If his father had been involved in that, of course. It was indeed a large leap of the imagination to align the replacement of a corroded wing with the killing of Bruce Tredwin. Could it have been mere coincidence? How should he go about finding out, ask his mother? Ask Uncle Gary? He shook his head. He’d have to tread carefully – emotions were running high since his father had died, and he couldn’t go around accusing his uncle of covering up for a crime.
George’s sister, Amelia, was due to head on home in a day or two, thank goodness. At least with her out of the way there’d be less bitterness in the house. He lay on the bed, the pieces of paper beside him, and put his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.
Christ, dad, what does all this mean?
He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew he was being roused from a deep slumber by his sister barging into the bedroom.
‘George! Come quick!’ she yelled.
He rubbed his eyes of sleep, his mind refusing to let go of what was proving to be a very relaxing snooze. First he’d had in ages and she goes and interrupts it. Bitch.
‘What the hell do you want, barging in on a guy like that?’ he groused.
‘Your uncles’ garage is on fire! They think your Uncle Robert is trapped inside!’
He was dressed and downstairs in minutes, tucking a shirt into his trousers as he ran to his car, his mother and sister diving into it with him.
‘Hurry!’ said his mother.
‘Get your foot down, in heaven’s name!’ blasted Amelia into his ear.
By the time they pulled up near the garage the old wooden office was all but engulfed in fire, lighting up the surrounding fields. A good many villagers had come to try and help, but had been pushed back by firemen, who were pumping gallons of water onto the roof of the garage. They stood helpless and overawed by the intensity of the flames as George and his mother and sister joined them.
‘Where’s Robert?’ his mother screamed. ‘Where’s Robert?’
Nobody was listening. She became hysterical and wanted to tear herself away from Amelia’s clutches to run to the flaming pyre.
‘I’m here, Cassie,’ said a frail, wavering voice from behind her. It was Robert Cowper, his frightened face blackened by smoke.
‘I thought you were dead!’ she said gratefully, and launched herself at her brother. He hugged her tightly.
‘Me, too, sis,’ he said.
‘What happened?’ said George. It looked like the firemen were quickly getting the blaze under control.
‘I was working late in the office…’ Robert began.
‘I’ve told you not to stay there late,’ chastised his sister, her relief quickly turning to anger. ‘What were you doing there at that time of night? Can’t you leave that business alone, just for once? I told you that place would be the death of you!’
‘The next thing I know is I smell smoke, then I see flames,’ Robert continued. ‘I was trapped for a while, but I managed to phone the fire brigade from the office. Then you…’ he added. He swallowed hard, rubbing his throat. ‘The smoke’s caused havoc with my breathing,’ he said. ‘I managed to bust out through the window, climb out. That’s when I cut my hand, on the glass.’ He signalled the damage by raising his fist. There was blood pouring from a cut. ‘They say they want me to go to hospital. An ambulance is on its way, but I’m OK, really I am.’
‘Oh, Robert!’ said George’s mother, staring at the fire. ‘All your hard work…’ Then concern flared in her eyes. ‘Where’s Gary? Where’s Gary?’
‘At home,’ reassured Robert. ‘You’ll never find him working late, you know that. He’s probably tucked up in bed.’
‘We ought to tell him,’ she said. ‘Who’s got a phone?’
Robert told her it was fine, to leave him be for a while. ‘The worrying thing is the firemen already think it’s deliberate. Arson.’
A police car with blue lights blazing pulled up near the fire truck. All eyes were drawn to it.
‘What do you mean deliberate?’ said George, the concept unthinkable.
‘Like I said,’ continued Robert, ‘they think someone poured petrol around the place and set light to it, with me inside.’
‘You can’t be serious?’ said Amelia. ‘Who would do something like that, especially in Petheram?’ Her eyes widened. ‘That’s attempted murder!’
‘Maybe they didn’t know I was inside,’ said Robert. ‘There’s no one I know would like to finish me off. Except that guy who was dissatisfied with his car’s re-spray.’ He gave a hollow chuckle.
