The Angler's Tale

by Jack Benton

  ‘But why run off?’

  Terrance gave an embarrassed smile. ‘When you did that little army man roll, I got spooked. Thought you might pull out a gun.’

  Slim nodded. ‘I suppose that’s understandable. I’m afraid I’ve never got over some of the things I saw back there in the desert.’

  ‘Gulf War?’

  ‘First. I was a kid.’

  Terrance looked down. ‘Better you than me.’

  Slim walked over to the dresser and pointed at the family photographs. ‘Who is he?’ he said, pointing to the older man.

  ‘Alan,’ he said. ‘And the older woman is Corrine, his mother. That picture was taken in 1968. I was eight years old.’

  ‘And what is their relationship to you?’ Slim asked, resisting the urge to grit his teeth, frustrated that Terrance was leaking him the information one piece at a time.

  ‘They took me in off the streets.’

  ‘They had street children in Totnes?’

  ‘I was in care. Kept running away. Don’t think it was ever official, but they were good to me. Brought me up when no one else wanted me.’

  ‘Who were your birth parents?’

  Terrance shrugged. ‘I don’t remember them, have never met them, don’t know who they are or were. They’re likely dead; might as well be. What does it matter? They dumped me on the steps of an orphanage when I was a baby. It doesn’t matter who they were.’

  ‘Where did your name come from? Why “Winters”?’

  ‘The orphanage named me after the season I arrived. I liked it better than “you damn boy”. Alan wanted me to change it to McDonald, of course, but I’d got used to it.’

  ‘That’s not good enough.’

  ‘What’s not?’

  ‘Stop feeding me a line. I’ve never heard of an orphanage assigning names like that. There was another reason they chose it, wasn’t there? Tell me the truth.’

  ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘I have my reasons, and I have my suspicions, too.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Take off your shoes. Show me your feet.’

  Terrance stared for a moment, then burst out laughing. ‘What?’

  ‘I think you’re a descendant of hers. One of her cursed. That’s why you were abandoned, because old superstitions run deep in small towns. And that’s why he took you in. And they named you “Winters” to mark you. Winter with an apostrophe. Isn’t that right? Winter’s descendant.’

  Terrance shook his head. For a long time he stared at the floor, saying nothing. Finally, he said, ‘Huh. You’re good, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘Your toes are webbed, are they?’

  Terrance shook his head again. ‘They were, if “webbed” is what you want to call it. I prefer conjoined. Less fanciful. In any case, I had that crap fixed long ago, back in the eighties, as soon as I was old enough to sign the forms.’ He rolled his eyes as he kicked off his right boot, then pulled off a thick fisherman’s sock with one swift movement. He held up his foot and flexed his toes. Three moved freely, the other two as a single digit.

  ‘The smallest two are fused,’ Terrance said. ‘I had the webbing removed from the others, but the last two couldn’t be separated because the bones are connected.’ He sighed, then pulled his sock back on. ‘It’s the same on both feet.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  Terrance looked up at the ceiling. ‘Genetics? Because some arsehole god hates me? I don’t know. All I know is that the history of it in these parts got me labelled. School, until Alan had me moved and kept out of anything that required me to remove my shoes, was brutal. I was marked as some kind of sinner before I was old enough to know what one was.’

  ‘And Alan helped you?’

  ‘I was running away from care, running away from school. I met him down by the harbour. He took me in. He and his mother were good to me. Over time I became part of their family.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to talk to him.’

  Terrance shook his head. ‘He’s become reclusive over the years. Even I only see him once in a while, when he stops by for some tackle. And he sends me the originals of each one of his paintings, once or twice a month, like clockwork. So many I’ve had to start selling them.’

  ‘What happened to him? Why won’t he talk to me?’

  ‘He doesn’t like people. I moved out when I was eighteen. He was good to me, but he was never a real father. He had his … reasons, for taking me in. I owe him respect, but there was never any love. Our relationship is formal these days, although I’ll always be grateful for what he did for me.’

