And None Shall Sleep (7 page)

She shook soy sauce over the food. ‘Where else could he be? He isn't at home. It doesn't seem that he had many friends. His son, by his wife's account, hated him. He was a sick man. The nights have been cold and he was only wearing pyjamas. We think he's been abducted.' She paused. ‘We've a few lines of enquiry. The car he left the hospital in, and there's a possibility he made a phone call.' She sighed. ‘Obviously he might not have actually spoken to anyone. But assuming he did it could have been either a colleague or a taxi firm. There are always unanswered questions. Sometimes even after the end of a case. I only hope we get the answers to some of them. And then there's the tiny matter of finding the body.' She grinned at him. ‘Just to provide you with a bit of work. We'll intensify the search of open wasteland, rivers and the canal tomorrow.'

‘Well,' he said, pouring them both a glass of wine, ‘if no one else is bothered about him, why are you so concerned?'

‘It's my job, Matthew. Besides ...' she considered for a moment and looked at him, ‘I have a very strange feeling about this case. It's so atypical. So many unusual ingredients.' She stopped. ‘And there's another reason you definitely won't understand.'

He moved closer. ‘Try me.'

‘Well,' she began, then stopped. ‘It's really silly.'

‘Go on.'

‘Well,' she said again, slowly. ‘We spent part of last night under the same roof. We shared a house. We were both in hospital. The same one.' Then she caught sight of his face. ‘You don't understand, do you?'

He laughed. ‘In a way,' he said and she left it at that.

They ate in silence for a while.

‘I thought people weren't supposed to speak ill of the dead,' she said suddenly.

‘You mean the wife?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, maybe she doesn't think he's dead.' She shook her head.

He looked at her. ‘What did she say that caused you such offence?'

‘I tried to suggest he might have a mistress. She replied he couldn't even get it up during his honeymoon. Horrible, isn't it?'

The room fell silent while Matthew turned his wine glass around in his hand and stared moodily into the ruby glints. ‘And when are
we
going to have a honeymoon?' He asked the question lightly, in his habitual bantering tone, but when she glanced at him he'd stopped looking into the glass as though it was a crystal ball and his eyes were resting on her. Their expression was quite cold.

For once she had no flippant answer for him. Nothing to deflect his question. So she sat miserably and they ate the rest of their food chatting desultorily, the atmosphere destroyed. He changed the subject back to the safe area by asking her what she thought the chances were of finding Jonathan Selkirk still alive.

‘Well, as I said, we think he was abducted. Mike's a hundred per cent sure he was, and I'm inclined to agree with him.'

Matthew made a face. ‘Don't tell me Tarzan's actually said something clever for once.'

‘Oh, Matthew,' she said reproachfully. ‘Behave. Mike's been driving me around like a model chauffeur all day. And I agree with him. I think he's right and that Selkirk's dead,' she said. ‘I also think nobody will cry many tears for him. He was not a nice man.'

Joanna told him about the family photographs stuffed into the drawer and that Jonathan Selkirk had disliked his son so much he had refused not only to have his photograph around the house but even that of his three-year-old granddaughter. ‘And she looks quite a sweet little thing,' she said.

‘Didn't think kids were much in your line, Joanna.' There was a tinge of dry sarcasm in Matthew's voice that again chilled her.

She felt bound to say something. ‘Kids aren't “in my line”,' she retorted, ‘but this was Selkirk's granddaughter.'

Matthew nodded. ‘I wonder why,' he mused.

She looked at him. ‘Why what?'

‘I wonder why he disliked his son so much.'

She chased the last scraps of prawn cracker around her plate thoughtfully. ‘There's lots of reasons why people don't take to their offspring,' she said at length. ‘Sometimes they suspect the child isn't theirs, sometimes they're jealous. Sometimes the kid is a little too like themselves – you know it mirrors all their weaknesses. And sometimes kids are just horrible.'

