by DH Smith
A Glenn Miller medley was playing. All that big band stuff, the trumpets swelling. She remembered going to an American dance during the war. Her mother thought she was at the pictures. It was the first time she’d seen jiving. Such wild dancing. It was quite shocking. And exciting.
What was happening upstairs? The bedsprings hammering again. That all should have stopped with her father gone. Was she jumping on the bed? She didn’t like it. It wasn’t neighbourly. She’d tell her tomorrow.
If Anne didn’t keep her all day.
Chapter 45
Bert smelt the dress, the perfume lingering in it, a slight tang of sweat in the armpits. It conjured up the fullness of the woman wearing it. Her breasts, her bare shoulders. It was short. Her legs, the top of her thighs and buttocks. He laid it out on the seat beside him, a sexy red thing, torn at the neckline as if someone was trying to get at her tits. Frank? And blood, spattered and dried over the front.
He’d had to work hard getting it out of the skip. It was way down, barely visible. Bert had to lift out some of the bricks and almost climb in to pull out the carrier bag. He didn’t immediately look inside, beyond a glance, as there was a woman watching from the house. Let her watch. What was thrown away was thrown away.
He put the bricks back in the skip like a good citizen, and took his booty to his car parked across the road. It was a sexy thing, almost tarty. The shortness, the low cut neck. The sort of thing they wore to tease. And maybe Frank got fed up with being teased… Might that be the tale of this dress? Frank’s blood, when hubby came back to find him at it.
There was a tap on his window.
It was the woman who’d been watching him. He let the window down. The dress was beside him laid out, he knew she could see it. So what?
She said, ‘Excuse me, but are you a friend of Frank’s?’
‘Yes, I am,’ he said carefully.
She was quite a nice looker, bending half over to talk.
‘I haven’t seen him the last couple of days,’ she said. ‘And his car is always out here. I usually see him drive off in the mornings… Do you know where he is?’
He ignored the question. ‘You a friend of his too?’
‘Well,’ she shrugged, ‘a neighbour, sort of friend. He comes down from time to time for a coffee. He’s a nice man, always friendly.’
Bert knew why his mate was friendly with her. Who wouldn’t be?
‘I can’t speak now,’ she said. ‘I’ve got children coming any minute. But if you can come back after ten o’clock then we can put our heads together… Bessie, you know, Frank’s daughter, can look after the kids for a bit.’
He thought, yes, he’d like to put his head together with hers.
‘Sure, I’ll drop in later.’
‘My name’s Anne,’ she said. ‘Flat 1.’
She held her hand out. He shook it and held it a little too long.
‘Bert,’ he said. ‘I look forward to a coffee.’
She indicated a car that had pulled up. ‘There’s my first children. Must go. See you later, Bert.’
And with a parting smile, gave a wave, and crossed the road. He continued watching as she spoke a few words to the young, plumpish woman who was getting out of the car. Somewhat obscured by the car, he saw the two of them getting two small children out and onto the pavement. They each held the hand of a child and led them up the path, up the few steps and into the house. The door closed on them.
A friend of Frank. Well, Frank had a secret life then. Couldn’t blame him for that. A coffee offered. You never know what else. They were already on speaking terms. And had an important topic of conversation. You never know.
He’d have to ask Bessie about her. In fact, might even call on her in a while. Last night was alright. He’d stayed until about ten, when he’d had his fill. He didn’t take the second steak with him but had left it as he thought he might well come back tonight. Fill the inner man, so to speak.
The day was looking up.
Warm for the time of year, a sky of fast, broken cloud, the sun coming through every so often. Bert kept his window down. Must clear up this wagon. Never know when it might have a passenger. He’d get Bessie on it later.
A car drew up opposite and a woman carried a baby to the house and rang the bell. Anne opened up. She took the baby and the woman left hurriedly. Within a minute she’d driven away.
Bert looked at his watch. Gone nine. He had the morning off. Just the morning. He had to be in the shop by two, then working late till seven. He could be over here by eight thirty, the steak on the table. Depending what happened in Flat 1 of course.
A black man and a pregnant white woman came out of the house. Yes, they were the ones. And it was her, definitely her, who he’d seen yesterday prodding down in the skip. And he, the black man with the briefcase. Though no briefcase today and no suit either. Both in anoraks. The same two from upstairs who’d been rowing about events in the forest.
Didn’t Frank say she was a teacher? They got in before school started. Not today, though. And he didn’t look like he was going to work either. Bert watched them get in a car a little way along the roadway. And when they drove off, he let them get a little way ahead, and followed.
Chapter 46
A good night’s sleep changes the world. He’d woken in the early hours, Anne had woken too. A flurry of sex and he’d slept till the alarm went off at seven thirty. No journey to work, and with a shower and breakfast, he was set up for a day’s work. And needed to be, with yesterday nothing but the van crash.
So stupid. So quick. And all the money it would cost him to put right. Two hundred, and up would go his insurance on top. At least there was no injury involved. Forget it. Except it kept coming back to taunt him. The quicker he got the van done the better.
Work.
