by Rachel Green
When she got home she squeezed half a lemon into a cup, added a spoonful of honey and a generous measure of whisky and topped it up with hot water. She sipped it if front of the computer while she performed internet searches on Shirley Burbridge and Federico. There was nothing new about Shirley or Edward but the time served a useful purpose in refreshing her memory.
Federico was more of a problem She didn’t know his last name and was stuck searching for ‘Federico,’ ‘Laverstone’ and ‘Corleone’s’. It gave her the address of the restaurant, which would have been helpful had she not been there a dozen times and the telephone number but there was no associated website. It would show her a map, print her directions to the restaurant from Timbuktu if she wanted them but wouldn’t tell her who worked there.
She glanced at her watch. It was only just after four and the restaurant didn’t open until six. She picked up the phone and rang them, expecting to speak to Mr. Corleone and was surprised by the flat, English accent of the man who took the call.
“Corleone’s.”
“Hello. May I speak to the staff manager, please? This is the Inland Revenue PAYE office in Peterborough.”
“Hold on, love, I’ll fetch him.”
There were some clunks and hissing and an Italian voice came on the line. “This is-a Corleone’s. Luigi speaking.”
Michelle frowned. “You’re the same person I was just speaking to, only putting on a terrible accent.”
“No no. This is-a Luigi. How can I be helping you?”
“I’m reviewing your tax returns and there’s a stain of what looks to be tomato sauce on the sheet. With regard to your list of employees, I can see the first name but not the surname or the address.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“So my question is this. What is the family name of your waiter Frederico?”
“Frederico? You mean Federico?”
“Er…I suppose so. The ink’s run so I can’t tell.”
“Poverelli. Federico Poverelli. Fourteen Bank Street, Laverstone.”
“Marvelous, thank you.” Michelle put the phone down, a smile on her face. A lot could be done with a word or two in the right ear, spoken by, say, the long-dead uncle of a council official’s wife. Mrs. Poverelli could find herself suddenly deported leaving Federico alone and in need of consolation.
The back door opened and Graham walked in. “Shell?”
Michelle closed the tab on her browser with the restaurant search and went into the kitchen. “What are you doing here? I don’t need you until eight o’clock.”
“I got the afternoon off. I wondered if we could have dinner or something.” He put a cardboard box on the counter top. “I bought some fresh fish. Thought we could have fish and chips, maybe.”
“Dinner?” Michelle looked pointedly at the kitchen clock. “It’s only twenty past four. Wouldn’t it be a bit early?”
“Not by the time I cook it.” Graham fished in the box. “Look. I got a bottle of Lambrusco to go with it. A touch of elegance, yeah?”
“Elegance?” Michelle was about to launch into the definition of elegance when she saw the look on Graham’s face. If she crushed him now he might never recover and, more to the point, he might realize she would never be in love with him and leave her high and dry. That would be the end of her burgeoning business as a spiritualist because she’d be forced to go back to office drudgery just to cover the rent.
“Tell you what.” She stepped closer and straightened his lapel. “I don’t really fancy battered cod. How about you take me to that Italian restaurant I like, eh? I really fancy a plate of fettuccini.” She tapped his cheek playfully. “Who knows? There might even be fellatio for you afterward.”
Graham turned his nose up. “I don’t really like Italian food. Couldn’t we do that another night? I right fancy cod and chips.”
“Pizza? You like pizza.”
“Yes. Can we have pizza? “
“You can have pizza at Corleone’s. They open at six so we’ll have time to eat before we go to Shirley Burbridge’s. I’ll book us a table, shall I?”
“All right.” Graham began to unpack the groceries he’d bought, putting the bag of fresh cod straight into the freezer with a heavy sigh.
Michelle stood over him and lightly kissed the top of his head. “We’ll have your cod tomorrow, eh? Maybe with new potatoes and peas and a butter sauce. You like butter, don’t you?” She shook his shoulder lightly and he grinned. “You do, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I like butter. ‘No buts, it’s got to be butter.’” An advertising slogan tripped off his lips.
