The Facts of Life and Death

by Belinda Bauer

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re all off the one car, I reckon. All these tickets. Come see.’

  Marion trudged through the soft white sand to the sea wall and peered over it to the line of parked cars.

  Directly opposite them was a yellow car with two broad black stripes down it.

  ‘Mark II Capri,’ said Donald. ‘Duncan had one of those.’

  Duncan was Donald’s younger brother. He’d had one of everything at some stage. Now he had one ex-wife, one daughter who didn’t speak to him, and one stupidly big house so encumbered by negative equity that it was actually subsiding under the weight.

  There were three more parking tickets under the windscreen wipers, fluttering their slow way towards freedom on the beach.

  Donald tore open one of the tickets on his stick and confirmed that it did indeed come from the Capri.

  ‘See?’ he told Marion.

  ‘I do,’ she nodded. ‘I do see. Well spotted, Donald.’

  With a new spring in his step, Donald strode off the beach, round the sea wall and over to the Capri, with Marion in tow.

  ‘One a day, by the looks of things,’ he said. ‘I should call the council.’

  ‘What for?’ said Marion dutifully.

  ‘Well, to let them know about the car. All these bits of plastic blowing about aren’t helping the situation, are they?’

  Donald shook open a new green bag and stuffed all the parking tickets in it and then tied it to the aerial, where it flapped about like last place in a balloon race.

  ‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘what’s the point of a warden just sticking a ticket on it every day? Owner’s obviously not bothered. It should be towed away. Impounded. Owner fined. But instead it’s sitting here on two flat tyres, being used as a rubbish bin by some idiot in epaulettes filling his quota. No joined-up thinking, see? Bloody local-government robots.’

  He’d worked himself up into a pedantic fugue, and Marion couldn’t have been happier.

  Donald just wasn’t Donald without a bee in his bonnet.

  When they got home, Marion made tea while Donald called the county council’s highways department and then their environmental services department. Then he rang the district council’s car-recycling department. Marion noticed that he was on the phone longer each time, over-explaining and under-listening to make sure he got best value for his council tax.

  She’d made Donald’s favourite – lamb chops on mashed potatoes – and when it was ready she went into the hallway to summon him to eat.

  Marion stopped dead.

  Donald was on the phone, talking to the Big Sheep.

  Marion stood and cocked her head to hear him better, and felt a long-lost smile start to stretch her face.

  He was telling them he’d be at work on Monday, come hell or high water.

  39

  INSTOW WAS A pretty village, but apart from the beach there wasn’t much to see or do. It had no amusement arcades or fairground, or shops selling tat, or pedalos for hire. Instow was smarter than that – it had Paul’s Deli, a couple of small galleries, the Commodore Hotel and three or four upmarket bistros painted fashionably dark grey or maroon.

  It was nice.

  But it was dull.

  Which is why, when the council caved in to Donald Moon’s campaign of harassment and sent a truck to tow away the illegally parked yellow Ford Capri, the operation drew the kind of crowd more usually seen under a man threatening to jump off a bridge.

  Old ladies got the plum seats. They squeezed on to the benches in beige quartets, armed with their 99 ice creams and plastic rain scarves and with tissues up their sleeves, ready for dabbing.

  Then came the dog-walkers – with their wet, sandy charges panting on leashes – and mothers with buggies. And once the dog-walkers and the mums had stopped to stare, it seemed the whole village got wind of something happening on the sea front, and by the time the tow-truck driver had hitched up the Capri and was ready to start winching, there must have been a hundred people waiting patiently to be mildly entertained.

  The truck driver’s name was Andy Shapland and he enjoyed the audience, especially the small boys, who he could see were truly impressed by his retaining straps and his road cones and his big hook – rather than the idle bystanders who simply had nothing better to do on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.

  Shapland took care with the Capri. His father had had one, although not so well cared for, even in 1976. Luckily the doors were unlocked, so he hadn’t had to break a window to release the handbrake. Now he lined the wheels up with the ramps, put on the steering-wheel lock, and pressed the big red button on the remote, which started the winch.

