For One Night Only

by W W Walker

  Constance handed the sheet to Gladys. Eddie’s body was face down. “Take the two corners,” she said as if they were about to make a bed. She put the elastic parts around his head and told Constance to do the same with his feet. His lower body was at an angle, so she tucked the elastic around his knees and then his feet. Ironically, the sheet covered him into a nice little package as if he was just a big sack of potatoes. “Now we have to turn him,” Gladys said.

  “What? Why?” Constance was losing it. It was one thing killing Eddie, but quite another to touch him. And how was Gladys dealing with it all? He was her son, for god’s sake.

  “We need him to be on the sheet,” she said simply. “Make it like a body bag.”

  Somewhere on the estate, a light came on.

  “We should hurry.”

  Constance nodded and did as Gladys asked. With the help of the elastic sheet, they turned his body over so that it was now under him. His face startled them both. Obviously, Gladys wasn’t that resilient. With a look of horror on her face, she quickly covered his head, his cracked skull now hidden from sight.

  “You need every bit of strength you’ve got now, dear,” Gladys said.

  She’d called Constance dear. Hearing such an affectionate term, almost made her knees give away beneath her. But, with renewed strength, as if a kind word had spurred her on, Constance took hold of the sheet and with Eddie’s body tucked inside, the two women dragged it up the garden towards the cliff.

  They came to a stop at the edge. The tide was in. It was crashing again the rocks, spraying almost halfway up. Gladys and Constance looked at each other. It was time to be rid of Eddie once and for all. They each took a firm hold of the sheet and spilled his body over the side, leaving Constance with the pink elastic, so-called body bag, as his corpse careened down the sheer cliff and into the sea.

  They could no longer see him. He was gone.

  ‘He was out swimming,’ they would tell the police. ‘He never came back…probably taken by a current after the turbulent waves had smashed his body against the rocks, cracking his skull in the process.’

  Standing on the cliffside, contemplating their actions, the two women fought their desire to scream when a breeze blew up from the sea as if Eddie’s soul had come back to haunt them.

  Then Constance had a notion. She looked at Gladys and said. “If he was out swimming, why would he be naked, while his wetsuit is here at the house?”

  She thought Gladys would have an answer to that, but Eddie’s bemused mother simply looked over the cliff, realising too late that she must have missed that episode of Kojak.

  “Constance?” Marigold called through the letterbox. “Are you there? Are you okay, Connie?”

  Marigold couldn’t understand why Constance wasn’t coming to the door. And why were all the curtains closed?

  She suddenly had an awful thought. What if something had happened to her? What if Eddie had done something bad? If he had done something to her friend, she intended to find out about it before she called the police.

  She decided to go around the back. She opened the gate at the side of the house, went down the path and stepped onto the terrace.

  She saw them inside when she knocked violently on the patio’s doors.

  Constance and Gladys jumped. Even through the window, Marigold could see that both women looked as white as a sheet. Constance came to the window and slid open the door.

  Marigold stepped inside, out of the cold. She held her hand against her chest. “Thank God. I thought something had happened to you.”

  Constance’s voice was shaky. “What do you mean?”

  “The bus has just left and then I couldn’t get an answer.” Marigold frowned as she suddenly remembered Connie’s face peeking through the curtains while the men were loading the bus. “Why didn’t you answer the front door?”

  “I didn’t hear the bell.”

  Marigold was sure there was something afoot. She’d yelled through the letterbox. How could Constance not have heard her? And since when were Constance and Gladys pals? She couldn’t remember a time the two women had sat together so intimately as if they were suddenly close family. “What’s wrong?” she asked, looking for an answer from either woman. “Where’s Eddie?”

  “He’s…he’s still out swimming.”

  “What?” Marigold was stunned. “How could he be out swimming? The tide’s in and it’s rough as hell out there.”

