Now You See Them

by Elly Griffiths

  Max had reached Black Rock without his mood improving. What should he do now? He didn’t want to go back to the hotel. There were too many hours to worry and think about Ruby. Should he call on Edgar, find out if he’d made any progress with the Angels Modelling Agency? No, Edgar would be preoccupied with his non-existent riot. There was a good Italian restaurant at the Montpelier Hotel. He’d go there. It would pass a few hours, at least.

  After Sophie had had her ride and even Jonathan had sat on patient Toby’s back, it was Emma’s turn. Vera gave her a leg-up. Toby felt much higher and more unstable than she had remembered. She was glad that she had worn trousers but, even so, her thin slacks rode up so that her calves were pinched by the stirrup leathers. Vera mounted Tempest and led the way to the field. Tempest was doing his usual curvetting, head-tossing thing but Toby plodded along stolidly, only stopping to take a chunk out of the hedge. Once on the grass, Tempest immediately started to canter and Toby followed, though at a more sober pace. Emma held on to his variegated mane as well as to the reins and hoped for the best. But it was really lovely to be on horseback with the Downs all around and the village at the foot of the hill. As they passed the gate—Sophie on the top bar and Marianne holding Jonathan—the children cheered. Emma felt her spirits lift. At least the children still loved her.

  Afterwards, Emma and the girls helped Vera rub Toby down and stood for a while in his stable, breathing in the wonderful, bosky horsy smell. Jonathan had fallen asleep in his pushchair, worn out by all the excitement. They thanked Vera (‘No problem. Come any time’) and walked back down Steyning Road. Emma took the girls to see the pond and Rudyard Kipling’s house but they weren’t particularly impressed.

  ‘I’ve seen ponds before,’ said Sophie. Emma thought of her abortive wait by the ducks at Queen’s Park and she felt herself growing angry again. But this time it was with herself.

  Marianne wasn’t interested in Kipling or Emma’s smuggling tales.

  ‘Why didn’t they just buy the brandy and stuff from the shops?’

  ‘It’s more complicated than that,’ said Emma. ‘Complicated and dangerous.’

  Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.

  ‘Can we get some chips on the beach?’ said Marianne. ‘Please, Mummy.’

  ‘All right,’ said Emma, although her legs ached and she wanted to go home.

  On the High Street, Marianne stopped by the window of a shop called The Smugglers’ Cave.

  ‘Can we go in, Mummy? They’ve got lovely little glass animals.’

  Jonathan had just woken up and Emma dreaded the idea of letting him loose in a shop containing glass animals.

  ‘Not this time,’ she said. ‘We need to hurry or there won’t be any chips left.’

  She thought of the last time she’d been on the beach at Rottingdean, the police tape guarding the place where Sara’s body had lain. Suddenly, she wanted to go home and bolt the doors. But she marched on towards the sea, pushing Johnno and holding Sophie by the hand. Marianne dawdled behind, brooding on the unfairness of life.

  Twenty-Six

  The invasion started in earnest on Sunday. The mods were three abreast as they passed the Brighton gates, a phalanx like fighter planes in the war, parkas flying, multiple wing mirrors glistening. The rockers appeared in ones and twos, motorbikes roaring in side streets, leather-clad giants slouching through the Old Steine. Many of the mods had badges down the arms of their parkas which made them look like soldiers in some ersatz army. Even though it was the bank holiday weekend, pubs and restaurants started to close. Only the rocker hang-outs like the Daygo and the Little Chef stayed open, full of cigarette smoke and leather jackets, the bikes outside like horses tied to the railings of a Wild West saloon.

