The Judas Sheep (19 page)

Darren called to collect the drugs from Kevin about an hour later, and I took the number of his red Sierra without any trouble. As soon as he left I went next door and Kevin gave me my money. I counted it, checking each note against the light. Darren had a ten minute start on me as I drove towards the M62. At ninety miles per hour the Merlin Couriers’ Transit rattled and shrieked like a witches’ sabbath on crack, but I didn’t catch him. 

‘So how did the trip go?’ Annabelle asked when I saw her in the evening. She was wearing a pin-stripe suit. I think she’s at her best when dressed fairly formally, but I’d hate to do business with her. She’d put me through the mangle and hang me out to dry, and I’d love every second of it.

‘Oh, you know. Routine and boring. Never mind that, though. What about your interview with Tom Noon?’ She was supposed to be seeing him at
eight-thirty
on Saturday morning, before his constituency surgery began.

Annabelle raised her eyebrows and sighed. She looked disappointed, which was unlike her. ‘It didn’t happen,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘He didn’t turn up at the office. I was there bright and early, with my best suit and a smile, but he failed to make an appearance.’

‘No apology?’

She shook her head.

‘Was his secretary there? What did she have to say?’

‘Oh, she was full of apologies. Said he must have been detained in London. She tried ringing his wife, but there was no reply. Later in the day she called me and said that Mr Noon appeared to have gone missing. Didn’t want to enlarge upon it, though.’

‘Missing, just that?’

‘Mmm.’

I pointed towards the telephone. ‘Want me to see what I can find out?’

‘Er, yes, if you can.’

I dialled Heckley nick. ‘Hello, Arthur, it’s Charlie Priest.’

‘Hello, boss. We thought you’d died.’

‘An exaggeration, Arthur. What can you tell me about Tom Noon, MP? Apparently he’s gone missing.’

‘That’s right. His wife reported him missing Saturday morning. Went out for a drink, Friday evening, late on, like he usually does. Took the Land Rover and the dog with him, never came home. That’s it.’

‘Are you looking into it?’

‘Have to, with him being an MP. Nothing coming up, though. Doesn’t appear to have a girlfriend; no business worries that anyone knows about. Nothing.’

‘OK, Arthur, and thanks. Will you let me know, please, if anything comes to light?’

I filled in the other side of the conversation for Annabelle, and her disappointment turned to concern. ‘We are not fair to our MPs,’ she told me. ‘We make them the butt of jokes, and complain about them, but they work hard, and take a lot of risks.’

‘Some of them,’ I conceded.

I was cleaning my teeth in my own bathroom when the phone rang. It was Arthur.

‘Why haven’t you gone home?’ I asked.

‘Can’t get the staff, Charlie. Too many sick, lame and la … You know how it is.’

‘I see. Am I included in one of those groups?’

‘Not you, boss. You’ve nothing to prove to anyone. Are you still interested in Tom Noon?’

‘Yes. Have you found him?’

‘Not him, the car. It’s at Bolton Abbey, in the Strid car park.’

The Wharfe is a modest river at Bolton Abbey, but at the Strid its character changes. It narrows dramatically from about fifty feet across to rip through a two-
foot-wide
crack in the rocks. A simple step can take you from one side to the other, but if you slip, there’s no escape. The rocks are undercut, and bodies can be lost for days in underground whirlpools. It’s a sinister place.

‘Oh sugar!’ I said. ‘That looks bad.’

‘’Fraid so. We start dragging the river at first light.’

I called Annabelle at ten o’clock next morning. It
was the first Monday in a new month, and she could have been starting her new job. I told her about Noon’s car being found and drove round to collect her.

Bolton Abbey isn’t in our patch, but as Noon was one of my parishioners I had an excuse to find out what I could. I rang Superintendent Wood and told him that I had a personal interest in the man. He’d already sent young Caton along to the scene to demonstrate our interest, but had no objection to me going, too.

‘Two heads are better than one, Charlie,’ he stated with all the authority his rank held. ‘Even if they are sheep heads.’ I didn’t mention that I had Annabelle with me.

The local police had cordoned off the Strid car park and large areas of wood at either side of the river, much to the consternation of the walkers. I couldn’t believe how many people were out in the woods on a Monday morning. I left the car on the road, behind several Pandas and a couple of police horse-boxes, and showed my ID to the Constable vetting visitors.

