by Liz Evans
‘We were wondering about the two other calls, Grace.’
They played them back for me. ‘Where are you, lover? We had a definite date, remember, and I’m getting pretty pissed off standing here freezing my little arse off. You’d better not stand me up or I’II kill you. ’
And then again: ‘Last chance. Either you get yourself to Seatoun P-D-Q or I’m coming looking. And believe me, if I have to, you won’t like what happens next.’
My skin tingled. I tried to keep it cool. But even I, who was nominally in charge of the mouth that was supposed to have made that call, had a momentary doubt. People committed murders whilst sleep-walking, didn’t they? Did they also make phone calls?
‘I’ll give you there’s a slight resemblance in the voice. But it’s definitely not me. When were they made, before or after the fir .. . the one that I made?’
‘We don’t know until we check with the retrieval service. Some play back the last call first. Others do it in reverse order,’ Frosty said. ‘And I’d have said the resemblance was rather more than slight.’
‘Well, you would. But then I’ll bet you’d have done Mother Theresa for vagrancy.’
I wasn’t seriously bothered. If they’d really suspected me of involvement in that death, they’d have cautioned me before asking their questions. Nonetheless, I could feel all my nape hairs standing up. And so, I guess, could Jerry.
‘Can you give us a minute, please, Emily?’ he said. ‘Go over Mr Vetch’s statement with him, will you? See if anything else has come to mind.’
Emily allowed herself to be dismissed with grace. Or in her case, I guess, without Grace, since I was left alone with Jerry.
‘You really should attempt to do something about that attitude, Grace,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell me about Luke Steadman. The early gleanings of the team seem sparse. He wasn’t a local, I gather?’
I told him all I knew. The uncle who’d left the cottage to him; the American dad who’d owned a meat-processing business; the upbringing in the States that had so nearly led to a walk on the wild side and been turned around after he’d been packed off to the wide-open spaces; the film studies; the production company; the plans to move across the Atlantic permanently.
‘So no immediate family that you know of?’
‘Both his parents are dead, but I suppose he might have other relatives here. He said his mum was English - I think. You’re wanting identification of the body?’
‘Amongst other things. Well, thanks for your help, Grace. We’ll be in touch.’
‘I suppose you want your jacket back?’
‘Please. Otherwise I shan’t be able to remove it and see the team’s faces collectively hit the floor when they realise they’re in for early starts and late finishes for a while.’
‘Perhaps you’ll get lucky and solve it before you hit the overtime budget.’
‘I doubt it. In order to solve it in one bound, I’d have to be a lonely maverick whose disregard of the rule book exasperates my superiors. And who works all hours rather than return home to a lonely flat
‘Festooned with the half-empty whisky bottles and ageing takeaway food cartons that form your staple diet...’ I suggested. ‘To listen to the recordings of my obscure musical icons ...’ ‘While your ex-wife - who divorced you because she couldn’t take the pressure of the job and is now married to a decent, but dull, nine-to-five type - is secretly still in love with you?’
‘The minimum requirements for a truly brilliant detective these days.’
‘And you don’t measure up to these standards?’
Shrugging his way back into his jacket, Jerry sadly admitted he didn’t even come close. ‘My career assessments have been rather good over the past few years - even if I do say so myself. My wife shows no signs of wishing to leave and the house is as tidy as is compatible with the needs of our inquisitive first-born; I don’t like whisky and I cook a pretty mean shepherd’s pie.’
‘Musical preferences?’
‘Radio Two.’
‘You’re a hopeless case, Jerry.’
‘I know.’
He smiled at me and I found myself grinning back. I knew he’d done it to relax me and wind me down from the everybody- hates-poor-little-me soapbox - and it had worked. I really did like Jerry. He wasn’t my type in a million years, but I envied Cathy Jackson at that minute for being his.
‘What’s the news on baby number two?’ I asked as he showed me to the front door. ‘It must be due soon.’
‘Eight weeks. Everything’s going very well, thanks. Here’s your car. Emily?’
