Smoke and Mirrors: The next instalment of the riveting Marnie Walker series

by Leo McNeir

  The boat looked about the same length as Sally Ann or Thyrsis. All other details were impossible to make out. It seemed to be black or dark grey, the shape camouflaged against the dim background of the fields and trees beyond the canal. She looked towards the stern as it broke clear of Thyrsis, but there too she was deceived. The steerer was almost invisible and seemed to be dressed entirely in black. In seconds the strange craft passed noiselessly behind Sally Ann and out of view. Danny began breathing normally again. Turning, she hurried back to the office barn and locked the door behind her.

  “Everything all right?” Anne called down from the attic. “Did you find it?”

  “Yeah. No problem.”

  “Shower’s all yours. I’ve put a towel out for you on the stool with your pyjamas.”

  “Thanks.” Danny made a big effort not to look at the hook in the ceiling beam. Sitting at Anne’s desk to slip off her shoes, she called over towards the ladder. “Anne? Can I ask you something about boats?”

  “Sure.”

  “When you travel at night, are you supposed to put lights on, like a car?”

  There was a pause while Anne considered the question. “I think most people put on running lights, like side lights, a red one on the left, a green one on the right.”

  “What about headlights?”

  “I’m not sure. We never really do much travelling at night. I think a headlight would show you where you’re going, but it might spoil your night vision for what’s around you.”

  “Yeah. That makes sense.”

  By the time Danny had finished downstairs and climbed the ladder, Anne was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed feeling the back of her hair.

  “It’s the one advantage of having fine hair like mine. You can towel it dry in minutes.”

  Danny patted her mop of curls. “Tell me about it.”

  “D’you want a drink or anything? There’s fizzy water or fruit juice in the fridge downstairs.”

  “No, I’m fine. I’ve put the boat keys on your desk. Is that all right?”

  “Sure. What was all that about boats travelling at night?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “You asked me about headlights, you know, when you came back from Sally.”

  “Oh, that was nothing.”

  Something in Danny’s tone sparked Anne’s interest. She might have let it pass, except that her friend hastily knelt down and began fiddling with the sleeping bag on the camp bed. Was she avoiding eye-contact?

  “That was a funny question, Danny. I mean, why did you suddenly think of boats using lights?”

  “I just did.”

  “Did you see a boat going by?”

  “Yeah.”

  “With no lights on?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Danny, look. I don’t mean to interrogate you, but you seem somehow spooked.”

  Danny sat up and looked across at Anne. “Not really. It’s just … I dunno … I’ve heard some weird things today. Then, I go to fetch my bag and this strange thing happened. This boat came by.”

  “What was strange about it?”

  “At first, I could hear it coming, but not see it. Peculiar. D’you know what I mean? It was like there, but not there.”

  “It might’ve been a generator on another boat. That can sometimes sound like an engine – well, it is an engine – but quieter running than most boat diesels.”

  “No, Anne, this was a boat. I saw it, sort of, anyway. It went by when I was going into the spinney. It was really weird, black, or very dark all over, no lights on, very slow. Whoever was steering it was, like, the same colour as the boat, all in black.

  Danny was no longer looking at Anne but focusing on the images in her head. When Anne spoke, her voice seemed to come from far away.

  “A stealth narrowboat.” It was little more than a whisper.

  “Yes.” Danny smiled. “Yes, that’s a good way of –” She noticed Anne’s expression and stopped. “What’s up?”

  “Danny, what else did you see? Did you see its name? Did you get a look at the steerer? What did he look like?”

  “I told you, it was all dark, no lights or anything. I could only just make out … no, wait a minute. There was something. When it went by, I think some light came from a window on Thyrsis, just for a second, a touch of colour. Yes. I think the steerer may’ve had blonde hair.”

  “Which way was it travelling, north or south?”

  “Er …”

  “Left or right as you face the canal?”

  “Left.”