Neither of them mentioned Eloise. In fact, during the year since Matthew had left Jane, Eloise had quickly become a taboo subject. Matthew disappeared every other weekend and she knew he was taking his daughter out. But she was rarely mentioned because every time her name cropped up they argued. Matthew made occasional conscious efforts to remind Joanna that he had a daughter but it merely made the hair at the back of her neck prickle. Guilt at robbing the child of her full-time father? Or was it more closely linked to Eloise's identikit resemblance to her mother?

Matthew tidied the meal away, loaded the dishes into the dishwasher and they settled back to finish the wine. It was eleven o'clock when he reached across and touched her plastered arm. ‘I think now is as good a time as any,' he said quietly. ‘Perhaps your accident has pushed us towards a watershed.'

She already knew exactly what he was about to say.

‘Why don't you sell here,' he said, glancing round the cottage, ‘and move in with me? When my divorce comes through we can buy somewhere decent of our own.'

His face was firm as he watched her. She knew he had already made up his mind and that the accident had merely precipitated the actual question. But she couldn't bring herself to speak. She loved Matthew – yes. But commitment? Her commitments were dual – both work and Matthew. And she had the uncomfortable feeling that commitment to the one might preclude the other.

She looked helplessly at him. He moved closer, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. ‘Jo,' he said, ‘it would be the best thing – for both of us. Please.' He stopped. ‘I mean, you
are
going to find it awfully difficult coping on your own. Your arm will be in plaster for a couple of months. Now is as good a time as any.' His face was set and very firm. She knew Matthew well. Once his mind was made up he could be extremely stubborn.

‘I love you, Jo.' He spoke very softly, almost a whisper. But his eyes were unblinking.

She swallowed and her mouth was dry.

After a pause Matthew moved away. ‘I see.' he said. At least, I think I do.'

So they sat awkwardly, and at midnight Matthew left. Back home to the top floor of the huge house he had rented from a friend for the last year.

Joanna went to bed disheartened and depressed, but, thanks in part to the after-effects of the anaesthetic, slept like a log.

Mike hammered on the door just before eight and caught her still in her white towelling dressing gown.

She yawned and stretched. ‘Thanks for coming.' And, to help hide his embarrassment, ‘For being so prompt and early you can make some coffee.' He followed her into the cottage.

She was halfway up the stairs before she shouted down, ‘Anything turn up in the night?'

‘Negative.' She heard the kettle being filled. ‘But all the taxi drivers have been questioned. No one picked him up.'

She did the best she could to wash and dress, clean her teeth and even managed a respectable smear of make-up. She settled herself across the table from Mike and drank the coffee.

‘At the bottom of the canal,' he said. ‘That's my bet. Maybe we should send a couple of divers down.'

‘Well, the nearest part of the canal to the hospital is four miles away so we can start there.'

She was sitting in the car before he mentioned Matthew.

‘I nearly didn't come,' he said. ‘I thought Levin might give you a lift in. I saw his car outside,' he added.

‘He left late last night.' She shot him an angry glance.

‘Not that it's any of your bloody business.'

They were silent for the rest of the journey.

Superintendent Arthur Colclough met them at the door, his jowls wobbling like an excited bulldog's. ‘I've been trying to ring you,' he said. ‘You'd better get out to Gallows Wood. Straight away. They've found something there.'

‘Selkirk?' they said in unison.

He nodded. ‘It looks like it.'

Gallows Wood was a small wooded area on the edge of a new housing estate. Over the years it had given the police no more trouble than half a dozen other patches of waste ground close to the town. In other words, it was a haunt for alcoholics, runaways and courting couples. Lately the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust had taken an interest in the badger sett and had bought the small plot of land from the local council.

Joanna frowned at Mike as he switched on the engine. ‘I didn't expect him to have got there,' she said. ‘It's a couple of miles from the hospital.'

‘So he must have got there by car.'

‘Wait a minute.' She remembered something. ‘There's a footpath, isn't there? If you go round the back of the housing estate and cut across those old factories ...' She frowned. ‘The question is, could he have stumbled, barefoot, about three-quarters of a mile across unlit, derelict ground, in his condition?'

Mike looked at her. ‘That might be the question. Let's just wait and find out.' He switched on the blue light, pressed his right foot down to the floor and they reached the wood in five and a half minutes.

