Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (39 page)

Knowledge? Blackmail?

since she lost her daughter it's her eyes that fill with water

That scrap of conversation during breakfast. How Ann Denholme had
gone to tend her ill and pregnant sister because the doctor feared
another miscarriage.

The Princess had said Ann Denholme hadn't been here when she'd made
her first visit to Weavers Hall. That had been eleven years ago.
Doesn't
come on as the motherly type, not to me
, George Poges had added.
Why'd
she take over the child? Doesn't seem to care much about her. . .
.

because of the things that she did in the streets and

He heard the piercing sound from down there where she was. She
hadn't come with the sound. He knew what it meant but he was used to
seeing
her
, her being there behind the sound, aiming the
crook or making the clicking and snapping noises or, sometimes, only
her eyes telling him what to do. Or trying to. She wasn't that good,
but she was small, too, like most of the sounds she made. She couldn't
know everything.

What he
did
know was danger and that there was too much of
it in that cracking noise, the air splitting above his head. He could
sniff it like blood. Blood everywhere on the snow.

He had not run away. He had run farther, higher, to watch and wait.

He looked sharp to one side then to the other, his nose for the
heady smell of the Smokes. They were standing or moving silently down
on the moor and round the banky hillside. More were on the other side
and he'd have to get behind them and—

He froze. An onrush of white over there was making for the Smokes
and running faster than he believed it ever could. It was the Deadheel,
the one that never moved from the mat in front of the fire.

That
one could
run
?

The Deadheel could move
that fast
? But if she'd sent it on
a long outrun, she wanted him to work with it.

His brief howl was not pain, not Hello. It was Oh no, oh no, oh no
and he pulled it back into his throat.

Oh,
no
.

In a straight line from his point to its point, he looked at the
Starer and panted from the long outrun toward the Clouds. He'd watched
the Starer sometimes freeze a cloud with his starey eyes and go right
on until he'd frozen himself, as if he was staring at his own eyes.

It wasn't the best way to get the Clouds to obey. You had to get
your teeth into them.

But they would have to do this together. Oh, no.

He started climbing the hill and so did the Deadheel. A stumbling
hill of banks where the Smokes ranged wide, a hill of broken shards
that made walking hard, and running awful. As he ran, some of the
Smokes turned and watched.

They knew; they always knew.

Wide apart from the Starer, he'd reached the other side at the same
time. He looked over at the Starer through the Clouds and caught a
signal. They dashed in opposite ways.

He would have to rough them; it was better to hurl himself against
several than to hang on to just one.

In widening arcs they ran until he and the Starer were behind the
Clouds.

Carefully, Abby dragged at the bright yellow waterproof; it was blue
on the inside, darker.

In the middle of getting out of one sleeve as she watched the moor
and the hillside, she saw them.

A line of sheep straight across the edge of the bluff, like a
platoon. Like that Zulu movie with the native tribe suddenly appearing.
Her mouth had dropped open then. She was breathless, now.

She forgot everything—the cold, the danger—for she had never seen
such a sight in her life.

The veiled moon rode above a tall black pillar of pine and looked
like the streetlamp in the Empire of Light.

Ellen swung off the BMW, grabbed up the white containers from a
basket she'd attached to it, and held them aloft. "You like Chinese?
Sweet-and-sour pork? Lo Mein noodles—?"

"No. Abby's missing."

Ellen dropped her arms. "Missing? What d'ya mean
missing
?"
Her voice was ferocious. Panther-black, she approached him.

"Missing! Disappeared! Gone."

She stopped then and looked totally confused.

"I called Superintendent Jury—"

"You expected him to find Abby in London? You think she walked to
London?"

"Shut up. I rang up the Keighley police."

"Police. Wonderful. It takes them an hour just to get their bikes
going." Enraged, she flung out her arm.

"This isn't New York," he yelled as the white cardboard box sailed
away, noodles cascading, falling and lying in slimy drips on the
stones. She took furious aim and the pork followed, this container
landing inside the mesh wire of the hen yard. He heard rustles, squawks
and in a moment saw flapping wings. He turned and walked toward his
Bentley, cold as hoarfrost except for the anger. Let her have her
tantrum, dammit.