‘That’s not funny,’ said George’s mother, hugging her brother again.
‘Adam Tredwin’s place was attacked, too,’ said George tentatively.
‘What do you mean?’ said Robert.
‘Someone smashed his windows, threw petrol onto his van and set it alight.’
‘Really?’ said his mother. ‘You never told me.’
‘Adam didn’t want a fuss…’ George said, shrugging. ‘Do you think the attacks are connected?’
‘These sorts of thing just don’t happen in Petheram!’ said Amelia, breaking down into tears. She had to be comforted by her Uncle Robert, who looked back at the fiery ruins of his livelihood.
‘Guess I’ll have to retire now,’ he said flatly. But there was no humour in his eyes.
It was as all attention was turned to the fire that George overheard Robert talking quietly to his sister. He wasn’t meant to hear, that much was clear, the way Robert came close to her ear.
‘I saw her,’ he said. ‘Or thought I did. Outside the window in the dark.’
‘The same woman?’ said George’s mother.
Robert raised a shoulder. ‘I dunno. Could be the same one. I just don’t know…’
‘Did you say woman?’ said George.
Both of them stared at him. ‘What?’ said Robert.
‘Did you say woman? Did you say there was a woman hanging about near the garage?’
‘No, George, we said no such thing,’ said his mother. ‘Come on, Robert, we have to see to that cut.’
17
Swallowing Pride
‘Why do you hate me so much?’ he asked her bluntly.
Amelia was taken aback by the question. It was early morning and the two of them were sat alone in the kitchen clutching cups of lukewarm tea. Their mother had finally turned in, exhausted.
No one had got much sleep that night. Robert had been taken to hospital, and George, Amelia and their mother had all followed in George’s car. Gary Cowper turned up at the hospital an hour later, distraught at the news of his brother’s near miss with death. A few hours later Robert Cowper was discharged, being told by the police that the brief questioning conducted in the hospital would be followed up by another visit from them very soon. They were taking the entire affair very seriously. The garage was being cordoned off as a potential crime scene until they had confirmation from the investigations into the actual cause of the fire. But there seemed to be little doubt; someone had deliberately set out to burn the Cowper garage down, and possibly take a Cowper along with it.
‘What are you talking about?’ Amelia returned. ‘I don’t hate you.’
‘Yes you do,’ said George Lee, taking a sip from the cup and grimacing at the taste of the cold liquid. ‘You hate me, just like my dad hated me, just like mother hates me.’
She shook her head tiredly, turned her head away from him to look at the early-morning sunlight sneaking in through the window and landing in a hot strip across the sink. ‘You’ve just got some kind of complex. You’ve always had one.’
‘There you go again. You can’t help yourself, can you? You’ve got to be negative. Come on, sis, why the hell do you hate me? What have I ever done wrong to you?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous…’
‘Is it because I nearly killed our mother?’
She stared hard at him. It was difficult to define what she was thinking. ‘Don’t be ridiculous…’ she said again,
quieter this time. ‘I’m going to bed, try and grab some sleep.’
‘You were what, thirteen-years-old at the time, when I was born? I used to think it was because you were jealous, you know, ordinary sibling rivalry, the older kid getting its nose pushed out of joint by the arrival of a new baby. But as I grew older I realised you couldn’t be jealous; both mum and dad showered you with love, treated you like their very own princess, and yet with me…’ He trailed off into silence. ‘And you joined them in their dislike of me.’
‘I did no such thing,’ she said. But her jaw muscles worked away at a thought that bothered her. ‘I remember the worry on dad’s face, all through the pregnancy,’ she said. ‘And I remember the day she went into hospital to have you, as plain as day. I was so scared for her. So scared that I’d never get her back, because everyone knew how close she’d come to dying when she had me, though no one ever spoke about it openly. They tried to keep the danger – the possibility – away from me, but I was old enough to work things out for myself, to see the concern. And then we got the call. You’d had to be delivered by caesarean, but mum was still desperately ill. They said we had to say our goodbyes. Prepare for the worst. She wouldn’t last the night out.’ She sighed heavily and avoided looking at him. ‘Maybe I did blame you for that. Maybe dad did too, a little. And you turned out to be a weird little kid, what with your invisible friend Cameron.’