Two police cars were already parked, their lights still flashing. Mike pulled up behind them and spoke through the open window to the constable standing by.

‘Which way?'

‘In there,' he said, pointing. ‘You have to go through the gate. Along the path. He's in the middle.' He looked pale. Finding a body is a shocking business.

Joanna spoke to him. ‘Were you the one who found him?'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘OK,' she said. ‘Well done. The sooner he was found the better.'

The constable nodded and Mike and Joanna climbed out of the car, looking around them. It was a pretty place, deserving of the Wildlife Trust's money, probably filled with birdsong throughout the summer days and badgers playing through the long, light evenings. But now it was dark and dripping as the sun disappeared behind thick grey cloud.

‘Somehow,' Joanna said, looking at the sopping leaves in the thick brambled undergrowth and the black path that twisted into its centre, ‘It looks the right sort of place.'

‘To top yourself? Yes,' Mike agreed.

‘Depressing, isn't it?' Joanna said as they scrambled through the gate. She glanced at Mike jumping over the stile. ‘Of all the things I find depressing it's a suicide.' She took in a deep breath. ‘It's as though the whole of the human race has failed that person. And we're the ones who find them. It always makes me sad.'

Mike attempted to cheer her up. ‘Well,' he said. ‘He had a sense of humour. Gallows Wood. Ten guesses how he's done it.'

She agreed.

They were wrong. On both counts.

Rain dropped heavily from the trees, splashing around them as they stepped through the undergrowth. Then suddenly the September sun emerged again to give the wood a pale, unreal light. It was a small wood, the path almost impenetrable with snarling brambles and soft, black mud.

Joanna glanced down at her shoes. ‘Bloody mud,' she said, ‘and with this thing on my arm they'll be tricky to get clean.'

Mike turned round. ‘And I thought Levin licked your boots clean.'

She stared at him. It took them a couple more minutes to reach the clearing in the centre of the wood. They looked around them and knew this spot was completely hidden from both the road and the nearby housing estate.

The path turned sharply to the right and they saw the ring of police standing round a crumpled heap of old-fashioned striped pyjamas.

They pushed forward and Joanna caught her breath. He was lying on his side, the back of his head clearly visible. His hair was cut short, making it easy to see the scorch mark of a bullet entry wound in the nape of his neck. His hands had been tied behind his back.

She knew what she would see even before she leaned across the dead man. He had no face. And she felt a sudden, shouting queasiness.

‘Bloody hell,' she murmured. And already she knew from the position in which he lay that he had had his hands bound and had been forced to kneel before the executioner's bullet in the back of his skull had killed him instantly. She forced herself to study him with a detective's eyes. Jonathan Selkirk lay wearing only pyjamas, feet bare, pathetically scratched and bleeding. A long black thorn stuck out of one of them. The back of one hand had continued to ooze long after the IV line had been removed, leaving a tiny pool of blood and a large bruise. And she knew whatever sort of man Jonathan Selkirk had been in life, he had done nothing to deserve this.

She addressed Mike over her shoulder. ‘Find out if they've contacted Matthew.'

He grunted.

Others were arriving now, carrying police equipment. A plastic shelter was erected over the body and a walkway carefully taped off. Ten minutes later the photographer arrived, and, twenty minutes after that, Matthew. He made a beeline for Joanna.

‘So you've found him,' were the first words he said. ‘I'm glad,' and, taking a step nearer and studying her face, ‘you look pale, I told you you shouldn't be working.'

‘Matthew, he was shot in the back of the neck.' The words sounded cruel and cold.

Matthew gave a low whistle. ‘Shot,' he said slowly. ‘I really didn't expect that.'

‘Neither did we.' She gave a quick shiver. ‘It's made a mess of his head,' she said.

Matthew shrugged. ‘I know,' he said. ‘Guns are nasty things. They do a lot more damage than people realize. People think guns leave a neat little black hole. They just don't understand. One little bullet rips out a ton of flesh. Sorry,' he added, looking at her now chalk-white face. ‘Darling, I'm sorry Are you all right?'