During Ivan’s monologue Suzie regained her equilibrium. She was not in the least bit phased by his demands and was plotting her own course. She asked in a conversational tone, ‘So where does the fisherman Trevor Mullings fit into all this, Mr Youlen?’
‘He didn’t want that pompous arse Morrison digging the dirt, so ’e tried to put the frighteners on ’im in Zennor and had ’im followed to St Austell. Trevor walked into the sea with that piss-artist Hector and wasn’t too keen on the boys in blue finding out – what with all the old cases being reopened from them days. Besides, no one wanted the piss-artist to drown.’
‘And how does Mullings’s new-found religious zeal square with that?’
‘Oh, that was red herrings.’ At this Ivan roared an odious laugh that originated from deep within the folds of his well-fed belly. ‘Red herrings from Trevor Mullings, the fisherman!’ His laughter increased and his face reddened to rival a ripe tomato, while the others watched in silence, not finding the joke remotely amusing. Estelle, recently seconded to Ivan’s cause, appeared alarmed – but he wasn’t finished.
‘He’s in another place, but I mustn’t carp on about it or you might put on some kipper feet and skate over there. You can’t miss him with his mullet. You see, he hasn’t really caught God, but I’m sure he still catches cod!’ With this witty tour de force Ivan nearly fell off his chair. But then, like the Joker in Batman, he swiftly turned deadly serious. His face looked contorted with hate. ‘So you has a choice. Either you coughs all the readies or Lady Bollocks-Chops here does what she just told her daughter.’
Suzie looked so furious at the suggestion she was from the same bloodline as Estelle from Hell – as she and her brother used to call their father’s ex-wife – that Danny feared she might lose control altogether. What especially troubled him was seeing Estelle whisper in Suzie’s ear. He knew how volatile his friend could be and demanded of the elderly woman, ‘What did you say just to her?’
‘Never mind, Danny,’ said Suzie briskly. ‘We’ll consider your proposal, Mr Youlen. Mr Galvin and I will go outside for a short while. I’m sure you’ll grant us a few minutes.’
‘Well, don’t be too bloody long. Offers get timed out around here, you know.’
‘We won’t.’
Outside Suzie revealed the gist of Estelle’s threat. ‘Apparently the old bag has a doctor friend who’s going to spill the beans about Father in The Lancet.’ She looked distraught. All these years she had protected her father’s name, and, as Grant had discovered, it was this that she cared most about; it defined her life. The thought of her father’s reputation being severely tarnished now, even more than twelve years after his passing, filled her with horror.
‘What the hell do we do?’ asked Danny in a somewhat panicky voice. He knew he had no grip of the situation, nothing he could offer by way of a plan. He was now very frightened.
‘Well, I’m not going to risk shooting her and having a murder charge against me.’
‘No, but I might.’
‘No, Danny. Don’t even think about it. We guessed we were walking into a trap. We now know what it is: blackmail from Youlen using a threat from Estelle. I suggest we leave them for half an hour, let them sweat on it. We’ll have a coffee by the harbour over there to collect our thoughts and decide what action to take.’ As ever, Suzie took the lead, and there was no mistaking her tone. She meant business, whatever the consequences. Danny acquiesced without further discussion, feeling like a dog being led by his master.
41
PRESENT DAY
Caroline and Grant pulled into the Park and Pay outside Mevagissey. As they alighted from their car they were greeted by seagulls screeching overhead. The cool autumnal air was in sharp contrast to their mood; Caroline’s rant had seen to that. A pleasant breeze swayed through the palms and pines and seemed to escort them as they set off towards Ivan’s cottage. They heard the deep thrum of a ferry’s engine, and as soon as they turned the corner the harbour came into view. They didn’t pass Suzie and Danny walking back towards them, although they missed each other only by minutes. Their conversation had become a little stilted after Caroline’s outburst. There was also now every chance of her provoking an ugly confrontation with Suzie, a prospect Grant did not relish.
The two approached the open door of Ivan’s cottage. Like Suzie and Danny before them, they were met by music with arresting and macabre lyrics. ‘The killer lives inside me; yes, I can feel him move …’ Neither recognized the song, but Grant, sensing some dark message, decided to ring Justyn.