  Slowly the car’s nose started to rise on to the low-loader, and the small boys burst into a smattering of spontaneous applause. Andy Shapland grinned and took a little bow, and they clapped harder.

  Distracted by uncommon glory, he didn’t notice that the Capri was heading for disaster. It was a low-slung car, even when new, but this one had been restored and repainted and lowered again. Not a lot. Not so you’d notice unless you were used to seeing Ford Capris every day – which, of course, nobody was any more. But it had low-profile tyres on it, and shorter shocks, and – most damning of all – it had a big fat exhaust system with far fewer inches of ground clearance than was really prudent.

  At maximum tilt – just as the Capri was almost home and dry – the big fat exhaust hit the ground hard. The nasty metallic scraping noise drew an ‘Oh!’ from the idle bystanders and then a ripple of laughter, as the boot clicked open in response to the jolt, like a sleeper opening half an eye to see what all the fuss was.

  Shit. Andy Shapland hit the big red button to stop the winch.

  He could see from where he was standing that he’d broken the exhaust. He’d done that once before with a Lotus and the owner had had a meltdown on the A361, but, to be honest, cocking it up on an old Capri in front of a crowd was much more embarrassing. From the corner of his eye he saw the small boys looking disappointed. And if he knew small boys, it would only be another few seconds before their childish disappointment turned into shouts of derision. Especially as the boot popping open had lent the whole thing a comedy air.

  He walked over quickly to slam the lid shut, then stopped, staring down into the black-lined interior of the Capri.

  Then he said, ‘Shit!’ and ‘Call the police!’

  ‘What?’ said an old lady on the nearest bench.

  ‘Call the police!’ shouted Andy Shapland in a panic. ‘Call the police!’

  Several people laughed, thinking it was part of the show.

  ‘Call the police!’ He’d do it himself. He could do it himself. He suddenly realized that he could call the police. Andy Shapland’s fingers felt numb. His head felt numb. He put the phone to his ear and it was only when everybody laughed again that he realized he was trying to call the police on the remote for the winch, speaking into the big red button.

  ‘There’s a body in the boot!’ he shouted. ‘There’s a body in the boot!’

  A thin man with two Border collies on leads stepped off the pavement and peered into the boot and confirmed that that was true.

  Lots of people called the police then, and the police came and made all the old ladies and the mums and the dog-walkers and the small boys stand far enough away so that nobody else could see anything interesting.

  Killjoys.

  Conveniently, there was a driver’s licence in the body’s wallet, and it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to match the photo of a stout middle-aged man with fluffy grey mutton-chop sideburns to the swollen, stinking body in the boot of his own Ford Capri.

  His name was Leonard Willows.

  Also known as Pussy.

  When the Gunslingers heard about Pussy Willows they tried to be sorry, but it didn’t work. Their only fond memory of him had been the fight that had got them banned from the George, and that was no basis for false regret.

  Within minutes of meeting that Friday, they wer
e deep in drink and speculation about who’d killed him.

  ‘Ex-wife,’ said Blacky. ‘Sure to be.’

  ‘Was he married?’ said Shiny.

  ‘If he was married,’ said Blacky.

  ‘Police haven’t said it was murder yet,’ said Whippy, who was always the most cautious.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Scratch, flicking his poncho over one shoulder so it didn’t dip in his cider. ‘Didn’t kill himself and hide himself in the boot, did he?’

  The Gunslingers nodded firmly at that. The police hadn’t even officially identified Pussy yet, but Scratch’s wife’s uncle had a boat moored at Instow and so had all the inside information, and there’d been a photo of the car in the Gazette.

  ‘What was that name he wanted?’ said Hick.

  ‘What name?’

  ‘The one we wouldn’t let him have.’

  ‘Dunno. Oi, Shiny! What was that name he wanted?’

  ‘Deadly, I think,’ said Shiny. ‘No, not Deadly, Deadeye. That’s it.’

  ‘Well, he’s got two of ’em now!’ shouted Nellie, and they all laughed.

  Daisy Yeo mooed for another beer from the bar, and when it arrived he raised his glass and said, ‘To Pussy Willows. Couldn’t have happened to a better man.’