  Constance shrugged, which made Marigold even more suspicious. Then as if a curtain had gone up on stage, Constance became a different person. “Oh, don’t worry about Eddie,” she said. “He’s a strong swimmer. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

  Marigold admitted she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the basket, but she knew when Constance was lying. The woman was acting! It was obvious…maybe not to a stranger who didn’t know her as a quiet person, who never made many optimistic statements, but Marigold was no stranger to Constance’s habits. She was often a timid character, not overly chatty or sociable, so right then, the image she was trying to portray didn’t fit her at all.

  “Sit down and have a cup of tea,” Gladys said.

  “I’ll get the biscuit barrel,” Constance offered.

  Marigold sat down and recalled that time when Constance had come to her house at No.2. It was just last year after the anniversary party which she hadn’t turned up for. Marigold had gotten quite peeved with her friend for letting her down, and when Constance went over the next day to make some lame apology, Marigold was less than receptive.

  “I’m sorry about the party,” Constance had said. She was wearing an orange flowery dress which would have looked okay five years ago, but it was the eighties now and people were ditching florals. She had a cardigan on, which hadn’t made sense, since it was a really hot day.

  “Take your sweater off,” Marigold said. “You must be baking in that.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Go on, take it off.”

  “I told you I’m fine.”

  That’s when Marigold reached over the table and tugged the cardigan from Constance’s shoulders. The bruise was huge, covering her arm and shoulder, as black and blue as a midnight sky.

  Constance pulled the sweater back around her as tears formed in her eyes.

  Marigold touched her hand. “Why do you put up with it?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have much choice, do I?” she said, bitterly.

  “Why don’t you just leave him.”

  “And go where?”

  “Family. They’ll help, won’t they?”

  “Not mine. My father would send me right back to my husband. I can hear him now. ‘You made your bed, our Connie, now you have to lie in it’.”

  “Your sister then.”

  Constance shook her head. “Never. She has a wonderful marriage. She’d scorn mine. I couldn’t bear the shame.”

  “Friends?”

  “The only ‘friends’ I have live in Seaview. The others have dropped by the wayside over the years.”

  Marigold contemplated Constance asking if she could come and live with her and Wilbur, and suddenly, Marigold was no longer compassionate for her friend’s dilemma.

  “Don’t worry,” Constance said. “I’m not about to ask you to live here.”

  “Well…I…”

  “I should go.” She stood up and left, and that was the last time they’d talked about it in any detail.

  Now, as they sat at Constance’s kitchen table, Marigold knew only too well the horrors that went on in that house and she intended to get to the bottom of what happened in there that morning…or last night!

  Eddie still hadn’t returned from his ‘swim’. “Don’t you think you ought to call the police?” Marigold asked.

  Constance still had her actress hat on. Marigold was beginning to feel insulted, knowing that Constance was making a load of excuses whilst assuming Marigold couldn’t see through her little ploy. Marigold suspected Eddie had left home and for the mo
st part she couldn’t understand why Constance wasn’t coming right out with it. It was ‘good riddance to him’, surely!

  “Maybe the coast guard should be informed,” Marigold said, pushing the issue to the very limit. Soon, Constance would crack under the pressure and tell all.

  Suddenly, when the sun shone through a gap in the clouds, something caught Marigold’s attention outside the patio doors. “That’s odd,” she said.

  Constance’s eyes followed hers. “What is?”

  “It hasn’t rained since Thursday and yet your terrace is wet.”

  A silence fell between them, before Gladys piped up, “That was me. It looked like it needed a good clean.”

  “Really?! You’re not worried about it icing over…and maybe slipping on it?”

  “No, I wasn’t worried about that until you said it.” Gladys was becoming irate and Marigold was glad to be making waves. One of them would cave any minute. Their secret was hanging in the air like a cloud full of thunder. It was obvious that Eddie had left his wife. She kept going. “It’s a shame Eddie had to miss the golf trip.”