“There you go. Italian tonight and I’ll cook tomorrow.”
“Okay.” He stacked the rest of the food in the cupboards, somewhat cheered and Michelle phoned to book a table relieved she’d averted an emotional disaster. When she replaced the phone on the cradle she picked up her honey and lemon again. It was long cold but the whisky still burned her throat as it went down. She popped a couple of paracetamol to be on the safe side.
“Have you thought of anything for the séance tonight?”
Graham turned and pressed the palm of his right hand to his cheek. He’d been raised by his aunt and Michelle could remember the woman having the same gesture. “It depends if they give us any time alone in the room.” He dug into his pockets. “I’ve got fishing line to move curtains and stuff. Puffers for cold draughts. Epsom salts if there’s a fire.”
“Nothing obvious. We can’t afford for them to twig it’s all fake.”
“’Course not, Shell.”
“See that they don’t.” She looked at her watch. “It’s quarter to five now so that gives us an hour. You get in the shower while I get dressed. We have to look our best for Mrs. High-and-Mighty, don’t we?”
“What should I wear?”
“Put on a shirt and tie. And trousers, not jeans, and shoes instead of those ratty old trainers.” She smiled at him. He was a genial man and a lot of women would be pleased to have him looking after them. He just wasn’t exciting. She needed a man who would make her heart beat faster every time she looked at him. Someone who would woo her with romance and make every night a wild ride of lust and passion. She nodded at Graham as he trooped up the stairs. Graham’s idea of passion was having chocolate sauce on his ice cream.
The boom of the shower going on upstairs shook her out of her momentary reverie and she sat at the computer again. She typed Federico Poverelli into the search engine and was rewarded with links to his Facespace page, a blog account and a newspaper article.
She scanned the latter. It was an account of a trial in Laverstone court where Federico had been accused of poisoning a woman called Emily Robbins. He’d been acquitted on the testimony of Edward Burbridge, who gave Federico an alibi for the day of the poisoning.
Michelle added the page to her bookmarks folder and turned to the blog. Federico was an ad-hoc blogger, interspersing pictures he’d taken of Laverstone with others of dishes he’d prepared and observances of English life from the point of view of an Italian man. She added that site and turned to the Facespace page. There he was, twinkling eyes and pencil moustache smiling out of the page. She hovered the mouse over the Add Friend button for a moment. On the one hand, she didn’t want to reveal her interest but on the other, she couldn’t see his complete profile without him friending her.
She clicked the button just as she heard the shower stop.
Chapter 8
Meinwen sat on one of the questioning trees at the edge of the crooked forest and opened a new page of her sketchbook. It was a curious area of Hobb’s Wood, where a series of pine trees had been bent to a ninety degree angle at their base. The area had become a tourist attraction although the reason for the odd growth pattern–and indeed the method–had been lost for years.
Meinwen knew. She’d explained it in her book Wood and Stone: The Curious Desire to Affect Nature due out in the new year and decided the entry merited a drawing. Not that she was a very good artist. She could
make a fair facsimile of what she saw in front of her but she’d be the first to admit her work lacked passion. The trees had been bent deliberately in the nineteen thirties by placing boulders from the nearby river Laver on their developing trunks, then removed again a few years later to allow the saplings to develop the natural curves they now portrayed. The boulders were still visible in the walls of the nineteen forty-six Provincial Insurance building in King Street.
She’d found the original plans for the Masonic Grand Hall when she’d been researching the whereabouts of the seven missing ring stones. The trees were bent to make the timbers for a bow roof; the theory being that the naturally curved pines would produce a vaulted ceiling without the need for bracing struts. Unfortunately the outbreak of the war prevented frivolous construction and the plans had been lost with the death of the architect, leaving the curiosity of the crooked forest as a legacy for generations to come.
