Master of the Moor by Ruth Rendell Page B

wouldn’t be all the way over here, would she?’
    ‘There’s a couple of policemen with us.’ Stringer pointed them out. ‘They’re sort of directing operations.’
    Stephen had rather expected he would do that. But he joined the party as they tramped off towards Lustley Dale.
    ‘What was she dressed in?’ he asked the husband.
    ‘I can’t be absolutely sure.’ He had a middle-class,educated voice. ‘A red shirt, I think. Jeans.’ His face was grey with fatigue.
    ‘We’ve been out looking for her since five,’ said another man.
    ‘She’d gone to see her parents in Hilderbridge and I was with mine in Jackley.’ Morgan managed a wry grin. ‘We didn’t get on with our in-laws.’
    Stringer said, low-voiced, as Morgan moved out of earshot, ‘We started at the Foinmen.’
    ‘Of course you would. Good Lord, yes.’
    ‘We’ve been at it — ’ He looked at the watch on his sinewy wrist with its furring of black hair ‘— like nine hours. There’s two other parties, one doing the southeast and one the Pertsey side.’
    By mid-afternoon they were on the lower slopes of Lustley Foin. Stephen wasn’t hungry. He felt invigorated, exhilarated by the search. It wasn’t often that he had a whole day out on the moor. As he clambered over the rocks, parting the scrub and the brambles to peer into crevices, he heard a droning throb overhead and looked up to see a helicopter. It was circling slowly and very low down, almost touching, it seemed at one point, the summit of Big Allen.
    Stringer cocked a thumb in Morgan’s direction. ‘That copter belongs to some mate of his father-in-law. Useful if she’s out in the open.’
    A bramble whipped and clawed Stephen across the neck. He put his hand up to it and saw the blood streaked on his fingers. There was no point in climbing the foin, she wouldn’t be up there. They spread across the opening to the valley that was called Jackley Plain, and there Roger Morgan could go no further. He didn’t quite collapse. He sat down on a stone and put his head in his hands. Of all the members of the party he was the one from whom the most endurance was called, but ofall the members of the party he was perhaps the only one unused to sustained walking or manual labour, and he was also the smallest. Stephen felt a flicker of contempt for him.
    ‘Sorry,’ Morgan said gruffly. ‘I’m dead beat. I’ve had no sleep since the night before last.’ He looked at Stephen with recognition. ‘You’re one of the Whalbys, aren’t you? You and your father came to our place to cover a settee.’
    Stephen didn’t much like to be reminded of this in public. ‘Oh, yes. Jackley. St Edmund’s Avenue.’
    Morgan nodded. ‘Better get on, I suppose.’
    ‘I should sit there a bit longer,’ one of the policemen said. ‘Then we’ll get you down to the road. We’ve got our vehicles at quarter mile intervals all the way from Hilderbridge to Jackley.’
    Stephen started off again and the others began to follow him. He wasn’t going to be left behind, nursing Morgan. Overhead the helicopter circled once more, making a black locust-shaped shadow on the sunlit turf of the plain.
    They stood admiring each other.
    ‘You’re lovely,’ said Nick.
    ‘So are you.’
    ‘I did make you happy, didn’t I?’
    ‘You know you did. Couldn’t you tell?’ She reddened, for she wasn’t yet used to this kind of talk. ‘I never knew it would be like that.’
    ‘I get a strange feeling when you talk that way. It’s a strange situation, isn’t it? It makes you more mine than if there’d been others or if your marriage had been real.’
    She nodded. ‘And you more mine.’
    ‘Stay with me, Lyn. I don’t mean all night, I know you can’t, but stay with me for the evening.’
    ‘No.’ She began to put her clothes on, blue denim jeans, white tee-shirt, shoulders thin and straight with bones like white shell. ‘It’s seven now. I ought to have been home two hours ago.’
    Nick said, but very