Fruitful Bodies

by Morag Joss

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He’s been more or less homeless since the late eighties. He’s never been in trouble. He’s harmless.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘I’m not a social worker. Why would I know?’

  Sara curled herself in under his arm. Whether it was the smell of his warm skin through the old cotton shirt or his growling pretence not to care about people like the shabby man that stabbed her suddenly with the knowledge that she loved him and, simultaneously, that she did not deserve him, she was not sure.

  ‘You know all right. What?’

  Andrew’s arms tightened round her as they stood looking across towards the Golightly house.

  ‘He’s called Leech. He comes from Bristol. Had a car accident in his teens and suffered brain damage. He did live with his mother but she died young, in her early sixties. He had a place in a sheltered hostel until the funding was stopped and it closed. Hasn’t settled since.’

  ‘Poor Leech. Poor shabby man. Can’t anyone help him?’

  ‘There’s nowhere for him to go permanently, not now. He’s been sleeping rough round Limpley Stoke for a year at least. He goes to Julian House in the winter, when it’s really cold. He gets by.’

  ‘You make it sound as if it’s all right.’

  Andrew was still gazing at the smallholding across the railway. ‘There are worse cases,’ he said.

  He had spent most of the evening before at Manvers Street police station, almost alone in the Incident Room, examining everything they had in the Takahashi investigation. Not that there hadn’t been a development. The team had come up with two members of the public who were just about certain enough that they had seen a middle-aged Japanese male in Bath before nine o’clock on that Saturday morning. Certain enough to have a shot at an ID parade, which Bridger was now setting up. One of the witnesses, however, seemed to want to insist that his Japanese male had been wearing jeans. The other’s had possibly been in shorts. Still, it was something, and meanwhile the question of the first wife remained interesting. Bridger was digging, albeit with his usual snouty lack of finesse.

  ‘A pregnant Japanese tourist is staying down there in that crummy little B&B. Six days after she arrives, she is murdered in the middle of Bath, early in the morning of one of the busiest days of the year. She was quickly overpowered, suggesting that her attacker was considerably bigger and stronger than she was. But,’ Andrew exhaled dramatically, ‘since the victim was under five foot and weighed less than a hundred pounds, that’s most people. Man or woman. No sign of a sexual motive, and nothing taken.’

  ‘Perhaps they were trying to rob her and were disturbed.’

  ‘Doubt it. There was time to hide the body, and if robbery was the motive, you’d do that before you bundled the body in a cupboard. At the very least you’d take the camera, which was superb.’

  ‘Film. You had the film that was in the camera developed, didn’t you? What about others?’

  ‘There were some new films back in her room, nothing more.’

  ‘But—’ Sara hesitated. Andrew seldom liked her flashes of insight. ‘But she was a photographer. She’d been in Bath for six days. It’s inconceivable that she didn’t take pictures, isn’t it? Where are the films?’

  Andrew stared at her. ‘She might have left film for developing somewhere. There might be films sitting somewhere, in Bath, uncollected.’

  ‘She might even have left them at Photo-Kwik at the end of the alley, mightn’t she? Or they might have been stolen from her bag, of course.’

  Andrew looked dubious. ‘We-ell … Look, thanks, I’ll have all the developing places checked out. Might just work, might tell us more about where she was, when. Thanks. You have your uses, my darling.’

  They stood in silence, listening to the plash of ducks on the canal behind them and the children’s bantering commentary to one another among the bushes.

  ‘And it might tell us nothing,’ he added. ‘That’s the way this enquiry’s going. And I wonder what the motive for stealing the film would be. Quite apart from the motive for killing, of course.’

  Sara said, ‘But you can’t wait until you think you’ve got a motive, can you? You’ve got to start somewhere.’

  Andrew shook his head and thought. ‘Right. Suppose for a minute we forget motive. The suspects, apart from the husband who remains the prime one, are Joyce, Hilary and Ivan Golightly. You. Me. Everybody at the Snake and Ladder, that’s the landlord, his wife, the waitresses, the kitchen porter, the chefs, all the punters. Any and every person Mrs Takahashi spoke to in Bath. And of course the entire conference in Bristol. Anyone. Just about anyone.’