Washes of ink from a shaggy ink cap mushroom brought a sense of menace to the drawing. She had precious few tubes in her little art box and she’d forgotten water, so her travel box of pigment pans was all but useless. She’d let it dry and ink over the drawing at home. It was too light as it was and wouldn’t scan well enough for her to embed it in the document otherwise. The cluster of mushrooms on the edge of the track had been a lucky find. Two to eat and one already gone to ink.
She packed up her art supplies and headed back into town. She paused to cut a chunk of honey fungus from the fork of a sycamore at the edge of the wood, inhaling the sweet scent it gave off under her touch. There was a good base meal here. If she could find a few more edible mushrooms she could partake of a veritable feast of nature.
The gloaming was already deepening into twilight when she left the main path and took the smaller track that led to the edge of the wood about a mile north of Laverstone manor. As familiar with them as she was, she had no desire to be in the woods alone after dark. She’d seen too many things that couldn’t be easily explained. Besides, she believed in the spirits of wood and water, the naiads and dryads and the old forest creatures. Just because she’d never seen them with her own eyes didn’t mean they weren’t real.
The track led past the old quarry. Chalk used to be dug from the stone here until the last war when the quarry fell short of able-bodied men and closed. It had become economically impractical after that and had been abandoned, though despite the signs warning of unstable cliffs people still came her to look for fossils.
A small fire sputtered in a ring of stones and she detoured to see who’d lit it. The figure working by its light sat on a tree trunk, using a small blade to chip away pieces of chalk from a fist-sized lump. A short distance away a tarpaulin was rigged up over sticks and branches. A makeshift tent for when the weather got too bad.
He looked up as Meinwen approached, his eyes glinting from a face so full of whiskers he could have been a badger in an army greatcoat, though to be fair a badger would have smelled a lot better. “Miss Jones, is it? I thought you’d be along here today.”
“You did no such thing, Joseph.” She held her hands over the flames to warm them. “You just want me to think you did.”
“I did though.”
“And now you’re going to ask me for sixpence.”
“Sixpence? Aye. A sixpence wouldn’t go amiss, though a pound or two would be equally welcome.” He grinned at her, his teeth flashing in the light of the fire. “Mebbe a few more an’ all.”
“A few more? Why? What have you found?”
“Ammonite.” Joseph held up the stone he’d been working, a perfect fossil emerging chip by laborious chip. Extracting it would take a trained museum curator weeks with a delicate set of tools but all it took Joseph was a couple of hours and pocket knife. “You’ll want that, I reckon, for your shop.”
“I will.” Meinwen leaned forward to study it. It was a remarkable specimen, four inches across and with the delicate tracery of sutures where the inner chamber walls met the outer shell. Even in the firelight she could see shades of patterning. “That looks to be a lovely one.”
“Ar. Fifty pounds or I’m a Welshman.”
“You’re clearly not Welsh, cariad.” Meinwen smiled. “Fifty it is then. Drop it by tomorrow?”
“If I’ve got time, ar.” Joseph fumbled at his feet and pulled something from the small pile of stones and stone chips. He had a knack of knowing which lumps of rock had fossils concealed inside and made an adequate living for his limited needs. “I’ve got this an’ all. I reckon it might be worth more n’ the fossil to the right person.”
“What is it?” Meinwen reached across the fire again, her hand out for the object. One of the sticks in the fire collapsed sending a shower of sparks upward. She gave a shriek as they caught in her hair, each spark sending up a tiny flame across the surface as it burned. She danced away, holding her head forward so the locks of gray-flecked red hung where she could smother them between her hands.
Joseph had stood and hovered at the edge of the fire. “What should I do? What should I do?”
She continued batting at her hair for some time after the flames had gone out, in case she’d missed a stray spark. The stench of singed hair filled the clearing. “It’s okay. I got them all, I think.”
“Ah. I can’t see no twinkles.” Joseph returned to his seat. “Happen you’ll be more careful around fires in future, eh?”