  Anne’s reaction took Danny by surprise. She leapt from the bed, pulled on her trainers and scrambled down the wall-ladder, still in her pyjamas. Anne was out through the office barn door before Danny could speak. Minutes passed while Danny waited. She was on the brink of going off in search of her friend when she heard the door open again and Anne climbed the ladder, panting.

  “Sorry about that, Danny.”

  Anne flopped onto the bed, breathing heavily. There were twigs in her hair and a thorn stuck in her pyjamas at the shoulder.

  “What’s going on, Anne? You look as if you’ve seen a …”

  Chapter 7

  Whizz-bang

  Danny knew it was morning. A thin crack of light was showing in the narrow slit that was the attic’s window. She rolled onto her back and yawned. Instead of the troubled and restless night she had expected, she had fallen asleep as soon as Anne turned out the lamps. She listened. Through the thick stone walls of the barn no sounds penetrated from outside. More strangely, she could not hear Anne breathing, even though her friend was only a few feet away.

  “Anne?” Danny whispered.

  Turning sideways she found her watch on the floor and squinted at its face. Just before seven. She had never woken so early. Struggling out of the sleeping bag, she sat up and looked across to the bed. The covers were thrown back; it was empty. In a louder voice she called down through the hatch.

  “Anne? Are you there?”

  No reply. Danny climbed down the wall-ladder, crossed to the kitchen alcove and switched on the kettle. As it began rattling, she checked out the shower room on the other side. The shower looked as she had left it the night before. She knocked on the door of the loo before entering.

  The previous night’s conversation came back to her in snatches. At first Anne had been evasive. But when Danny asked outright if she had gone looking for the mysterious boat, Anne had just nodded, pulling a thorn slowly out of her shoulder, gritting her teeth. A tiny bloodstain had spread round the hole in the pyjama top where the thorn had come through. She had begun rubbing it.

  “So did you find it?” Danny had asked.

  “It had gone too far, at least too far to catch up with in the dark. If it didn’t tie up, it could be a couple of miles away by now.”

  “Whose boat is it, Anne?”

  “Until I see it, I can’t know for certain.”

  “But?”

  “It might belong to someone I know, or rather knew.”

  Danny had shown her impatience. “I guessed that much.”

  She had worried that the explanation would be as creepy as the conversation over lunch. Yet when she had pressed Anne, it wasn’t so strange after all. If the steerer of the strange boat was the person Anne thought it was, then this was about some boy Anne had known. That was familiar territory. Stories about boyfriends, Danny could handle. Anne really had grown up a lot since she had left school. Perhaps she had even crept out once Danny was asleep to spend the night with the boyfriend on his boat!

  Danny washed and climbed up to the attic to dress. Climbing back down, she noticed something different about Anne’s desk. From one of the drawers, the corner of a folder was sticking out and had prevented it from closing properly. Danny was pulling the drawer open to push the folder into place, when her attention was drawn to a photograph protruding from under the flap. She slipped it out.

  It was a black and white photo, but not an old one. The s
ubject was three black boys, teenagers with dreadlocks, standing beside a child, a little fair-haired girl of about six or seven. One of the boys was holding her hand, and they were all grinning at the camera. What could this be?

  Danny drew out more photos. They were a curious mixture: crowds of children in what looked like a playground; children’s faces in the windows of buses; parents waving; a mob of skinheads running down an alleyway. Not exactly holiday snaps. Was anything normal these days where Anne was concerned? She turned the photos over. Each one had a number pencilled on the back and several had a caption, “Summer School’, in neat writing. At the bottom of the pile were three pictures of men dressed alike in black shirts and trousers; one had an arm-band in a lighter colour. On the back of those picture the caption was “New Force’. In the bottom right-hand corner of every photograph were the initials, DS.

  DS. Danny Sullivan sat staring at her own initials and felt her blood run cold.

