In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(11)

“We must be hopeful,” Julian went on. “She's well equipped. And she doesn't panic in a tough situation, when things get dicey. We all know that.”

“But if she's fallen … or got lost in one of the caves … Julian, it happens. You know that. No matter how well prepared someone is, the worst still happens sometimes.”

“There's nothing that says anything's happened. I looked only in the south part of the White Peak. There're more square miles out there than can be covered by one man in total darkness in an evening. She could be anywhere. She could even have gone to the Dark Peak without our knowing.” He didn't mention the nightmare Mountain Rescue faced whenever someone did disappear in the Dark Peak. There was, after all, no mercy in fracturing Nan's tenuous hold on her calm. She knew the reality about the Dark Peak anyway, and she didn't need him to point out to her that while roads made most of the White Peak accessible, its sister to the north could be traversed only by horseback, on foot, or by helicopter. If a hiker got lost or hurt up there, it generally took bloodhounds to find him.

“She said she'd marry you though,” Nan declared, more to herself than to Julian, it seemed. “She did say that she'd marry you, Julian?”

The poor woman seemed so eager to be lied to that Julian found himself just as eager to oblige her. “We hadn't quite got to yes or no yet. That's what last night was supposed to be about.”

“Was she … Did she seem pleased? I only ask because she'd seemed to have … Well, she'd seemed to have some sort of plans, and I'm not quite sure …”

Carefully, Julian speared a mushroom. “Plans?”

“I'd thought … Yes, it seemed so.”

He looked at Nan. Nan looked at him. He was the one to blink. He said steadily, “Nicola had no plans that I know of, Nan.”

The kitchen door swung open a few inches. The face of one of the Grindleford women appeared in the aperture. She said, “Mrs. Maiden, Mr. Britton,” in a hushed voice. And she used her head to indicate the direction of the kitchen. You're wanted, the motion implied.

Andy was leaning against one of the work tops, facing it, his weight on his hands and his head bowed. When his wife said his name, he looked up.

His face was drawn with exhaustion, and his growth of peppery whiskers fanned out from his moustache and shadowed his cheeks. His grey hair was uncombed, looking windblown although there wasn't any wind to speak of this morning. His eyes went to Nan, then slid away. Julian prepared himself to hear the worst.

“Her car's on the edge of Calder Moor,” Andy told them.

His wife drew her hands into a fist at her breast. “Thank God,” she said.

Still, Andy didn't look at her. His expression indicated that thanks were premature. He knew what Julian knew and what Nan herself might well have acknowledged had she paused to probe for the possibilities that were indicated by the location of Nicolas Saab. Calder Moor was vast. It began just west of the road stretching between Blackwell and Brough, and it comprised endless expanses of heather and gorse, four caverns, numerous cairns and forts and barrows spanning time from Paleolithic through the Iron Age, gritstone outcroppings and limestone caves and fissures through which more than one foolish tripper had crawled for adventure and become hopelessly stuck. Julian knew that Andy was thinking of this as he stood in the kitchen at the end of his long night's search for Nicola. But Andy was thinking something else as well. Andy was knowing something else, in fact. That much was evident from the manner in which he straightened and began slapping the knuckles of one hand against the heel of the other.

Julian said, “Andy. For God's sake, tell us.”

Andy's gaze fixed on his wife. “The car's not on the verge, like you'd think it should be.”

“Then where … ?”

“It's out of sight behind a wall, on the road out of Sparrowpit.”

“But that's good, isn't it?” Nan said eagerly. “If she went camping, she wouldn't want to leave the Saab on the road. Not where it could be seen by someone who might break into it.”

“True,” he said. “But the car's not alone.” And with a glance towards Julian as if he wished to apologise for something, “There's a motorcycle with it.”

“Someone out for a hike,” Julian said.

“At this hour?” Andy shook his head. “It was wet from the night. As wet as her car. It's been there just as long.”

Nan said, “Then she didn't go onto the moor alone? She met someone there?”

“Or she was followed,” Julian added quietly.

“I'm calling the police,” Andy said. “They'll want to bring in Mountain Rescue now.”

When a patient died, it was Phoebe Neill's habit to turn to the land for comfort. She generally did this alone. She'd lived alone for most of her life, and she wasn't afraid of solitude. And in the combination of solitude and a return to the land, she received consolation. When she was out in nature, nothing man-made stood between her and the Great Creator. Thus on the land, she was able to align herself with the end of a life and the will of God, knowing that the body we inhabit is but a shell that binds us for a period of temporal experience prior to our entering the world of the spirit for the next phase of our development.