‘I tried to ask Andrew once why he drinks so much,’ Ridley said. ‘The curious thing is that he never seems to enjoy it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He takes no pleasure in getting drunk. It seems like something he needs to do.’

  ‘Why? Is he trying to forget something?’ Simon asked.

  The young man shook his head. ‘I don’t know. When I asked, he told me it was a way to find forgiveness. I couldn’t understand, so I asked him to explain. He was already in his cups at the time. All he did was turn silent. He’s trying to turn himself into a souse.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where—?’

  ‘No,’ Ridley said sharply. ‘But if he’s vanished, you ought to be worried about him. If the mood catches him, who knows what he might do …?’

  Simon glanced at Jane. Would Barton kill himself?

  She stood completely still, staring down at the floor, listening intently.

  ‘Are there any places he likes?’ Simon asked. ‘What about the woman he said he’d gone off with last time?’

  ‘He never said another word about her. There were a few times I wondered if he’d made her up. I don’t know why he would, though.’

  Andrew Barton was the only one who could tell them the truth about that.

  ‘What about places he goes?’ He needed something. Somewhere to begin.

  Ridley shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Do you have John Dale’s name on your list? He isn’t one of the drinking crowd. I know that sometimes he and Andrew go walking together. He might have a few thoughts.’

  Dale’s name was the last one there. The only man among the group with a job, dressed in a plain black suit, covered by a long, stained apron, sitting at a desk in his father’s spice warehouse on the Calls. As a clerk led them past all the sacks, Simon felt the smells tug and itch at his nose.

  It was a little better in the office, with the door closed and the window open to the stink of the water.

  ‘It doesn’t take long to get used to the scents, Mr Westow,’ he said with a smile. ‘It still catches me occasionally, though.’

  ‘Andrew Barton,’ Simon said.

  ‘He’s gone again?’ he said after he heard the news. ‘I saw him a few days ago. I don’t know what happened to him when he disappeared, but he’s never looked happy since he returned.’

  ‘Did you ask him?’

  ‘No.’ His eyes widened, as if the question had taken him by surprise. ‘It’s his business. If he’d wanted to tell me, he’d have said something.’

  ‘I understand you two are close. You go walking together.’

  ‘It’s been a few months since we took a long walk, Mr Westow.’ He frowned. ‘Close? I’m not sure about that. We both enjoy walking. For the pleasure of being out there and breathing clean air. Believe me, after a week in this place, it can feel glorious. Andrew and I talk, but he’s never revealed any deep secrets, if that’s what you’re hoping to hear.’

  That would have been too much to hope.

  Dale was thinking, diving into his memory. ‘Last time we went must have been late in the winter, not long after that ugly business when that man tried to steal from his father. Andrew seemed uneasy then.’

  ‘Uneasy?’ Simon repeated the word. ‘In what way?’

  ‘He used to be pleasant company. Never much of a care in the world. He’d laugh all the time. We’d walk, stop somewhere and have a drink. But that last time, he was different. All the joy he used to have had vanished. He was tense, hardly spoke a word while we were out. We’d barely been out for an hour before he suddenly wanted to turn back. Usually we were out all day.’

  ‘He never suggested going again?’

  ‘Vague promises, nothing more. I’ve run into him, and he’s always polite, but he turned distant. As if he had things clawing at him.’

  Simon’s voice became more urgent. ‘Do you have any idea what was troubling him? Was there any talk among his friends?’

  ‘None that I heard. But I’m not a part of that drinking set.’ He waved a hand at the office. ‘I have work to keep me busy.’

  ‘Does Andrew have any favourite places? Anywhere you went often?’ Simon asked.

  ‘I’ve been trying to think about that. We went out towards Towton a few times. It’s on the way to York, not far from Tadcaster. There was a big battle there a few hundred years ago. Andrew had read about it.’ The man shrugged. ‘It was just fields and a stream to me, but he seemed to find something there.’ He paused, caught by a memory. ‘There’s a church close by, old and very small, in a strange place called Lead. It’s a tiny building, but he always made sure to spend some time there when we were up that way. I’m sorry, that’s all I can think of.’