  They all laughed and sipped their drinks.

  Then Hick frowned and said, ‘I hope we’re not suspects.’

  They smiled a little bit, but then realized he was being serious.

  ‘Why would we be suspects?’ said Razor.

  Shiny rolled his eyes and said, ‘ ’Cos of the fight, innit? It’s not like it was private! Everyone round here knows about it. And Pussy bore a grudge, you know. Remember that time Razor seen him in the Blue Dolphin? Cut him dead.’

  ‘Cut me dead,’ agreed Razor. ‘I said, “Right, Pussy?” and he wouldn’t even look at me.’

  ‘Still,’ said Whippy, ‘it’s a motive, innit?’

  ‘But he started it,’ said Chip.

  ‘And we finished it!’ said Blacky, to cheers all round.

  ‘And that’s the truth,’ nodded Shiny, ‘if Mr Plod comes knocking.’

  ‘Who’s Mr Plod?’ said Razor.

  ‘The police!’ said Shiny. ‘Don’t you read?’

  The Gunslingers had the best meeting they’d had for an awfully long while. They laughed and sang along to a new Lyle Lovett on the jukebox, and Jim Maxwell let them buy a final round a whole ten minutes after he’d rung the big brass bell behind the bar.

  And the cherry on the cake was that when they got out to the car park at the end of the night, not one of their cars had been vandalized.

  ‘No Pussy Willows, nobody fucking with our cars,’ said Hick Trick. ‘Says it all, dunnit?’ – and they all agreed that it did, indeed, say it all.

  40

  DADDY HAD CHANGED, and Ruby didn’t know why.

  When they drove up the hill in the mornings, he snapped at Ruby, ‘Don’t hang on my seat like that!’ and when she asked Mummy for more pudding he said, ‘You’ll get fat. Ter.’

  Fat. Ter.

  Fatter.

  She felt fractured. Didn’t he love her any more? She must’ve done something wrong – but nothing she did could make it right.

  She sat with Daddy and watched Extreme Fishing and Man v. Food and brought him Mummy’s phone without being asked, and fetched wood from the woodpile, even though it was full of spiders. She even brought Panda downstairs and sat him on the easy chair, to let Daddy know they were ready when he was.

  But he barely spoke to her, and twice that week he went on the posse by himself, leaving her alone in the house.

  And Ruby no longer felt safe in the house.

  It was almost November and the forest was at its most overbearing – pendulous with leaves and seeds and dripping rainwater, and, however loud she turned up the TV, Ruby could never block out the sound of the rustling against the back wall of The Retreat; the itchy squeak of branches against the windows; the creak of beams, like the masts of an old ship. Mice scratched and scrabbled behind the damp plaster, and Mummy came down early one morning and stepped on a toad halfway down the stairs. The big spiders had moved indoors in force, and Ruby didn’t even dare to sit on the rug, where their camouflage was complete.

  There were cracks in the walls that Ruby had never seen before. Or if she had, she hadn’t remembered them. And the crack that had always been in the corner of her room, over the bed, seemed to have got longer. And wider.

  Sometimes something in the roof or the walls gave a short, sharp report, like a cap gun – as though something was snapping, letting go, breaking free. At night she would wake from blood-soaked dreams to feel her ears ringing with something they’d heard in her absence. And when she lay there waiting for a repeat performance, The Retreat held its breath and waited until she’d dropped back into a fitful sleep before cracking its knuckles and grinding its teeth.

  But worst of all was the bathroom window that Daddy was too lazy to fix.

  As the wind swung around to the north and picked up its winter cold and strength, the high whine became howls of pain and low groans, like somebody dying upstairs, while downstairs nobody talked about it. It was too obvious to talk about; too loud to mention – there would only be a row.

  So they suffered in the opposite of silence.

  The next Cowboy afternoon, Ruby went into the little shop and spent her week’s pocket money on a tube of glue and a Gazette.

  ‘You on a diet?’ said Mr Preece, even though she noticed that he had to reach over his own belly to ring up the sale.

  She passed the empty paddock with barely a glance, and hurried down the hill.