“I’ve always been careful around fires.” Meinwen came around the flames to his side. “Goodness knows what damage has been done. I shall have to wait till I get home to see.”
“It’ll be fine.” Joseph still held the object he’d been about to give her and was turning it over and over in his hands. It glinted at every revolution, reflecting the fire from a metal surface.
“What were you about to show me?” Meinwen held her hand out again. “I can see it’s metal.”
“Antique, mebbe.” He dropped it into her palm. It was the length of her forefinger and about half the diameter. A series of metal bars pierced the shaft at one end and the other was surmounted by a circle with an eye inside. The eye had a shorter rod bisecting it. “A key, I reckon.”
“A key to what?” Meinwen held it as close to the fire as she dared. It weighed as much as a bank bag full of pennies and seemed to be made of iron.
“Don’t know. If I knew that I would have used it, wouldn’t I?” He chuckled and held his hand out for its return.
Meinwen surrendered it with reluctance. “What do you want for it?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll ruminate on it.” He slipped the key in an inside pocket somewhere and drew out a plastic pouch of tobacco.
Meinwen straightened. “You’ll give me first refusal on it?”
“Aye, why wouldn’t I?” He patted her nearest leg. “You’ve always been fair to me, even when others wouldn’t. You’ve always given me a fair price for anything I find, an’ all. I check, you know. I walk past your shop and see how much you’re selling things for.”
“I didn’t know.” Meinwen smiled. “I have to add some on for myself and the rent on the shop.”
“I know that. I’ve no complaints.”
“Good.” Meinwen remembered her phone. “Would you mind if I took a picture of the key? I’ll try to research what it’s for. It might give an indication of it’s value, though I’m not promising anything. Where did you find it?”
Joseph’s eyes narrowed and he began mumbling to himself. Meinwen was too polite to eavesdrop though she couldn’t help overhearing the word ‘trucks’ several times. “By the canal,” he eventually admitted. “Not saying where.” He put his tobacco pouch down and took out the key again, snatching it away when Meinwen reached for it. “No more touching. Take your photograph.” He held his hand out flat, the key across it.
Meinwen slid open the lens cover and held out her phone. It clicked and Joseph snatched his hand away as if it had been bitten. “There. Done. You have your photograph. Now go and research it.”
“But the f
lash didn’t go off.” Meinwen examined the image on her phone screen. Despite the lack of flash she was sure she could fiddle with the image on her laptop.
“You go now.” Joseph had picked up his pouch again made shooing motions with it.
“All right. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Mebbe tomorrow. Mebbe next day.” Joseph returned to his ammonites as if he’d dismissed her from his thoughts already.
Meinwen nodded and picked up her bag, leaving Joseph and the clearing behind. He was one of the colorful locals the police always referred to when criticized for the number of homeless in Laverstone. He had somewhere to live, a disused railway carriage on the siding at Denholm Lane, though he was more often off camping in the woods than at home in his carriage. The council made annual attempts to offer him a flat or a place at one of the sheltered housing units but he always declined and they assuaged their guilt about him by supplying him with fresh blankets and food drops once a week. There was reputedly a nephew, somewhere, but no one had ever seen him. Few people even knew his last name.
Meinwen crossed Pettin’s Field by way of the public footpath over the barrow and the stile into Quarry Lane. She could have followed the lane all the way from where Joseph was camped, but it traversed the head of the quarry and would have added twenty minutes to her journey. Pettin’s Field was an easy shortcut if barrow wights weren't a concern.
Quarry Lane led into Quarry Bank and she stumped along, loosening her coat despite the deepening sky. After the morning rain the air was heavy with damp and her vigorous walk through the woods had left her hot and sweaty. A left turn took her into Gaunt's Lane and toward Winston’s garage. Just the spot for a personal thank you for helping her new friend and a cup of tea. She could use his bathroom, too. She didn’t mind going in the woods but the comfort of indoor plumbing was worth holding a full bladder for.