  On Saturday night Edgar and Emma had had a chilly reconciliation. They had both apologised and had managed to get through a fairly amicable evening meal. But they hadn’t kissed or even touched. Edgar went into work early on Sunday and told Emma to avoid the centre of town. Emma’s parents had already decided against their usual visit, hunkering down in their Roedean mansion with poached eggs on toast and a murder mystery on the wireless. But Marianne and Sophie had been invited to a morning birthday party near Queen’s Park and Emma thought that would be safe enough. At least it would get them out of the house. Walking back, the girls overexcited by sugar and party games, Jonathan in his pushchair clutching a red balloon, she was struck by how empty the streets were. She could hear her footsteps as they walked along St George’s Road. The shops were shut, of course, the shutters down outside the butcher, greengrocer and hardware store, but usually there were people walking down to the sea or visiting the pubs, cheerful and self-conscious in their Sunday best. Now the High Street was silent. As they passed St John the Baptist, though, Emma could hear Latin chanting. It would take more than a few mods and rockers to put Catholics off going to mass. But the singing had a mournful, almost sinister, sound. Emma remembered attending a Romany funeral in that church, more than ten years ago. It was the first time that she had seen Astarte, then only nineteen, an ethereal figure in black, walking up to the altar to sing a strange, haunting song about spirits and willow trees. It had been as if she was casting a spell with her voice.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ said Marianne.

  The answer was clear when they reached the top of Burlington Street. There was a sound coming from the beach, a kind of subdued roar, unlike anything Emma had heard before. It sounded, she thought, like an army preparing to charge. Like a lot of children who’d lived through the war she had very clear images of what a battle would be like, no less violent for being second-hand.

  ‘Can we look?’ said Marianne.

  Emma hesitated. They were high above the beach and very near home. Surely it would be safe? It’s almost my duty to see what’s going on, she thought. She was dying to look.

  They crossed the road and looked down on the promenade. Below was a battle scene. Mods on one side, rockers on the other, Brighton policemen, wearing their white summer helmets, in the middle. As they watched, Emma saw a rocker throw a deckchair so that it hit one of the mods. With another roar the mods advanced, hurling stones and other missiles.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ said Emma.

  By midday only the WPCs were left at the station. Was this why the super had said he needed her? thought Meg. Was it just so that she could man (or woman) the reception desk? She wanted to be out there where the action was. She had a feeling that people would be talking about the Battle of the Mods and Rockers for years to come. She didn’t want to miss out.

  Reception was quiet today. Everyone was obviously at home, hiding from the violent youths. Meg answered one phone query about a missing cat and told a tourist the way to the Pavilion. She felt sorry for people who had come to Brighton for the bank holiday weekend. The beach was cordoned off and most of the tourist attractions were closed. And, as if to mock them, it was another beautiful day, the sky cloudless and the sun properly warm for the first time that year.

  She was just wondering if she dared to leave her post to get a cup of tea and a book when a man appeared in front of her. He was middle-aged, middle height, middle everything really. But his words were anything but middle-of-the-road.

  ‘I’ve come to give myself up,’ he said.

  ‘Pardon?’ Meg was sure that she hadn’t heard right. ‘I’m Howell Davies. I’ve heard that you were looking for me. I’ve come to give myself up.’

  Howell . . . Oh, yes. The man who might have helped Ernest Coggins escape from prison. The ex-actor and convicted conman. The man with an embittered ex-wife in Crawley. The miner’s son who had claimed to be a lord. The man opposite didn’t look like an actor or a fraudster. He looked like a bank manager on his day off.

  ‘You’d better come into the interview room.’

  Meg had never interrogated a suspect on her own before. It felt very strange to be in the little suite, dark and dank like all the rooms at Bartholomew Square, lit only by a cen
tral bulb swinging in the underground breeze. It was Howell Davies who seemed almost to be putting her at her ease, smiling encouragingly as he took his seat—the suspect’s chair—opposite her.

  Meg found a notepad and wrote, ‘Interview with Howell Davies 17th May 1964’ in large, round letters. The DI liked to record interviews but she wasn’t quite sure how to work the tape recorder. This would have to do. She’d asked Liz, a new WPC, to take over on reception. That left only Denise and Angela who were Specials and not really meant to be working on cases. Meg was on her own. She sat up very straight and looked Davies in the eye.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Nine, the High Street, Rottingdean.’

