by Liz Evans
‘When it comes to Peter, you get the hots every time?’
‘Yes .. . no,’ I said. ‘Well, not when he’s in the frock. The point is, I don’t see how I can blow out a grade-A bloke with no hang-ups, and then fall for one with better legs than me. And a better bust, if it comes to that. What am I going to do?’
‘Ask him if you can borrow it when he’s not using it. At least you’ll start off with a couple of things in common.’
This isn’t funny. I’m trying to have a serious conversation here.’
‘So what do you expect me to say? Who knows why people fall for each other. Look at the odd couples you see around. Nobody can imagine what on earth they see in each other. If I could explain sexual attraction I’d quit this job, write a book on it, and make a fortune. Maybe it’s your guardian angel keeping an eye out for you. If you had fallen for Luke, you’d be feeling ten times worse now. Dating a bloke in a frock isn’t half as tricky as dating a corpse.’
I guess she had a point. When I thought of Peter I saw golden skin, sloe-eyes and tapering fingers that made my skin tingle. When I called up a picture of Luke, however, the sun-tanned bloke in a sports car had gone. All I could see was that blood- soaked body with fingers cut raw by the barbed spearhead and flesh starting to putrefy in the Turkish bath atmosphere.
Accidental death, the police were calling it. Not officially yet - that would be down to the coroner’s inquest - but that was what it said on frosty-faced Emily’s paperwork. Hence the strangely laid-back investigation. Annie had spelt it out for me on the drive over to Wakens Keep.
‘There was this chaise-longue in the police property store. I thought at first it was stolen gear, but it turned out Emily had had it taken out of Steadman’s place. It’s evidence for the coroner’s court. It seems your Luke was trying to change a light bulb. They found the new one still in its carton behind one of the chairs. Instead of getting some steps, he pulled the chaise under the fitting and tried to balance on the curved section. He went over backwards on to that lance. It normally stood in a brass canister, apparently. Kept it partially upright.’
She’d taken one hand from the steering wheel to show me, palm flattened, the angle of the spear.
‘According to the post-mortem, it nicked the corner of his heart. He’d have started bleeding to death pretty fast. I mean, he might have yelled for help or tried to reach the phone—’
‘The land line was cut off.’ I’d tried to imagine what it must have been like. Had he realised he was dying and known it could be days before anyone found him? Had he tried to get to the outside door? What must it have felt like knowing that whatever plans you’d made for the next forty or fifty years were never going to happen now? This was it - check-out time.
‘They think it would have been quick,’ Annie had said as if she’d read my thoughts. ‘All that blood pumping from a heart chamber. He’d have passed out fast. Even if medical help had got there almost immediately, it’s doubtful they would have been able to save him. Emily is going to ring his mum; let her know how things stand. But keep the details to yourself until after the inquest, OK? You know what prima donnas some of these coroners can be if anyone pre-empts their moment of glory.’
‘There’s nothing here,’ she said now, replacing the toiletries in their correct positions in Barbra’s bathroom cabinet. ‘Just how well is our new partner likely to have hidden these negs?’
‘She stashed them so that Lee wouldn’t find them during his stay. It’s a game with them; making each other’s lives as miserable as sin. There’s no way she’d make it easy for him.’
‘Then I figure we’re wasting our time like this. You know the score, Grace. Somewhere like this needs an attic-to-basement job. It’s going to take the best part of a day and it can’t be done when we’re tippy-toeing like there’s a bomb with a sound-sensitive detonator in the walls.’
She was right: this was hopeless. I was either going to have to get Barbra away from the house for a clear day and risk breaking in. Or find some way to make her hand those negs over.
The phone bell sent my heart bouncing into my mouth. After becoming attuned to the small-hours silence, the whole house seemed to be acting as an echo chamber for the strident ringing. ‘Hell, it sounds like it’s right outside the door.’
‘It nearly is,’ Annie hissed back. ‘Is there an extension in Barbra’s room?’
‘How would I know? Let’s get out of here.’
