‘I suspect we have enough to be getting along with.’
Gilmore poured himself coffee while Parker explained the reason for his presence, just in case anything had become lost in translation. In return, Gilmore brought Parker up to date on the current status of the search. A cordon had been placed around the entire area after the initial discovery, following which the wardens had conducted a general examination of the landscape and eliminated those regions unsuited to the interment of a body, no matter how small, either for reasons of inaccessibility or unsuitability; the wardens couldn’t guarantee where a body would be, but they could do the next best thing, which was to say where it wouldn’t be. Meanwhile MASAR, the Maine Association for Search and Rescue, had begun seeking volunteers to look for the child’s remains. This whole process had taken a week to organize, but it meant that the search would be conducted in the most efficient manner possible. Now teams of between two and four volunteers, each equipped with GPS and a dog, had commenced slow walks over carefully designated zones. As each zone was cleared, the GPS coordinates would be downloaded from the devices and the cleared areas marked on a map to ensure that nothing was missed, and time and energy were not wasted in the unnecessary repetition of tasks.
‘If there’s another body out there,’ said Gilmore, ‘we’ll find it, eventually.’
‘How long until you’re sure?’ asked Parker.
‘Weather permitting, could be another week.’
Allen rejoined the conversation, and Gilmore cleared up one or two further details for Parker before returning to the more immediate business of checking in with the search teams, as well as finding somewhere discreet to take a leak.
And Parker followed Allen up the well-trodden trail to the grave.
31
Quayle had been following the news coverage of the body in the woods. Naturally it interested him, but he had few contacts in this part of the world, and none in law enforcement. It was possible that these were the remains of Karis Lamb, but they might equally be those of another young female. Until the identity of the victim was established with certainty, Quayle would continue his hunt. Even if it were Karis in the ground, he would still need to find out who had put her there.
Quayle knew that Karis Lamb had been given Maela Lombardi’s name as a source of help and shelter in Maine. Since Karis had already shown herself willing to entrust her safety to Dobey and Bachmeier, with no adverse outcome, Quayle considered it highly likely that she would have taken the next step and contacted Lombardi upon her arrival in the state.
Lombardi lived on Orchard Road in Cape Elizabeth, not far from the big Pond Cove Elementary School on Scott Dyer Road at which she had taught for many years. Orchard was tree-lined, and all of the homes were well tended. Lombardi’s was one of the smaller builds: little more than a cottage, Quayle thought, and not suitable as a family home. In fact, according to the plans that Quayle found online, it was just the kind of dwelling in which one might have expected to find a retired spinster schoolteacher: single story, with a double window at either side of the central front door; two bedrooms, one barely large enough to accommodate a twin bed, the other more substantial; a living room that flowed into the kitchen area; and one bathroom. It was set back slightly from the road, and shaded by mature shrubs and hedges. It didn’t have a garage, and the driveway was empty. This didn’t trouble Quayle. He had no intention of approaching Lombardi by day. Orchard didn’t have street lighting, so by night the only illumination would come from porch lights, and the interiors of the houses themselves. Getting to Lombardi without being seen would pose no particular difficulty, and once he and Mors were inside they would have plenty of time to spend with her. They would find out what they needed to know, and Lombardi could be made to disappear. Quayle would let Mors take care of that.
So they knew where Lombardi lived, but they also knew what she looked like. The old busybody had been photographed for the local papers upon her retirement, and her name and image also cropped up regularly in bulletins from the Cape Elizabeth Historical Preservation Society, the Education Foundation, the Friends of the Thomas Memorial Library, and the League of Women Voters. Quayle wondered why Lombardi had never married or had children of her own. He thought he might ask her before she died. He hoped she wouldn’t give him some sentimental claptrap about all her students being her children. He wasn’t sure he could bear it.
‘Where do you want to go?’ asked Mors. She was driving. She always drove because Quayle had never learned, and did not care to at this stage of his existence. He was especially grateful for her presence in this land of oversized vehicles, and it made him yearn once again for their business here to be done with so he could return to London: a city in which he could walk anywhere he needed to go, or slip into the comfort of a black cab, even join the masses on the Underground, although Quayle now rarely ventured far from the river.
‘Away from people,’ he said.
‘Do you want to return to the hotel?’
They were staying as husband and wife in a motel by the Maine Mall, under names that existed only on credit cards linked to temporary accounts and whatever identification they chose to present.
‘No. Find me somewhere I can look at the sea.’
Even as a creature of the city, Quayle found comfort in the rhythms of oceans, and the ebb and flow of tides.
In this world, at least.
‘You know,’ he said, as the road unspooled behind them, ‘it is believed that salt calls to salt, and we respond to the sea because we came from it, but I don’t think that’s true.’
‘No?’
Mors’s eyes did not leave the road, and she betrayed no real indication of interest – but then, she so rarely did. Her body might have retained some superficial warmth, but at her core Mors was even colder than Quayle. At best, she could just about rouse herself to a state of vague indifference.
‘There is a greater ocean waiting in the next life, and into it all souls must flow.’
‘Even yours?’
Quayle glanced at her to see if she was trying to be funny, but she was not. Still, there was no denying the presence of a certain hard wit, and perhaps a glimmer of inquisitiveness. It was unusual for her to hear Quayle speak in this way.
‘No, not mine. I’m referring to the commonality.’
‘Why not yours?’
‘Because I have been promised oblivion.’
‘And what of me?’
‘I think you’ll enter the water. I think you’ll face judgment.’
Mors was silent. A gull stood ahead of them, picking at roadkill. She slowed to give it time to ascend.
‘Does that concern you?’ Quayle asked.
She turned to him, the car now almost at a halt. Her eyes were the peculiar gray of the scum found on certain ponds, the kind that even the thirstiest of animals prefer to skirt. Mors had been marked for him as a teenager, and nurtured by a succession of carefully selected foster parents until she was ready to come to him in adulthood, when the welfare system no longer had any cause to pay cognizance to her. She was very good, perhaps the best of all those who had stood by his side over the years.
‘I’ve told you before,’ she said. ‘You can choose to believe what you want, but I think there’s nothing beyond this world. In the end, we’ll all face oblivion.’
‘But what if you’re wrong? And you are wrong.’