  ‘It’s helpful, thank you,’ Simon told him. Somewhere to begin.

  ‘You heard it all,’ he said to Jane as they walked up the Head Row towards Green Dragon Yard. ‘What do you think?’

  The fact that Andrew had changed around the time Fox was arrested had to be important. Could he have been involved in that?

  ‘I don’t think we’ll find him,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

  He knew she was probably right. The worry crept through his body. They’d need the devil’s own luck to discover Barton alive.

  Sally was still resting when they arrived. The shutters were thrown back, light streaming through the windows. Jane heard Mrs Shields moving softly around the kitchen.

  No pain on the girl’s face. That was a good sign.

  She sat, took hold of the girl’s hand, then ran her fingers over Sally’s forehead. The girl opened her eyes and smiled.

  ‘I was awake. I must have drifted off. Were you working?’

  ‘Andrew Barton’s gone again.’

  Sally pushed herself up until she was sitting. Still moving slowly and carefully, but not as strained. Small grimaces. Such an improvement from the unconscious girl they’d helped here, looking as if she might die. The bruises across her face were at their most vivid, the cuts all scabbed over. As Jane told her about Andrew Barton, her eyes were suddenly curious and eager.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘That’s for Simon to decide.’

  A final light squeeze of the girl’s fingers, then Jane stood and drifted outside to join Simon and Rosie.

  ‘He seemed to like this small church. We need to look at it,’ he said.

  ‘Could you go?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘I’ve barely recovered from the trip out to Temple Newsam,’ Simon said. ‘It would ruin my leg.’ He turned to Jane. ‘What about you? You’d recognise him.’

  She’d certainly know him again. She’d seen him with Fox, gone up against him with a knife. But if she found him, what would she do? They’d been hired for this, but he had to pay for the pain he’d inflicted on Sally. How could she balance those things?

  ‘Be at Barton’s house in half an hour,’ Simon said, then hurried away, leaning heavily on his stick.

  ‘We won’t find anything there,’ Jane said. Andrew had been gone too long, and the place had been no more than a guess.

  ‘I don’t imagine you will,’ Rosie agreed. ‘But we still have to look. It sounds like we don’t have anywhere else to try, doesn’t it?’

  ‘His friend said there’s a battlefield he liked, too. Somewhere called Towton. I don’t think it’s too far from the church.’

  ‘You could look there, too.’

  Jane glanced back at the cottage. ‘What about Sally?’

  ‘She’s going to be fine. A week and she’ll be up, and soon after that she’ll be nearly as good as new. Her mind isn’t damaged, you’ve seen that.’

  The thought made her smile. The kind of comfort she needed. But as she crossed through into Green Dragon Yard, any pleasure fled. She could feel it in her heart; this tale with Andrew Barton would have no happy ending.

  A chaise this time, bigger, more stable than the gig. James Barton was a good, steady whip, safer than Sally. He was dressed for the part, wearing a light summer riding coat and high boots that were polished to a brilliant shine. Jane still hated being perched on the seat, so high off the ground, but at least she didn’t feel she might tumble off at every turn.

  Barton was lost in his thoughts and fears as the horses sped between the high banks and hedgerows. He hadn’t tried to talk, and Jane was grateful. She wouldn’t have known what to say to him. He didn’t need to hear the things that she knew. Silence was easier, more comfortable. Nothing more than a pale grey sky above them, the clatter of hooves and the rattle of the wheels the only sounds.

  They’d already travelled ten or twelve miles from Leeds, moving at a brisk pace over the uneven dirt road; it would have been a long walk out and back again in a day. Quite possible, though; Jane had heard of men on the tramp for work who covered forty miles between dawn and dark. Maybe the rhythm of walking soothed Andrew.

