The Rye Man (22 page)

The inspector nodded, took off his cap and pushed a hand back through his flattened hair. ‘So you're the headmaster then. What can you tell me about Jacqueline?'

‘She's not academically bright – in fact she's very slow. She's got a reading and writing age well below her chronological age. That makes her a loner, an outsider – none of the other kids have much to do with her. I don't think she's been very happy . . . When did she go missing?'

‘Some time between eight and ten last night. They thought she was in her room. When the mother called her for supper there was no reply. Have you any idea why she might have run away?'

He
thought of the armlet of bruising coloured like a withering leaf, hesitated. Two men with sticks walked past, their dog running ahead and sniffing in the verges. ‘I don't know, maybe something happened at home.'

‘Parents say not. McQuarrie obviously blames you, says you were trying to throw her out of the school.'

‘I wasn't trying to throw her out of the school. She needs special help, teachers who can give her the time and attention she needs. We don't have the staffing and resources to give her what she's entitled to.'

‘Did you discuss this with the McQuarries?'

‘Yes, I came to the farm, we talked about it.'

‘And they weren't happy with what you suggested?'

‘McQuarrie's not a man who listens well. He thinks his child's happy. I couldn't make him understand. I could have explained things to his wife but he obviously makes all the decisions.'

‘Do you have the authority to put her out of the school?'

‘It's not a question of putting her out – I've explained that. Decisions like this are usually taken in conjunction with the parents. I suppose at the end of the day the Board could make some decision but it would take a long time and they'd prefer it to be a joint one.'

‘The McQuarries had a phone call yesterday from an educational psychologist who says they gave permission to have her tested. They say they didn't.'

The police radio punched voices into the car, call signs, numbers, street names. A pale blink of sunlight filtered through the windscreen. The car suddenly felt airless – he felt an urge to open one of the windows. ‘Maybe there was some misunderstanding – I don't know. But should we not be looking for Jacqueline, trying to find her before any more time goes by?'

‘
People are looking for her right now. I just have a few more questions. Is she friendly with anyone in school at all, any house she might have stayed over at?'

‘I don't think so, I really don't think so.' He thought of her crouched at the base of the hedge, curled like a mollusc on the slope of the rock.

‘Might Mr Vance her teacher be able to tell us anything more which would be useful?'

He shook his head. The sun lit up the streaked dirt on the windscreen. Somewhere he could hear a dog barking. There was a frame of grime where the wipers couldn't reach. ‘I don't think Mr Vance would be able to help but if you like I'll phone him. Are there no reports of anyone seeing her?'

‘Nobody's seen anything. At this stage we can't rule out the possibility that she's been abducted.'

He looked into the man's face, saw the blue circles under his eyes, the tiny white scar high on his cheek and felt a spasm of sickness in his stomach. ‘Abducted? That's not something you hear about in this part of the world. You don't really think . . . ‘

‘It happens – not very often, thank God. But it can't be ruled out. Have any of your parents said anything about approaches to their children, seen strange cars hanging about?'

‘Nobody's ever said anything.' He watched him put on his police cap then pull it down on his head and straighten it with the palms of both hands. They both got out of the car. ‘Where do you want me to look?'

‘I want you to go home Mr Cameron. The way McQuarrie feels at the moment it'd only be a distraction to have you involved. Go home and I'll ring if we hear anything.'

He wanted to argue but knew it was pointless. He would look on his own, keep away from McQuarrie. He started to
walk
back to his car, stopping when the inspector called after him.

‘Mr Cameron, as often as not we find them sitting in front of some friend's TV with a bowl of cornflakes. This one's probably not any different.'

He raised his hand half-heartedly in an acknowledgement of the reassurance, got into the car and started the engine. He caught his reflection in the mirror, lightly fingered the raised weal of a bruise and the frayed corner of his lip. It made his face strange to him, unfamiliar, as if it was someone else who looked back at him. He drove slowly down the country roads, stopping from time to time at gateways into fields where he would get out and clamber on to the top rails, the metal bars cold against his skin, then stand up straight and slowly sweep the field. The strengthening sun had cleared the frost apart from those shadowed pockets where it could not reach and the earlier stillness had disappeared.