"Where're
you
going?" she yelled at his back.

As he slid onto the seat, he yelled back: "To
look
for
her, of course." He slammed the door.

She'd followed him, standing now hands on hips gazing from boot to
wing of the Bentley, shaking her head. "Terrific."

"Go eat Chinese with the chickens." Melrose turned the key. The
engine quietly turned over and clicked into a purr.

"Beautiful. Brilliant. Across the moors in a Bentley!" El-len
stretched out her arms and flung the words into the night, "It's so
you
!"

"Go away." He was backing out slowly and taking her with him because
she'd clamped her hands on the window-sill. "Away, away! You're an
encumbrance!" But he jammed down on the brake.

"Listen, Wonderearl," she said, her voice dangerously low, "you will
get about forty feet in this slab. And if the police ever
do
get here, who's to welcome them while you're crashing around in your
Batman car?"

"Malcolm. Get your hands off." Melrose tried to push them. They were
steel clamps. He nodded up toward the dully lit window. Malcolm waved
furiously.

She squinched her eyes nearly shut, looking up. "You've got to be
kidding!"

"And you." Since she'd released her grip, he backed up, spitting
gravel.

Ellen hurled herself at the car and he hit the brake again. She
yanked the door open, grabbed his arm, and jostled Melrose away from
the wheel.

"Get your damned hands q^ me!"

She didn't.

He tripped on a stone, nearly went down, thinking if he'd fallen
she'd simply have grabbed his collar and dragged him. Now she was
shoving him onto the long, leather seat of the BMW. As she hopped on in
front, he was pushed onto the metal fender. The noise of the bike's
engine was shattering. As the bike shot away from the Hall, Melrose had
to grab for her waist. He glanced back and saw Malcolm waving some
idiot flag and could have sworn the chickens had rushed up in a long
line and were beating their wings in applause.

The bike had slogged and sloshed down a green lane, come out on the
Oakworth Road, then found an opening in a rotten wooden fence and they
were now bucking along across the frozen field.

Melrose raised his voice, which was carried away by the wind anyway,
and asked, "Do you know where you're going?"

"No." The word wailed in the onrushing wind.

"Keighley Moor." He took one arm from her waist and pointed west:
"That way."

Ellen bumped across a stream and whipped the bike toward the west.

The bitter wind whipped his jacket back and he knew he would be in
hospital straightaway. Still, he had to admit the race through the cold
moist air, his arms hugging Ellen's waist, was exhilarating.

At least until he saw the low stone wall rushing toward them.

He saw the stone wall, knew the Smokes wouldn't want to move when
they got there, knew he could fly over it, but they could only go
through the rubble. The leader would try to hold and then to bolt.

A rush of Smokes just in front was already dithering and moving off
to the left. He circled out to the left, corkscrewing to confuse them,
and he got them back on course. Smokes could run. And Smokes were smart.

Something told him he shouldn't be tasting this thick salty stuff
but if the Cloud wouldn't move, the others near would stop, too. Charge
the whole lot. Waste of time. He rounded on the big, stubborn one,
caught its heel, clamped down. The Cloud made its dumb angry noise, but
it moved back toward the mob and the others followed. He made a quick
zigzag line in front of his part of the mob, showing them Teeth. Teeth,
Teeth, Teeth, Teeth. Then back to his position, running slightly behind
them. He looked over at the Starer dashing toward a Cloud way on the
other side. The Starer only had Eyes. Eyes.

He was right. The Smokes were nearly at the wall. Black-wet, the
wall ran like a river across the moor. He couldn't see the place where
he knew she was, since he'd left the hilltop, but he knew she was only
a clear field away on the other side of this wall. The place where
she'd gone with the one in big boots and a gun who seemed to be trying
to shoot the sky down. Never got it, though.

He was right; he would have to use a powerful eye on the old one,
the leader. It was the leader who'd get the other Smokes through and
over.

