by F. G. Cottam
‘So it was the catalyst,’ Megan said.
Richard chuckled. He was obviously proud of his lovely, talented, clever daughter. Why wouldn’t he be?
‘They’ll adore it here,’ Megan said. ‘There is so much to do. They can join the Club.’
‘The Club?’
‘Our version of the Scouts and the Girl Guides, kind of rolled into one,’ Richard said. ‘Phil Teal runs it and it runs like clockwork. All the kids seem to love it. It fosters a sense of community and a strong team ethic.’
‘I was served food by a boy in a Scout uniform on the beach last night.’
‘The Club members always help out at civic events. They rigged that contraption last night that got the bread to the east shore still warm. They do more serious stuff too: sailing courses and survival skills, rock climbing and abseiling, all sorts of wholesome pursuits.’
‘Jack has always had a strong team ethic. It comes from his football. He’s an exceptional player, but he won’t be allowed to play again before Christmas.’
‘He could coach the younger boys, though,’ Richard said. ‘He could coach Angela Heart’s nine- and ten-year-olds.’
‘He would enjoy that,’ Lillian said. ‘But would it be permitted?’
Richard chuckled again and patted her hand. ‘This is still England,’ he said. ‘Everything is allowed here, if we judge it to be right. This is a corner of our green and pleasant land where common sense is still allowed to prevail.’
They were on their way back to London late that afternoon when, about twenty miles east of the bay, James’s mobile pinged into life and he was informed by the display that he had eight messages, two of them from Lee Marsden and the remainder from the Colorado people. He had drunk a beer with his lunch and Lillian had stayed on the lemonade. He was not over the limit but never drank and drove so she was driving the car. He told her about the messages.
‘When were they left?’
‘Late yesterday afternoon.’
‘Lee needs a hobby. He should take up golf or something.’
‘He thinks he’s on to 20 per cent of something big.’
‘Maybe he is. Yesterday afternoon was Saturday, even in Colorado. Plus, it was Saturday morning. They’re five hours behind us. It must have been a breakfast meeting. They must be awfully keen.’
‘Either that or they’re fanatically geeky sociopaths.’
Lillian laughed. ‘I can just picture them,’ she said, ‘gathered in a donut shop at the foot of the Rockies, drinking American coffee from outsize paper cups, discussing you and their scheme for your game to dominate the world. It’s all very exciting, Jimbo.’
‘Jimbo?’
‘You’ll have to get used to being called that, out there.’
‘It’s bad enough Lee Marsden calling me Jimmy.’
‘We all have to make sacrifices, darling.’
James glanced at his wife, smiling at the wheel. The Jaguar’s roof was down and her hair blew behind her in the slipstream so that he could see the finer, paler strands exposed at her temples. She was not wearing her sunglasses and the laugh lines at the corner of her eye were small and faint and an exquisite flaw as if there to emphasise just how perfectly beautiful she looked. He did not know when he had loved her more or felt closer to her. They had found their focus and direction again. There was an expression Jack used; he would have it in a minute.
He leaned over and kissed Lillian on the cheek. ‘We’re locked on,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we are.’
James thought his brother less ebullient than usual, more reserved than was usually the case with him, when they got back. Given that they had only been away since Friday lunchtime, he also seemed much more relieved at the sight of them at the door than he could have any real justification for being. James knew his children. They were well balanced and well behaved, obedient by inclination as well as training and they doted on their Uncle Mark and revelled in his company. Taking care of them surely could not have been that much of a chore.
It was on the walk back to London Bridge underground station an hour later that James discovered the reason for his brother’s unusual demeanour. James was escorting him as a courtesy. Mark and perennial girlfriend Lucy lived in a smart newish apartment block in Kentish Town. He was headed north of the river and home.
‘Do you fancy a pint?’
‘Not really, Mark. I’m probably in for a longish evening with the kids.’
‘Can we stop for a cup of coffee, then?’
James shrugged. There had been plenty of coffee at the house. They went to the Starbucks in the station tunnel that led to the Jubilee and Northern Lines and sat at a zinc table there. Mark ordered them both a latte and remembered at the counter that his brother enjoyed his with an extra shot. James heard him request it.
‘Don’t tell me, Mark. You caught Jack looking at a porn site on my computer.’
‘The only action on the computer that seems to animate Jack is goal highlights on YouTube.’
‘Well. I’m sure his time will come.’
Mark was toying with his drink, ladling foam off the top of the mug with the thin wooden paddle designed for stirring it. He was avoiding looking at his brother. He said, ‘I think your house is haunted.’
A few weeks earlier, James thought that he would have laughed out loud at the absundity of this claim. Since then, he had experienced the strange and still unexplained intuition that he was being watched by something lurking in the shadows of his garden. There had been the children’s dreams. There had been the painting too that Livs had done at school, though that had been more to do with his research into the bay and the way that witchcraft had been dealt with there than with the house.
‘You had better explain,’ he said.
Mark said, ‘Lucy has never been comfortable in your house.’
