by Liz Evans
Almost certainly, if she’d looked out of her back door any time recently, but I didn’t want Della firing me, so I made vague huh-huh noises that she could interpret however she wanted, and hung up.
I’d cleared the tubs in the fridge area. I decided to leave those in the freezer compartment until later and take a walk around the promenade to West Bay. It’s a popular route on Sundays. You can watch the hardy types huddled behind windbreaks on the beach, flinching as the north winds hurl sand into their faces; avoid the cyclists hurtling past the ‘No Cycling’ signs; peek into the beach huts where people are cooking on camping stoves; and run slap into people you don’t want to meet.
Roger ‘Eh-Eh’ Nesbitt was marching along looking as if he had tied both his buttock cheeks together. He even had a walking stick clamped under his right armpit like a drill sergeant’s baton. I attempted to wander past as if lost in thought.
Roger double-stamped to a halt in my face. ‘I want a word with you, my lovely. Know the truth. Graham told me. Undercover operation. Not a good idea. Raise false hopes. Been too much of that. Saw Ellie suffering when old Gray was in prison. Best to let sleeping dogs lie. Want your word on it.’
I didn’t like the bumptious little twerp, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and said mildly: ‘It’s not really up to you is it, Mr Nesbitt? The Walkinshaws want to find Heidi. They need to know what happened to her. It would be a form of closure.’
‘Psycho-babble. Put it behind them. Get on with life. Best course. Need your promise, young lady.’
‘I can’t give it. It’s down to the Walkinshaws, not me. Or you.’
I tried to step around him. He whipped out the stick and held it in front of me like a barrier. ‘Not the words I want to hear.’
The blow took me by surprise. He flicked the stick horizontally. It caught me across the solar plexus knocking the wind from my lungs. ‘Little warning. Toe the line. Drop this investigation.’
I gave him my biggest smile. And then brought my knee up. ‘Big warning. Touch me again and I’ll put that stick where the sun don’t shine. Have a nice day.’
In films, at this point, your feisty heroine will stroll nonchalantly away. This is not a good idea. Once you’ve kicked somebody in the nuts, take it from me, a fast sprint is the only way to go. I reversed direction and pounded back towards Seatoun.
*
It’s times like this I wish I was on speaking terms with my own family and could invite myself along for Sunday lunch. Technically speaking I could. But ever since I’d been ‘invited’ to sign my resignation from the police after a slight misunderstanding involving me accidentally giving a false alibi to a nasty piece of work who’d seriously injured a police officer, my father had made it clear I wasn’t wanted in his house. He had good reason. His own very brief career in the force had ended with him being put in a wheelchair by a piece of scum who’d never been charged. But it still hurt that he’d chosen to believe I’d deliberately sold out rather than to ask for my version of events (possibly minus the few thousand that appeared in my bank account shortly afterwards).
Recognising the beginnings of a really black mood that could take me ages to pull out of, I decided to squash it before it took up residence. I intended to go round to Shane’s place, but I crossed the main road opposite the The Gold Strike. It was part pub, part slot-machine arcade and a hundred percent drunk moron magnet. Any one of the three could be the reason Vince Courtney was heading inside.
I followed him in, and promptly lost sight of him in the crowds. It was a single level, low-ceilinged room, thickly carpeted in swirls of purple and red. The only natural light came from the doors at the front. The further in you went, the more you lost any sense of the time of day. Which is what the management intended: it helped to deaden any guilt at playing the slots and/or glugging down booze from seven in the morning to two a.m. the following day. Not that any of this lot looked like they felt guilty. Most of them looked as if they wouldn’t have felt a thermo-nuclear strike — although if the lager ran out, we could be in trouble.
Vince’s ordinariness made him hard to spot. Medium height, with mousy hair, jeans, denim jacket and T-shirt was the uniform for half the blokes in here. Eventually I found him at the rear of the room, near the toilets.
He was a real babe magnet. While I watched, half a dozen cuddled and slurped over him. Unless you were watching real hard, you’d probably miss the folded note being slipped into his pocket and the packets going the other way. I moved into his space. Recognition flickered in the dun-coloured eyes.
