Page 46 of The Dead Come to Stay
“To York?”
“To the gallery there.” Jo cut into the pie, releasing a cloud of steam. She probably meant the York Art Gallery, and yes, he had.
“A long time ago.” After the wedding, in fact. He took a bite that was much,muchtoo hot and attempted to float hot mashed potato in his mouth while hurrying to fill a water glass. “I’ll be in York tomorrow myself,” he said, when he managed to swallow it down.
“Can you drive?” Jo asked. Apparently his not-so-expressive face was registering its confusion, because she blushed and clarified. “Sorry! It’s just... I only drove there the one time. I got stuck on that outer circle—couldn’t work out how to exit—and stalled out on the bridge. I’d rather chew glass.”
“Um,” MacAdams said. Jo was spooning gravy and mash into her mouth with gusto, unaware of the dilemma she’d just put him in. This was police business, after all. He was going there to speak to his ex and her partner about Hammersmith, and he’d planned to stay the night somewhere.
“I won’t be back till Wednesday,” he said.
“That’s okay, I probably am, too. Just have to find a hotel.” She stopped eating. “Oh—would you rather I didn’t? With you, I mean. I could take the train.”
Yes, take the train and let him feel like the complete jackass he undoubtedly was. It was his turn to do some reading; Jo didn’t look mad—or even hurt. She looked expectant, bright, unsinkable as usual, looking up through mussed bangs and suspending a forkful of shepherd’s pie in want of an answer. It would be fine. They might stay at the same hotel, which was also fine. Everything was perfectly fine.For fuck’s sake, James, pull your finger out.
“What time can you be ready?” he asked.
Chapter 16
“So you’re going to York with Jo Jones, in order to talk shop with your ex-wife’s better half,” said Green. They were in line at Teresa’s tea wagon; it was eight thirty in the morning.
“Your discretion is admirable,” MacAdams said.
“Just clarifying, boss. Same hotel?”
It was, and a budget sort of place, too, because short-notice bookings weren’t exactly easy to make in York during wedding season. MacAdams didn’t say this out loud, just watched the quirk of Green’s lips. They were lined in lipstick, dark brown with plum in the mix. Business makeup. Green was headed up to Newcastle to get a DNA swab of Trisha and to see her old police chief to inquire about Hammersmith.
“Don’t you look professional,” Teresa said when Green made it to the counter at last. She ordered ham-and-egg croissants with coffees, handing take-away cups to MacAdams.
“Just a picnic,” Green said with a wink. He supposed that was true; they were about to pay a visit to Abington trail off Lower Road.
“Gridley is running through the CCT footage again,” Greensaid. “So far no singular hikers; mostly groups have turned up on the Petrol camera. And no missing persons reported, either.”
MacAdams knew that a connection between Foley’s lady and a vanishing hiker was, in fact, unlikely. The largely tree-less Pennines had a way of fooling the eye. They hid away folds and dips in shadow and heath. A walker might descend quickly out of sight or disappear in the oft-creeping mist. Jo probably just lost visual for a completely usual reason. Then again, Backbone of Britain, the Pennines’ stony spine, offered a bleak sort of beauty, sublime, and was not uncommonly dangerous to outsiders or unskilled walkers. Maybe there was something to it, even if not tied to Foley’s murder. And speaking of—
“Any new records for our victim?” he asked.
Green swallowed a mouthful of croissant before answering. “Still struggling to uncover his movements before 1998—though it seems that’s when he arrived. Andrews hunted passenger charts and found his name on a Belfast-Newcastle. Gridley’s checking cognates of his name, in case he altered it once out of Ireland.”
The worry, of course, was that he may have changed it altogether, despite his driving records attesting to documents on the up and up.
“Might be time to publish an obituary in Newcastle papers, “McAdam said. “See if we can turn up next of kin using his photo.”
“What are we going to do with the man himself? “Green asked. “He can’t just stay in the morgue forever, can he?”
MacAdams was surprised by just how long people could stay in Struthers’s morgue. Evelyn Davies was, technically, still there. Struthers had begun to refer to her as his colleague.
The Lower Road had dried firm once more, narrow but serviceable. The spot where Foley had been found wasn’t far.
“Will wonders never cease,” he said, driving past the van to where the road widened for better parking. Jo called this spot atrailhead, but it wasn’t. The path Roberta frequented was instead part of extensive right-to-roam trails that skirted farmland and crossed the moor. It did intersect with the Way as it crisscrossed lonely hills, but it wasn’t much used. Hikers tended to take Upper Road, instead, with its shorter distance to better vistas.
So what was a food truck doinghere?
MacAdams closed the car door gently and hitched up his trousers.
“We do not look like hikers, boss,” she said. They looked exactly like two police officers, in fact.
“I wasn’t expecting to find it,” he admitted. There wasn’t anything special about the van; in fact, almost the reverse. Very basic, white, with words on one side in plain black letters. The window was open, however, so someone was presumably there to sell sandwiches. He and Green approached together.
