I watch him turning, slowly, slowly. Eyes flicking but no haste, no scurrying need to move from the centre stage. He is a little older than me; I’d guess in his early thirties. He has a strong nose. Not a boxer’s nose; it is too fine and chiselled for that, but irregular. Delicately arched, almost feminine lips. His skin is olive, and a faint dark stubble is beginning to shadow his chin. I must say I like a man with dark hair. I move from the table.
“David Carruthers?” I say from behind him.
He turns, unsmiling. His eyes hold mine a little curiously as he holds out a hand.
“Hello.” Grip firm, but brief. Long piano-player’s fingers.
“I’m over here,” I say, nodding at the table where my bag is hung over the back of my chair. “Can I get you a drink?”
“I’ll get them,” he says. It’s more statement than offer. I let him. Why should I argue with a rich man?
“What is it you want to know?” he asks, putting a large glass of wine down on the table in front of me.
“I want to know if your father ever talked to you about my mother.”
He shrugs carelessly. The gesture gets under my skin.
“Once.” He takes a sip of beer. “Not until a few years ago. We went on a trip to London together.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much.”
“My father worked for him.”
“Yes I know.”
“He used to send my father out of town when James Cory wanted to see my mother.”
“Hmm.” It is a neutral sound. I don’t know what it means.
“I want to know if James Cory killed my mother.”
“You mean you want to know if your father did.”
It is the truth. I bite my lip.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was harsh.”
A waitress comes to remove empty glasses from the next table. We watch her, saying nothing, as she wipes a cloth over the surface. The glasses clink as she fits four into one hand between her fingers.
“Did your father think Cory was capable…” The waitress turns back, an afterthought, lifts the ashtray. I stop talking until she has left again. “Did your father think Cory was capable of murder?”
“Absolutely not.”
The white wine in my glass is chilled. It hits my stomach, and the lake of supermarket red, with the sudden force of a swallowed ice cube. It feels good.
“Why was he so sure?”
“He was with James when James got the call that your mother was missing. A friend of your mother’s called him wanting to know if he knew where she was.”
“Karen Sandford?”
“Could have been.”
“You don’t know Karen Sandford? Know where she, is I mean?
“No.”
“And?”
“My father said James went ashen. He was standing when he took the call but dad said he remembered him grabbing hold of the back of the chair.”
“Why would he do that? He didn’t know she was dead, did he?”
“I’m only telling you what he said. I wasn’t there,” he retorts brusquely. “But if someone goes missing when they are meant to be picking up their child, it’s not looking good, is it?”
I take another drink. A dull ache has been spreading through my skull for the last half-hour, I guess from lack of food. One cream cake. One bite of egg and cress.
“Did your father really never doubt Cory?”
I notice that just for a second, David Carruthers avoids my eye. Just long enough for me to wonder.
“He really thought my father did it?”
“He liked your dad.”
“But he supported Cory.”
“They went back a long way.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What?”
“Did your father have any doubts?”
“I don’t think he could believe James was capable of murder.”
Still he does not answer the question directly.
“Or he didn’t want to believe…”
“Maybe.”
“And he didn’t want to get involved.”
“Can you blame him?”
“Yeah, I can actually. He helped screw up my dad’s fucking life.”
My anger is like a sudden surge on an accelerator pedal. Instantly, instinct makes my foot slacken and the anger dies. I take a slug of wine. Carruthers seems startled. I feel tired suddenly, emotionally tired, like tiredness is a great big mouth that is just slowly sucking me in and swallowing me up without even bothering to chew. I lean my elbows on the table and put my head in my hands. Carruthers watches silently.
“Your dad just went back to normal and got his life back. It was easy for him. Like it was obviously easy for you,” I say bitterly. I reach for my glass, swallow the rest in one.
He says nothing but catches the eye of the waitress, points to my glass.
“Another large white wine please.”
That’s the confidence of the rich. They don’t ask; they just do.
“How do you know I want one?”
“Don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
His eyebrows shoot up, then he half laughs, shakes his head. He lifts his glass.
“You’re talking shite, you know.”
“What?”
“About things being easy. Sometimes what’s easy is seeing people the way you want to see them, rather than the way they are.”
The dull ache in my head is becoming a throb, a distant drum-beat in my head.
“What’s wrong? Did your toy train break when you threw it out of the pram?”
His hand freezes, the glass halfway to his mouth.
“My God you’re arrogant!”
It’s my turn to shrug.
“Listen,” he says, “I’m not going to try and pretend my life has been like yours. I had my mother and my father around and I’m grateful for it. But I’m not going to apologise for it. Maybe my father shouldn’t have got involved, but whatever happened – and you don’t know what happened any more than I do – it wasn’t his fault.”
What does he mean, get involved? The thought is only a passing one. Carruthers leans forward over the table and his voice is low and urgent.