‘Hey, Chainsaw, how you doing?’
‘Good enough. You?’
‘I’m good. You sorted?’
‘What you got?’
‘Wizz, E’s and puff. You want something with a bigger buzz, I can make the introductions.’
I twisted my hand so he could see the twenty-pound note folded in the palm. ‘How much for some information?’
He jerked his head. ‘Step into the office.’
He led the way into a corridor that ended in a rear fire door. There were a couple of padlocked doors in the right-hand wall which I guessed were the storerooms. The heavy door into the pub swung shut, cutting off the noise. ‘So what you want to know, Chainsaw?’
‘What’s between you and Jonathon?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I heard you threatening him in The Blue Anchor. Your debt collection technique sounds like it could be painful.’
‘You don’t have to worry about that. It’s strictly cash on delivery. Do not ask for credit as a refusal often brings pain.’
I hadn’t been certain that his argument with his brother-in-law had been about a drugs payment until that moment. It’s always nice to have your brilliant deduction techniques confirmed. ‘You only give credit to family then?’
‘A mistake, which I will not be repeating. Stupid tosser thought if he put it around at the luvvie parties, they’d let him write for their crap programmes. Five hundred he’s into me for. But don’t you fret, Jonny boy is going to pay. You can bet your tush on that.’
‘How come you haven’t tipped off the papers? Clemency Courtney in drug hell. Recoup your losses.’
‘Only person be in hell would be me. You don’t dump on my sis.’ Belatedly it occurred to him that he might have done just that. ‘You ain’t a reporter, are you?’
‘Nope. I’m just very nosy.’
He stood back and struck what he plainly considered a hard-man pose. ‘Know what, Chainsaw? You ask too many questions. You want to be careful. That could be an unhealthy habit.’ He twitched the twenty from my fingers.
*
Annie finally arrived home at half past six that evening.
‘Where on earth have you been? What kind of best mate isn’t around when you need someone to moan at?’
‘The kind who has a life. I’ve been having lunch with my sister.’ She let us both into the house and led the way up to her flat on the first floor. ‘Why didn’t you moan to O’Hara?’
‘He’s not around either. Probably untying pink lace knickers somewhere.’
‘His own?’
‘No.’
‘Is that what you want to moan about?’ Annie moved around the sitting room, turning on lamps. Like her office, it was beautifully furnished and tidied to just the right side of cosy.
‘No. I wanted to moan about the lack of progress on my cases. But since then I’ve been threatened by the galloping major to drop the Walkinshaw case, and by Clemency Courtney’s brother because I got curious about his business’s financial arrangements.’ I kicked off my trainers, flopped on the sofa and crossed my feet on a footstool.
She handed me a large glass of white wine and invited me to tell all.
So I did. Starting with my inability to prove or disprove that Jonathon was sending threatening letters to himself, and ending with my inability to do something as simple as track down Heidi Walkinshaw’s best friend even though she probably lived within a few miles of me.
‘Four tubs of peanut butter ice-cream.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Annie muttered under her breath. I put it down to jealousy.
Once we both had plates of pasta in tomato sauce in front of us, Annie plugged in her laptop. She tapped into the web. ‘Let me introduce you to 1837 on-line.’
It was a web site listing all the marriages, births and deaths in England and Wales since registration became compulsory in 1837. I’d been consulting them for years at the Family Records Centre in London, but up there it was all listed in ledgers. ‘Why didn’t I know about this before?’
‘Because you’re a luddite?’ Annie suggested. ‘Right, how old is Maria?’
‘Twenty-eight I assume. That’s how old Heidi would be now.’
‘I’ll start the search in 1993 when she was sixteen as that’s the earliest she could have got married. This only goes up to 2002, so let’s hope Maria’s the conventional sort and got married before her daughter was born.’
