by Jack Benton
‘Oh, it’s nothing much important,’ he said. ‘I’ll just catch up with him when I get a chance. I’m sorry, but I have a shocking sense of direction. Could I trouble you to write down directions to Lodge Farm?’
‘Well, sure.’
Mrs. Waite tore a sheet of note paper off a pad and scribbled down a few lines, complete with a crude map.
‘Thanks, that’s very kind of you.’ Slim took it from her, gave it a passing glance, then folded it neatly and slipped it into a pocket.
‘Thanks for your help,’ he said, heading for the door. He paused with it half open and turned back. ‘I don’t suppose you know anyone called Charlotte?’ he asked.
Mrs. Waite frowned. ‘I don’t recall anyone by that name.’
‘Someone who used to live around here?’
Mrs. Waite shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Not to worry.’
He headed back to the guesthouse. The door was unlocked as it usually was during the day, so he let himself in, calling out Mrs. Greyson’s name. From the living room came the light buzz of the TV, the inane exclamations of a cooking show.
Slim gave the door a light tap. ‘Mrs. Greyson … I was just wondering when the post comes … I’m expecting something.’
No answer came. Slim quietly opened the door and found Mrs. Greyson slumped in her armchair, snoring quietly. An empty tumbler stood on a coffee table; next to it stood a bottle of supermarket-brand port.
Slim instinctively reached for the bottle, then drew back, clenching his fist, forcing it into his jacket pocket to keep it out of trouble. His other hand had tightened over the door jamb.
It appeared Mrs. Greyson enjoyed a drink too. Slim glanced at the clock on the mantel, an ornate steel lump with none of the finesse of the one he had found on the moor.
2.15 p.m.
He went out and quietly closed the door. If Mrs. Greyson wanted to get drunk in the middle of the afternoon, that was her business.
As he headed out to the bus stop, he wondered if he was getting too caught up in Amos Birch’s disappearance for his own good. After all, it was more than twenty years ago. What could he possibly discover that the police investigation had missed?
He had been called reckless more than once during his ramshackle career as a private eye. He had stumbled into the profession through a lack of better options, and found he had a certain lateral way of thinking which gave him a knack for figuring out a situation. Yet, since giving up drinking he had lost a little of his edge, and the temptation to turn back to the bottle was becoming a garrulous voice in a quiet room.
16
Plymouth was a bustling historic city still in full swing when Slim got off the bus just after 5 p.m. He walked quickly through the shopping district and reached the town hall just half an hour before closing. A rather disgruntled clerk led him to the marriage registration department, where another clerk seemed just as frustrated at his late request.
‘Tell me once again,’ said the clerk, a stone-faced middle-aged woman with a habit of tugging at the left horn of her old-fashioned spectacles, something which had over time left her glasses sitting slightly lopsided on the bridge of her nose.
‘I’m trying to track down an old friend,’ Slim said. ‘I believe she might have married since I knew her.’
‘What are the last details you have?’
‘Celia Birch, of Worth Farm, Trelee, Bodmin, Cornwall.’
‘Give me a minute. Take a seat, please.’
Slim flicked through a magazine on fly fishing for a while before the clerk called him back over.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but I have nothing. No one by that name has registered a marriage in this district.’
‘Okay, not to worry.’
‘Sorry I couldn’t help.’
‘Thanks anyway.’
Slim headed out into the evening. Plymouth’s shopping centre was shutting down for the night, and bars were beginning to open. Slim thrust his hands into his pockets and walked past the beckoning lights with his head down, feeling, for the first time in a while, a hollowness, a sense of absence, that there was an empty part of him that needed to be filled. Once, drink had done it, succeeding in drowning out a sense of failure that a succession of short-lived lovers had been unable to do. Now he found himself facing that beacon of disaster as the case of Amos Birch’s disappearance slipped through his fingers.
He had grasped it because it gave him something where there was otherwise nothing, but now the void was opening, yawning in front of him, drawing him in.