‘Hi, Justyn, can you listen to this …’
‘Give me a break,’ came the weary reply. ‘This is VDGG again.’
‘What do you mean, “again”? And what’s VDGG?’
‘Oh, the games people play …’
‘No, seriously. What do you mean by “again”?’
‘Well, I’ve just had Desperate Dan on the phone telling me that he and Suzie were outside Youlen’s cottage listening to the lyrics of Van der Graaf Generator’s “Death in the Sea” and so on from forty-odd years ago.’
‘Thanks, mate,’ said Grant, catching on. ‘Speak soon.’
He turned to Caroline. ‘Suzie and Danny heard the same music when they arrived. It’s a band from the early 1970s. We must be wary. I wonder where they are. Inside, d’you think?’
Caroline, who had turned pale, agreed to wait a while outside the door. As the track finished they heard voices and waited for the next song to start, but no more music was forthcoming. They listened intently and could make out two distinct voices. One Grant recognized as that of Ivan; the other he didn’t know, but it was clearly a woman’s voice, sounding frail and almost ghostly as if from another era.
They could make out some words. She was complaining about someone telling people how to run their lives. ‘He told me I was worthless, but it was my money that got him going in the first place, and you know how he portrayed me in the court case – as a drunk and a slut!’ The voice trailed off.
Suddenly Ivan was standing on the threshold of his cottage.
‘Well, well, what have we here? Another Awayday from the Smoke. So what did you do? Take a pound-stretcher from Paddington?’
Grant and Caroline, taken aback by Ivan’s hostile tone, looked at one another for support before Grant recovered his composure. ‘Well, hello, Ivan. How nice to see you again. I recall how charming you were the last time we met at – where was it? – the Lost Gardens of –’
‘Shut it! I don’t need any more of your pompous crap. Are you here to meet your friends?’
‘They may be, but I’m here to meet you, Mr Youlen.’ A low, menacing voice came from behind Grant and Caroline. It was cold and calculating, and it was unmistakably Suzie’s. She and Danny approached the door of number 85 once more, but this time she was holding a gun in her hands trained on Ivan’s forehead. An engine could be heard chugging in the harbour, and the seagulls decided this was the moment to increase their screeching overhead.
‘Holy shit!’ shouted Ivan, moving smartly back inside his cottage, shutting and bolting the door. His old straw hat fell on to the doorstep, blown by the draft of the slamming door.
They heard an eerie scream, almost certainly from Estelle, inside the dwelling; it sounded like a cry of shock. Just then Ivan appeared at the first-floor window brandishing a twelve-bore shotgun aimed at Suzie’s head. All four stood outside, rooted to the spot, suppressing an instinct to run for cover. There was no mistaking the gravity of the situation. Suzie raised her gun towards Ivan at the window, but before either could fire their attention was diverted by the arrival of a petite blonde hurrying towards the cottage. It was Ivan’s partner, Julie, a hotel beautician, who had returned home in her lunch-hour.
‘What the …’
‘It’s all right, Julie. Let me deal with these grockles. Just back off. It’ll be fine. Hunky-dory.’
‘And don’t call the police.’ Ivan and Suzie uttered the words almost simultaneously. Momen
tarily each was surprised by the other’s command echoing their own. However, they kept their guns trained. Suzie raised her eyebrows as if to indicate nothing had changed; Ivan resembled a disturbed wild dog.
As Julie backed out of the small square Suzie seized the initiative. ‘I want that old crow out here right now, or someone will get hurt.’
‘What about my money?’ bellowed Ivan.
‘You’ll get your money, Mr Youlen. Just give us Estelle!’
Ivan weighed up his options. He decided to play ball, ordering her out of the cottage. ‘Yeah, all right. Get out there, you old bird!’ He almost kicked Estelle down the stairs from where she had been crouching next to him, so certain had she been that Suzie would fire a bullet at her head. Estelle shot a look of disbelief and horror at Ivan, who cruelly teased, ‘You’re only useful as bait. I don’t foresee a long-term relationship. What are you: a hundred next birthday?’