‘Mrs Wilberforce – she’s a friend of the missing man,’ I told him when he looked expectantly at Annabelle.

‘Thank you, sir. Will you keep well to the right, please, then within the tapes.’

‘Cheers. Keep close to me,’ I told Annabelle. ‘Have you ever been here before?’

‘This area, but not actually to the Strid.’

I’d told her of the place’s reputation on the journey up. Once in, nobody ever came out alive. With one
notable exception. About fifteen years earlier a man had tried to murder his wife by pushing her in. By some freak of the current, or maybe due to the clothing she was wearing, she was carried straight through, and survived. He was charged with attempted murder, but she changed her story and they were reconciled. I bet she keeps the carving knives in a locked drawer.

Noon’s Land Rover stood forlornly in the bottom corner of the car park, tucked under a chestnut tree that was just breaking into a pale leaf. Another Land Rover, a proper one from the Underwater Search Unit, was near the entrance to the woods. We’d asked for the Mounted Police to scour the riverbanks, and the Task Force were standing by in case we required an extensive search of local properties, outbuildings and suchlike. I led Annabelle along the track between the red and white tapes, down to the riverside.

You can hear it booming long before you arrive, and the sodden trees, dripping with ferns and lichen, create the atmosphere of a Lost World. When you see the river it looks like the aftermath of an explosion at a brewery – a demented torrent of peat-brown madness and churning foam. Nothing could survive that, you tell yourself. Downstream, the river widens, flowing serenely between twisted oak and thriving willow. Only rafts of froth, drifting aimlessly, indicate the agitation the water suffered merely seconds earlier. A dipper flew across and landed in the shallows.

Several people were standing around, one in a diver’s
dry suit, attached by a line to his attendant, ready to go to the assistance of his colleague in the water should an emergency arise. Jeff Caton saw me and walked over.

‘Hello, Jeff. Anything happening yet?’ I asked.

‘No, There’s a diver down, but they haven’t found anything.’

He’d met Annabelle before, on the walking trip. ‘Annabelle knows Tom Noon,’ I explained. ‘She should have started work for him this morning.’ I’d give her the job, even if Tom Noon wasn’t in a position to.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jeff told her. ‘Did you … do you know him well?’

‘Not really,’ she replied. ‘I have only met him three times. Did you say that there was a diver down, in that?’

‘That’s right. Rather him than me.’ He pointed to an officer in a boilersuit, wearing a headset and holding a line that led tautly into the river. ‘He’s on the end of the rope.’

‘Anybody local here, Jeff?’ I asked.

He pointed a Sergeant out to me. I went over and introduced myself and told him who Annabelle was. I made it sound as if she could have identified Noon, if they’d found him. Taking one’s girlfriend to the scene of a crime is not generally regarded as good police procedure.

The diver came to the surface, in the deep pool on the low side of the Strid, and was helped out. He had a long conversation with his colleagues, pointing into the
stream and describing the shapes of the rocks with his hands. The next diver listened intently, before wading into the icy water.

A Constable came over and asked if we’d like mugs of tea. Jeff accepted the offer, but I told him that Annabelle and I were going shortly. The Sergeant and the Diving Supervisor joined us, and the Constable brought Jeff his tea. As he handed it over the diver’s attendant called to us: ‘He says he’s found something!’

He drew in the line, walking downstream, planting each foot carefully on the slimy rocks. We followed him part of the way, and caught sight of the diver’s red suit beneath the broken surface of the water. He swam slowly into the shallows and stood up, holding something, towing it to the side. His diving colleague waded in to help him.

They lifted the body of a small dog, skinny as a whippet, on to firm ground, a lead trailing down from its neck. We resisted the temptation to crowd around, standing back until the Diving Supervisor and the local Sergeant had received the corpse. Fumbling fingers undid the dog’s collar. The Sergeant peered at the engraved disc that hung on it, wiping it dry and holding it towards the light that slanted through the branches. When he’d read it he stepped from boulder to boulder, back up to the rest of us, and handed the collar and lead to me.

The weak sun caught the meniscus of tears under Annabelle’s eyes, making them appear larger than they
were. I passed the collar to Jeff and put my arm around her shoulders. ‘It says Bobby Noon,’ I told her, ‘with a Heckley phone number.’