He passed others searching but he turned his face away and didn't look at them. His mind seemed incapable of focusing tightly on any single thought or plan and he drove instinctively, skipping from image to image like the wind flicking the pages of a discarded book. Only the word ‘abducted' fixed itself in his consciousness, spawning a sadistic series of images with which to torture himself. The open door of a car, the appearance of an unfamiliar kindness, the offer of a friendship. But she was timid too, always pausing to sense the proximity of danger. Crouched down at the thorn hedge – only the blondness of her hair had made her visible and when he had looked again she had been gone.

He drove down roads he had already been down and all the time he felt as if there was something separating him from the reality of what was happening. It felt as if he was watching from a distance, rather than participating in it. Cocooned in
the
car it seemed he could reshape the events outside, if only he could bring his will to bear on them. If only he could stop the flicking, flitting images and take himself back to that moment before his hand lifted the phone, then the present might be rearranged in a different pattern. What was happening seemed to have originated inside him and had no life outside his own, but when he glanced in the mirror again there was the swollen ruck of skin to link him with the unravelling sickness. He pressed his palm firmly against it, tried to disperse the swelling, and thought of a lie to tell Emma.

If the child had left of her own will where could she run to? She had no knowledge of any outside world, no means of reaching it. Only these fields and hedged roads marked the meridians of her existence. And why had she left? Had something happened in that house, something that had to be hidden? McQuarrie's fist slamming into the kitchen table. The broad gold band of his wedding ring. The first time he had touched her, her arm stiff under his hand. Her head dropping like a stone on to the page. Maybe McQuarrie knew where she was, maybe his outburst had been only a calculated deception which masked some truth that could not be told. He saw again his wife's face fading slowly from the window, frightened to be seen by those gathered in the yard.

Why had he never told anyone about the wreath of bruising on her arm? Because he wasn't sure? Because he was frightened of being wrong? Because he was still trying to establish himself in this community and to be wrong would destroy the credibility he needed to succeed, replace that trust he sought with suspicion and doubt. But what if McQuarrie hadn't been acting and the child had really been frightened of losing the little the school had been able to give her? If that was true he would be able to help her understand, would still be able to see her. Perhaps there were arrangements that could be made
so
she wouldn't have to leave the school. None of it seemed important now in comparison to the need to find her.

He drove slowly up the driveway to his house. He wondered if there had been any phone calls for him, one simple call that would allow him to retrace his steps and start again. He tried to think of all the options that were open to her but it seemed a closed circle of an existence with no obvious point where she might break out. There was a light on in the outhouse – he remembered it had been on when he had been trying to de-ice the car. He remembered the hiss of the oil lamps in George Crawford's barn, the wavering, vaporous smoke of light. As children they had perched on the bales of hay and watched their parents dance in the crowded square of light. The moths. Drawn out of the darkness, fluttering round the trembling light, white wings like paper. Circling, homing, at last unable to resist the lure of the light. She would run to him – there was nowhere else. He jumped from the car without stopping to shut the door or remove the keys, pushed his way into the outhouse, but it was Emma's startled face he saw, and in her fright her hand knocked over the jar of water into which she was dipping her brush. Coloured water flowed through the broken glass, a little lake of blue lapping across the floor. She was staring at his face, asking questions he had no time to answer.

‘Is she here? Did she come here?'

‘Jacqueline?'

‘Yes, is she here? Have you seen her?'

‘No John, I haven't seen her. Your face . . . ‘

He sat down on the paint-spattered seat, fingered his face and told her the lie he had prepared, then answered all her questions as honestly as he could and stared at the blue splash of water and the jagged shards of glass. ‘Emma, I have to find
her.
It's just possible that she's somewhere close by and that she'll try to come here.'