There were seven concrete pillars to go in. Each had grooves down its length on both sides. And the two metre wide sections of fencing, made up of wooden slats joined to a wooden post at either end, would be held in place by the grooves. Simple enough, a question of getting the spacing right. Measuring and lining up as you go.
Jack laid a string line along the length where the wall had been. The brickwork had been taken out to earth-level. The rest could stay, except where the posts needed to go in. There, any subsurface bricks would have to come out so he could dig a hole for a post.
Should be straightforward.
He’d left his tools in the shed overnight, thank goodness, considering the condition of his van. Just by luck, he had everything here this morning.
He’d cemented the first post in, when the skip lorry arrived. He heard the hydraulics from the garden and went out to check. Jack gave the driver the thumbs up. It was the same man who’d taken the last skip away. Jack watched him attach the chains and haul the skip onto the back of the lorry. He stayed to watch it be driven off.
Straight to landfill, and good riddance. He felt a relief at that. The evidence buried and bulldozed in with more loads day by day. It was simply a question of keeping mum.
He had a second post cemented in, with the fencing slotted between them, when Anne invited him in for a coffee. Jack took his boots off at the French windows, they were splattered with cement and the soles clagged with soil from the flower bed.
In the nursery, Bessie was handing the children their milk and slices of apple. He greeted her, and saw at once she had a bruise on the side of her face.
‘How’d you do that, Bessie?’
‘I bumped into the door,’ she said.
He frowned, not believing her, but didn’t press it.
‘I’m trying to keep off your plants,’ he said.
‘Thank you, Jack.’
He went in to the kitchen where Anne was making toast, two coffees already on the table. Jack sat down and sipped a coffee.
‘What d’you make of Bessie’s face?’ he said.
Anne sat down opposite. ‘She had a visitor last night,’ she said. ‘A chap called Bert. A friend of Fr
ank’s.’
‘He would be.’
‘He had a dinner appointment with Frank. Was pissed off when he didn’t come home.’
‘And took it out on poor Bessie.’
‘More or less,’ said Anne.
‘I’m not having that,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll see him off.’
Anne held up a hand. ‘Don’t, Jack. He might be suspicious.’
‘He can’t take squatter’s rights!’ seethed Jack.
‘Don’t have a go at me. I didn’t do it.’
The toast popped from the toaster and she rose to take the slices out. She put them on a plate in front of Jack.
‘I’ve arranged to talk to him later,’ she said. ‘I’ll make it clear we’re keeping an eye on him.’
‘If I see him, I’ll knock his teeth out one by one with a cold chisel.’
‘Jack!’
He nodded at her placatingly, not wanting to get into an argument with her. Instead he concentrated on spreading marge and marmalade on his toast. They didn’t talk for a while. Jack was cooling his temper, Bessie was vulnerable – but he had no right taking it out on Anne.
‘Take it step by step,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to him… Then we can decide what else we might do.’
‘OK,’ he said, corking his aggression.
She asked him about his daughter. He knew it was displacement activity, but it was fine. He told her about the trip to Brighton en famille tomorrow. And the bribery offered to Mia. They chatted safely about families, about the problems of moving, until Jack thought it time to get back to work.
Back to digging, making cement, putting posts in. He knew what he was doing, how to line up and mix cement. And there were no other human beings to screw things up.
Chapter 47
The road went through the forest, with woodland either side. It was almost empty of traffic, so Bert could keep a fair way back and keep them in sight. He drove steadily, hoping they wouldn’t do a sudden turn off where he might lose them.
It was when passing a car park that he caught a glance of a single car in it. Orange, could it be an Aurora? Frank’s? Could well be, with all the talk of forests. What was his car number? BEC something. He was past it, couldn’t stop to check as they were driving straight on. Later, he’d come back and see.
Had Frank been killed here? Or, he grasped at an alternative, back home and driven here in his own car, to get it off his doorstep. Bound to be found though, sooner or later. If it was him doing it, he’d take off the number plates and torch it.
These amateurs.
Not much further on, they turned off into a car park. He drove past, unsure what to do. They didn’t know him, but he was hanging around their house and they might at some time connect him. Dare he park in the same place? He’d chance it. A hundred or so metres up the road, he did a u-turn, and drove back to the car park and pulled in.
They had the doors of their car wide open and were taking off their shoes and putting on walking boots. This hadn’t occurred to him, that it might be muddy in the forest. He was wearing trainers; well, he’d suffer wet feet if it came to it. He saw they were looking at him, and got out his thermos and poured himself a cup of tea, making it look like he had some purpose in his halt.
He was perhaps 20 metres away, and turned his mirror so he could see them without looking in their direction. They wore woolly hats and had backpacks. As they tied their walking boots, he wondered whether he might have this wrong. Maybe they were simply going for a hike in the forest. Surely not? Two of them taking a weekday off, especially a teacher – didn’t make sense. They were just trying to make it look right.
But he still had a niggling doubt, as they headed into the forest from a narrow path on the edge of the car park. He gave them half a minute, locked up his vehicle and followed. They were walking slowly; he could hear them talking, not the words but the murmur of them.