We were too late. Barbra answered the extension question by coming out of her room and padding down the upper landing to pick up the receiver. Annie flicked the light in the bathroom off quickly.
Through the heavy door we caught fragments of Barbra’s end of the conversation. It sounded like another crank call; although this time, whoever was on the other end had graduated from heavy breathing, judging by Barbra’s suggestions that they ‘Get off this line before I call the police, you pathetic creep.’
There was more of the same before it went quiet.
‘Has she gone?’ I murmured in Annie’s ear, since she was crouched closest to the keyhole.
‘I’m not sure. Give it a minute.’
We waited, trying to control our own breathing. There was no sound from the landing.
‘Clear,’ Annie murmured.
We were straightening up and reaching for the door handle when we heard the unmistakable click of the receiver being replaced. She’d been out there all the time, listening to whatever was going on on the other end of the line.
Barbra’s footsteps were on the move again. Unfortunately, instead of heading back to her bedroom, she was coming this way. Annie just managed to click the light back on again to prevent the door being thrust into our faces.
There are few plausible explanations as to why two women would be together in a bathroom, in the dark, in the early hours of the morning. Particularly when one of them is wearing a pair of rubber gloves.
I was hoping Annie was about to come up with one of them when Barbra said: ‘I want you to leave now.’
My first thought - that she’d taken exception to supposed kinky goings-on amongst her sanitary suite - was soon discarded. She didn’t look shocked so much as distracted. And hung-over.
‘Pardon?’ Annie said.
‘You heard. You can push off now.’
‘It’s two o’clock in the morning, Barbra.’
‘So? I’ll pay you for the full night if that’s what’s bothering you.’
Annie stiffened. ‘It wasn’t the first thing that sprang to mind, no. What about your mystery prowler?’
‘Stuff him. I’ll get me chequebook while you two get dressed.’ She whirled away in a sweep of peach satin and coffee lace neglige.
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Annie said.
We had no choice but to get out of there. Sitting in Annie’s car with Barbra’s cheque safely tucked in my pocket, I asked her if she wanted to hang around to see what happened next.
‘No. To hell with her.’ She turned her ignition and lights on and felt for the seatbelt. ‘You can lurk if you like. Personally, I’ve had enough of the Barbra Delaney story.’
‘That’s no way to speak of the saviour of Vetch’s Investigations.’
Annie stomped on the accelerator and did a three-point turn. We left the square in Wakens Keep at the acceleration rate of a speeding bullet.
She dropped me off at my flat. The slashed mattresses were still ... well ... slashed. The floor hadn’t got any softer. I used to be able to sleep on a clothes line. Insomnia seemed to be another side effect of turning thirty. After four hours of intermittent snoozing, twisting, and screwing my eyelids closed, I gave up.
Despite the fact it had the rest of this week to fatten on trippers’ cash, Seatoun already had a slight air of low-season famine. There was a sense of something slipping slowly away - like water seeping through a pinprick in a plastic container.
I wandered along the promenade, watching the tide hushing over the drifts of tiny white shells
as it retreated from the swath of newly swept and cleaned sands. The early-morning masochists’ swimming club was frolicking in the spume again, and the joggers who utilised the near-deserted pavements at this time of day pounded past with grim determination. Occasionally one of the chambermaids or breakfast waitresses at the private hotels would hurry past me. I was the only person out here at this hour who seemed to have nothing much to do and all the time in the world to do it. With one exception.
Sipping from a lager can, Kelly Benting was sitting on the closed cinema’s steps, watching the early-morning breeze bowling rubbish down the underpass passage until it flattened against the locked entrance doors to the amusement park.
I raised a casual hand from across the road, but she ignored me. Shrugging, I left her to it and continued to drift up and down the front trying to sort out my future (if any) with Peter.
On the plus side, I fancied him and I enjoyed his company - when he was Peter. On the down side, I wasn’t so sure about spending time with Rainwing. They called them ‘sh’ims’ in the States someone had told me - man one day, woman the next. I wasn’t sure I could handle the jokes if the truth came out. On the other hand .. .