‘What makes you think she'll come here?'

‘Because she gave me a shell and . . . ' He stopped himself, saw the confusion in her face. ‘We have to look everywhere. There's no time to talk.'

He hurried outside, looking in the shed and other outhouse. He called her name, wheeling round himself in confused circles, shouting at the trees and hedges which bounded the garden. She followed, almost banging into him when he turned suddenly to veer in some new direction. His voice shot out across the surrounding fields, skimming the distance before disappearing. The silence was terrible to him and he shouted again and again as if hoping that it might scare away whatever it was that held her now. He turned to the house answering Emma's questions with an abrupt order to search. Every room, every hiding place. He bumped into furniture, richochetted into the hall and up the stairs, Emma trailing behind, trying to keep up. Their bedroom, the empty rooms, the bathroom where the pulled-up floorboards still littered the floor. She wasn't there. He slouched on to the floor with his back pushed against the bed and dabbed the corner of his mouth with the tips of his fingers. Emma stood in the doorway with blue paint on her hands. She was going to say something but he shook his head slowly from side to side and put a finger to his lips. Nothing passed between them and then he heard something – a rustle, a scrape of furniture, the press of a foot on a floorboard – and he was pushing past Emma who had registered nothing and was climbing the steep stairs to the attic. For a second his hand hesitated at the door and then he pushed it open, heard the whine of its warped frame.

A jumble of junk in cardboard boxes, empty tea-chests piled on top of each other like a child's building blocks, the cane
chair,
a closed suitcase. He had grown familiar with the sprawl and as he looked around him he knew that nothing had been moved, nothing touched.

‘She's not here John.'

He sank into the chair and set it rocking. ‘I know.'

He listened to her play the role that was normally his, as she came close and told him everything would work out all right, that the child would turn up safe and well, but her words left him untouched. He rocked harder on the chair, hoping that she would stop talking, give his mind time to think. Time to think about what was best, about what it was he had to do.

The hours dragged by, unremitting, irredeemably filled with the bitterest of imaginings. He wandered from room to room driven by a growing restlessness, eschewing all her attempts to reassure him. The phone rang only once – it was George Crawford asking if he'd heard anything but his voice sounded distant, almost cold. He spent some time phoning parents of pupils who were in her class but as he expected, none of their children had any ideas about where she might be. In return for no information he had to answer a series of questions as best he could and listen to uninformed conjecture and rumour. None of it was any help.

Sometimes he would go to the front of the house and look out across the fields and felt again the strange sense of distance which separated him from what was happening. He waited a long time before he pulled the curtains, pressing his face close to the coldness of the glass but saw nothing except his own reflection and the room in which he stood. They sat in the living room and pretended to watch the television, their efforts at conversation faltering and forced. He listened for the ring of the phone but it didn't come and although he heard it many times in his imagination, once even started towards it, there
was
nothing but the inane babble of the television. He went to the room he used as a study and sat at the desk, squaring the fan of papers into neat piles, straightening the pens and pencils. If only he could stretch out his hand to what was happening, pull it close to him, then he felt he might shape it into some order, guide it towards some safer end. But it felt veiled to him, always at a distance, swept along in its own flux.

He looked at the tea-chests, their heaped contents spilling over the sides. The titles on the faded covers of paperbacks and records seemed to meet his gaze with scorn, mocking the trust he had once placed in them. But there had to be something to trust, there always had to be something to trust, and if it wasn't any of the things which littered the chests, then what was it now, this thing he clutched to stop himself falling? Suddenly he started to pull at the clutter in one of the chests, shedding objects on to the floor until they formed a piled bonfire round his feet. A smell of must puffed up from the yellow-edged pages of sun-bleached books. He wanted to pull his head back but he burrowed on until he found it. A child's scrapbook, the corners of newsprint poking out from coarse grey pages. His name was printed crudely in block capitals on its front and there was a tiny blot in one corner where ink had leaked from his pen.