“The police crawled all over our house when she disappeared. My father was taken in for questioning along with James. At one point, they were even trying to say that he had helped James dispose of the body. They took his car away and had it stripped right down, looking for blood stains or hairs. And every time they went away, he was never sure when they were coming back, what the next theory would be. My mother was convinced Dad was going to be locked up for something he had no part in… It was your mother who had the affair,” he says, stabbing a finger at me. “But it was my mother who spent years on antidepressants.”
Carruthers slumps back into the chair.
“She became ill?”
“She’s always been… a bit fragile. She’s been bothered with depression off and on for years. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have happened anyway because Mum, well…” He changes his mind about what he is going to say. “But it certainly started around that time. It didn’t help. Look, that’s why I don’t want you to meet with her. I really don’t want her upset and there’s nothing she could tell you, I know that. Honestly. I want you to promise not to try and contact her again.”
“Why did the police think your father was involved?”
“Because they were close friends. Because they worked together. Because my father’s car was seen parked outside James’s house the night before your mother disappeared. As if that was something strange. They were always in and out of each other’s houses. And Dad said he had some complicated tax stuff to sort out that he needed to speak to James about. But according to some ludicrous local theory, they were sitting round having supper and a bottle of wine while they discussed how to bump off James’s bloody mistress.” He grimaces. “Christ I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…”
; I shake my head, dismissing him with a wave of my hand. The wine is biting, making me feel light-headed.
“The police left him alone eventually, though?”
“Eventually. When Terry Simons took over. He was the police chief who was sent in to take over the case.”
“I know. We’ve met,” I say dryly.
Carruthers looks surprised.
“Anyway, my dad wasn’t involved. I think Simons realised that pretty early on. And I mean, if James was going to commit murder, there’s no way he’d sit and discuss it. He’s a loner.”
“If? I thought you said there was no way?”
Exasperation shadows Carruthers’ face as he stares into his glass.
“Was James Cory a Mason?”
He looks puzzled.
“He and Dad both were. Why? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I just wondered….Were you close to your dad?”
“Yeah. But closer to my mum.” He is looking at me suspiciously.
“Only child?”
He nods. “You?”
“One sister.”
The word feels strange now. It doesn’t fit right any more. Music pumps out of a jukebox by the bar, a distant rhythm in my head, like a vibration from another room. Strange bar, strange town, strange guy. What am I doing here?
As if echoing the thought, Carruthers says, “What made you come here so soon after your dad died?”
I don’t know how to answer. The more I tell people, the less sure I become.
“I…” I stop, unable to say anything. The thump of the music is a step out of time with the thump in my head, one a discordant echo of the other. Thump, thump… Thump, thump… It is too hard to put the words together. Carruthers is staring at me. “I…”
He lays his hand on my arm for a moment, an instinctive gesture. He seems embarrassed then, lifts it back awkwardly.
“Were you close to your dad?”
“I loved him,” I say simply. What else is there to say? “And then I came here and found out… found out… she was murdered.”
His face freezes.
“Shit,” he says. “You didn’t know before you came up here? That’s not why you came? You didn’t know your mother was murdered?”
I shake my head. We sit together then for a while, silently. I watch the light fading outside, darkening swiftly now, an orange moon rising.
“I didn’t want to meet you tonight,” he says suddenly. “I just didn’t want to get involved. And now I wish I hadn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I feel involved. But there’s nothing I can do. I’d like to help you and I can’t. Nobody can. You need to go home, Rebecca. There’s nothing anyone can do here. I’m sorry.”
“You feel sorry for me?”
“Yes,” he says softly, kindly even. “I do.”
“Save it.” I drain my glass. The room spins slowly. “I don’t want your pity.”
I have offended him. He sits back from the table in a rush, his arms thrown back against the seat. Half irritated, half hurt.
“One last thing.” I have to go now. I need to get out of the smoke and the heat and the noise, out into the evening where I can hide in the darkness. “Would James Cory ever have left his wife for my mother?”
It’s hard to think straight now. Hard to select precisely the right word.
Somewhere in the alcohol-induced confusion inside my head, I think this question will prove everything. If he would really have left his wife, he wouldn’t have killed my mother. If he would have left his wife, he must have loved my mother. And if he really loved her, why would he kill her?
“I… I don’t think so. Not from what I heard,” Carruthers sounds hesitant.
“Why not?”
“From what I heard…” He stalls by taking another drink from his glass. “I think your mother… I don’t think James felt… she wasn’t….”
“You mean she was the kind of woman you took to bed but didn’t marry?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No.”
He thought it, though. I always know when men think that stuff.
He frowns. “James’s wife, Anna… she came from a wealthy family. In the early days of Cory Construction, it was basically her father who was financing it. There was no way he was going to leave Anna. And he was right. Look at it now.”
Money had to come into it somewhere, I suppose. Money always comes into it somewhere.
“I don’t have a bloody clue why I am telling you all this.” He looks at the table and shakes his head, then glances up at me slyly. “Because you’ve got nice eyes, probably.”
Flirt. What’s he thinking? Like mother, like daughter? I can play it though. I can play that game.