Lowering his tail, he crouched as if he had a saddle on his back,
his belly nearly touching the ground.

He held the old Smoke's eye for a long time. He could have stayed
here the night, but he had to get them moving. The Smoke stared back,
then broke the look and started moving a little to the right, then a
little to the left, but he couldn't break the look.

He moved in on it.

Deadheel was running a quarter-moon course at the rear of the mob.
Good.

The mob was crowding at the wall but the old Smoke wouldn't move.

He couldn't waste time, because she was in danger. He had no choice.

He shuddered. He'd have to
bark
.

The old Smoke crashed through the opening and the rest went spilling
after it.

It was all Abby could do to keep down because once again she
couldn't believe it had worked. Worked this far, anyway.

Mr. Nelligan's sheep had been moved down the rocky hillside faster
than she could believe possible. That was a hard drive. Hours, it
should have taken.

Now they were cascading through the wall as if the wall were nearly
invisible, no more than veils of smoke, mist, and clouds.

Again, Abby wanted to stand up and cheer and yell at this mob
running toward her, driven by Stranger and Tim. The Gun would not be
able to shoot, load up and shoot again and again, even if it were
stupid enough to try picking off a hundred and twenty sheep.

But she did at least rise up on her knees and clasp her hands
beneath her chin in a prayerful pose.

Looking up at the heavens, she thought,
Oh, why not
? and
started to give thanks to Jane's, Helen's, and Charlotte's God. But
then she lowered her fisted hands to her hips, and called up,

"It was
my
idea!"

She dropped back, trying to fold herself like an accordion, arms
tight round her legs, but still watching the sheep running straight at
her—

Oh, no!

The bike roared on through the underpinning of ground mist, nearly
spilling Melrose as Ellen jumped a frozen stream as if it were an
obstacle in a steeplechase.

They had zigzagged between drystone walls searching for the one
Melrose remembered. Once the bike had skidded in loose dirt and toppled
them both by a melting snowbank. She drove the BMW in ever-widening
circles and through corkscrew turns at the ends of packed-down lanes.

After the second spill that had Ellen aiming mild obscenities at
the BMW that seemed to sputter and grind in some sort of metallic
rhythm, Melrose tried to work a boulder out of his shoe and mud off his
jacket. Ellen had fanned out the ordnance map she used for her Bronte
turns, paying him little attention, holding the map in front of her
headlamp as she revved the engine, dying to get going again.

When Melrose had hoisted himself behind her, she tossed the map back
at him and came down so hard on the pedal the bike bucked around now
like an unbroken horse.

He took time out from worrying over Abby to remind himself that in
spite of that incredible look of
purpose
, that intensity of
eye, that frost that sparkled her hair, she was intractable, as grimy
as his gardener, and probably in flagrante delicto with her BMW.

"Over there!" Melrose yelled, seeing the distant light of Nelligan's
gypsy caravan.

"Where?"

"Straight on. Run along that wall—"

It came out as a wail, lost, but she careened the bike down the
slope of the hill and another onrush of wind smacked him in the face.

Melrose unlocked his eyes to look across her shoulder as best he
could. "Down there," he shouted, seeing the opening in the wall. His
hand shading his eyes, he saw the hulk of what he thought might be a
dead sheep until it moved sluggishly. "Don't hit that—"

She didn't. They didn't sail through the opening as much as they did
over
it. He was half-turned to look back through the rubble at
the hindquarters of the moonlighting sheep and was, therefore, totally
unprepared for the sudden braking of the bike.

Ellen said, "What the
hell—"
as the BMW careened into a
whirling dervish-dance, tossing Melrose into the rocky furze. "—is
that?" she added, bringing the bike out of its spin and stopping with a
thud. Her black-clad arm pointed ahead. She rose from the bike, using
the pedals like stirrups.

Melrose struggled up from the broken rocks and rime-hard heather to
inspect his ripped up trouser leg and the additional damage done to his
sleeve, which was hanging by little more than threads.