At the end of the street, he stopped outside the door of the last pub. After a moment’s hesitation, he pushed through the door and went inside.
17
‘What happened to you, Mr. Hardy?’ Mrs. Greyson said, as she held the door open for him to slink into the hall.
Slim rubbed his eyes. ‘I think I got hit by a car.’
‘Are you sure? Do need me to call someone?’
Slim shook his head, wincing at the ache in his neck. He remembered trying to walk through a punch as he might once have done during a brawl back in his army days, but it had proven as stupid an idea as it felt now with a hangover carving out the inside of his skull.
Only a doctor could say whether the punch had caused more damage than the tabletop that had arrested his fall, but now both eyes were bordered by an eerily symmetrical crescent of purple bruising, while the split lip caused by a second assailant seemed to exist solely to prevent him smiling at the absurdity of his situation.
‘I’d also like to ask that if you’re planning to stay out all night then to please tell me in advance,’ Mrs. Greyson added.
‘I, um, just went out for an early walk,’ Slim said. ‘To clear my head.’
‘Well, you left the door unlocked, so I had no choice but to lock it. If it’s dark, the door should be locked at all times, just in case. You never know who might be about. We get burglars even here, Mr. Hardy.’
‘Ah, sorry.’
‘Will you be having breakfast?’
‘Is it possible I could take it up to my room? I’m not really feeling up to company.’
Even though he still appeared to be the guesthouse’s only guest, Mrs. Greyson sighed. ‘Normally I’d say no, but for you, Mr. Hardy, I’ll make an exception. Just this once.’
He waited while she prepared a tray, memories of the evening before slowly coming back. What he had said or done to start the fight remained a mystery, and the lack of any scuffs or marks on his knuckles showed it had been one-sided. The park bench that had been last night’s bed had left him with acute back stiffness, and he had somehow torn half of the sole from his left shoe.
An early morning bus from Plymouth to Bude had dropped him off on the A39 near Davidstow, and a long walk down winding lanes back to Penleven had sobered him up. The food had been cooked with less care than usual, but the coffee was a dark pool of clarity, so he thanked Mrs. Greyson and headed upstairs with his tray.
He wanted to crawl into his bed and die, but there was something he needed to check first. He had photographed all the articles he had read about Amos’s disappearance, and now he scrolled through them, sure the information he required was there somewhere.
Merrifield.
Mary Birch’s maiden name.
It was a casual way to avoid the public eye, but one not unexpected after your mother far outlived your father.
Slim lifted the phonebook he had borrowed from the table in the hall and there she was.
Merrifield, C., Parkwood Close, Tavistock, Devon.
She hadn’t gone far at all, but when communities were so tightknit, twenty miles was the other side of the world.
Satisfied that the beating had rattled the thoughts around in his head enough to present a new lead, Slim downed the bitter, lukewarm coffee and climbed into bed.
18
‘I’m pretty sure I had nothing to do with that,’ Michael said, leaning on a spade, his exposed arms slick with sweat despite th
e February cold. ‘Although it crossed my mind the other night.’
‘I had a meeting with a concrete slab,’ Slim said. ‘It wasn’t pleased to see me.’
‘I’m not pleased to see you either. What do you want?’
Slim gazed out across the field toward the bump of Rough Tor in the distance.
‘This is going to sound pretty intrusive, but I want to ask you about Amos Birch.’
‘Pretty intrusive? Who do you think you are?’
‘I’m a private investigator, and I’m investigating the disappearance of Mr. Birch.’ As soon as the words were out, Slim felt a surge of embarrassment at his attempt to sound authoritative. Michael, clearly not falling for the trick, shook his head.
‘Private investigator, you say? So someone hired you, did they? Who might that be?’
‘If you don’t want to talk, that’s fine. But if you have nothing to hide, it won’t bother you, will it?’
Michael threw the spade aside and marched up to where Slim leaned on a field gate.
‘Why don’t you get lost?’ he said.