Vetch and the sergeant emerged from a side room in response to Jerry’s interrogatory whistle, Vetch making a big play of saying goodbye with a handshake that he held a fraction too long, judging by the expression that touched Frosty Emily’s face.
Whilst Rosco backed the car into the car park, I asked Jerry what was happening with Zeb. ‘Oh, come on’, I said. ‘Do you think I didn’t recognise the brush-off when I phoned you earlier about him? I’ve been trying to get hold of Annie since yesterday and it’s no go. Is Zeb in serious trouble?’
‘As I told you when we spoke on the telephone, DC Smith is not currently working out of Seatoun.’
‘But you’re his boss. Don’t tell me you don’t know what’s happened to him. Please, Jerry. Annie’s my best friend. If something is going down with Zeb—’
‘Then I’m sure the family will tell you should they wish you to know. Good night, Grace. We’ll be in touch.’
20
After paying an extortionate ransom to the laundry for the return of my freshly washed and pressed clothes, I spent the best part of Monday trying to restore some sort of order to my office. Even with the minimal filing system I employ, the paperwork had accumulated to amazing proportions over the past few years.
In the end I became so depressed I decided a bit of colour therapy was called for. Perhaps if I slapped some paint around the room it might seem more cheerful. On the other hand, if the business was about to go bust, as Annie had predicted, I certainly didn’t intend to spend any money on it. The logical course of action was to find someone with a collection of those half-used tins of paint that are left after the decorating.
Jan’s desk was empty, but the internal door to the basement was wide open.
‘Anyone home?’
‘What do you want?’ Jan was halfway up the stairs, her arms clasped round a box of copy paper. The orange and lime of the past week had gone. Once more Dracula’s bride rose up to meet me; a vision in black boots, black shorts, black tights, black leather waistcoat, white blouse and a raven-black barnet.
‘You dyed again, then?’
‘No. I’m just really tired.’
‘I meant the hair.’
‘I know you did. That was a joke, see? I can do that sarky stuff as well as you.’ She emerged into the light, using her back to walk the door closed again. ‘I went to a posh hairdresser. It took them hours to get it back the way it was. Cost a flaming packet. It’ll take me weeks to pay Ifor back.’
‘Ifor-squared loaned you money?’ I revised my opinion of the Grim Reaper. He was beginning to sound like my sort of person.
‘Yes. But only because I’ve been giving him a hand with his decorating downstairs. He won’t give you any.’
‘Why not?’
‘I told him you never pay people back.’
‘Cheers, Jan. Is he in?’
‘No. He’s gone up the nursing home to see his sister. That’s
why he’s set up in this dump. So he can be near her.’ With a grunt of expelled air, she dropped the box of paper on a handy chair. ‘He said he might come back this evening.’
Somewhat belatedly it occurred to me to ask whether our burglars had done any damage in the basement.
‘No. Alarms went off when they came down here, Vetch said.’
‘I was thinking they could have used the outside entrance.’ ‘Wish they had,’ Jan said, punching up icons on her compu
ter screen. ‘Me and Ifor can’t get that door open most of the time. The lock keeps jamming. Did you like my card?’
‘What card?’
‘Me birthday card. I left it at Pepi’s after the party. Didn’ you get it?’
‘You went to my party?’
‘Everyone went. Even that big-headed policeman you can’t stand. He tried to grope my bum.’
Terry Rosco had been to my birthday party? What the hell did Annie think she was playing at?
If I ever found her, it was something else I’d have to ask. In the meantime, her absence was really beginning to niggle at me. I was assuming she was somehow involved in Zeb’s mystery problem, due to the evasive answers I kept getting from the local CID office. But what if that wasn’t it? She could be in trouble somewhere and no one would know. On my last case I’d ended up chained in a wine cellar (I attract that sort of client), contemplating just how long it might take before anyone in my life would notice I was missing. I’d concluded it would probably take several weeks of decomposing before they sent out the search parties. I decided to start making enquiries via Annie’s numerous relatives if I hadn’t heard anything within the next day.
