Animal Instinct

by Animal Instinct (retail) (epub)

  Dear Diary.

  Nightmares all night. Haven’t had them for ages. Scared shitless!! HATE Dad!! Can’t tell Mum what happened. She won’t believe me. Nobody will. Years of secrecy, abuse and lies. Told Dad today: I’m going mad!! HATE HATE HATE HIM! Must tell someone!!! Feels like cancer. Past ruining my present. Who can I tell? Wish I were dead. Everyone thinks he’s so nice. Can’t even tell Saffron. HELP!!! PLEASE!!!

  Bella’s final diary entry was dated Sunday 28 August, the day before her body was found. Joe scanned the penultimate entry, dated Saturday 27 August.

  Dear Diary,

  Saffron and Liam still SEX MAD after two years!!! Heard them shagging for England first thing. Again tonight!!! Like animals rutting. Mum is SO embarrassed, she doesn’t know where to look when they come down for breakfast. Overheard her asking Saffron if she thought it was safe, with the baby due any day, then turning nasty and telling her she was a sex addict who needed to go to the Priory. Makes my sex life look BORING BORING!!!

  Joe ran his eye over entries dating back several weeks. Despite the forest of exclamation marks the diary contained nothing as dramatic as Bella’s tirade against Adam. There were details about elephant welfare, anodyne gossip about the keepers and volunteers, and descriptions of parties. One entry caught Joe’s eye, dated 4 July.

  Dear Diary,

  New ele keeper started today. Tom Lycett. Sex on legs!! Fit! Fit! Fit!! Not sure he’s noticed me, or is remotely interested. Can’t blame him. Hate my nose, hate my breasts, HATE HATE HATE my thighs!!

  Apart from the mention of Lycett there was no indication that Bella had any interest in men. Her passion was for elephants, tigers and pandas. At the same time, the entry about Saffron and Liam’s appetite for sex implied Bella was also in some kind of sexual relationship, even if it was BORING BORING!!! Joe reread the final entry.

  Dear Diary.

  Nightmares all night. Haven’t had them for ages. Scared shitless!! HATE Dad!! Can’t tell Mum what happened. She won’t believe me.

  He studied the words. Something was troubling him but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He took the diary entries for July and August into the dining-room-cum-office and made a photocopy.

  Back in the kitchen, he replaced the pieces of paper where he had found them and put the file back on the chair. Then he resumed his seat. Queasy about delving into Katie’s ‘laptop thinking’, Joe set his qualms aside and found a document titled Bella Pennefeather. He clicked on Katie’s latest stream of consciousness.

  Bella’s iPhone found by SOCO in elephant yard drain. Diary app poss suggests history of abuse by father, Adam Pennefeather (AP). Scratches on wrist. AP told me (and Joe) that Bella scratched him ‘during panic attack’ Monday afternoon.

  AP’s alibi for estimated time of death (midnight–4 am): alone in study/asleep. No corroboration. Mother Isobel: asleep in separate bedroom. No corroboration.

  Bella’s sister Saffron: asleep on floor above. No corroboration. Saffron’s husband Liam O’Mara: drove to London approx 5.40 pm on afternoon before Bella was murdered. ‘Plumbing problem in pizza restaurant’. ‘Stayed overnight in London flat’ (Downshire Hill NW3). Alibi TBC.

  Joe scrolled to the next page.

  Adam P’s boots match prints in ele house storeroom. But keeper Tom Lycett (time-of-death alibi TBC?) says floor is scrubbed at end of each day. Adam P can’t explain bootprints. Insists hasn’t been in storeroom for two weeks. SOCO matches Adam P’s fingerprints to prints on whisky bottle under storeroom sofa. Adam P: ‘I never drank whisky in storeroom. I never took bottle there.’

  Joe skimmed Katie’s earlier notes, dating back to Tuesday 30 August when Adam had reported his daughter missing. There was nothing else of note. About to shut down the laptop, his eye was caught by something on the desktop: a thumbnail photo of a man he recognized, standing in front of the Arc de Triomphe. The man sported a beard but there was no mistaking his identity.

  Hugh Duffy.