  So Davies had been in Sussex all along. What’s more, he had been in Rottingdean, where the Brighton police had spent the last few days tramping up and down the High Street looking for secret tunnels. Meg and Danny might have walked past him when they visited The Smugglers’ Cave.

  ‘Occupation?’

  ‘Retired actor. This is like one of those quiz shows on the wireless, isn’t it?’

  Meg, who had been thinking the same, scowled. ‘You said you had come to give yourself up.’

  ‘Yes.’ Davies recrossed his legs and leaned back comfortably in his chair. ‘I know you think that I might have been involved with Ernie’s escape from choky. Well, I wasn’t. I was in Wales that day and at least five family members can verify that. In fact, half the town can probably vouch for me. When the black sheep turns up, it’s big news in Maesteg, I can tell you.’

  ‘Can I have an address for these people?’ said Meg. ‘And a telephone number too, if possible.’

  Howell obliged, helpfully spelling out the Welsh words. ‘Beryl told me that you’d called on her,’ he said. ‘Poor love, she lives in fear of the neighbours finding out about her jailbird husband.’

  So Beryl had known where Davies was to be found. Meg had thought as much. ‘Have you any information about Ernest Coggins that might help us find him?’ she asked.

  ‘Ernie was a gentle soul,’ said Davies. ‘All he really cared about were the animals. He loved looking after the pigs but he suffered so much when they were taken away for slaughter. He used to feed the birds. He made a bird table in Crafts. There was one robin that was so tame it used to sit on his hand.’

  Coggins was sounding a bit like St Francis of Assisi, thought Meg. She thought that she’d better remind Davies why he was in prison in the first place.

  ‘What about the girl he kidnapped, Rhonda Miles? Did he ever talk about her?’

  ‘Yes. I think he cared deeply for her.’

  ‘Cared deeply?’ This sounded rather sinister to Meg. ‘Oh, not in that way.’ Davies waved a disdainful hand. ‘What filthy minds the police have. He was sorry for the girl. He was worried when he heard that she’d gone missing. He said he thought he knew why she’d run away.’

  ‘He did?’ Meg was listening properly now. ‘Why?’

  ‘It was to do with her father. Ernie was a mild-mannered man but he hated Crispian Miles. Sir Crispian. He said that he had blood on his hands. The blood of millions of innocents.’

  ‘Blood on his hands? What do you mean?’

  Davies looked at her with mild surprise. ‘Oh, I thought you knew. Crispian Miles is a butcher.’

  ‘A butcher?’

  ‘He got rich through the misery of animals, that’s what Ernie said. Ernie loathed the whole food industry. He used to read all these leaflets about how badly animals were treated, how they were herded into tiny crates with no food or water and driven to the slaughterhouse. They could smell the blood, Ernie said, and knew that they were going to die. It fair put me off my food, I can tell you. Which was a shame because it wasn’t bad at Ford.’

  ‘You said that Ernest thought that Rhonda had run away. Why did he think that?’

  But now Davies became irritatingly vague. ‘I can’t remember. Something to do with a dog. Have you finished with me now? I want to go and see the fun and games on the promenade.’

  Isabel hated Sundays. The mornings were all right. Mum cooked a nice breakfast with bacon and eggs and then they usually had a walk to Gladstone Park. They didn’t go to church but it was quite nice seeing all the other families on their way there, the Catholic women with their veils, the Caribbean families all dressed up in colourful clothes. Some of the neighbours didn’t like the Caribbeans but Isabel’s dad said that it took all sorts to make a world.

  As she walked between Dad and Lucinda, Isabel looked out for The Man, the one she had told Meg about. A police officer had visited the house yesterday and told them that he was a suspect in a kidnapping case. Mum and Dad were shocked, of course, but luckily nothing came out about truanting or the Ritz. Isabel just said that all the girls had been given the police phone number at school, in case they saw anything suspicious. The policeman, DI Deacon, had even praised her initiative. Isabel thought that Dad was twitchy this morning too, scanning the faces of people at the park as they innocently walked their dogs or played with their children. But The Man would be on his own, of course. At any rate, they didn’t see him.