“And you,” I say, stabbing my finger into his shoulder, “have a nice… leather jacket.”
He laughs into his glass.
“Is that the best you can do?”
I hold his eyes for a moment. “No.”
He’s really quite attractive, David Carruthers, I think. Really quite attractive.
I stand up. Too sudden. I grab the table and he catches my arm.
“I’ll walk you back. It’s by the river isn’t it?”
“It’s okay,” I say, shaking off his arm gently. “I can manage.”
“I’ll walk you back.”
I shrug, a ‘please yourself’ shrug. It is too complicated to argue. Too complicated for words.
Outside, there are groups of youths hanging about at the chip shop on the corner. Shouts, squeals of female laughter, some kind of carry-on. I need to concentrate on walking.
“Watch it, Gary,” shouts a girl, and Gary grabs her round the waist and propels her, screaming, across the pavement. It is me who stumbles into her path rather than the other way round. Carruthers catches me.
“It’s okay,” I mutter. My mouth feels dry, dehydrated. “I’m not drunk.”
“I think you’re more emotional than drunk,” he says. “When you’re feeling that way a couple of drinks is enough.”
“Yeah, well, I had a couple before we met.”
“Figures,” he says.
He puts his arm lightly round my shoulder, guiding me across the road. We walk silently for a while, up to the traffic lights at the bridge before turning down by the river. The lights from the street lamps shine in the water, the reflections quivering in the blackness.
Above, the moon riding high now in a pink streaked, velvet sky. A couple walks towards us, the girl with her arm through her partner’s for support, teetering on stilettos that ring sharp and steely on the pavement. It is only five minutes to the B & B, which sits back in the road, facing the river. We stand on the pavement opposite, next to the water. The downstairs light is off but the exterior porch light has been left on. ‘No vacancies’ says the sign beneath.
Now I am here, I don’t want to go into the dead of the darkness, feel the door close behind me. My eyes are smarting. I feel dishevelled.
“Thanks for walking me.”
“Will you be okay?”
I nod.
“You don’t look it.”
I am inches from him. I can smell him, the smell of heat and aftershave, sweet and musky and comforting. The smell I associate with being wanted. I should go now, walk across the road and up the path. I don’t move.
“I hope your mother… you know…” What’s the word I’m looking for?
He nods. And then he gives me one of those looks that changes things. That look where suddenly you stop looking at a stranger and start to see something else.
Possibilities, maybe.
“I don’t like to think of you on your own.”
“I don’t like to think of me on my own either.”
He reaches out, tucks a stray strand of hair behind my ears. “You don’t need to stay here tonight,” he says softly. “Not if you don’t want. If you want company.”
In the stillness that follows, I look out at the water, flowing, flowi
ng, steadily down to the bridge. Rippled, mirrored with light, its pace all its own. Unalterable. I think about it, his offer. Think of drifting with the flow, letting it sweep me down where it will. I am tempted. No chance to think, to talk to the dead in the coffin of my room. Just the touch of the living, the heat of the moment, the comfort of no tomorrow. There are people who belong to right now and Carruthers is one. And until now, he is everything that I have ever needed, sweet and impermanent, the smell of him gone by daybreak, leaving only the promise of a blank new day.
But maybe it’s time now. Time to stop drifting with the tide. Make the river flow the way I want it, instead of casting myself like flotsam on the top. I shake my head. “I need to go,” I say softly.
We stand close still, and I put out my hand.
“Thanks for meeting with me.”
We shake hands and when our arms drop, I hesitate. He leans forward then, gives a brief, awkward hug. I wrap my arms round the soft leather jacket. For a few seconds, I feel the comfort of being touched and almost change my mind.
“Take care, Rebecca,” he says. “And please, do yourself a favour. Go home. Don’t try to open this all up.”
I don’t look back until I reach the porch. I turn then, see him standing with his back to me. He is leaning, with his forearms on the railings and his hands clasped, lost in thought, looking out across the dappled water that dances silver with reflected light.
CHAPTER FIVE
Spirit Daddy. Where. Are. You? Why can’t I find you? Why don’t you answer? Tonight I am not going to get angry. I am going to drink another glass of wine and chat. Because you have to answer sometime, don’t you, Da? You have to answer sometime.
So much to talk about today. So many people. They remain in my head in little tableaux. Terry Simons looking out of his window. Kirstin sitting in one of her lace-trimmed armchairs. David Carruthers, leaning against the railings down by the river. David Carruthers. Shame about David Carruthers. And then they begin to move, the characters, like little clips from a film. Scenes from someone else’s life.
The one who is always there is Cory, a silent presence who squats like a massive Buddha in every scene. I haven’t heard him speak yet. Not yet. It’s gone, the adrenaline, the pumping, thumping, craziness that seeing him for the first time provoked. I’m swinging from one extreme to another now. Up one minute, down the next. Maybe I’m crazy. Do you think I could be crazy? Of course, you won’t say either way, will you? You won’t say anything at all.
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