I got through more hands than Madame Tussaud’s turning things over and over in my mind. Without any conscious effort on my part, my feet took me from the sloping pedestrian section to the start of the climb to the area where Seatoun’s finest in blue hung out, and back again. Clock tower, public loos, roped-down deckchair stacks, silent children’s playground - all slid over my gaze without my really seeing them. Only objects that were out of place made any impression.
Kelly Benting came into that category. I kept passing and repassing her. She’d crossed over the road to the seaward side and was wandering the same stretch of promenade as me. She looked terrible; worse than the day Peter and I had broken up her rumble in the bedroom with Carter. I don’t know what she’d taken but I doubted if the can of strong lager she was now sipping as she shlepped unsteadily from one end of the prom to the other was going to help.
Eventually she slowed from crawl to full stop. I finally caught up with her drooped on the prom rail near the harbour.
‘Hi.’
At first I thought she wasn’t going to bother to answer. Finally, however, she turned dull eyes on me and said: ‘Hi yourself.’
‘Made it up with the boyfriend, did you?’
‘Yeah. Sort of.’
‘Carter will be gutted.’
Her indifferent shrug consigned Carter to history.
‘So where is he? The boyfriend? Ricky, wasn’t it?’ I had to elaborate when she looked puzzled.
‘Dunno. We had another row, I think. Don’t really ’member.’ She took another swig from the can and continued to stare moodily at the sea birds probing the wet sands.
I could recognise a ‘get lost’ message with the best of them. ‘Well, been lovely chatting. We must do it again sometime. Good luck in the Miss Sullen Contest.’
I moved past her. She called sharply: ‘Wait!’
So I waited.
It took another couple of sips of lager before she finally blurted out: ‘The police station’s up there, isn’t it?’
‘Certainly is. You can’t miss it.’
She pushed herself off the prom balustrade. ‘Do you know any of them?’
‘Some.’
‘I got to go see them. About Luke. About Luke’s death. I have to tell ’em what happened.’
Her tongue was tangling in her sentences and she was plainly thinking better of that decision to let go of the railing.
‘They know what happened. It was a stupid domestic accident.’
She frowned, turning over this information in her head. And then she came up with a statement that I couldn’t really argue with. ‘The police are pretty thick, aren’t they?’
‘Some of them certainly are. Why d’you think so?’
She put her chin up. ‘Isn’t that obvious? It wasn’t an accident. I killed him.’
36
Kelly wanted to confess to the police. I wanted her to confess to me first. Principally because I’m terminally nosy. But also, having discovered the horror, I figured I had a kind of moral right to hear all the details first-hand rather than have to wait months for the court case. I didn’t put it to Kelly in quite that way.
‘You realise they probably won’t believe you?’
‘Why not?’
‘Take a look at yourself. You’re breakfasting on nine per cent proof and I’d guess you’ve popped something as an aperitif.’
‘That was hours ago.’ She shook the can. The contents fizzed out of the opening. With an impatient flick, she sent it into to a pool below us left by the retreating tide ‘I’m not stoned.’ She pushed her fingers through her long hair, drawing it back from her face. Without the tumbling brown curls, the gaunt cheekbones and eye hollows were even more noticeable. ‘I know what I’m saying. I killed Luke. And I’m going to tell the police.’
‘Take some advice? If you want to be taken seriously, tidy yourself up and get rid of the lager breath; have some breakfast.’
‘You reckon?’
‘I certainly do. Come on.’ I got hold of her arm whilst she was dithering and marched her to Pepi’s.
The early-morning dippers had already bagged three of the tables. The aroma of bacon, eggs and spitting sausages filled the place. Kelly’s olive complexion turned to dirty green.
‘The loos are out back.’ I spun her in the right direction and she fled.
When she came back ten minutes later, she still looked rough, but she’d scrubbed off the final traces of yesterday’s make-up and she’d made an effort to comb out her hair.