  For lunch Mum usually did roast beef or lamb with mint sauce. Sometimes Grandma and Grandad came over from Willesden, which was nice because they brought Smarties for Isabel and Lucinda but it did make lunch go on and on because Gran chewed everything about a hundred times and Gramps told long stories about the war. But, when lunch had been cleared away and washed up, that’s when the Dread started. Isabel thought of it with a capital D. Mum and Dad would doze in the front room while she and Lucinda were meant to get on with their homework, sitting at either end of the dining room table. Lucinda had just started at the grammar school so she didn’t have much work but Isabel seemed to have more and more. At night she dreamt about exercise books rising up and throttling her, drowning her in a sea of French verbs, history dates, Latin declensions and algebra. She wasn’t stupid, she knew that, but somehow the answers seemed to be getting further and further away and sometimes the letters tied themselves in knots that she didn’t know how to undo. When she’d started at Dollis Hill Girls she’d been about the same standard as her friend Veronica, comfortably in the middle of the form, but somehow Isabel had slipped down so that she was now on a level with Dorcas, who always spelled Wednesday wrong and had only got into the school because her mother was the cook.

  It was Bobby who got her through Sundays. Isabel knew that, if she got through her homework after a fashion, she could, after cold meat for supper, bath and hair wash, get into bed and read Film Frolics. These days there was always something about Bobby in the magazine, even if it was just his horoscope or his favourite Thanksgiving meal (what was Thanksgiving anyway?). Then, when Lucinda had gone to sleep, Isabel would get out her Bobby Book. Very carefully, by torchlight under the covers, she would look through the photos, mostly cut out from magazines but one, thrillingly, taken outside the Ritz with Veronica’s Box Brownie. It showed Bobby pausing to wave at them before getting into the Rolls. It was black and white, of course, but you could see the gleam of Bobby’s golden hair and the flash of his smile. Then, if she was lucky, Isabel would go to sleep and dream about him rather than maths and Latin.

  This evening seemed to drag on for ever. At least it was a bank holiday tomorrow so she didn’t have to go to school but it was still, unmistakably and unbearably, Sunday. The page of Latin danced and metamorphosed in front of her; now the letters looked all different sizes like a ransom note. Isabel’s head pounded. Maybe she should ask Mum for an aspirin. She went out into the hall. She could hear Mum and Dad listening to the news, something about mods and rockers in Brighton. ‘Society is collapsing,’ someone was saying, ‘these young people have no respect for law and order.’ She was about to push open the sitting room door when she noticed something on the mat. There was no post on a Sunday so it must have been hand-delivered. What’s more it was addressed to her. Just ‘Isabel’, nothing else. Was it from Veronica or one of her friends? But it didn’t look lik
e them somehow. All the girls at her school had the same handwriting. This was small and cramped, backward sloping. An adult’s handwriting.

  She opened the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper with a few words written on it.

  Isabel. You are beautiful. You should be a model.

  There was a telephone number underneath.

  Sir Crispian Miles had a list of chores to be completed before bedtime. This was his routine, something that could be achieved even on the darkest of days. Check that Valerie had taken her medicine and was sleeping peacefully. Check on the nurse (he just tapped on her door and said ‘Good night’, he didn’t go in, of course). Check that the doors were safely locked and bolted. Do the crossword. Watch TV until they played the National Anthem. Sometimes he stood up for this. Since Rhonda had disappeared, he added another item. Look at her picture and allow himself to cry. He allotted himself five minutes for this, strictly rationed. He looked at her school photograph, grinning gap-toothed smile, lovely hair smoothly brushed, and sobbed dryly. Sometimes Rho seemed to look at him and say, ‘Don’t cry, Daddy. I’m fine. You’ll see me again.’ But sometimes she was as distant as an oil painting, her eyes unreadable. After he’d finished his cry, Crispian replaced the picture on the shelf and poured himself a glass of brandy. Just one glass. He didn’t want to start down that path, thank you very much.