Slim held his ground. ‘Did you kill him, Michael?’
Michael balled his fists. ‘You’ve got a nerve, asking me that.’
Slim remembered the eyes of young soldiers after they’d made a combat kill, the way they would glaze when spoken to, a part of their mind forevermore elsewhere, looking down the barrel of a gun at a splash of colour behind a jerking head, or a tangle of rags lying in the street.
Michael’s eyes shone with anger, but there was no guilt. Slim didn’t want to consider being wrong, but he couldn’t see murderer in Michael’s eyes.
‘Did you?’
‘I had nothing to do with it.’
‘What about Celia?’
‘What about her?’
‘Did you know her well? Do you think she had anything to do with her father’s disappearance?’
Michael’s face was a thundercloud. He glared at Slim with undisguised hatred, but there was something else there too: regret.
‘You should stay out of people’s business. We don’t need your type round here, digging up the past.’
‘What is there to dig up, Michael? The skeletal remains of an old man’s body?’
Michael scowled. ‘It’s a figure of speech. If you don’t mind, I have work to do.’
Slim returned to where his bike lay on the grass verge, leaving Michael to finish clearing out a ditch beside a stile. As he lifted his bike, he turned back quickly, just quick enough to catch Michael doing the same thing.
There had been no murder in Michael’s eyes, but there had been enough knowing to ensure Slim would definitely be talking to him again.
19
After leaving Michael, Slim hiked up to the A39 and caught a Plymouth-bound bus to Tavistock. There, he made his way to Parkwood Close. Celia’s house was on a meandering terrace of 60s-era houses. It lacked the architectural beauty of the older part of town but was pleasant enough, too narrow for much traffic and with a leafy park across the street.
Slim bought a newspaper in a corner shop then sat on a bench which had a view of Celia’s front door through a screen of trees, idly scanning through pages of gossip and football reports as he waited for her to appear.
An hour later, having seen no one, he was almost done with the few interesting articles and had turned his attention to the growing tremble in his hands. He checked his watch. Half past five. It was almost late enough to be acceptable, so he gave in to his cravings and headed for the corner shop. A quart would be enough, perhaps, to keep him alert for a few more hours, and if he was careful, it might get him right through until bed.
He was halfway there, head down, hands in pockets and moving with a nervous desperation, when he almost bumped into a woman walking quickly the other way.
‘Oh, sorry.’
The woman glanced up then stepped around him, turning her eyes down, increasing her pace.
Slim’s heart jumped. Her age was about right. So was the kind of lingering but weathered attractiveness which might have once pulled men’s strings. Before he could get control of his tongue, he blurted: ‘Celia. Wait.’
She paused just long enough to tell him his hunch was right. She glanced back then shook her head, hurrying on. Slim remembered how he must look: gaunt, bruised, his eyes hollow from a lack of decent sleep.
‘Celia … Ms. Birch—wait, please. I don’t mean you any harm.’
She took a few steps, then stopped. She took a long breath as though a conversation with a stranger was a rare event, then slowly turned around, her eyes lifting. A bob of mousy brown hair was almost military-like in its accuracy, shadowing a square face which appeared lineless until she lifted her head enough for a nearby streetlight to catch it. Eyes that couldn’t stay still flicked from the road to the terrace back to Slim’s.
‘What do you want? How do you know my name?’
‘Ms. Birch … I didn’t mean to alarm you but … my name is Slim Hardy. This is going to sound stupid, but I’m a private investigator. I’ve been looking for your father.’
She frowned, cocking her head. ‘Why?’
‘Look, can we just talk?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Celia turned and walked away.
‘Ms. Birch—wait!’
‘This is harassment,’ she shouted back over her shoulder. ‘Don’t think I won’t call the police.’ To emphasise her point, she waved a mobile phone in the air as her heels clacked away along the pavement.