  Barton tugged on the reins and pointed. ‘Over there. If the man back at the crossroads was telling us the truth, that’s the church.’

  It stood alone, as small as she’d been told, set back about two hundred yards from the road, in the middle of a field. No other buildings, just mounds of turf and a few stones poking up from the ground, covered with moss.

  She slid down, grateful to have her feet on the ground again.

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ Barton said. She could hear the tremor in his voice, desperate to know but terrified of what he might find.

  Jane crossed a rickety plank bridge over a beck and followed the rough track where feet had trampled the tall grass in the field. Nothing felt quite real and she turned, half-expecting to find herself alone. But Barton and the chaise were still there.

  Over in the trees, birds were calling. Somewhere in the far distance she could hear cattle lowing.

  The wildflowers stood as high as her waist; their different scents rose into the air as she brushed against them.

  The church looked so small, so unlikely, out here on its own. She wondered at the stones, the mounds that surrounded it, as if there had once been other buildings that had fallen to nothing over the years while this remained. People must have lived here, worked and laughed and come to this place to pray. Where had they all gone? How long ago did it happen? Why?

  All abandoned, except for this. People still came; someone had made the path through the grass. That could have been Andrew Barton, she realised with a start.

  At the church door, she stopped for a moment, resting her hand on the wood. Sometimes, in places like this, there was an instant when she believed only a thin veil separated her from the past. If she could rip it apart, she’d be able to see these people who’d once walked here. Talk to them, hear about them. They’d be as alive as the characters in the novels she read: those Americans, Charles returning from exile, Ivanhoe and Lion-Hearted Richard. In her head she knew it was all a fancy, but her heart still believed. She took a deep breath, then the door slowly creaked open as she pushed it.

  Inside it was a single room, barely more than four walls and a roof where missing slates let in the sun and the rain. It had its own smells, perfumes of the past, of neglect and hope and faith. A series of stone slabs lay in a line on the floor, coats of arms roughly carved on them, half-covered with dirt, all the sharpness of the cuts worn away by the centuries. No signs Andrew had been here, but she’d never expected to find any.

  The windows were gone. A single bell outside to call people to service, but no congregation to hear it. They were all ghosts now.

  It was quiet, and a sense of comfort and peace wrapped around her. She could understand why Andrew Barton liked to come here. Perhaps it brought him some peace.

  She’d seen what she needed; there was nothing to keep her. Yet she was reluctant to leave. The church seemed to weave a delicate web of magic around her. As she pulled the door closed, she stroked the weathered stone of the arch.

  Barton was sitting rigid in the chaise, staring straight ahead, a man trapped in his terror. He never turned to watch her approach.

  As she stepped on to the bridge, a stone turned under her foot and she stumbled, gasping as she grabbed for a tree branch to stop herself falling.

  Without that, she’d have never spotted him.

  She tried to steady herself. The bough started to bend and suddenly Jane was staring into the beck. The wavering image of the body lay right there under the lapping stream.

  Andrew Barton.

  First Mrs Fox in Kirkstall, now the young man here. Both of them lying dead in the water.

  She dashed to the gig, heart racing, wondering how to tell a man that his son was no longer alive.

  There was no need for words; he read it on her face.

  EIGHTEEN

  Simon hailed Charles Granger, hurrying towards him as the man stopped and turned.

  ‘Mr Westow, you look well.’ His expression changed as he realised what he’d said. ‘Apart from the leg, of course.’

  Simon laughed. ‘Nothing to be done about that. How’s business?’

  Granger ran the factory he’d inherited, a business that made hessian sacks and shipped them around the country. He was in his middle twenties, thrown into the thick of it all before he was ready after his father died suddenly of a heart attack. Simon had known the older man, saddened to read of his passing. But death came for everyone.

  Back before he had responsibilities, Charles Granger had spent most of his nights carousing around the inns and beershops. He’d left that behind, but he’d gone around with some of the same men as Andrew Barton. Like the ones who could have beaten Sally and who attacked him.