  *

  Marnie and Ralph did not normally make love in the morning, so that Sunday was an exception. The day had started as usual with Marnie getting up first and using the bathroom. On an impulse she decided to take a shower, which was also not the norm; she tended to shower at night when Ralph was around. It must have been the season for impulses. If it came as a surprise it was not unwelcome, when Marnie was shampooing her hair with eyes shut tight and felt a sudden rush of cool air as the door to the shower opened and quickly closed. She gasped from the cold as she was bumped in the confined space and her back touched the wall tiles.

  “Oh, sorry.” A quiet, polite, distinguished voice. “Is this shower occupied? I couldn’t see with all the steam.”

  “Could that be why you’re having to use your hands to find your way around?” Marnie twisted her face under the showerhead to rinse off the suds.

  “Absolutely! What other reason could there be?”

  “Of course. Well, just pretend I’m not here. I wouldn’t want to spoil your shower.”

  “That’s very considerate of you, but easier said than done.”

  The fact that various parts of their anatomies were colliding in the narrow cubicle only served to underline the point.

  “Oops!” Marnie lurched as something clattered to the floor with a splash.

  “What’s up?”

  “I’ve dropped the shampoo bottle.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “I’ll have to bend down to pick it up. In this place that’s not going to be easy.”

  Ralph sighed as if all the worries of the world were on his shoulders. “Never mind. We’ll manage somehow …”

  *

  Danny was in the loft packing her bag for later when she heard a car arriving. She was hovering over the gap in the floor by the wall-ladder when the door to the office barn opened. It closed with a bang followed by a muffled curse.

  “Damn!”

  “Hi Anne.”

  “Sorry, Danny. Hope I didn’t wake you.

  “No, it’s okay, I’m up and about. Where’ve you been, jogging?”

  Anne laughed. “Not likely! Not my kind of thing. Are you ready for breakfast? I’ve been to fetch some stuff from the boat.”

  Danny scrambled down the ladder to find Anne filling the kettle.

  “I thought we’d eat here, give Marnie and Ralph a bit of time together. Unless you want a cooked breakfast?”

  “No. Not my kind of thing. Cornflakes, toast, anything like that’ll do. Not really a breakfast person.”

  “It’s lovely out. We can sit on the bench in the courtyard if you like.”

  “Great.”

  Danny helped by loading the tray and carrying it outside. The sun was climbing through wispy cloud, birds were singing, the air was warm and fragrant, a perfect morning for breakfast in the open. This was unlike anything Danny had known. Sure, she had eaten in the garden of her parent’s house before, but this felt different. Glebe Farm was another world.

  The sun reflected off the stone walls of beautiful buildings. The cobbled yard and climbing roses created an atmosphere of peace and calm. It was as if Marnie had fashioned a way of life more like a holiday than the reality that most people knew. But there was something else. Danny had been uneasy ever since she saw the lavender hanging in the office. It was as if there was a sinister presence in this haven, something unmentioned below the surface. There was more to everything than met the eye in this paradise.

  Why had Anne taken the car that morning if she was really going to Sally Ann? The boat was a one-minute walk away through the spinney. Why had she not given a straight answer to the simple question of where she had been?

  *

  Off with his head! It was a swift and accurate beheading. Ralph removed the top from his boiled egg with one tap and one stroke of the knife. Marnie was always impressed by the way he did that. The action coincided with her arrival on the stern deck of Sally Ann carrying a teapot and a dish of lemon slices. She put them on the table and kissed Ralph on the cheek before sitting down.

  “How’s the egg?”

  “Perfect, just as I like them, like everything you do.”

  Marnie laughed. “Cupboard love.”

  It occurred to them simultaneously that the shower on Thyrsis was about the size of a broom cupboard. They were both smiling as Ralph dipped a soldier in his egg and Marnie poured Orange Pekoe through a strainer over three slivers of lemon in her cup.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it? I always have a fancy for lemon tea after we’ve … had a shower like that.”

  Ralph swallowed. “First thing on Monday I’ll phone Fortnum and Mason and order a hundredweight of their best Ceylon FBOP.”