We had a cup of tea each and I managed a toasted teacake in a cafe in the village and drove home. I stayed at Annabelle’s through the afternoon and read her reports on Africa. I was stunned into silence, even though I’d expected them to be good. One report examined a number of projects that the various charities had sponsored, evaluating their effectiveness and suggesting improvements. She understood all the angles, and wasn’t afraid to comment on economics or practical aspects. She knew all about crop rotation, medicine, and the merits of plastic, concrete and iron pipes. They’d sent the right person.

The other report was about the impact of tobacco on the economy and health of the region. It was a complicated story, told better by the pictures she’d taken. My pupil had done me proud, but it nearly broke her heart. One photo was of an old man dying of cancer, the only relief available being from the cigarettes that were killing him. Others showed little kids, urchins, with stalls selling a few packets, and all the time they puffed away at the weed. Annabelle bought what she could from them, to bring back for analysis.

She was on the best picture, a tiny figure against a huge advertising hoarding. On it, a Michael Jackson lookalike straddled a Harley Davidson. He was
half-turning
,
to light the cigarette of the beautiful girl on the back. ‘Smoke Red Wings and you too can have all this,’ was the message to a population whose per capita income wouldn’t pay for his Ray Bans.

Annabelle was in the kitchen, emptying cupboards. I wandered in and said: ‘Your reports are superb. Andrew Fallon will be delighted with the tobacco stuff. I’m sorry if I was boorish before you went. Now I see how worthwhile your trip was.’

She came to sit on a stool next to me. ‘Do you know what my favourite part was?’ she asked.

I shook my head.

‘Your birthday card. It was the best one I’ve ever had.’

‘It was very expensive,’ I told her.

‘I know. It positively oozed expense.’

‘And taste?’

‘Taste more than expense.’

‘Thank you.’ I decided that the time was right. ‘Annabelle?’

‘Mmm.’

‘You know you were going to come down to Gilbert’s cottage in Cornwall?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’ve been thinking. East Yorkshire isn’t exactly Cornwall, but it’s still very nice. And the cottage there is OK, too. It’s not really a cottage, more a little house. But it can be very pleasant, and you’d never know you weren’t in a cottage. So we could, you know …’

Annabelle tipped her head to one side and tried to look puzzled. ‘Could what?’ she asked.

‘We could, well, walk on the beach; spend some time together. And you can skim pebbles on the North Sea just the same as any other sea. So … what do you think?’

‘I think you have such a way with words, Charles.’ The smile had defeated the puzzled look, and her cheeks were pink, showing off her dimples.

I nodded several times, perched on the high stool, sitting on my hands. ‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘We have intensive training, for when we appear in court. So can I take that as affirmative?’

In the distance I could hear a noise like a budgerigar gargling. We both froze, listening. It was my mobile phone, in my jacket pocket, hanging in the hallway. The world had caught up with us again.

Halfway through, Annabelle joined me to listen to my end of the conversation. My tone probably gave away the content of the message. I said: ‘Thanks for ringing, Jeff. Will you let me know what the pathologist has to say?’ I folded the phone and clicked the aerial home.

She was leaning on the door jamb, arms dangling. ‘They’ve found a body,’ I told her. ‘It fits Tom Noon’s description.’

All the newspapers were filled with eulogies for the dead politician. The local rag said he was one of the greatest
Prime Ministers we never had. Their quota of originality is expended on the football scores. Andrew Fallon, PM-in-waiting, was widely photographed and videoed in a distressed state. His other passion, apart from knocking tobacco, is railways. He is a great advocate of expanding the system, and heard of his friend’s death while opening an extension to a private line somewhere near his home town of Dumfries. Pictures of him on the footplate of a steam locomotive, rivulets of tears cutting through the grime on his cheeks, appeared on all the front pages.

I was more interested in the pathologist’s report. Tom Noon had drowned, but had been unconscious when he entered the water. A wound on the back of his head was consistent with him slipping and banging his head on a rock. People who should have known better nodded wisely: the rocks were slimy with moss … it had happened before … it was a dangerous place to take a dog for a walk on a lead.

At eleven o’clock at night! Twenty-five miles from home, without telling your wife where you were going! I didn’t believe a word of it. I asked to see the body, and examined the wound on his head. It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, with little indentation to indicate the shape of whatever had caused it. I revisited the Strid and tried to reconstruct a possible scenario. It could have happened, but I wasn’t convinced. I waited for some organisation, like The Struggle Continues, to claim responsibility, but nobody did.