  Constance kept up her side of the acting duo. “He changed his mind. He doesn’t get on with Roger very well.”

  “Oh, I see. That’s a shame since Roger was kind enough to pay for most of it.”

  “Eddie would have felt duty bound to him.”

  “None of the others felt that way. My Wilbur certainly didn’t. It was understood that Roger was charging it back to the company. One of the perks he called it.”

  “I…I didn’t know that.”

  “I think Eddie knew.”

  “Well, I don’t know why he changed his mind. I’m just guessing.”

  “This is all rubbish.”

  “What?”

  “I know something has happened. I just wish you trusted me enough to tell me.”

  When Constance clammed up, saying no more on the matter, Marigold got up and walked out. She’d had enough.

  When she got outside, after leaving Constance and Gladys wondering about how much she knew, Marigold noticed Kiki’s curtains were open over the road at No.1. Marigold thought that was odd since Kiki never got up before eleven on a Saturday. She called it her treat of the week.

  Just as she was about to cross the eight, she remembered she’d promised Wilbur that she would look in on Mr and Mrs Butler.

  She went along the path of No.8 and noticed some loose fertilizer on the flagstones. She tutted. Wilbur had missed a bit from the flowerpot the cat had broken last night. She’d get a dustpan and brush and clean it up properly. She tapped on the back door which was at the side of the house. There was no answer. She tapped again. Nothing. “Yoo-hoo, Mrs B,” she called. “It’s Marigold from across the road.” She tapped again.

  She went down the side and into the back garden taking a few paces back to try and see if the curtains were still closed in the back bedroom window. They were. Perhaps they were having a lie in. She was standing with her arms crossed, wondering what she should do, when she heard voices.

  It was Constance and Glady, form next door. She stood very still and quiet at the side of a tree and listened.

  “What about the stone?” asked Constance.

  “I washed it and threw it over the cliff.”

  “But, now there’s a gap in the rockery. It’s noticeable.”

  “We can fix that.”

  “What if the water doesn’t dry up. If Marigold noticed, others will too.” Constance was saying making Marigold’s ears prick up even more.

  “We can get some towels. Soak up the worst of it.”

  “Alright. But our biggest problem is the wetsuit. What will we do with it?”

  “Burn it?”

  “Not around here. They’d notice a bonfire. And rubber smells.”

  “Bury it then.”

  “Bury it?”

  “Why not? We could go down to the beach after eleven when the tide’s out.”

  “Alright, we’ll do that then,” said Constance.

  “We need to go and make everything look as normal as possible. You should open the curtains and make the beds.”

  “All right.”

  Marigold stood in the garden next door. She’d forgotten about Mrs Butler as she now wondered what on earth Constance and Gladys had been talking about. If Eddie had left, what did that have to do with a wetsuit? Why would they want to bury it? What on earth was going on?

  Across the road at No.1, she found Kiki pacing outside the house on her little patch of lawn. “Kiki?” Marigold called as she crossed the eight. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “Erhm.”

  Marigold put her hand on Kiki’s shoulder. “What is it?”

  “I had a friend come around last night…after you left.”

  “But I didn’t leave until eleven-thirty.”

  “Just before actually,” Kiki said as Marigold began counting minutes in her head. “It’s just that he…I mean she, left quite early this morning, but she never took her car. I’ve just seen it parked down the road beyond the gates. He…she parked it there last night.”

  “Why didn’t she drive it in?”

  A pause. “She forgot the code.”

  “How did she get through the gates then?”

  A pause. “I…I let her in. She couldn’t be bothered to go move her car, so she left it there. We had a few drinks, so she didn’t leave until early this morning.”

  “There’s your answer then,” Marigold said, satisfied she’d solved the mystery of Kiki’s friend’s car. “If you both had a lot to drink, she wouldn’t have wanted to drive, would she? The new drink driving restrictions are playing havoc with people’s social lives.”

  “I suppose so…”

  “What’s her name, your friend?”