  Judging by his appearance (much more hair), Joe estimated that the picture had been taken about twenty years ago. He stared at the photo for several moments, absorbing the implications.

  Without giving conscience the chance to trump curiosity, he did something he’d never done before. He clicked on Katie’s email folder and scrolled through the senders’ names. There were three recent emails from Duffy, all to do with the logistics of collecting Katie and driving her to work. Joe’s eye was caught by the heading on a fourth message: Plastered of Paris. The body of the email was blank but there was an attachment. Joe hesitated. His eyes flickered to the Oracle.

  Friday 8 pm: H.

  He clicked on the attachment.

  An old photo of Katie in front of the Eiffel Tower. One arm around Hugh Duffy, the other clutching a bottle of champagne.

  Plastered of Paris.

  Joe could see the gold ring on Katie’s finger. Clearly, the picture had been taken after their wedding. But it was her companion’s face he couldn’t stop staring at.

  Duffy’s beard.

  His ginger beard.

  Looking hard at the photo, he couldn’t understand why he was so drawn to staring at the man’s beard. Then realization hit hard. Joe’s stomach gave a lurch. Duffy’s facial hair called to mind Luke’s goatee and the flash of colour among the hair sprouting from his son’s chin.

  Joe recalled thinking of the colour as ‘copper’.

  But there was another word for it.

  Ginger.

  8

  1975

  ‘Latch-key kid.’

  Joe had heard the teachers muttering it under their breath, like it was something to be ashamed of, but he didn’t care what they thought. He was used to coming home to an empty house that reeked of dog, damp and Dad’s ashtrays.

  Besides, when your mum had buggered off and your dad was ‘a pillar of the community’, some things were bound to go by the wayside. Like someone to help with homework. Cook fish fingers. Chat about your day.

  His routine seldom varied: a Jubbly on the way home, or a bag of flying saucers and, once a week, a comic. Carol Dixon enjoyed teasing him.

  ‘You’re too told for the Beano.’

  She was right but the Bash Street Kids made Joe smile so he continued to follow their antics while taking care Carol didn’t catch him at it.

  The walk home took forty minutes, most of it along the seafront or the white cliffs. Joe always made the journey alone, passing the time by counting seagulls or looking out to France, trying to imagine what it was like to be a boy in 1940, knowing the Germans were just twenty-odd miles away.

  The pebble-dashed bungalow stood by itself, set back from the edge of the cliff, half hidden behind a huge patch of gorse. ‘Splendid isolation,’ Dad called it. He’d inherited the house from Joe’s grandparents – wouldn’t hear of moving – but Mum complained bitterly.

  ‘I need people. Shops. Life.’

  That was why she’d upped sticks, renting a flat above an Express Dairy in a London suburb.

  Joe had visited once but she’d been rushed off her feet, what with her hairdressing job and running around after the man Dad called ‘Him’. There was no incentive to go back. Besides, who’d keep Seaview clean?

  Who’d look after the animals?

  The fishmonger and butcher put aside scraps for what everyone called ‘Joe Cassidy’s menagerie’, refusing to take any payment. Joe assumed they wanted to stay in Dad’s good books (being pally with the local copper had its benefits) but Carol said it was because people felt sorry for him. Joe was furious. There were loads of things worse than not having your mum around, especially a mum who drank Dubonnet in the day while bending your ear about becoming the next Vidal Sassoon. There were tons of people worse off – people with leukaemia, or starving in Africa, or kipping in doorways.

  ‘Don’t you get lonely?’ asked Carol on the one occasion he plucked up courage to invite her home. The question touched a nerve. The truth was that loneliness ran through Joe’s life like letter
ing through a stick of rock but he’d heard Mum yell at Dad (‘Nothing worse than self-pity!’) so he sidestepped the issue.

  ‘Lonely? With all these animals?’

  It was true, at least partly. Life without his menagerie would have been very different. The Labradors were called Benson and Hedges (Mum’s idea). Their rumbustious behaviour was viewed with disdain by the tortoiseshell cat, saddled with the name Cinzano.

