In the Moors (26 page)

“The police don't seem to be thinking along the lines of a simple battle of parents,” I agreed.

“We don't know that for sure, though.” There was a slight quaver in Caroline's voice. “We don't actually know anything about Garth, do we?”

“Caroline, love,” said Nora. “Garth is a waster, no doubt of that, but he's never been cruel to Aidan.”

I remembered what Rey had said yesterday.
These people … they hide all their evil and go walking around the world as if nothing is amiss.
I could see how Caroline might clutch at the straw of Garth, a seemingly far more likely suspect than her own son. Rey's words might fit either of them equally. Even so, I went over all the details Nora had given me so far.

“No one heard Aidan scream. What if he didn't cry out at all? If he'd seen someone he knew and trusted at the edge of the playground, he might not even have thought about returning for his satchel.”

“I'm sure Garth wouldn't hurt him,” said Nora, an obstinate look on her face.

It struck me that although Nora had taken a strong dislike to her daughter's college romance, she was going to defend the father of her grandson, as people tend to do when their family is threatened. She'd made up her mind that evil had come down upon them from outside.

“
You'd
know,” said Caroline, turning to me.

I was pulled from my thoughts. “Pardon?”

“You'd know if it was Garth or not. Soon as you looked at him. I'm sure of it.” She got up and loaded the tea trolley. “This has all gone cold. Shall I make some fresh?” She trundled out, shutting the door behind her. I imagined her standing over the kettle to weep.

I looked across at Nora, wondering how she would react to Caroline's outburst. “That's not how it works. I'm no better at gauging character than the next person. I have to have access to someone's spirit world to know anything more.”

Nora struggled up from the feather-depths of the sofa. She came across to me slowly, as if the floor was strew with hazards. She contemplated Aidan's Buddha for a moment before lifting it from my lap as if it were Aidan himself.

“Anything,” she whispered. She kissed its merry cheek. “Anything that will find my darling. Any tiny thing.” Her eyes had a halo of tears. “I'd like you to meet Garth. Please. For me.”

TWENTY-ONE

Garth Stanford lived like
a traveller, except his multihued van was not going to travel anywhere. Some time in its history, it had lost its wheels. It was half out of sight from where I was standing—on the other side of a five-barred gate—but I could certainly see that it was balanced on breeze blocks. I hung around the gate as if I was on a stakeout and dived into my bag for my mobile.

“Caroline?” I hissed into the phone. “I've found it.”

“Clever you!” came from the other end. “Nora said it was hard to find.”

I glanced back at the van. “Once seen, never forgotten, I should think.”

“Now, you take care.”

“I'll be fine.”

“You must ring us again as soon as you're out of there.”

“If he lets me in at all.” I'd been hoping we might give Garth a ring, to ask him if he was available, but Garth did not have a telephone, and now I could see why.

“If you haven't rung in half an hour, I'll ring you. If I don't get a reply, I'm alerting the police.”

I blanched. “Don't do that, Caroline! I'm not exactly popular with the police at the moment.”

“Keep in contact, then.”

“You have to give me some time. Promise you won't ring me until later.”

But I didn't trust her not to call, and I didn't want it to sound as
if we'd set this up between us, so I put my phone on silent mode. This cloak and dagger stuff wasn't at all appropriate. I just needed to get to the bottom of the dismal feeling that had come off the Buddha.

Getting into the field was going to be my first challenge. The track leading from the gate had been used by farm vehicles and was deep in mud. I clung to the fence, sliding from one patent leather boot to the other until I finally reached a bit of field that came up to trade description level. Grass, in other words. Feeling as conspicuous as a pheasant in season, I squelched in a straightish line, skirting the fire pit dug in the grass, surrounded by odd-shaped, heat-blackened stones. Soon I was close enough to make out that the splash of colour by the back door was a pot of spring primroses.

The van was tucked up against the far hedge between a couple of massive sweet chestnuts whose branches overhung its roof. Originally, the van had been an unpromising off-white colour, but its paintwork had been re-created with spray cans to depict a glorious, bright green, fire-breathing dragon. The windows were hung with bits of net curtain, which meant that the closer I came, the more easily the occupier could spot me, whereas I couldn't even tell if he was in.

I took a razor breath and rapped on the back door. From a distance, I heard a creak of metal against metal.

“Yeah?”

I put my head round the side of the van. Garth Stanford stepped out of his driver's door, jumping the short distance to land squarely. He was a tall man, as lean and berry-skinned as my beloved Bren, and with even more beard, if that was possible. His hair was a wild, unbrushed corona of bronze and on his nose was the oldest pair of spectacles I'd seen in a long time. Even Arnie had better glasses than these. They were a huge, black, horn-rimmed affair, held together with bits of duct tape.