  Marnie added a cube of sugar to the golden liquid and watched it sink onto the lemons. “Ralph, did you hear a car early on this morning?”

  “No. But then I never hear anything when I’m asleep.”

  “True. I wonder if I dreamt it.”

  “Have we any plans for today?”

  Marnie slowly stirred the tea and took a sip. “Mm … that’s good. After a start like that I feel like relaxing. How about you?”

  “Definitely a day off … busy time ahead. Perhaps a walk and a picnic?”

  *

  “What shall we do today?”

  Danny finished her toast and marmalade. “Don’t mind. It’s nice just being in the country. D’you have a plan?”

  Anne folded her napkin. “Not really. We could just have a lazy day if you like.”

  “What about Marnie and Ralph?”

  “I thought they might want to be together, just the two of them. Ralph’s been away all week and he travels a lot giving lectures, going to meetings, conferences.”

  “They’re very high-powered. You all are. You have a really full life, don’t you?”

  “It’s fun, couldn’t be better. I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  *

  Marnie unfolded the local ranger map on the table, and they pored over it. She showed Ralph the location of Knightly Court, both of them wondering why they had never been aware of it before. She tapped the map at a spot to the north-west of the village.

  “What about Knightly Woods for our walk? We haven’t been there before.”

  Ralph bent closer. “Make a change from the boat. Plenty of footpaths. We could probably find somewhere to picnic.”

  Ralph offered to clear up the breakfast things while Marnie checked out the girls. She walked through the spinney, breathing in the smells of the morning. When she reached the edge of the trees, she hesitated. Instead of going straight ahead towards the office barn, she made a detour, skirting round the back to the other cluster of barns.

  The garage barn was constructed of stone, open at the front like a car-port, big enough to house four cars. Facing her on the right was Ralph’s Volvo, standing beside her Land Rover Discovery. In the left-hand bay Anne’s red Mini lined up next to a small car concealed under a dust-cover. This was Marnie’s classic pre-war MG, a two-seater built in 1936 and loving
ly restored. That morning, her focus was on the Mini.

  Marnie walked into the barn, put a hand on the bonnet of the little red car and stood looking thoughtful. It was still warm. This must have been the car she had heard, but where had Anne been going? It had been too early to fetch newspapers; there were no other shops open at that hour on a Sunday; no point in making a special journey for petrol. Still lost in thought, she headed for the office barn. Rounding the corner, she found the girls sitting on the bench in the sunshine. For a fraction of a second Anne’s expression registered surprise.

  *

  Ralph’s version of a day off was to spend only two hours that morning working in his study on Thyrsis. The forward section of the interior was equipped as a workspace with desk, computer, printer, bookcases and filing cabinet. Built-in shelving housed a small television, mainly used for monitoring news broadcasts, and a hi-fi unit to provide background music while Ralph sorted statistics. The office chair was supplemented by two small armchairs.

  While Ralph dealt with preparations for his next conference trip, Marnie changed into overalls, returned to the garage barn and pulled back the cover from the MG. The sound of the starter motor, followed by the throaty rumbling of the old engine brought the girls running. Marnie reversed out and began inspecting the venerable machine for leaks of oil or fluids. Her late husband, Simon, had devised a special cleaning pad, part duster, part buffer, and Marnie set to, giving the bodywork a thorough rub-down. Danny said it reminded her of grooming the pony she had as a child. Soon the morning sun was glinting off shiny paintwork in British racing green.

  With the girls dedicated to hedonism by the waterside, Marnie announced that she and Ralph would be using the MG for their trip to the woods. In reply to an unspoken hint, she took Danny for a ride up the field track and on to the village shop to fetch the papers. Anne stayed behind, digging out sun-beds and towels.

  Marnie’s pleasure in the morning and the drive in the sports car were dimmed when she parked outside the shop at the same time as Celia Devere came out onto the pavement. In a floral summer dress and looking more like Princess Di than ever, she stopped in her tracks and stared at the MG as Marnie hopped out.