I watched as she filled in boxes on screen, setting the time frame for the search and typing Deakin into the surname box. She hesitated over the First Name. There was a button to check if you wanted the search to look for ‘Maria’ in any position among the given names. ‘Better tick it,’ she murmured. ‘It will give us more hits to sift through, but people do sometimes prefer not to use their first Christian name.’
She was bent over the screen tapping with concentration — too much concentration at that point. She always signed herself ‘Anchoret Smith’. It had never occurred to me that Mr and Mrs Smith’s oddly named brood might have been lumbered with more than one bizarre Christian name.
‘Okay, here we go.’ Annie hit a key. A few seconds later we had a list of nine Maria Deakins who’d married in the years we’d specified. Better still, we had the surnames of the blokes they’d married.
‘I’ll just save that … and now … if Daisy is in the reception class at West Bay, she must be four or five. So we look in the births for a Daisy with any of these nine surnames.’ Her fingers flew over the keys again. We got one hit this time: Daisy Jane Pierpoint had been born four years ago in Trafford. ‘Now all we’ve got to do —’
‘Is call up all our contacts in the utility companies on Monday morning, and find out if a Pierpoint was connected recently,’ I finished for her. We all had people in the gas, electricity and phone companies who, for a fee, would provide addresses that their owners no doubt thought were strictly confidential.
‘Exactly. Although it might take a while. It was a heck of a lot easier before everyone from the supermarkets to the local flaming sweet shop started selling gas, electricity and phone calls.’
‘You just don’t know who to bribe anymore,’ I agreed. I tried directory enquiries just in case it was that easy. It wasn’t. If the Pierpoints were connected, they were ex-directory. Annie was still typing furiously. ‘What are you looking up now?’
‘Nothing. I’m typing up your invoice. It’s ten pence a hit. Plus the call to enquiries.’
‘And you’re going to charge me! I thought you were a mate.’
‘I provide pasta, wine and a shoulder to cry on as a mate. Professional services are charged for.’
‘Will you forget it if I don’t ask you what your other Christian name is?’
‘No.’
We watched a repeat of a police show on the television and finished off the wine. By the time I finally wandered home, I was feeling a lot better. I took the back streets rather than go along the promenade past the arcades and amusement park. The usual sounds of the town at night drifted over the roof tops: tinny music from the park rides; revving cars; shouting drunks; gulls who were confused by the strong neon lighting and were squabbling over discarded chips instead of getting their heads down somewhere. And at the back of them all, the ever present ‘hush-hush’ of the ocean.
I was nearly back at the flat when I vaguely registered the motorbike engine behind me. Its volume increased. It seemed uncomfortably close. I glanced back and knew something was wrong. By the time I’d realised that the ‘something’ was that the bike had no lights, it had mounted the pavement and was hurtling straight at me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Duchy, can you hear me?’
‘Of course I can hear you, you’re yelling in my ear.’
It hurt to talk. I probed with my tongue and tasted the salty tang of blood. Reassuringly, all my teeth seemed to be where I’d left them when I dived head first into my basement. I had a thundering headache. I tried to sit up and discovered other bits hurt too; my knees, a shoulder, some ribs. O’Hara stuck his arm behind my back.
‘A motorbike tried to run me down,’ I burbled into the soft space between his chest and the top of his arm.
‘I know. I saw you jump. Nice move.’
‘Thanks.’ I’d gone for the top of the metal staircase rather than straight over the railings. Tumbling down the metal treads instead of falling directly on to the flagstones had prevented any serious injuries, but left me with a lot of painful minor ones by the feel of it. ‘Did you get the bike’s number?’
‘No. Soon as my headlights hit it, he took off. I had a choice between chasing him or checking if you needed any first-aid. I could do heart massage — or kiss of life?’
‘I think I’ll live without, thanks.’
There weren’t any mirrors in the main living area so I had to go through to the bathroom. To the sounds of blood plink-plunking from my nose into the sink and exploding into pink starbursts, I examined the damage. There was a gash across my top lip, redness that would soon turn to bruising over the nose, and a graze on my chin. Plugging my nostrils with toilet-paper, I stripped down to my underwear. Nothing was actually bleeding; thick jeans and jumpers had saved me from that, but the skin was badly scraped wherever the bone was near the surface. And I was going to have enough bruises to look like a piece of abstract art.