‘That’s hardly surprising, is it? A kid who creates someone to love him when those who should love him wished he’d never been born.’
‘I never hated you,’ she said, her voice low.
‘I don’t get it. Why? Why did she become pregnant again when she knew she’d had it so bad with you?’
Amelia raised a brow slightly. ‘I don’t know, I’ve asked myself that over the years.’
‘They had access to contraceptives – it wasn’t the Dark Ages, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Accidents happen,’ she said.
George chewed thoughtfully at his lower lip. ‘Yeah, so now I’m an accident. One way or another they never really wanted me.’
‘For God’s sake, George, stop being so self-centred. Uncle Robert nearly died tonight – last night – their business has been razed to the ground, and yet here you are again, thinking only of yourself.’ She got up from the table.
‘Why were you and mum so eager to burn dad’s papers?’
She paused, one hand on the table. ‘It was mum. She wanted it doing.’
‘Why does she want to get rid of it all so quickly?’ he pressed.
‘I don’t know, do I? She’s just upset, that’s all. She’s grieving the loss of her husband. People do strange things at such times.’
‘Do you know dad was sending regular chunks of money to someone somewhere?’
She frowned, lowered herself down into the chair again. ‘What money?’
‘Monthly amounts. Regular as clockwork. Rising with inflation, too.’
‘He was probably paying off a bill or something.’
‘For twenty years or more? And from an account he kept secret from our mother?’
‘You’re mistaken, George. Now is not the time to be fabricating some cock-and-bull story. Just leave the fiction back at home, eh?’ She rose again. ‘He was a good man. A very good and honest man. Don’t start to blacken his name now that he’s dead.’
‘You remember the time Bruce Tredwin got knocked down and killed?’ he said.
She blinked, studying him. ‘Not really.’
‘You’d be about twenty, twenty-one, wouldn’t you?’
‘So?’
‘So you’re telling me you can’t remember a death in the village? Those kinds of things rarely happen and yet you can’t remember it?’
‘I was married at twenty, remember? I’d already moved out. And what if I do remember? It happened such a long time ago. It’s dead and gone, forgotten.’ She strode over to the kitchen door. ‘I’m going to bed.’
‘Was dad involved?’
She froze to the spot, paused briefly and then turned around, her face an angry mask. She pointed a shaking finger at him. ‘You horrid man! He’s hardly cold in his grave and you start to speak utter drivel like this! You have a perverted, poisonous little mind, George, just like that character Cameron you used to pretend to hang about with. Well I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you’re grown up now, George; you can’t pretend that it’s Cameron speaking anymore. It’s you, you nasty piece of work!’ She opened the door, made as if to walk out of the room and then, without looking back, stopped and said, ‘And for the record, I suppose I really do hate you, George.’ And slammed the door on him.
Weston-Super-Mare was enjoying a prolonged run of good weather, the tourist season at its highest. The traditional British seaside town was packed with families sitting on the beach, even though it was late evening, catching as much of the long summer days as possible. They were still taking donkey rides, queuing up to buy fish and chips or hamburgers, or taking lazy strolls along the front. The tide was out, so there was a huge stretch of waterlogged beach for kids to play on. Their excited shouts and screams brought back mixed memories for George Lee, as did the tempting smell of donuts sweetening the air, tugging at his taste buds and making his mouth water. Weston had been a regular holiday destination for the Lee family. Easily accessible, not far to travel to. Anywhere further than fifty miles was out of the question. They didn’t travel far, the Lees. Neither did anyone else from Petheram.