  ‘I haven’t seen any of them in months.’ He shook his head when Simon asked. ‘My life is the factory these days. When I’m not there, I’m at home.’

  He’d married just a year before, a business alliance rather than true love, and his wife had given birth to a son a few months earlier. The man had his heir; duty done.

  ‘One of the men who came for me might have a damaged knee.’

  ‘Good God,’ Granger said, incredulous. ‘Did this happen in town?’

  ‘No more than a few yards from here. I’d appreciate it if you could ask a few discreet questions. It might be someone you used to know.’

  The man gave a reluctant nod. ‘If I run into any of them. These days, though, I can’t promise …’

  ‘Of course. I understand.’

  Simon spoke with a few others as he moved up Briggate, stopping by the market cross near the Head Row.

  A moment turned into five minutes as he watched the surge of people and traffic. Andrew Barton. He thought about what John Dale had said, that the young man had changed around the time Fox had been arrested. He’d been the only one to notice that. Simon knew he needed to talk to the Bartons again, and go back to Andrew’s friends with more questions.

  Perhaps the young man would simply reappear, the way he had last time. But something told him that wasn’t the likely outcome.

  ‘Waiting for an answer, Westow?’ Porter appeared next to him.

  He chuckled. ‘Hoping for one, perhaps. Do you have any?’

  The constable shook his head. ‘Nothing more than problems of my own. How’s that young girl who works for you? I heard what happened.’

  ‘Improving,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘Looking for the ones who did it?’

  ‘Among other things.’

  A hand raised in farewell, and he hobbled across the Head Row.

  In George Mudie’s printing shop, Simon sat and stretched out his leg as he watched the man working. All the walking had tired him. After ten minutes, Mudie stopped and poured himself a tot of brandy.

  ‘You’ve got something on your mind, Simon. It’s not like you to be so quiet.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You have your hands full,’ Mudie said after Simon unburdened himself. ‘You’re trying to do three things at the same time.’

  ‘They’re connected. Two of them, at least: find the people who came for me and the ones who hurt Sally.’

  ‘Very likely,’ he allowed after a moment. ‘But you’re being paid to search for Barton’s son.’

  ‘All I’ve found so far is one faint clue to where he might have gone.’

  ‘One’s better than none. Maybe it will bring you something.’

  He stood, grimacing as pain shot up his leg. ‘We’ll see.’

  Barton dashed past her and plunged down the bank, straight into the water. It rose over the top of his boots as he thrust his hands under the surface to reach for his son.

  He began to tug Andrew from the beck. The head surfaced first, lips pale, life gone. Then the chest.

  The man looked up, helpless.

  ‘You’ll have to help me. Please. He’s too heavy.’

  A moment and Jane scrambled down the bank. Her boot heels dug into the dirt. She placed her hands under the arms of the corpse, gritted her teeth and pulled. She didn’t look at Andrew’s face, just used her strength to try and drag him on to land.

  No rope marks or redness around his neck. Andrew Barton hadn’t been strangled. She saw no sign of a knife wound. But from the moment she spotted him, she’d never believed this was murder. He’d come out here to kill himself.

  Why would he do that?

  Finally they had the body up by the road and Barton knelt by it, torn between emptiness and the need to howl out his grief.

  Jane had seen the dead before, far too many of them. Life departed, and they became nothing more than a sack of bones and decay. Their pain was gone, left for those still alive. She watched as Barton cradled his son, tears running down his face. Jane didn’t try to break the silence. She didn’t know any words that might comfort him, if they existed at all.

  A final, punishing effort as they lifted Andrew into the chaise. Barton covered him with a rug, all the respect he could offer out here. Up on the seat, he flicked the whip above the horse and they began the journey back to Leeds. She knew they should have told someone, the constable of the nearest village. But she wasn’t about to try and tell Barton anything; he wouldn’t have listened.