O’Hara opened the bathroom door. ‘I found your disinfectant. Have you got any cotton wool?’
It was too late to grab for a towel. Anyway, he’d seen it all before. ‘I shouldn’t think so. Improvise.’
When I limped out, he’d ripped up a clean pillowcase and poured hot water into a china basin. Disinfectant spread like a milky cloud in the water. Squeezing a cloth in the mixture, he started to gently wipe the dirt and blood from my face. It stung. Water dripped and rolled down between my breasts and over my stomach. O’Hara pulled my left arm straight and dabbed at the elbow. I had a mental back-flip to years ago when I was small and my mother used to soothe grazes better. It made me feel safe and warm.
‘So who have you pissed off this time, duchy?’
I’d been asking myself the same question. Top of the list had to be Vinny Courtney; and his T-shirt had indicated a passing acquaintance with motorbikes. On the other hand, there was also the mysterious ‘Mr White’ who’d delivered the newspaper to Fur-Fetish. ‘Did you notice the biker’s helmet? Did it have anything painted on it?’
‘There was some kind of design I think. Street-light flared off it. But I didn’t get a clear look. Would that narrow down the bad guy?’
‘Not a lot.’
I could feel the heat from his body as his hands moved softly over mine, locating and cleansing the areas that hurt. The dripping water from the cloth soaked into my bra and panties. The material started to turn transparent.
O’Hara leant forward. His tongue delicately licked my lips. I opened them and he probed inside. Sliding my arms round him I pressed myself harder into the kiss. I winced with the pain. So did he.
Some small part of my brain that wasn’t concentrating on his hands moving down and over my hips, noted that the injuries he’d received from Graham Walkinshaw seemed to have got worse, rather than better. ‘What happened to your face?’ I mumbled into it.
‘Left hook. Sh
e took me by surprise.’
She? An image of Clemency’s perfect cheekbones and cute, lacy-pink covered butt swam into my mind. I’d assumed Jonathon beating her was domestic violence, but it could equally well have been foreplay. Maybe Clemency liked it rough. Two scratches that I hadn’t noticed before sprang out from the tanned skin of O’Hara’s neck. The kind that long fingernails make. I pushed myself away from his chest. ‘I think you’re overdoing the bedside manner here, doctor. Make yourself useful with the coffee while I get into some dry clothes.’
I changed into my pyjamas in the bathroom. And then added a tracksuit in case he got the wrong idea. I emerged to coffee flavoured with whisky. ‘It was that or peanut butter ice-cream. You haven’t got any milk.’
His tone was light. I was relieved he wasn’t one of those blokes who went into a sulk when they’re knocked back. Flinching each time my split lip came into contact with the hot liquid, I asked if he’d been just passing.
‘Nope. I was bringing these round.’ He reached over to his leather coat which he’d hung over a chair back, extracted some folded papers and passed a couple to me. ‘Statements from the two girls Higgins was convicted of kidnapping and assaulting.’
‘As remembered by brother Dec?’
‘He won’t be more than a few words out. Once he’d read something, he could recall it near perfectly years later.’
The first sheet was dated January 1970:
Statement of Rosemary Ann Perry, d.o.b. 28.9.56
I met Leslie Higgins on the promenade in Seatoun last June. I was sitting in the beach shelter by the café and he came and sat next to me. I’d been crying and he loaned me a handkerchief because I was using my sleeve to dry my face. He asked me what was wrong. I told him I was sad because my mum and dad were going to get divorced. Mum and I came to live in Seatoun, but I hate it here. I haven’t got any friends and I miss my old home. My mum doesn’t understand, she just keeps saying it’s for the best.
Leslie was nice to me. He understood what I meant about feeling alone. He told me about his mum dying when he was little. He talked to me about my dad. My mum doesn’t let me talk about him, but I really miss him.