George could still point out the flat they rented, if he had a mind to, back then run by an austere-looking woman called Mrs Bagby, the business taken over by her equally austere-looking daughter when the old woman popped her clogs. George smiled. That was a particularly northern phrase – to pop your clogs. He’d learnt it when he finally left Petheram to go to university. The factory workers in the old days used to wear wooden-soled clogs, the hardest-wearing form of footwear. The pop-shop was the pawn shop. A person’s clogs were quickly pawned when they died, because there was always a need for money and not many ways of getting it. Pawn shops were making a big comeback, he noticed, strolling down the line of shops in the town, for this was essentially a working-class town with working-class visitors, and the working classes were the ones to feel the latest economic downturn the keenest. Except everyone was saying there was no working class anymore.
Bollocks, he thought as he made his way to the theatre. Like there were no more alien abductions, only experiences. It served some higher purpose to imagine it so, he thought, wondering why he was getting so heated up over nothing. Was it the memory of his bitter conversation with Amelia still worming insidiously through his skull, making everything appear bleaker?
I still say you should kill her, said Cameron.
Maybe I will, one day, thought George, standing briefly outside the small theatre and looking at the gaudy posters on the walls outside, the rows of coloured light bulbs.
I don’t mean in a novel, said Cameron.
What are you saying?
No one would miss her. She’s an arsehole. They all are. She admitted she hated you.
That’s no reason to murder the woman, George defended silently.
I’d murder her. The bitch.
George Lee ignored his conflicting thoughts and went inside the theatre. It seemed curiously deserted.
‘I thought there’d be a queue or something,’ said George to the uniformed woman standing on the plush red-carpeted stairs. She looked bored to hell.
‘The Talbot show’s coming to the end of its season,’ she said vaguely, tearing the ticket in two and handing him the mutilated stub. She pointed. Through there,’ she indicated a door, to the right at the top of the stairs. ‘Enjoy the show,’ she added, with scant enthusiasm.
There were plenty of empty seats, he noticed, taking his place. The lights went down and a man in a crisp black suit strode confidently onto the stage, followed by an attractive woman wearing a figure-hugging electric-blue dress that shimmere
d under the stage lights. George Lee sat back and watched as William Talbot went through his routine. He encouraged members of the audience to come up on stage and be hypnotised, and variously they drove pedal cars and thought they were driving Lamborghinis, making noises like a roaring engine; or they were the Prime Minister and his cabinet, making decisions about whether or not to put a tax on hair length and breathing. And so on. In the end George groaned inwardly, embarrassed at the almost cruel exploitation of the willing but unwitting subjects for the gratification of a few low-minded individuals who guffawed and clapped noisily when it was over.
He noticed how William Talbot took his final bow with a face caked in aloof contempt. Part of the act? George couldn’t be certain. And had his body wavered just a little too much, like a man who had taken more than a shot or two of Dutch courage? Maybe that was his imagination. You’d have to get me drunk to get me up there, he thought.
It didn’t take long for the audience to drain away, satisfied for but a moment or two before seeking out fresh delights, like a hotdog or two or three, or a go on the slot machines. It all left George feeling slightly uncomfortable and dirty, and unconsciously he brushed his arms of imagined dust and fluff. He didn’t know why.
He persuaded a young man, who was manhandling a large painted stage prop of a country house, to let him sneak backstage to the dressing rooms. Pretended he was a reporter and flashed him a store discount card as his reporter’s ID, which the young man never checked. It cost him a tenner, though, as it wasn’t usually allowed without the manager’s permission, which, the young man assured, would have cost him at least fifteen pounds and a nice spread in the paper about the theatre to boot.
Backstage was pretty basic to say the least. Grotty, is what George would call it. He knocked at a cream-painted plywood-fronted door – or it might have been white paint gone cream over the years – and heard a gruff voice mumble something indecipherable. The door was opened by William Talbot’s female assistant, who, up close, didn’t look half as young or half as attractive as she did on stage. Her makeup was cracking and sweat had smudged her eyeshadow. She had a paper towel to her cheek, wiping off the rouge. She smiled sweetly, though, on seeing George.
FLINDER'S FIELD (a murder mystery and psychological thriller) Page 14