  ‘So where do you start?’

  Andrew was not listening. ‘That, of course, is how you tackle it if you make a very big assumption, which is that the murderer actually had a motive.’

  ‘I thought you said we forget about motive.’

  ‘I meant we don’t concern ourselves for the moment with what the motive is. But we’ve still made the assumption there is one. Suppose there isn’t?’

  Sara frowned. ‘You mean somebody just killing for no reason? Just somebody off their head? I thought you once told me that was the most unlikely thing of all.’

  ‘It is. Category A murder—an unknown killer striking at random, for no apparent reason. They’re unbelievably rare. And I have my doubts that that’s what we’ve got here. To start with, there was an attempt to hide the body. No signs of uncontrolled frenzied violence, no sexual assault. That’s why,’ he looked with concern at her, ‘I feel absolutely certain it was her husband.’

  Sara nodded. ‘You said it didn’t seem right, her choosing to stay here. It’s hardly the place you’d pick if you could afford better.’

  ‘Which she could. The husband’s an eminent academic, high status in Japan. Good salary.’

  ‘So she was hiding. She ran away from him in Bristol and she was hiding out down there.’ Sara nodded in the direction of the house. ‘Perhaps he wanted her to go back to him and have the baby and she wanted out. He lost his temper, hit her and then strangled her.’

  ‘Something like that. Although he hasn’t once mentioned the pregnancy so it’s possible he didn’t even know she was pregnant. And one reason for that might be that the baby wasn’t his.’

  ‘What? You haven’t told him? That his wife was pregnant? That’s so cruel!’

  Andrew looked surprised. ‘It could be a material point in building a case, so of course we haven’t told him, and we won’t, as long as he’s a suspect. If we don’t charge him, of course he’s entitled to see the PM report and he’ll find out then.’

  Sara’s eyes had filled with tears. So the very existence of the small, dead, almost-baby was now a ‘material point’ for the purposes of convicting its putative father. It was not to be remembered for its own lost life’s sake.

  Andrew said, hugging her, ‘My darling, don’t ever join the police. You’re far too emotional. But I’d swear that’s how it happened. He admits, or at least did once admit, though that too is now inadmissible, dammit, that he hit her. Anyway, there’s evidence he did. The bruises.’

  ‘Evidence someone did,’ Sara corrected quietly. ‘Perhaps not him.’

  Andrew smiled. ‘You’re learning. You’re definitely learning.’ He kissed her on the nose, but turned back to the view over the hedge. ‘No. No, it was him. He hit her, that’s certain. He slapped her because they had been having a row and she left him about a week before she died. And that, bugger it, that’s all I’ve got. Not enough to charge him. Despite a dead first wife in the picture, too.’

  ‘Sounds like it should be, somehow.’

  ‘I know he killed her. I just know it. When you’ve seen a few of these cases—’

  ‘That,’ Sara said, poking him in the stomach, ‘sounds exactly like the kind of thing you won’t let me get away with. Forget instinct, don’t bother me with intuition, where’s the evidence—isn’t that right?’

  ‘That is quite righ
t. Because I’m not talking about intuition, I’m talking about experience.’

  ‘But it doesn’t help, does it, if you haven’t got enough to charge him? All you can do is keep up with appeals for information, is that it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Andrew sighed, ‘and we ask around, we ask around some more and we check and we check again. It’s what the Bath Chronicle calls “pursuing a number of lines of enquiry”. They’ve been great, actually. We couldn’t reach nearly so many people without their cooperation, even if we do have to allow them a few “Killer In Our Midst” headlines. Meanwhile I don’t see there’s much more I can do, except hope that the ID parade comes off. That would be a start.’

  He placed his hands on her shoulders and looked at her. ‘And you’re off to Salzburg on Sunday.’

  ‘I thought you’d forgotten.’

  There was a yell from the hedgerow. ‘I’m starving! When’s lunch? Can we have it here?’

  ‘Here would do, I suppose,’ Andrew said to Sara, ‘unless you want to get a bit further away from Cold Comfort Farm over there. Though you could always lead a raiding party and go scrump an organic turnip for us.’ Sara laughed and he pulled her to him.