I pushed out the chair opposite by stretching a leg under the table. ‘Tea? Coffee? Cyanide?’
She chose coffee. And double poached egg on toast. Seeing my face, she explained: ‘My dad says you should make yourself eat after a bender. Balances the blood sugars.’
I ordered the same and let her sit quietly, hugging her sore midriff and staring blankly out the window until the food came.
She was wearing a tiny leather bag on a thong across her chest. The contents were tumbled on to the formica surface as she sought for money (I hoped). A comb, crumpled tissues, lipgloss, mascara and mints. ‘I had a tenner.’ She turned the whole thing inside out and shook it.
I took the two mugs from the tray before Shane could retreat. ‘You’d better put them on my tab, Shane.’
‘What tab?’
‘Start one.’
I half expected Kelly to bolt for the loos again when faced with runny poached eggs, but after a second’s hesitation she tucked in to her own plate. I guess being raised amongst the alcohol fumes increases your tolerance levels.
‘Tell me about Luke,’ I invited.
‘I want to tell the police.’
‘Think of this as a dress rehearsal. Get it straight in your head. Make it sound true.’
‘It is true. You think I’m gonna invent some story about murdering someone? What sort of sad sicko do you think I am?’
Her voice had risen with indignation at the idea I actually might doubt she wasn’t capable of driving a six-foot spear straight through someone’s chest. Luckily the jukebox switched from ‘Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’ to ‘Sea of Love’ at full volume so the surf-bunnies didn’t share in her confession.
‘So tell me. Take it from the top.’
She thought for a moment, chewing rhythmically and washing down the mouthful with a gulp of coffee, before saying: ‘It was Carter’s birthday, that Friday.’
‘I remember. I was outside the pub when he told you. He wanted to take you out. You said you’d think about it.’
‘I only said that to get rid of him. Otherwise he hangs around staring at me for hours. Only he came back, didn’t he. Not then. On his birthday, I mean. He kept going on and on. In the end I told him to push off. I weren’t nasty about it,’ she assured me earnestly. ‘I mea
n, I never said he was pathetic or anything. I just said I wouldn’t ever go with a bloke who didn’t have wheels. And then he said would I if he had a car? Well, I figured he had no chance. Where was he going to get a car? So I said, sure, give me a call soon as you get a motor. And then he said ...’ She leant into the eggy plate, lowering her voice. ‘He said he’d driven Luke’s car loads of times.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘As if! I told him, like, yeah, in his dreams. So he said he’d prove it me if I came up Luke’s cottage with him. I thought, right, call his bluff - and I told him let’s go.’
‘When was this? When you collected his birthday present from Luke?’
‘What present?’
‘Baseball cap. Luke gave it to Carter just after the pair of you overheard him arguing with Est— with your mystery woman.’
‘Oh, that. No. We made that up. He never gave Carter a present. Look, you’re getting everything out of order. Do you want me to tell this or not?’
I held my hands up in a gesture of peace and surrender. ‘Fire away.’
‘He had a key to the garage. Carter did, I mean. Luke gave it to him. So he could wash and polish the car. At least that’s what Luke thought he did. But Carter says Mr Groom used to hide spare keys in the garage. He found some for the car months back. He showed me. And he’s got one to the house too.’
‘Not any more he hasn’t. So Carter’s been doing a bit of joyriding, has he?’
Over the hills and far away, no doubt. No wonder Luke hadn’t known what Harry Rouse was raving on about when he’d had a go at him about wheelies in the farmyard.
‘When Luke was away - he used be out all day sometimes, and come back really late at night - Carter said he’d take a baseball cap and sunglasses from the house and go for a spin. People see what they expect to see, Carter said. And a bloke in a cap and glasses in Luke’s car must be Luke. He said it was dead easy and he’d take me out in it if I liked. Only he couldn’t do it then because the motorbike was still there. That’s how he used to know Luke would be gone for ages. He always took the bike and the cycle helmets.’