  “Erhm…Tyra.”

  “I tell you what, why we don’t have a nice cup of tea and you can tell me all about her.”

  As they walked into No.1, Marigold thought about how earlier, Constance had lied through her teeth about the whereabouts of her husband, and now she was with another one who couldn’t see the truth if it hit her in the face.

  What a morning, Marigold thought.

  Chapter Twenty

  Drake was in a bad mood and in a good mood all at the same time. He realised he couldn’t class himself as a patient man, but the guy he had tied up in the kitchen of the empty house was seriously testing his patience. Tyrone didn’t know what had hit him when he’d left Kiki’s early that morning, and it was the one thing that was keeping Drake’s cheerful mood up. He loved to surprise people. Not in a good way!

  He often recalled the surprised look on his father’s face when young Drake had put that drill through his neck. And he didn’t lose that expression even when the life was sucked out of him. When he went down those cellar steps and the mirror followed him, despite his eyes being shut, Drake had called out. “Here’s your mirror, you dirty bastard, take a look in that now.” The irony wasn’t lost on Drake’s humour and he spent many days afterwards reminiscing on the whole debacle.

  Mother, of course, had gone about her routine in her usual docile state. God, how he hated women. They never fought back. They never stuck up for themselves. They never objected to anything. That’s what he liked about Kiki Cutter. She was a strong woman. Not someone people could just walk all over.

  Except for the guy he now had tied up on the kitchen floor of No.3. He had tried to take over her life and Drake was positive Kiki hadn’t agreed to it. She had rejected Tyrone time and time again at work, so she wasn’t about to welcome him into her home willingly. If she had, Drake wouldn’t think kindly of her at all and he’d be forced to teach her a lesson until she complied! It didn’t usually take him long to make women do that. Look at his mother. She was a good example.

  After father left, she’d gone around that kitchen with her bucket and sponge and she’d cleaned everything. Then she did it again the next day. When someone knocked on the door asking about father, Drake h
eard her telling lie after lie about his whereabouts. He was a co-worker, someone from the plumbing firm father worked at. Mother told him that he’d run off with some tart and that he probably wouldn’t be back. “It’s just me and our Drake now,” she’d said before she told him to send father’s final wages to her.

  That was the last they’d heard about father. Good riddance!

  Now there he was with Tyrone, not knowing what he was going to do with him.

  It began that morning when he came out of Kiki’s house in the early hours, and out of the dark Drake had taken a spade to the backs of his legs, making him crumble to a heap on the floor. Then Drake crashed the spade down on his head. He’d gotten the spade from the greenhouse at No.8 since they didn’t need it anymore.

  He was surprised and relieved all at the same time when Tyrone moaned while lying on the grass in front of Kiki’s house. Drake was sure he’d hit him hard enough to kill him, but it looked like his head was harder than he’d anticipated. Drake had to admit to feeling mildly relieved. He hadn’t planned to get rid of Tyrone since he had no idea Tyrone was going to be there. The spade across the skull scenario had been as much as a surprise for Drake as it had been for Tyrone. Sometimes Drake just saw red and the things he did, as a result, were almost dreamlike as if he was being forced to do it. His father maybe. Yes, maybe it was father who made him do the things he did.

  When Tyrone had passed out, Drake had dragged him by the legs all the way to the empty house. He’d checked to see if anyone was looking, but it was so early, a fine mist had settled on the ground and everyone in the neighbourhood were fast asleep. Just as he’d taken a much-deserved rest from lugging the big guy about, from the darkness and through the mist, he’d seen a figure, a man, wearing a wet suit.

  After he’d gone up the side path of No.7, Drake had simply carried on, not even relieved that the man never saw him. If he had, Drake pondered, he would have gone over the road and smashed his head in too. He still had the spade so that would have been easy peasy. No, that man had been lucky to get off scot-free. He would live to see another day. Lucky guy!