  ‘And Corinne? Can I speak to her?’

  Terrance’s reaction, a scoff and a roll of the eyes, told Slim all he needed to know.

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she? He’s claiming her benefits.’

  Terrance pulled another cigarette from a packet and lit up.

  ‘Look,’ Slim said, ‘I’m an alcoholic. I just broke into your house, and I’m wanted by the police for various other misdemeanours. Nearly twenty years ago I did some time because I tried to kill a man with a razor blade. Luckily for him and me, I was too drunk to pull it off.’ He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t even the right man. It was someone else who was sleeping with my wife.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Because I have no moral high ground. I’m hunting a murderer. I don’t care if someone’s cheating the welfare state.’

  ‘She’s been dead for ten years or more. He had to tell someone, so he told me. I know he didn’t kill her. He’s just a recluse. He doesn’t want the attention or the drama that would have gone with announcing her death. He sells enough paintings that he doesn’t need the money. He only does it because he doesn’t want people intruding on his life. For all I know he drops her pension into the charity boxes by the port.’

  ‘And her body? Is she still in there?’

  Terrance shrugged. ‘I doubt it. Knowing him, he probably took her out on his boat and dropped her into the river. He’s always been a fish out of water, has Alan. Never liked being on land.’

  ‘I need to see him.’

  ‘He won’t see you. He has as little contact with people as possible. I arrange the printing of copies of his paintings, and their distribution. Makes up the difference in shop trade lost to the damn internet. That’s one reason why he sends me the originals. I know he got cajoled into attending an exhibition a month or so back, and hated every minute of it.’

  Slim smiled. ‘I know. I was there. This is important, though. I need to talk to him.’

  ‘He’s not a bad person. Just … unique.’

  ‘I’m not saying he is. I just need to clear him from my enquiries. If he’s done nothing wrong, he has nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Like I say—’

  ‘I’m not planning to ask, Terrance. I broke into your fortress, didn’t I? I can get into most places. I want you to take me up there.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Right now.’

  59

  The sun was beginning to dip by the time Terrance’s battered old car pulled up outside Corinne McDonald’s house. Terrance started to get out, but Slim put a hand on his arm.

  ‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll do this alone. Don’t even think about driving off or calling the police.’ He patted his pocket. ‘I have you covered.’

  Terrance shook his head. ‘He won’t talk to you,’ he said. ‘He probably isn’t even there.’

  Slim climbed out, slammed the door, and made his way up the steps to the house. He glanced up and down the street, then reached forward and slid his pick into the lock. The door clicked open, swinging forward a few inches before a chain on the inside caught it.

  ‘Alan?’ Slim called into the gap. He waited a couple of minutes, but got no response. With a wry smile he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pair of pliers he had picked up in Terrance’s yard and secreted away without the fisherman noticing. Pushing them into the gap, he twisted them around the chain
and yanked hard. With a couple of further pulls the fittings ripped out of the door, allowing it to swing open. As he stepped inside, Slim glanced back down at Terrance, waiting in the car, wondering what the fisherman had seen, but Terrance was reading a newspaper he had brought with him. Satisfied, Slim stepped inside and pulled the door shut.

  The house smelled of age, paint, and fish. The hallway was relatively cluttered, with several jackets hung on a rack behind the door, a couple of easels leaning against the wall, and even a box of fishing tackle sitting on an old-fashioned telephone table next to a dusty dial phone. Slim followed the cord back along the floor, lifting an eyebrow when he saw how it had been cut near the socket. Alan really didn’t like intrusion into his life at all.

  Slim opened the nearest door on the left. It led into a living room which was tidy and formal, perhaps because its window opened onto the street. Net curtains allowed light to enter, illuminating a faded and worn three-piece-suite and a couple of shelves of books, all local history or nautical-themed. There was no television, but a radio stood on a dressing table in the corner. The wallpaper was a dusty brown, a mantelpiece over an unused fireplace holding just a couple of generic ornaments which could have come from any local tourist shop. There were no family photographs or personal effects of any kind. No books left open on the arms of chairs, no newspapers or coffee cups, no pictures on the wall. The room felt like a museum display of 1970s England.