About half the leaves had fallen from the trees, with lots of cloudy sky visible between the branches. The ground was dampish, in places churned up by boots, tyre tracks and horses. He couldn’t avoid going through watery mud, and quite soon his feet were cold and wet. He hoped this wasn’t a waste of time.
On a straight section of path, he hid behind a tree and watched his quarry. They were searching the ground, she one side, he the other. Clearly looking for something. Their row last night, didn’t keys come into it? Keys so important that both of them had taken a day off to find them.
This wouldn’t be a waste of time.
He’d have liked to hear their conversation but daren’t get that close. With the leaf-fall, they might hear him. So he kept back, keeping to their pace, avoiding piles of leaves, walking when he could hear them walking. Stopping when he couldn’t.
Bert found the keys. He might not have done if he hadn’t stepped on them under a leaf and felt them through his trainers. There were four keys, the fob was a sort of flag. Nigeria it had written underneath, a Nigerian flag then.
Excited at the find, he wrapped them in a tissue and thought of heading back as he’d got what they’d come for. They were going to be very disappointed. Maybe have another row. But he needed to know where they were going. Logic told him that on a visit to the woods, in the last day or so, they had dropped the keys. Most people would have duplicates, might be annoyed at having to have more cut. But they wouldn’t take a day off work, and come all this way to search for them.
Both of them.
He knew, as he’d half known before he’d set out, Frank was buried out here.
Chapter 48
Third post in, and two sections of fencing slotted between them. Jack stood back to look at his handiwork. Good, with the posts plumbed upright. This was the first time he’d put this sort of fencing in, but it was all going smoothly. He was about to prepare the cement for the fourth post when he realised he hadn’t enough. He had bought three bags and was using half a bag for each post. He obviously couldn’t count to seven.
If he’d had his van, he’d just have popped out and bought an extra. As it was, he had a bag and a half left for the remaining four posts. If he put a bit more ballast in each hole, a little less cement – it’d work. Better get his sums right this time. He did a quick scratch in his notebook and figured it. Three eighths of a bag each. He checked. Yep. Awkward amount.
He poured a quarter, roughly, out of the open bag and put it in a bucket. He opened the last bag and took a quarter of that and poured that in, giving him three eighths of a bag in the bucket. Sums! The bucket would do for one, then the small bagful for another and the other bag divided in two. That would give him the same for each. He was quite pleased with his working out. Fractions n’all.
Of course, if he’d noticed he was short first thing, then he could have taken a bit from all three bags to make up the last. But at least he’d spotted it before it got too bad.
Bessie came out from the nursery. She went over to the part of her flowerbed where Jack had put in the first posts and fencing.
‘Not too bad, is it?’ he said.
‘No, not bad at all.’
And he was aware from the way she was looking that they were talking at cross purposes. He was referring to his fencing work, and she to her flower bed. It wasn’t worth picking her up on it, if they were both happy. Though her bruised face, that left him far from happy. He stuck his shovel in the soil.
‘Bert came last night, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He came to see Dad. He brought a couple of steaks for them.’
‘You cooked him one?’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘Yes.’
‘Just for him?’ he went on.
‘I didn’t want one anyway.’
‘Why did he hit you?’
She was looking down at the ground, shuffling her feet.
‘Because, just because…’ She was rubbing her hands feverishly. ‘Because Dad wasn’t there. Because I didn’t know where he was. Because…’ She stopped and turned her back on him.
; He put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Did he rape you?’
She didn’t reply and he knew the answer.
He said, ‘We’ll sort this out, Bessie.’
She shook his hand off her shoulder, took a couple of steps away from him and turned round. There were tears on her face which she rubbed off with her sleeve.
‘I thought with Dad gone it would be over,’ she said with a sniff, ‘but it’s all starting again.’
He took a step towards her, shaking his head. ‘Oh Bessie.’
‘Do you know what he said?’ she exclaimed.
‘No,’ he said helplessly.
‘Just as he was getting dressed he said… this’d be a good place to move into.’
‘I won’t let him,’ said Jack.
‘You’ll be gone,’ she exclaimed, her whole body pushed forward in declaration. ‘But I’ll be here and he knows I’ll be here.’
She turned, and ran across the grass and through the French windows.
Chapter 49
Maggie stepped out of the forest and onto the hardened clay of the car park. Hers was the only car present. There’d been another earlier when they arrived, and the man had seemed to be watching them. Probably just her nervousness. You think everyone is watching you, when really it’s you watching them. David caught her up.
‘What a waste of time,’ he said.
‘At least we know,’ she said wearily, ‘they’re not clearly visible.’
‘To us,’ said David.
‘Do you want to go look again?’
David sighed. ‘We’ve been here more than two hours.’
She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Are you sure you dropped them here?’
He groaned. ‘Practically sure.’
‘So they just could be somewhere else. Could be?’
‘I don’t know where else,’ he said weakly.
She bit a finger. ‘We’ve scoured the grave area. Round and round that half a dozen times. Up and down the path twice…’