Garth was dressed in a single garment, an ankle-length kaftan of faded orange. He wore no shoes and I would've placed a bet that he wore nothing underneath the kaftan, either.

“Can I help you?” His voice had the deep, slow warmth of bamboo chimes.

I put my hand on the side of his van, in a sort of honouring gesture, but I couldn't think of a thing to say that wasn't incriminating. It occurred to me that if I did nothing more than shake his hand, I might get what I'd come for. I busied forward, arm outstretched.

“I'm Sabbie Dare.”

He stared at the hand in the way the cows in the next field might have stared at the fence, but he didn't move.

“Let me start by saying I'm not the police or the press.” I had a strong feeling that everyone connected to Aidan would be fed up with both these agencies by now. “Or the council,” I added, searching round for other possible irritants in Garth's life. “Or the farmer.”

The eyes behind the glasses trapped me in their gaze. “Don't tell me who you
aren't
.”

I let my hand drop to my side. I was doing badly. “Nora Rodderick told me how to find you.”

“How is she?”

The response caught me off guard. “Oh, well, desperate, I suppose.”

“I gave up on desperate some time ago.”

I studied the mud that coated my boots. “I'm so sorry.”

“What does Nora want?”

I looked through the lenses of his glasses, right into his eyes. They were a clear, honey-edged brown, guileless and filled with sorrow. “It's about Aidan.” My voice was all whispery.

“In that case,” said Garth, “you're welcome to come in.”

He turned and climbed back into the van, a length of bronze-haired shin showing beneath his kaftan as he pulled himself up. I scrambled after him.

I was expecting to find myself up against the front seats, but everything had been removed—seats, steering wheel, gearbox, partition. There was nothing about this van now that made it a vehicle. Instead, the interior had been turned into a surprisingly spacious one-room accommodation. Garth's bed was a mattress tucked in behind the back doors and raised from the floor, caravan-style, to allow for storage underneath. Along both sides were overhead shelves stacked with books, tapes, potted plants, and a mismatch of crockery. On top a small chest of drawers was a cardboard box of vegetables and a shabby portable radio. There was a tape playing inside it—something from a different place and time, maybe ancient Greece, maybe Mexico City. Wherever he could, Garth had draped throws and scarves and other fringed things, giving the metal interior a feeling of softness and colour.

“Take a seat.”

I looked around. The choice was eclectic—a chair straight out of the Sixties, with wooden arms and a sagging cushion; a beanbag covered in big yellow sunflowers; or a set of canvas camp chairs, folded against a wall hanging of another dragon, this time with ochre scales and eyes of burning coal … a bit too much like the massive Slamblaster
for me. This was a symbol he clearly identified with, yet I couldn't see anything fire-breathing about Garth. I plopped down onto the beanbag.

“Nice music,” I said.

“Helps me relax,” said Garth. “I'm trying to stay calm, see.”

“I guess it's hard.”

“I'd like to kick the sides of the van in.”

“You don't look to me like a van kicker.”

Behind the glasses the honey brown eyes closed, briefly. “It's having nothing to do. Not being able to help in one single way.”

I was reminded of how Arnie had volunteered to find the missing children—how all the parents must have done so. Garth struck a safety match and bent to light a gas burner. He placed a whistle-kettle onto the half-hearted flame. “Drink?”

“Oh,” I said, startled. “Thank you.”

He didn't offer me a choice but spooned something from a tea caddy into a small white pot, pouring water on top as soon as the kettle whistled. The lid chimed into place. Every action was self-possessed and measured.

“This is a peaceful place to be,” I said. Actually, I loved it—loved its simplicity.

He nodded. “It's good.”

“You travel about, or just stay put?”

Instantly, this struck me as a stupid question. The man literally had no wheels. But Garth gave it his reflective consideration.

“I guess we're all looking for the place to settle. Never thought that would be me. But I like being close to Aidan and Stella.”

“Only, finding somewhere to live alternatively …”

“Yeah. Can be hard. The council have tried to move me on.”

“They'd have a job,” I quipped.

“I'm lucky. I've found a friendly farmer.”

“He lets you stay?”

“I get the pitch, rent free, if I lend a hand when they're at full stretch.”

“Oh, good exchange of energies.”

“The farm job makes me an ‘agricultural worker'
.
”

“Great!”

“It's an organic farm.” He gestured to the box of vegetables, which I assumed was part of the exchange of energies. This was a man of as few words as possible.