  Slim closed the door and walked down the hall, past a set of stairs leading up. In a room straight ahead he found a small, cramped kitchen. The smell of fish pervaded from here, although there were no signs of anything having been recently cooked. No plates or cutlery left on the draining rack, and the sink’s bowl was dry. In the cupboards Slim found cheap supermarket brand boxes of cereal, a couple of cartons of UHT milk, and a few tins of pasta sauce, all cheap, generic, simple flavours. It felt like a relief effort, and he wondered if Terrance shopped for his erstwhile foster parent.

  A door at the back of the kitchen led into a small utility room. A couple of pairs of waders stood by a back door that opened onto Alan’s garden. Outside was an overgrown yard with a few small shrubs forcing their haphazard way out of the surrounding brush. It looked like it had once been cared for, maintained, but perhaps this had been Corinne’s domain, one left to literally go to seed since her death.

  Slim went back through the house, into the living room, where he peered through a window to check on Terrance. The fisherman was still reading his newspaper.

  On a landing upstairs, Slim found a vase standing on a small table filled with dusty dried flowers. Net curtains that needed a wash hung over a window that looked down onto the street. Slim glanced out once more at Terrance, still sitting in the car, then went to check the bedrooms. One was a guest room, all floral and lace. Dust plumed as Slim patted the pillows, and he retreated back onto the landing, a hand over his mouth to stop himself coughing. A bathroom at the end had another dry sink and a shrivelled bar of soap which hadn’t seen use in several days.

  The other bedroom, farthest from the street, was clearly used. It smelled distinctly of paint, although Slim couldn’t identify a source. The bedsheets were ruffled, partly folded back to reveal a sweat-stained sheet badly in need of a wash. A bedside table held a couple of books on local history, and a wardrobe in the corner, against the far wall, had a door that had got stuck on the corner of a protruding shirt sleeve. The wardrobe itself looked ancient, its knobs faded to a dull bronze, the chipped and scored wood dark brown, whatever design it had once held faded into the background. It had a small mirror in the door at head height, and the carpet in front of it was worn almost through, as though whoever used this room spent a lot of time perusing his appearance.

  Slim went out, closed the door, and went back along the landing. Something wasn’t right about the house, but he couldn’t quite figure it out. For the residence of a man described as a recluse, there was very little about this house which suggested it. With a decent clean it could be rented out.

  Slim was halfway down the stairs when he realised.

  He stopped dead, staring at the wall across the hallway from the stairs, between the living room and the kitchen, at what should have been but wasn’t.

  The house was missing a room.

  60

  The light through the frosted window above the door revealed where the missing room should have been: a slight bulge in the wall where the doorway had been bricked up and wallpapered over.

  Slim stared at it for a long time. The house was cramped enough as it was; you didn’t hide a room without good reason.

  Frowning, Slim studied the living room door, then looked back up at the landing. The living room wall on the hidden room’s side was plain and unadorned, and the kitchen’s fixtures were immovable. The house was part of a terrace, meaning it could have been offered for use by the adjacent occupants if someone had been prepared to knock through the wall, but that seemed unlikely.

  Slim had seen no possible entrance. Heart racing, he ran back up the stairs and into the bedroom. He felt around the floor for a trapdoor of some kind, but found nothing. The bed was wire-framed, so Slim lay down and felt around underneath, pushing a few boxes of old fishing magazines aside, but again found nothing.

  Finally, he turned to the wardrobe. The stiff door resisted his pull at first, but once open he found only a skeleton crew of clothing: a couple of shirts and an overcoat, arranged to hide the presence of a trapdoor in the floor below, a trapdoor with a handle caked with dried paint. It came up easily when pulled, revealing a dark space below, the light over Slim’s shoulder illuminating the first few steps of a metal ladder leading down.