‘That’s undeniable.’ James thought Lucy very easy on the eye. But he also thought her an attention-seeking pain in the arse. The woman who had been threatening on and off to become his sister-in-law for a decade now claimed a psychic sensitivity. She had heard the story that a slave-trading ship-owner had originally had the Greers’ townhouse built. This much was historical fact. But she claimed that the tormented souls of his human cargo sometimes visited the house. At least, she claimed that a couple of them did.
She had aired this theory loudly over lunch one weekend, a couple of years earlier, as their reluctant guest. Olivia had overheard her and the idea that their house was haunted by captive spirits from a slave ship had frightened their daughter for weeks. She had kept imagining she could hear their seasick moans and the iron jingle of their manacles. It had been an ordeal for her and for her parents until they had finally managed to persuade her it wasn’t true.
‘Lucy has never been comfortable in our house. But you are an agnostic where ghosts are concerned, Mark. Or you were.’
Mark shifted uncomfortably. He had never tried to impress his brother and it was evident to James that he was not attempting to do so now. He did not share the attention-seeking exhibitionism so irritating in his girlfriend. He was a bit rumpled and chaotic, but was actually someone with significantly more impressive achievements to his name than James could honestly boast.
James had written a few clever lines of computer code and provided some neat software solutions for prestigious clients and was the creator of a game about which some geeks in Colorado were becoming excited. Among other professional exploits, Mark had engineered football stadia in some of the major capital cities of the world.
‘I think there was something in the garden on Friday evening. When I went to investigate, what I saw resolved itself into a trick of the light against one of the glass study door panes. But I still think there was something there, James. It was malevolent and watching me. All my instinct told me it was cunning and very dangerous. I’ve never experienced anything like that sensation before and hope I never do again. But I’ve learned to trust my intuition. It was there, J
ames. It was not human. And it was real.’
A silence elapsed between the brothers. James sipped coffee and looked up, towards the end of the tunnel, where in an oval of light, cars and people moved along the busy thoroughfare beyond through heat ripple. He had spent the morning with his wife in the bay. He had joked with Richard Penmarrick about Elizabeth’s reluctance as a singer to bathe in the spotlight. The four of them, five with Megan Penmarrick, had eaten a leisurely lunch on their terrace. He wished he was back there.
‘There’s more, isn’t there?’
‘No. Yes. Yes, I’m afraid there’s more. I looked in on Livs this morning. I heard talking and so just poked my head surreptitiously around the door. I wanted to make sure she wasn’t watching something inappropriate on the TV in her room. But she wasn’t watching anything. She was sitting up in bed. She was too engrossed to be aware of me. She was talking to someone. I could only hear one half of the conversation though, James. The person she was conversing with wasn’t there.’
‘She might have an imaginary friend.’
‘Does she?’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry to bring this complication into your life.’
‘It doesn’t really matter, Mark. I appreciate your reasons for doing so. You love your niece and nephew.’
‘I happen to love my brother, too.’
‘We’re moving. We’re finally doing it. Lillian was totally entranced by the bay. The house purchase was done on Saturday on a handshake.’
‘Good for you, mate.’
The two men stood. Mark cracked a smile that looked to James inspired by pure relief. They embraced. James would walk back from here, out of the tunnel into the light. Mark would journey down into the earth for the tube train taking him home.
‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ James said to Mark’s retreating back.
Mark turned. ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘a dream inspired by too much greasy food eaten much too late.’
‘I’m not even going to go there,’ James said. ‘I’m not even going to think about what you gave the kids to eat over the weekend.’
‘I dreamed of the sea at night,’ Mark said. ‘I dreamed the sea was singing.’
The call from Alec McCabe came the following afternoon. They had told the children that the move was definitely on the previous evening. James was right. It did result in a late night, both Jack and Olivia far too excited at the prospect to want to go to bed before an exhaustive discussion about the likely specifics of their new lives on the coast.
Then in the morning, Livs protested about having to go to school. She said that it was pointless. She was right, Lillian privately conceded, her logic could not be faulted. She would not start year five at her Brodmaw primary until September. They planned to leave London, if they could, well before the end of the current school term. There was no way she would be able to complete her existing year-four coursework so there was no real point in her continuing to attend. But her parents had too much to do to cope with both children in the house while they attempted to get through it all. So, under duress, off she was packed.
Most of the detail about the bay Olivia and Jack heard on the Sunday evening came from their mother. She was slightly less of an authority on the subject than their father was. But he had to spend an hour fielding an exasperated call from Lee Marsden. Lee was adamant that the appearance required of him in the States could not realistically be put off for more than another week.
‘A week Monday, you are there,’ he said.
‘This is a very busy time in my domestic life, Lee. We’re involved in a massive upheaval. We’re relocating. You can go to Colorado and talk to them. You speak the language of development deals and contracts. Plus it’s what I pay you for. And 20 per cent is a fair old slice.’
‘What do you think I’ve been doing, Jimmy? I’ve been negotiating with them night and day. But they have one or two crucial creative suggestions to make to you and they want to meet you, which given the sort of money they’re projecting is only fucking reasonable and fair.’