  Joe’s favourite was Benson – the only animal allowed to sleep on his bed, despite Dad’s daily protests. Joe did his best to warm to Hedges during walks and games of Frisbee, but his heart belonged to Benson. There was something melancholy about the dog’s brown eyes, something thrilling about the way he rushed to the door whenever Joe came home, something exhilarating about the connection with another species.

  As for the hens and rabbits, Joe made the chicken run and hutches himself one holiday. (Dad had promised to help but a big murder case came up so that was that.) Joe prided himself on the fact that his hutches were better than anything you could buy.

  Four hens and seven rabbits named after Snow White’s dwarves. They lived what Mum called the ‘life of Riley’.

  Joe was up at six to let them into the garden while he cleaned the hutches and hen house, collected eggs, freshened water and prepared the food. Carol liked Sleepy best, his velvety ears and chocolate markings, but Joe tried not to have favourites. It was too upsetting when they died.

  The routine was repeated every day after school, as soon as Benson and Hedges had had their hour-long walk in the woods. Then it was time for homework accompanied by Crossroads or Johnny Morris on Animal Magic, and an hour’s reading on the sofa, with Benson for company.

  Joe devoured three library books a week. He reread some more than once, including Watership Down, White Fang, Animal Farm, The Wind in the Willows – and his all-time favourite, The Incredible Journey. Even his visits to the lavatory were opportunities to bone up on other species. A tattered copy of Animal Encyclopedia sat on the cistern. Each morning, Joe tried to learn about a different animal, working his way from A to Z while obeying Dad’s cringe-making instruction.

  ‘Move your bowels every day.’

  Joe’s reading continued over a solitary supper. He usually made a hot meal but Dad was seldom home in time. Beans on toast. Sardines. Macaroni cheese. When he was older – a safari guide in Africa – he wouldn’t cook. He’d live on sandwiches. And never smoke.

  Things changed the day his father brought home Tracey Carter. A probation officer with a vague resemblance to Joe’s mum – strawberry blonde, buxom – Tracey smelled of Cussons Imperial Leather. She brought a packet of Jaffa Cakes and sat on the sofa, scoffing them while Dad made tea. She offered one to Joe but he sensed a reluctance to share.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  She held the biscuit between a forefinger and thumb and offered it to Benson.

  ‘Dogs are allergic to chocolate,’ said Joe.

  ‘I don’t think a bloody Jaffa Cake will kill her.’

  ‘She’s a he.’ Joe did his best to keep his smile in place. ‘Chocolate can give dogs diarrhoea or cause epileptic seizures, heart attacks, internal bleeding…’

  A sigh.

  ‘Christ on a bloody bike.’ Tracey put the biscuit in her mouth and started chewing.

  ‘And onions.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They’re bad for dogs. Garlic is too. And grapes and raisins, hops, macadamia nuts…’

  Tracey rolled her eyes and finished the biscuit in silence, her smile returning only when Joe’s father entered with the tea.

  Later, after Joe had gone to bed, he heard a high-pitched yelp, followed by a scream. Rushing into the sitting room, he found his father tucking in his shirt while trying to pacify Tracey Carter.

  ‘The bloody animal bit me!’

  The woman’s hand was covered with blood. Benson was in a corner, tail between his legs. Joe ushered the dog into the hall and closed the door.

  ‘He never bites,’ he said. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ said Joe’s dad. ‘Tracey slipped and… sort of fell onto Benson.’

  ‘Slipped?’ said Joe.

  ‘Off the sodding sofa,’ said Tracey. Blood was dripping onto her bare feet. ‘Look at my hand. I need to get to hospital. I need a bloody rabies injection.’

  ‘We don’t have rabies in England,’ said Joe.

  The woman’s eyes blazed.

  ‘Tetanus, then.’

  ‘I’ll drive you,’ said Joe’s dad. He turned to Joe. ‘Bed. No dog in your room, clear?’

  Next morning – a rainy Saturday – Dad drove Benson to the vet, insisting Joe come along to say goodbye. Joe didn’t understand.

  ‘Goodbye to who?’

  Later, he understood only too well.

  And later still – when he finally stopped crying – he made two promises.

  Never again would he love another dog.

  Never again would he speak to Tracey Carter.