  He had neglected to bring the torch hidden away in his belongings back in Eliza Turkin’s abandoned house, but he had no choice. He might not get another chance to find out what Alan McDonald was hiding down there in the dark.

  He climbed awkwardly into the space—clearly designed for a much smaller man—and started down.

  Immediately, the smells that had pervaded the rest of the house blanketed his senses: paint, drying and wet, fish, both rotten and fresh, and something else: formaldehyde.

  He stepped down onto the floor in the dim circle of light cast from above, and although the walls were hidden in gloom he realised he had found Alan McDonald’s secret studio. The floor was bare stone, flecked and splashed with dried paint, and a multitude of easels stood around him like wooden statues, some containing half-finished paintings, others empty. Against the nearest wall was a ramshackle dresser scattered with painting equipment: brushes in filthy jars, scraps of canvas, dirty rags, small plastic bottles containing dozens of shades of paint.

  As his eyes adjusted, the outline of something else appeared, something that dominated the room.

  A bed.

  And lying on the bed were two shadowy figures. Slim took a step backwards, a string hanging from the ceiling bouncing against his ear. As he lifted a hand and tugged the light cord, he saw one of the figures shift.

  Light filled the room and Slim staggered, his resolve broken as a gasp escaped his mouth. He knew now where the stench of formaldehyde came from: not from the paintbrush cleaning fluid as he had assumed, but from the mummified corpse lying on one side of the bed, leathery lips pulled back over protruding teeth in a smile that Slim knew would haunt him for the rest of his days. Brittle hair hung down over bony shoulders, to a body covered with what appeared to be a dress woven from fishing net and shells.

  Slim was aware of his knees hitting the floor. He stared at the corpse, barely aware of Alan McDonald sitting up, picking up a pair of spectacles from a bedside table and frowning through them at Slim like an old man woken by a noisy dog. Nor did he have more than a vague awareness of a shadow covering the trapdoor above, and a voice saying, ‘Sorry, Dad, I didn’t think he’d ever find it.’

  Something heavy came crashing down, striking Slim on the side of the head. From the way it made a strangled ring he knew it was
the old telephone from the hall, but it didn’t really matter as he slumped forward to the ground, his vision blurring and then fading to black.

  61

  ‘What are we going to do with him?’

  A sigh. ‘What we did with the girl. We have no choice. Why did you bring him here? Why did you let him disturb her? Why?’

  Slim became aware of the voices, but kept his eyes tightly shut. It wouldn’t do for them to know he had regained consciousness. It was all he could do to suppress a groan or shift against the bonds tying his hands. His head was ringing, his hands and legs felt numb.

  ‘He was persistent. I thought he had given up, but then he broke into my house and saw your paintings.’

  ‘We have to protect her.’

  ‘No. He doesn’t know what he saw. Move her, clear out her things, hide her. They have nothing on you. On us.’

  ‘You don’t get it, do you? After all these years, I tried to drum it into you. It’s them and us. They don’t want our type, and they’ll drive us out, like they drove her out, like they drove out Mistress Beatrice. We’re not wanted.’

  Terrance sighed. ‘You can’t just keep killing people.’

  ‘Don’t say that ugly word. I’ve killed no one.’

  ‘Then what do you call it?’

  ‘Look at her. Does she look dead to you?’

  ‘Dad—’

  ‘Enough. We need to get him out of here as soon as it gets dark. Out to the river. It can be done by morning.’

  Slim heard a sniff. He frowned, unable to help himself. Someone was crying.

  ‘Not again, Dad, please. Not again.’

  Slim flinched as a heavy kick struck his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. He grunted and attempted to curl up, his eyes snapping open to see Alan McDonald standing over him, face in shadow.

  ‘See?’ the old man said, turning to Terrance, whose cheeks were wet with tears. ‘You can’t trust anyone. He was listening all the time.’ He leaned down, face close to Slim, and Slim smelled fish on his breath, as though Alan McDonald ate them straight out of the water. ‘Weren’t you?’ He turned back to Terrance. ‘It’s us versus them, I told you. We need to get rid of him.’