Half Broken Things

Sally nodded, her head still buried. Steph rose, filled it and switched it on. As she was washing mugs- every mug in the house seemed to be in the sink- she said in a worried voice, ‘So the police- what is it they’re saying, exactly?’

Sally presented her exhausted face again. ‘They’ve found his car, or what’s left of it. It was miles and miles from here- in a lay-by someplace near Chepstow, all vandalised and burnt out. They don’t know how it got there. It’s miles and miles from where he’s supposed to be. He’s supposed to be up north.’

‘You mean, he isn’t, then? Then where is he?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Steph, that’s what I’m telling you! They don’t know. They say he won’t have left the car there. They say it was probably stolen and dumped there and set alight.’

Steph drew in a shocked breath. ‘Oh, Sally! They’re not saying he- he wasn’t, you know, in it, was he?’

Sally seemed slightly surprised. ‘No, of course not. They don’t know where he is. That’s what I’m saying. They don’t know if the theft of the car’s got something to do with where he is, or if it’s a separate thing altogether. But the police want to find the people who took the car. Obviously.’

‘But are they… I mean they must be… are they looking for him? Up north, I mean?’ Steph asked, picking up the kettle. It was easier, she was finding, to ask questions casually when she was doing something else at the same time. She filled their coffee mugs and brought them to the table.

Sally shook her head. ‘They won’t even say he’s definitely missing, they say he could have left the car somewhere to go off walking, assuming it’d be safe for days and days. I think they’re making enquiries up there, along the Pennine Way, but they’re not even sure he went. Nobody would steal a car up there and bring it all the way down here, according to them. So they think it was nicked from round here, and he never went up north. They said he could’ve changed his plans and decided to do his walking down south instead of going all the way up there.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know exactly what they’re doing. They don’t know what they’re doing, if you ask me.’

‘Maybe he did change his mind. You said he used to go up north and walk there with his wife, didn’t you? Maybe at the last minute he couldn’t face it on his own and went somewhere else instead. Here, I’ll take Charlie while you have your coffee.’

Sally looked at Steph with respect and interest as she handed him over. ‘That is possible,’ she said, nodding. She drank some of her coffee but as she put down her mug her face crumpled. ‘But those awful people… the people that took the car, you don’t think… I mean maybe they… you know, they might have… you know, hurt him… and just left him somewhere. Oh God!’

‘But what for?’

‘Oh God, Steph, I don’t know! That’s what the police are for, isn’t it? And there is such a thing as motiveless crime, you know.’ She blew her nose on a paper tissue from her sleeve and looked up. ‘That’s not the only thing, anyway. The point is I had to ring Simon in Nepal to tell him. I’ve rung the place he’s in anyway, it’s just this tiny hospital. I couldn’t actually speak to him. I was going to tell him he should come home, only he can’t. He’s ill.’ Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘All this time, for over a month, he’s been really ill. That’s why he hasn’t phoned. And he can’t travel yet, so I’ll have to go and be with him and bring him home. I’ve got to go to Nepal.’

‘What about Charlie? You’re not taking Charlie, are you? Shall I… I mean, it’d be better, wouldn’t it? It’d help, wouldn’t it, if we had him at the manor?’

Sally looked gratefully at her, as more tears ran down her cheeks. Charlie, interested, began mimicking her sniffles with little grunts of his own. ‘Would you, Steph? Could you, I mean if it’s no trouble? I haven’t got anyone else he’s so happy with. He’s so good with you.’

‘Of course! Of course I’ll look after him. And of course it’s no trouble. Is it, Charlie?’

‘And look, as long as you don’t need to… I mean, I’ve been a bit outspoken about Simon and his dad. Not that it’s not all true but it’s been a difficult time, you know? I mean, I’ve told the firm I’ve got to go to Nepal, and I’ve told Philip. They’re OK about it and so’s he, but I suppose everybody wants to know where they stand. I can understand it.’

‘How long are you going for?’