“I've turned my garden over to organics,” I said. “Hens, vegetables, that sort of thing.”

Garth gave the pot a slow stir and poured a straw-coloured liquid into two chunky mugs. He handed me one and made himself comfortable on the floor, sitting cross-legged.

The scent of the tea wafted up from the mug. “Mmm,” I said, sniffing. “Mint, chamomile, Melissa, something fruity … haws, perhaps?”

“Rose hips. You know about herbs?”

“I used to live with herbalists.” I took a sip of the tea and felt its warmth and flavour slide into my stomach, relaxing me. “And I've got most of these in my garden. I ought to get round to blending them more than I do.”

“So, did Nora send you here just to remind me I'm useless and hopeless?”

I shook my head. It was getting hard, being in the middle of so many people's utter pain. My hands were around the mug, comfortably warm. I felt relaxed and at home. The lemon balm in the tea, the smell of incense in the van, and the music were all drifting around my mind, making me forget why I'd come. It would have been nice to talk about permaculture for the rest of the afternoon—anything to avoid the subject of a missing son. Maybe I could even convince myself I'd be doing Garth a favour—taking his mind away from his agony.

“You know I've come here about Aidan,” I said, as softly as I could. I waited for Garth's response. His body rocked to and fro, his mug in his hands. “But it's more about the man they've arrested.” Suddenly, I knew I was going to tell Garth everything from the beginning, from the moment Cliff had walked into my therapy room for the first time and I had seen anguish and mystery in his eyes.

Halfway through my story, I absentmindedly put my empty mug down on the floor, and Garth refilled it from the pot.

“Something wasn't right about Aidan's Buddy,” I finished. “When I touched it at Caroline's, I felt a despondency that couldn't have had anything to do with the kidnapping. So I suppose I came here to ask you if you could shed any light on it.”

I realized how my agenda had changed. I had no intention of trying to work out where Garth had hidden Aidan, or if he'd killed Josh. As far as I could tell, he'd find it difficult to sever a stick of barley or dig up a carrot.

In the dim lighting of the van, I saw his otherworld image. It was lifting slightly away from him with a sort of repressed compulsion. It explained to me how Garth was managing to cope with the calamity that whirled around him. He had risen above it; he had risen above the howling world.

“I'm sad to think my son was sad, even before … what happened.”

“What I got was more everything not being right.”

“Things weren't right,” Garth agreed.

“Oh?”

“If Aidan had had his way, he'd be with me now. Out here, where a kid can run and climb and eat off a wood fire.”

“Are you saying he'd choose to live with you over his mother?”

“What? No.” Garth shook a laugh out of himself, the first I'd seen. “No, Stella used to dig this life too. But her mother wouldn't have it. They wanted Aidie to go to the church school in the village. Come home and play on a computer. Have nice friends to tea.”

“To be fair, that's not quite how Nora told the story.”

“You have to make up your own mind about that.” He looked down at the herbal dregs in his cup, then back up at me. “Stella was always torn. She loved the travelling. We used to spend every summer going from festival to festival. Then she finished her degree and inherited a bit of money from her grandmother and we took off. India, Thailand.”

“The hippie trail?”

“You can look at it like that, if you want. You can say we trod in the footsteps of a lot of other people. But we did it for ourselves, to work out what we wanted from our lives.”

“And for you, that was …”

“The simplest life I could possibly find. The joy of never harming a living thing. The wonder of waking each day just to appreciate that the sun has risen and the season is moving on.”

“Yes,” I said. “I can see the attraction in that.”

“Can you? Stella lost that feeling. We came back to England because she knew she was pregnant—that
we
were pregnant. She insisted she wanted to be near her family for the birth. Before we knew it, obstetricians overran us with their epidurals and caesareans. I think we had our first row ever.”

I didn't interrupt, but I had trouble imagining Garth in a row of any description.

“She moved back to her mum's. I went off for a bit. I missed the birth. I never forgave myself for doing that, but I didn't feel part of things with her anymore. There'd been a takeover bid.”

“I'm so sorry.”

Garth went back to his gentle nodding. The tape clicked off and the otherworldly music stopped. The silence extended into a Zenlike stillness.

Garth moved around the van while I finished my second mug of tea. Carefully, he put the cassette into its battered case. He threw some herbs on a charcoal burner and a scented fog of smoke curled into my nostrils. When he came and sat down again, something had changed in him.

“You're quite a shaman,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“I don't just mean the Buddha. I was thinking of what you said earlier—the way you found the cottage.”