smelling each moment heavier with rain, she thought better of the idea. The fortuitous approach of a number eleven bus seemed indication enough of what she ought to do.

She hurried to join the queue. A moment later, she was jostling among the crowd in the bus itself. However, within two blocks, an embankment stroll in a raging hurricane looked decidedly more appealing than what the bus ride had to offer. Claustrophobia, an umbrella being driven into her little toe by an Aquascutum-outfitted Sloane Ranger several miles out of territory, and the pervasive odour of garlic which seemed to be emanating from the very pores of a diminutive, grandmotherly woman at Deborahs elbow all joined forces to convince her that the day promised nothing more than an endless journey from bad to worse.