My mind wouldn’t settle. Since I couldn’t paint the restlessness out, I jogged it. On my way back I spotted a notice in the window of the mini-market advertising a portable TV for sale at £25. It meant a trek home to get my savings passbook, but it looked to be a bargain, and my old one hadn’t survived my visiting vandals. I stocked up with some groceries at the same time and staggered home with plastic carrier-bags dangling from each forearm and the set clasped to my chest.
I took the side streets because it was easier to negotiate the relatively empty pavements with this lot rather than weave amongst the lager lizards on the promenade. Back here, one in four B&B properties seemed to be empty - their boarded windows mutely testifying to the previous tenants’ blind faith in their ability to ‘make a go of it’ despite all the previous evidence to the contrary. The necessity to stop and redistribute my load every few minutes meant that I happened to be outside one such crumbling dream when the basement window’s plywood shutter slid aside and a familiar figure wriggled out and dropped to the ground.
‘Hi, Lee. Doing a spot of window-shopping?’
He brushed dust off his clothes and hair whilst he strolled back up the outside steps. The paint on the double-fronted building looked relatively new and the door furniture and roof tiles were intact. Even the ‘Lease For Sale’ board hadn’t been half dragged off the wall by bored kids yet. It all suggested a property that had only recently been closed up. There were probably still a fair amount of goodies inside worth stripping out, although to be fair, Lee’s hands were empty as he joined me at pavement level. Perhaps he’d just needed a place to crash for the night after one row too many with Barbra.
‘Hi. Earned me mum’s thirty pieces of silver yet?’
‘Nope. But I’m still giving it my best shot.’ The slippery case of the telly was heading ever floorwards. I tried nudging it back with a knee.
‘Give it here.’ Lee dragged it out of my arms and swung round to walk beside me. ‘Want to know why me mum really wants you to find them punters?’
‘Is there a real reason?’
‘Natch. She can be a right nutter at times, you know.’
‘Takes one to know one, Lee.’
It occurred to me it might not be a good idea to wind him up when he was carrying my newly acquired TV. But he merely said: ‘Yeah, OK, so we both got a mouth on us. Better than being one of them sad bunches that sits staring at the telly all night never opening their gobs. You want to hear this?’
We had to step apart to let a couple of skate-boarders belt past. ‘Go on then,’ I invited when we re-joined.
‘She tell you about Carly— What the hell...’ He just managed
to leap aside again as the boarders hurtled back, cleaving between us like a bow wave splitting the ocean swell.
The old girl coming towards us wasn’t as fast on her pins. By the time we’d righted her and restored her walking stick, Lee and the boarders had both run out of screamed suggestions as to what they were all going to do if they ever got within gobbing distance again.
‘You were saying... ?’ I prompted when Lee and I had resumed our original course down the street.
He opened his mouth ... and this time was interrupted by a wail from behind. ‘My purse. Oh, my purse. It’s gone.’
The old girl was swaying on the walking stick, frantically delving in the capacious handbag hanging from her forearm. I couldn’t help it. My eyes racked Lee for a tell-tale bulge anywhere in his pockets. He saw me looking and his mouth twisted. Thrusting the telly into my arms, he strode back with a stiff-¬legged gait, cast around the site of the original collision - and retrieved the purse from where it had fallen in the gulley by the kerbstone.
Ignoring its owner’s thanks, he came back towards me with the same impatient stride. I tried to apologise.
‘Forget it,’ he snapped. ‘You’re just like the rest. Who needs yer?’
I dragged my guilt home along with my groceries and my new TV.
I was aware I’d wasted a lot of the day when I should have been working on behalf of my client. But finding a dead body yesterday had knocked my professional concentration off balance. I was fine doing mundane, routine tasks, but as soon as I started any serious thinking, I kept getting flashbacks.