The door opened slowly and the fragile, wizened figure walked out into the glare of the sunlight. Her pink-tinged white hair looked as if it had just been toasted. Meanwhile Ivan maintained sentry duty on the first floor.
‘You shouldn’t treat an old lady like this,’ she squeaked pitifully. No one was sure to whom she was talking, but any sympathy the onlookers had soon evaporated as she launched into an onslaught of her own. ‘OK, Suzie, or should I say Suzanna?’ she continued in the commanding tone Suzie had always loathed. ‘You’ve had your fun, but you know your father wouldn’t have amounted to anything if it hadn’t been for me and my patronage. I paid for him to get through medical school, bought our first flat …’ She paused to see what reaction she was getting.
‘Go on,’ said Suzie grimly.
‘He was a fake, a complete fake. Did you know his real name was Richard Hurd, which rhymes rather well with what he was, don’t you agree? But he had to be grander, so he changed it by deed poll.’
‘Enough,’ Suzie shouted, levelling her Colt 45 at the old woman standing four yards away. ‘Now tell my friends what you whispered to me,’ she ordered in a voice so low as to be practically inaudible.
‘I’m going to get The Lancet to publish the truth about your father, how he played God, experimenting not just with animals but – and here’s the headline for the esteemed medical journal – with humans, too!’ Estelle’s face glowed with triumph.
‘Say that again and you’re dead,’ pronounced Suzie, spitting the words. Her voice remained low, but there was no doubting the threat.
‘She’s right, Suzie.’ All were taken aback as they turned round in disbelief to see that Caroline had spoken.
‘Oh, Caroline, per-lease.’
‘No, Suzie. He did play God with humans.’
Suzie addressed Caroline but continued to aim her gun and cold stare at Estelle. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, you stupid girl. We’ve all got our own stories to tell.’ She noted how Estelle was enjoying the interruption.
‘You didn’t see him.’ Caroline’s voice was distraught. ‘You didn’t see him, my father, with metal plates attached to either side of his head, straps across his forehead and under his chin. You didn’t see him in the hospital from Satan’s own backyard. You didn’t see him bite the wire brace as great jolts of electricity shot through his body.’
‘So he had electroshock therapy. So did thirty thousand other people in 1970s’ Britain. Get over it and move on. Don’t cause a scene now, Caroline. You’re being rather tiresome.’
‘No, I won’t move on. I will cause a scene. How dare you! How dare you! Your father recommended the treatment and – I later learnt from the doctor – helped to supervise it.’
The sharp crack of gunshot echoed far beyond the narrow cobbled street. No one in Mevagissey could have missed it. The deathly silence that followed was surreal. Even the seagulls went quiet. Just before she fell to the ground Estelle had been grinning from ear to ear, with a smirk so satisfied it further inflamed Suzie’s emotions. But the shot hadn’t killed her; she had simply fainted at the sound.
The bullet was buried deep in the right temple of Suzie Hughes-Webb. She had turned the gun on herself and was already gone from this world. Danny, Grant and Caroline froze in stunned silence, aghast and oblivious to Estelle rising slowly to her feet. Ivan appeared at the front door, still brandishing his twelve-bore. He took in the scene with a look of incredulity. From across the square came an urgent cry of ‘Suzie!’
Only Grant recognized the great bear of a man running towards them as fast as his frame would allow, nearly tripping over the corpse of his beloved before crouching down and lifting her head to see the fatal wound at the side of her skull.
‘Oh no, oh please God, no, no! Please God! No!’ It was Suzie’s husband, Frank. Grant approached him but was rebuffed.
‘Why?’ yelled Frank, as he cradled Suzie in his arms. ‘Why?’