Slim hesitated. He had briefly seen the inside of one prison cell and had no intention of seeing the inside of another. Sometimes certain things went on when cameras were turned away. Forces personnel resented acts of violence between their own, and retaliated in their own particular style. Memories of the slap of the rubber hose on the back of his legs sometimes woke him at night, but this could be his only chance. If Celia ran, he might never find her again.
‘Ms. Birch … I want to know what happened to your father, Amos.’
Celia flapped a hand over her shoulder. ‘He abandoned us, that’s all. Happens every day, doesn’t it?’
Slim hurried to keep up as she increased her pace again.
‘And I also want to know about Charlotte.’
Celia stopped dead, Slim almost bumping into her. The bag she carried fell from one hand, her phone from the other.
In the distance a siren began to wail. Celia stood, hands dropping to her sides, looking up at the sky. Then, as she turned, Slim realised the sound was no siren. With gritted teeth, Celia kicked off her heels, scooped one up then ran at him, the shoe held up like a club.
‘Celia—’ Slim started, but it was too late. The hard flat square at the end of Celia’s heel swung toward his face.
20
‘I’m ex-military,’ Slim said, handing back Celia’s shoe as she sat up on the grass verge and wiped dirt off her blouse. ‘It’s been nearly twenty years, but they drilled us pretty well. Muscle memory. If you’d tried that with a gun, I’d have broken your arm.’
‘Do you want me to say thanks?’
Slim fell quiet. He looked at a clump of fresh daffodil leaves—the flowers still a few days off—as they swayed in the evening breeze.
‘I don’t know what I want,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why I’m here really, if I’m honest about it.’
‘Then why are you?’
Slim frowned. ‘It’s an addiction, isn’t it? It’s no different to the booze. Once I start, I can’t stop. I have to see it out, for better or … worse.’
‘And my father is your pet project? Your little holiday mystery? Honestly, most people just go to the beach.’
‘I tan badly. Rain and cold suit me better.’
For the first time, the hint of a smile appeared on Celia’s lips.
‘Yeah, me too.’ She sighed as she put her shoes back on. ‘So you’re ex-military? Why’d you quit?’
‘I didn’t quit. I got thrown out. “Dishonourable discharge” was thei
r pretty little label. I tried to kill someone.’
‘Isn’t that the whole point?’
Slim shrugged. ‘It depends on the circumstances. On this occasion, no. I jumped through their hoops, did my time, and ended up at the back of another unemployment queue. When you like a drink it’s not easy to hold down a job, however, so I figured I’d use some of what I learned in the military for private investigation.’
‘You’re not being very private about it.’
Slim grimaced. ‘On my last case I had a few problems, both with the people involved and the police. This is supposed to be a recuperation holiday, but I can’t just sit around and watch TV, or walk on the moor. I’m not that kind of guy. After a while it all starts to look the same.’
‘My father would have bit your head off for saying that about the moors. He loved living on the edge of that muddy shithole.’
‘Your father, right. When I heard about his disappearance it got me intrigued. I’m afraid I asked a few questions, many of which weren’t welcome. But I figured that since I’d already upset most of the residents of Penleven, so I might as well go for the jackpot and see if I could upset you too.’
‘Well, you’ve pulled it off.’
A hundred questions burned on Slim’s tongue, but he remembered something told to him by an old friend from the military who had worked as an interrogator during the Gulf War: sometimes silence is your greatest weapon. Questions are like missiles; they send people diving for cover. Stay quiet, give them time, and often your target will come out into the open.
‘So, what is so interesting about my father?’ she said at last, and Slim allowed himself an inward smile.
‘Everything. People don’t just disappear. They always go somewhere. They fall down a hole and die, or they run off and change their identity.’
‘Whatever he did, he did a good job of it. You really want to know what happened? He walked off into the night and never came back. We had no idea it was coming, none whatsoever. The police combed every inch of that moor but they found no trace of him. Some footprints, that’s all, but they lost his trail a few hundred metres from our house. Once you’re away from the stream there’s no mud, just that goddamn springy grass for miles and miles.’