I could see Luke, his face distorted with terror and pain, his body curled into a half-circle as he died, and the metal tip of that awful spear erupting through his chest. It wasn’t one of those flat-bladed types of the kind usually brandished by the masses in medieval crowd scenes. This one had had a long, thin spike like ... Well, go on, say it, my subconscious urged ... like the sort carried by Native American Indians?
There were deep slashes on Luke’s hands too. It was funny, I hadn’t consciously noticed them at the time, but now they floated into my mind and stuck there: curved and bloody and lying palms together near his face as if he was praying. One of the little fingers was almost severed; the bone gleaming whitely through the raw flesh.
He’d tried to drag the spear out - or perhaps push it back. I doubt it would have done any good if he’d succeeded - probably just have caused him to bleed to death faster.
I was aware that the chills were setting in again. Pulling a baggy cardigan on over the sloppy T-shirt and trainer bottoms I’d reverted to after yesterday’s flash-the-flesh fiasco, I made myself a coffee, turned on my new bargain, and sat on the floor in front of it, dealing out Barbra’s photos face down like a set of tarot cards.
I played a game with myself - turning the snaps face up as each new item was featured on the early-evening news. Luke’s death hadn’t made the national slot. The biggest story was still the diphtheria scare. Two more victims had been hospitalised. Serious-faced scientists explained technical details with multicoloured wriggly graphics, and Ministry of Health officials told everyone there was no need to panic, whilst I turned up shots of Rainwing/whoever.
Despite the way the jerk had set me up, I couldn’t help feeling a certain tingle at the memory of that night. He might be a chronic liar - but he’d been a terrific lover.
The national news-readers signed off and the programme switched to the local news. At least Luke got a mention there. There were long-distance shots of the cottage with the police tapes fluttering across the lane, and an earnest-faced blonde doing general background-type interviews with a couple of locals from St Biddy’s - neither of whom seemed to know much about Luke. Both spoke about the late uncle, however, with more fluency.
For some reason I was surprised to find Uncle Eric had been an optician before his retirement. I think I’d subconsciously had him tagged as another son-of-the-soil.
An enterprising researcher had managed to dig out an old black-and-white picture of him posing outside his shop for some charity event. It looked like it had been taken in the mid-sixties.
&nb
sp; There was no discernible resemblance to Luke, but I recognised the car his well-polished shoe was resting on immediately.
The report switched to the diphtheria scare and returned to an interview with Faye Sinclair, who seemed to have been elected our rent-a-quote MP on the subject. They’d caught her in the garden this time; there were trees and bushes waving around in the breeze as she held her hair back with one hand and chatted to a mike being waved under her nose.
I turned up Mrs X’s portraits and willed her to give me something ... anything ... to help me find her.
The shots Barbra had taken were all partials. In the first couple, Mrs X had dropped her head to meet the sunglasses that were being raised towards her nose. The upcoming arm and spectacles had shielded sections of her features in the later shots, and in the final one, as she’d passed in front of Barbra’s lens, the glasses were in place and there wasn’t much beyond an ear and the angle of a chin to recognise her by.
I picked up one of the earlier snaps and tried to imagine what she would look like without the arm cutting across her cheek and eye.
A sense of disorientation swept over me again. The face that was in front of me was also floating six feet away. Blinking to try to refocus, I attempted to bring both images together. It wouldn’t work. There were two Mrs Xs - one in my photo ... and one on the screen.
21
‘... as a child of mixed race myself, I know how pernicious racism can be. It’s so easy to blame those who don’t seem to understand the rules
I sat forward, oblivious to the interviewer blabbing on about another attack on an immigration hostel in Dover, whilst I studied every millimetre of Ms Faye Sinclair’s features. Why the hell hadn’t I seen it before? Because I’d only ever seen her in formal interviews, that’s why (and not taken much notice of them). The public Ms Sinclair, with her carefully groomed suits, discreet jewellery, immaculate make-up and hair that seemed to have been engraved from ebony, was very different from the casual, relaxed woman in the photo I was holding.