‘Face time.’
‘Exactomundo.’
James was using the landline and made a face into the receiver. Lee could be a terrible tosspot. He was good at his job, though, and on this occasion he was absolutely right. ‘A week on Monday it is.’
‘Hombre,’ Lee Marsden said, ‘amigo.’
James ended the connection and shook his head. He was fairly sure that Lee Marsden had told him he came originally from Wimbledon.
McCabe called just after 4 p.m. on Monday. He called Lillian, who was at her studio with Olivia and answered on her mobile. She had picked Livs up from school and was spending an hour packing stuff away into removal boxes so that the letting agent could show prospective commercial tenants around. Livs was happily helping in this task.
McCabe got to the point. ‘Robert O’Brien is dead,’ the detective sergeant said. ‘It does not look suspicious. A mate of mine is the senior investigating officer. It will make tomorrow’s papers.’
Lillian sat down on the desk she had just cleared. She swallowed. ‘How did he die?’
‘It won’t say so in tomorrow’s papers, won’t be made public until the results of the autopsy report are made known, but he had been taking cocaine.’
‘Cocaine killed him?’
‘He died of heart failure. He does not seem to have been a chronic user. His liver and kidneys will tell us more—’
‘Jesus.’
‘—but a preliminary examination suggests he used the stuff recreationally rather than habitually. There is not the corrosive damage to the septum generally typical of heavy users.’
‘It must have been the coke. His heart wouldn’t fail,’ Lillian said. ‘He was fanatical about working out.’
‘The SOCOs seem to think he might have had a shock.’
‘What kind of shock?’
‘Something that caused him to die of fright,’ McCabe said. ‘He bit through his own tongue.’
‘And you are telling me this because of our conversation the other day,’ Lillian said, ‘when I accused you of being perceptive.’
‘The last thing he was working on, retrieved from his hard drive, appears to have been a letter intended for you. It could be interpreted as a suicide note.’
‘Please don’t tell me that.’
‘Unless the death was suspicious, there is every chance it will stay out of the public domain. The tabloids will dig, though, I have to warn you, once the fact of the cocaine use becomes public knowledge. They will do so inevitably because his target market was kids. He wrote for an audience of children.’
‘I knew that. I was working on a book with him.’
‘Just out of interest, where were you on Saturday night, Mrs Greer?’
‘Is that a joke?’
‘No. It’s a question.’
‘I was in Cornwall, Detective Inspector. Lots of people can vouch for my presence in a coastal village there. I attended a beach barbecue.’
‘Lucky you,’ he said. He suggested a meeting later in the week at the house to bring the Greers up to speed on the legal situation with Jack’s trio of alleged assailants. They agreed a day and time. He broke the connection.
When the call ended, Lillian stood up from the desk and looked at her daughter, busily oblivious, packing items away in careful wraps of tissue paper in boxes brought as flat-packs by the removal men. She studied Olivia for a while. She felt guilty for feeling it, but her strongest identifiable reaction on the news of Robert’s death was not shock, it was the sensation of relief. She had been very stupid and completely faithless ever to have become involved with him. But he had been a selfish and destructive man, capable, in his immaturity, of terrible spite.
He felt remote from her. She was almost incredulous when she thought of their affair. He was a part of a history she barely recognised, because it attached to the damaged person she no longer was.
She waited until the children had gone to
bed before telling James that Robert O’Brien had died. She told him the source of the information. She told him about the circumstances of the death.
James shrugged. ‘I can’t say I’m particularly sorry. I didn’t know him. And he did something that hurt me very much.’
‘It wasn’t a capital offence.’ They were in the study. Lillian was looking out of the window, at darkness. She said, ‘I hurt you more badly than he did, I’m sure.’
‘I’ve forgiven you. It was in my interest to do so. And there was some mitigation.’
‘It’s odd that he wrote me that letter on the night he died.’
‘Not really, Lily. You’d have been on his mind. You would be a very hard act to follow, I should think. I’m glad I will not now be forced to discover just how hard.’
‘No,’ she said, turning back from the window and facing him. ‘You will never be obliged to do that.’
Chapter Nine
She read the Robert O’Brien stories carried in the following day’s newspapers at the computer in the study on press internet sites. The consensus, given his success, struck her as somewhat mealy-mouthed and peevish. There was a persistent inference from unattributed ‘friends’ and ‘colleagues’ that he had been struggling for most of the second half of the decade with writer’s block. He had employed a number of strategies for countering this over recent years. It was hinted at, but of course not said outright, that one of these was cocaine.
There was nothing about the suicide note in the stories. McCabe had suggested the note itself was ambiguous. It could be interpreted as a love letter or a maudlin tribute or an elegy to a lost love. It was only a suicide note if he had deliberately killed himself and she supposed that conclusion would be determined during autopsy by the quantity of the drug he had ingested. Lillian thought dabbling with coke in any quantity about as safe as Russian roulette. But a recreational quantity, a gram or so taken over a whole evening, would not be interpreted as a deliberate attempt at killing himself by an athletic young man.