Words failed the others, but Danny spoke for Suzie. ‘Estelle,’ he spat, pointing an accusing finger at the old lady leaning against the door frame, the only support she could find. ‘Meet Estelle Hughes-Webb, yes, the first Mrs Richard Hughes-Webb. She was going to trash Richard’s reputation once and for all. She was involved with this pathetic specimen of human flesh here, Mr Ivan Youlen, in plotting a form of blackmail whereby she would reveal, through a doctor friend, details of Richard’s experimental work on humans to find a cure for heart disease. In this way she was seeking to denigrate his pioneering breakthroughs. So what if he used humans as guinea-pigs? Her doctor pal was going to get all this published in The Lancet.’ At this point, Danny, close to emotional collapse himself, realized that Frank was not listening.
‘I came as soon as I could, Suzie,’ wailed Frank, as grief overwhelmed him. ‘I came as soon as I could,’ he repeated loudly. He elevated her, supporting her upper body until it was clear, even to him, that she was way beyond the clouds and the stars already.
Danny had phoned Frank the night before they left London, as Suzie had unnerved him as well as Grant with her suggestion that Trevor Mullings ‘must be silenced’. Frank knew his wife had access to her late father’s gun in England and feared that she might use it. He had caught the first flight out of Cape Town the following evening and arrived at Heathrow at six in the morning. He took the eight-fifteen train from Paddington and arrived in St Austell shortly after midday, hiring a car there. He was devastated to have arrived at the scene seconds too late, as he was convinced that his police experience and knowledge of his wife would have enabled him to disarm her in time.
Grant called the police. Almost immediately the constabulary’s cars could be heard, sirens wailing, rushing through the country lanes towards Mevagissey. They arrived almost at once, startling the assembled group, who didn’t realize that the police had been summoned by one of Julie’s workplace colleagues who had dialled 999 on hearing of the scene Julie had witnessed. On learning of the presence of firearms, the police required no prompting to race to the cottage.
Grant suddenly felt nauseous and retreated down the cobbled path to the harbour, where he threw up, before recovering quickly. Spotting that he had a signal on his phone he called Brigit. He broke down, and it was some while before she could calm him down.
Tony, Suzie’s brother, arrived in London the following week for the inquest. It didn’t take long for the Crown Prosecution Service to conclude that it was a case of aggravated suicide. Proceedings were initiated for the arrest of Estelle Hughes-Webb and Ivan Youlen for conspiring to blackmail, but Suzie’s friends in the gallery were not over-exercised by this development. In the event, Estelle was released with no charges being brought. What interested Grant rather more was the look on Tony’s face as the details of the scene at Mevagissey were played out during the legal proceedings. It was written large that there were family secrets known only to the Hughes-Webb family.
It occurred to Grant that Danny may have been party to a few of these secrets, since, after all, he had been engaged to Suzie. Grant looked across from the aisle first at the forlorn figure of Frank, his fra
me hunched forward; he looked numb and possibly sedated. He then glanced at Danny to his right, who was crying. As the proceedings concluded, Grant put an arm round his friend’s shoulder and helped him out of the stuffy courtroom into the bracing morning air.
Once outside in the bright autumn sunshine the four of them gathered together as Tony, Danny and Grant arranged to meet for dinner that evening at a quiet restaurant off the King’s Road in Chelsea. Frank made his apologies, saying he couldn’t face a gathering of any sort; he was returning to Cape Town as soon as possible.
Grant, for his part, was caught in a cauldron of emotions – from guilt at Suzie’s suicide to anticipation at talking to her brother that night, who he guessed might have some significant revelations to disclose.
42
PRESENT DAY
At dinner that night the three men were initially subdued. Justyn had asked if he could join them, but Grant was concerned that Tony might feel overwhelmed if they arrived mob-handed. The last thing he wanted was to risk putting him off talking freely, as he suspected that this gathering might be his one chance to hear the full story.
He placated Justyn by saying that the two would meet up for a drink later that evening at Justyn’s favoured West End club or his flat in Maida Vale. Brigit, meanwhile, had no problem with the old friends getting together on their own.
‘It must have been Estelle appearing like that and winding her up that sent Suzie over the edge,’ started Tony.
‘But she had gone to Cornwall with a gun,’ countered Grant.
‘Well, so had I,’ added Danny, which came as a shock to Tony but not to Grant.
They turned to study Danny closely for a moment before Tony inquired, ‘Why?’
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