  ‘Come here, you,’ he said, kissing her loudly. ‘I haven’t kissed you all morning.’

  ‘Not in the last two minutes,’ Sara said. ‘Do you think they mind, though, seeing us kiss? They might not like it.’ The children all had their backs to them, but still.

  Andrew let her go and spread one of the picnic blankets on the ground. ‘Maybe not. But honestly, I sometimes think we should be able to expect a bit more of them. Dan’s been poisonous all morning over bloody Legoland. The whole of the way along the path from Bathampton I was trying to explain to him why I’m not taking them, but of course I have to try to explain it without criticising his mother. He’s still furious. With me. Bloody Valerie.’

  ‘It must be hard. When he was looking forward to it so much.’ They watched Dan, crouched by the hedge, picking blackberries.

  ‘But he’s still going, as I pointed out, just not today. He’s got to learn to wait for things. He’s old enough now,’ Andrew murmured. Sara nodded, but felt she knew as well as Dan did that you might want a thing so badly you could never be old enough to be able to wait for it.

  The children came out of the bushes, a little reluctantly, when Sara called them to come for something to eat. She was sitting on the blanket and filling baguettes from various plastic boxes around her when Benji raced up last, holding out both fists.

  ‘I got better ones! I got special blackberries! Mine are special!’ With a delighted smile he thrust out his hands and opened them. Sara stopped buttering bread.

  ‘Andrew—’

  Andrew quietly put down the bottle of beer he had just opened, crouched down, took both of Benji’s wrists and tipped the deadly nightshade berries quickly on to his own hand. ‘Darling, have you eaten any?’ Benji shook his head.

  ‘Are you quite, quite sure, Benji? Have you eaten any?’

  Benji shook his head again, firmly. ‘I was saving them for pudding.’

  Andrew said, ‘These aren’t blackberries. They’re a different sort of berry. I’m going to get rid of them.’ His tone of voice had silenced all three children and they stood with serious faces, watching and listening. ‘But first, all of you. Take a good look at them. See? Small and round, and very, very dark, nearly black.’ Andrew passed his hand round under their solemn eyes and then flung the berries as far as he could across the path and back into the hedge, where they hit the leaves, pattering like hail.

  ‘They are very, very poisonous.’ Benji began to cry. Andrew, crouching once again, pulled him close. ‘It’s all right. I’m not cross, Benji. Don’t cry. I want you to listen. I had to throw them away because they’re poisonous, do you understand? If you ate them you’d be very ill and you might even die.’

  ‘Sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean it. Don’t tell Mummy … you won’t tell Mummy, will you, Daddy, don’t tell,’ he sobbed.

  ‘Darling, I’m not cross. I know you didn’t mean it. I just want you all to recognise those berries another time and never, never touch them. All right? Come on, let’s have lunch. Who wants Coke?’

  ‘Can I open the crisps, Sara?’

  ‘How many’d you have to eat to die, Dad?’

  ‘C’n I have a cheese triangle?’

  ‘Don’t know, Dan, but probably not very many. That’s why you mustn’t ever touch them.’

  Natalie made the first dive into the basket, followed by Dan. Food and drink restored the children’s swaggering wellbeing and the adults’ sense of ease. After a spit of rain which nobody took seriously, the sun actually came out. More birds, mallards, landed on the water. Andrew sat and threw little bits of bread to the ducks, who raced and squabbled with each other for each soggy lump, reminding him of his children, who lay or sat around. Still with mouths full of food, Dan and Natalie were making screeching noises through blades of grass between their thumbs. Benji sat humming parts of The Snowman, as he picked bits out of his baguette. The older children were given second baguettes and they wandered off with them in their hands to find better blades of grass.

  ‘Don’t go too near the bank,’ Sara called after them. ‘No falling in!’

  But for the whisper of far-off traffic on the road half a mile away and the muffled drubbing noise of barges farther up by the viaduct, the only sound was the rustle of Benji working through his second packet of crisps. Sara moved the depleted food basket and plastic boxes off the blanket, lay down on her back and watched the clouds twisting in the sky, calculating when the next would cover the sun and bring the sudden, unwelcome cooling that would drain the blue from the water. Andrew was lying nearer the bank and she stretched down one bare foot, found his shoulder and made him jump. He grabbed the foot and tickled it until she squawked and pulled it away.