  9

  Joe emerged from Canterbury police station and lit a cigarette. Having his fingerprints taken by an unsmiling ex-colleague had done nothing for his mood but at least he’d managed to avoid Katie.

  And Duffy.

  Thoughts tumbling over themselves (Plastered of Paris?), he was aware of horns blaring as he darted across the road and hurried from the police HQ, towards the walls of the old city. The place would be teeming with tourists but Joe didn’t care. He needed to lose himself in a crowd.

  Not long ago, this level of anxiety would have triggered a panic attack. He was stronger now. More in control. Determined to stay that way.

  The cigarette – his first in two weeks – tasted foul. He threw it away then lit another immediately. Walking through cobbled streets around the cathedral, he chose a cafe festooned with flowers in baskets and sat outside in the Indian summer sun.

  A dreadlocked busker was playing the theme from Titanic on pan pipes while a puppy dozed on the man’s purple jumper. Yards away, a group of middle-aged Japanese women photographed each other in front of the timber-fronted buildings. Other tourists browsed the souvenir stalls. A burger vendor was frying onions. The smell wafted over to Joe’s table. Under normal circumstances he would have succumbed to temptation. Today was anything but normal. And he was anything but hungry.

  A waitress emerged from the cafe and took his order for tea.

  ‘And an ashtray, please,’ said Joe.

  ‘Smoking’s bad for you,’ she said.

  Joe suppressed a flicker of annoyance. He nodded towards the blackboard.

  Coffee’s & tea’s & sandwich’s.

  ‘Doesn’t anyone know how to use an apostrophe?’

  She frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

  Joe sighed. ‘Never mind.’

  * * *

  A year after Joe and Katie married she’d come home one February evening and burst into tears.

  ‘Is this it?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘This. Working all hours. Crippling mortgage. A two-up two-down in the area we’ve lived all our lives. Fortnight in Majorca, sex once a month. Is this it?’

  Six weeks later she’d taken some overdue leave and boarded a train to London.

  ‘A bit of time out. Not from us, just from this place. I need to be on my own. See if I’m missing out on all that “bright lights, big city”.’

  ‘And if you are?’

  ‘Then we need to talk. But if I don’t like it I’ll stop being a pain.’

  A week later she was back. Thoughtful, subdued, but relieved to be home.

  Or so she said.

  London was fun for a few days but no place to live. She’d made his favourite meal and given a coy smile.

  ‘Absence makes the heart grow fondue.’

  They were in bed within the hour. A few weeks later she announced she was pregnant. There was no mention of a trip to
Paris.

  The waitress returned with tea and an ashtray. Joe stubbed out his cigarette then lit another straight away. He’d read that a married woman who has sex with an illicit lover would often make love to her husband within forty-eight hours. Not a conscious calculation, went the theory, just basic instinct coming into play. If she became pregnant the child could as easily belong to the spouse as to the lover. Hubbie’s suspicions would not be roused; he’d embrace the child as his own.

  What were the statistics? How many kids were raised by men other than those acknowledged as their fathers? One in ten, at least according to conventional wisdom. Which suggested a lot of people harbouring a lot of secrets. Millions of emotional time bombs waiting to cause carnage.

  There was no hard evidence that Katie had been keeping such a secret and Joe knew beyond any doubt that he would always love his son, no matter what. But he was ashamed to admit that there were times he didn’t much like Luke. Times when he’d listen to him mouthing off, or throwing a strop, or just being Luke and think, How did you turn out like this?

  Who are you?

  Did every parent feel this way? One more than one occasion, Joe had struggled to find any resemblance between himself and his son, if not in looks then in tics, personality or sensibilities. There were few, if any. Which proved nothing. Joe looked and behaved nothing like his own father.

  His mobile rang.

  Chrissie McBride.

  ‘I’m outside Pennefeather’s. Wondering if you’re inside.’

  ‘I’m in a cafe,’ said Joe, drawing on his cigarette. ‘Thinking.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘Cheetahs.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘The females are mad about sex.’

  ‘Good for them.’

  He smiled. ‘Half of all cheetah litters with more than one cub are fathered by more than a single male. Scientists did a survey in the Serengeti.’