‘That’s what I’m saying, I don’t know. I’ve got to get some jabs first anyway, and I can’t get a flight for another ten days. And I’ll be away three weeks. Minimum, it might be longer. Simon’s got this recurrent thing, he might be all right to travel soon or he might not. Why, is that a problem?’ Having got the favour sealed, Sally was now ready to defend her right to ask it.

‘No, of course it isn’t,’ Steph told her smoothly. ‘We’ll be fine. You can stay away as long as you like.’

***

If we needed encouragement to feel that what we were doing was appropriate and somehow meant, was perhaps even being surveyed and assisted from beyond by some approving deity, we got it, with this news of the car being burned out and abandoned. Over the next few days, as Sally got her trip to Nepal organised, Steph heard new snippets from her. The vicar’s depression and recent erratic habits did us no harm to start with. More and more of his parishioners were adding to the picture of a man with a skewed sense of proportion, a man making a terrible fuss over one lychgate, a man brooding about trouble with his bishop over a recent church theft, as well as his wife’s death and the break-up of his son’s marriage. Sally stopped short of mentioning suicide, at least to Steph, but the thought hung in the air between them whenever Gordon was spoken of.

But for the car not simply to be discovered (as we assumed it would eventually be) where Michael had left it, but to have been stolen, in all probability by joyriders, then vandalised and set alight somewhere just over the border into Wales, was a minor miracle. Because it muddied the picture. Should the police be combing the Pennine Way for an accident victim? Tracking down the brats who had stolen the car and establishing what they might have done with the car’s owner in the course of their thuggery? Dragging rivers? Alerting the ports? The Somerset police now had to work with the Welsh police and two different police authorities up in the Pennines, which was requiring additional layers of effort.

The day after Sally left for Nepal, the police came. A uniformed officer, with the words liaison and community in his title, I recall. We were ready, of course. He seemed particularly anxious that he wasn’t disturbing us and said he wouldn’t take very long. There was concern about the whereabouts of Mr Brookes, and he merely wanted to corroborate, if he could, what was already known about the day Mr Brookes came to see his grandson. He opened up his notebook. Mr Brookes, according to his information, had told his daughter-in-law on the telephone the previous evening, and remarked to the parish secretary that morning, that he was going to visit his grandson before heading up north on holiday. Could he start with our names? Yes, I confirmed, I was the house sitter, and did he want Town and Country’s number? No, he didn’t think that would be necessary. Steph was my niece, staying with me for the time being. (We decided that we should be quite open about the house sitting, in case the police knew of the Standish-Caves. It was wiser also to stick to the aunt and niece story that Steph had told Sally right at the beginning, just in case there should be any cross-referencing.) When I said this I watched him look at Steph, playing on the drawing room floor with Charlie, that lovely hair swinging over her face. She looked up, pushing back her hair and smiling at him with her strange, green-gold eyes.

He had more questions, which we answered. Yes, Mr Brookes had kindly brought them down here from Sally’s house that morning. His mood? Difficult to say, as we had not met him before, but he had seemed a quiet sort of man, pleased to see Charlie but in a muted sort of way. Perhaps a little preoccupied. You might think, Steph said hesitatingly, and she hoped it didn’t sound cheeky, you might think that vicars would be happier than other people, believing in Jesus and all that. The policeman said he supposed vicars had their fair share of problems like everybody else, and in fact several members of Mr Brookes’s parish reported that he had been a changed man in the months since his wife passed away. We paused at this point for long sympathetic murmurs, which for myself were quite sincere. Yes, the police officer said, quite chatty now, Mr Brookes was always known to have been a workaholic, but had lately been driving himself even harder, throwing himself into things. We told him that Mr Brookes had left here at some time between twelve and half-past, after refusing an invitation to lunch. Yes, the policeman said, the man who ran the shop in the village believed he might have seen his car. That must have been quite soon after. The policeman pulled the rubber band back over his notebook and thanked us.