  On her bedroom floor she tore the newspaper into strips and put them in a bowl full of warm water to soak.

  Later, when Daddy had left, and Mummy was downstairs with Nanna and Granpa, she got to work.

  They had made pâpier mâché once at school, but she couldn’t remember the exact recipe. They’d moulded masks over balloons. Ruby’s was of a mermaid, but she was much younger then.

  She squeezed the water out of the soggy strips of paper until they became a pulp, which she squirted with glue and then fed into every gap she could find in the bathroom window frame.

  She found plenty – some with her eyes and some just by feeling the air cooling her wet fingertips. The ghostly keening grew smaller and more distant as she worked the pulp between the wood and the glass, using her ruler to push it in and tamp it down.

  She kept listening for Daddy’s return. She wanted to finish before he got back. Once she thought she heard the car and panicked a bit, but it was a false alarm.

  When she’d filled in all the gaps she could find, she squirted glue into them too, to seal the paper. Some glue got on the window, and when she tried to rub it off with toilet paper, the paper stuck to her fingers, and to the glass.

  And to the carpet.

  But the noise of the wind grew smaller and smaller until finally it ceased.

  Ruby stood in the bathroom and listened to the silence. It was only now that it had stopped that she realized how that sound had become part of her life – a ghostly undercurrent that had grated through her head for years.

  She shivered. How had they all put up with it for so long? The thought of hearing it ever again made her feel ill.

  She decided to do the same for the crack over her bed.

  Halfway through the Gazette, Ruby tore through the face of someone she knew. She stopped.

  RING CLUE IN MURDER HUNT.

  Ruby laid the two bits of newspaper back down together and adjusted them carefully so they aligned.

  It was a picture of that girl who had given her the five-pound note. The caption reminded Ruby that her name was Steffi. Next to that was a photo of the girl in the big pink dress, and then one of a pretty girl with long blonde hair, whose name was Jody.

  She read the story.

  Police hunting the killer of Frannie Hatton say they want to find a silver nose ring she is bel
ieved to have been wearing when she disappeared.

  Frannie, 22, from Northam, was killed and her body was left in a lay-by in Abbotsham seven weeks ago.

  Although she always wore a nose ring, it was not on her body when it was found.

  In Bideford yesterday, Detective Chief Inspector Kirsty King said, ‘We believe now that Frannie was probably wearing the nose ring when she was abducted and killed.

  ‘If anyone has found it, or knows where it is, please contact us in confidence because it might be vital to our investigation.’

  Frannie’s grieving boyfriend, Mark Spade, 28, said, ‘She never took it out. I’ve looked everywhere for it but it’s not in the flat.’

  A neighbour said yesterday, ‘She was a pretty little thing who wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  Police are linking Frannie’s murder with two earlier assaults and with the subsequent disappearance of two other young women from North Devon.

  Jody Reeves, 25, disappeared on 3 October after a night out with her boyfriend, while Steffi Cole, 20, went missing on the walk home from her part-time job at Paul’s Deli in Instow a week later.

  Both women were forced to phone home before disappearing, leading police to believe they could also be victims of the masked man known as the ET Killer. They have appealed for witnesses who may have seen Jody or Steffi on the dates in question to contact the police in complete confidence.

  Ruby was agog. She had seen Steffi! She was completely confident about that. She’d left the shop after giving Ruby a fiver and that man with the bushy sideboards had stabbed the tyre soon afterwards. He could have murdered Steffi!

  Then she noticed something she hadn’t the first time round. At the foot of the story was a small photo of a plain silver loop. The caption said: Similar nose ring.

  Ruby’s mouth popped open in surprise.

  It was the earring she’d found in Daddy’s car! The one she’d stuck in her diary!

  With excitement buzzing in her tummy, she pulled her diary out of her pony backpack and flicked through the pages.

  The earring was gone.

  Ruby touched the place where it had been with her fingers. This was definitely the place. There was her writing . . . I found this treshure . . . but all that was left was a rough white patch on the page to show where the sticky tape had been ripped off and had taken some of the blue lines with it.