  Dan appeared and squatted by the basket.

  ‘Found any good grass?’ Sara asked, with her eyes closed.

  ‘Not doing that any more,’ he said. ‘We’re watching ants now. Aw, Benji’s got more crisps, c’n I have more?’ He began foraging in the basket. ‘D’you want any more to eat, Sara? There’s more bread.’ He looked up. ‘Want another sandwich, Sara? I could do it.’

  It was an impressive show of manners from a nine-year-old, Sara thought, still lying on her back and smiling up at him upside down. He had clearly calmed down and was trying to show there were no hard feelings. She did not want more to eat but it was important that she accept the offering.

  ‘Yes, thanks, Dan, I will. There’s a bit of pâté and lettuce to finish. Can you manage? Want me to do it?’

  ‘No! I’m doing it. Shut your eyes and I’ll surprise you.’

  ‘Careful with the knife, then.’

  Five minutes later, when there was almost as much mayonnaise between the pieces of bread as there was on the grass, Sara sat up in obedience to Dan’s command, took her ragged sandwich and bit into it. After two or three chews she jumped to her feet and spat out the mouthful across the water. The ducks scattered, splashing.

  ‘Oh! What’s in this? Dan?’

  Andrew got up. ‘Dan, you little—! Was that a joke?

  Dan! Christ!’

  Sara stared at the water where, among the floating, half-chewed white and green shreds of bread and lettuce, were the black tatters of berries. She had nearly swallowed a mouthful of deadly nightshade and was still holding in her hand the rest of a highly toxic sandwich. Just then Dan dashed forward and planted a kick on his father’s shin.

  ‘I hate you, I hate you! I hate you, Dad! I hate you!’ Andrew now had hold of the flailing arms. Dan’s face was unrecognisable with rage.

  ‘Dan! Dan! What’s this? What the—’

  ‘I hate you! I hate you! You’re horrible! You’re a horrible Dad! Mum says you’re horrible to all of us now because of Sara! You promised we’d go to Legoland and you’re not meant to break promises! You’re meant to keep a promise! Mum cri
es every day because you’re so horrible and I hate you!’

  ‘Dan, listen—’

  ‘And I’m not called Dan any more! I’m DANIEL! It’s not Dan, it’s DANIEL! Mum told you and you can’t even remember! So don’t call me Dan!’

  ‘Dan—Daniel, wait—’

  But Daniel had already turned his tearful red face away from his father and was tearing off back down the towpath in the direction of Bathampton Lock.

  * * *

  NATALIE AND Benji took advantage of the stunned, silent condition of the grown-ups to crunch through almost a whole tin of travel sweets on the way home. Daniel too, having walked ahead furiously by himself to the car, stared out of the window without speaking. When Andrew delivered the children up at Valerie’s doorstep, he waited until the three of them had trooped off into the house and out of earshot. Sara watched from the car as he raised a hand against Valerie’s opening tirade for bringing them back at three o’clock when she had told him five. She was standing mouthing in the doorway, her arms folded like a bouncer, dressed aggressively in red trousers and a black sleeveless polo neck. Sara wound down the window and listened.

  ‘No, you listen,’ Andrew was shouting. ‘I have something to say. Are you listening?’ His voice was shaking with anger. Valerie uncrossed and crossed her arms and looked out distantly somewhere over his shoulder to indicate that she was, grudgingly.

  ‘Ask Dan what he did today. See if he tells you. Just in case he doesn’t, I will. He tried to poison Sara. Not very cleverly, but he tried, and the reason was because he was so angry with me. Not just about Legoland, though you fucked that up beautifully for us all, thank you very much.’

  Valerie opened her mouth to speak but Andrew stopped her. ‘No, no, don’t tell me again it’s natural he should be angry because we all know that. But whether he tells you what he did today or not, I want you to tell him something. Tell him why his father doesn’t live with him any more. Tell him it wasn’t just about Sara. Why not tell him you had an affair of your own, and you didn’t even want me to stay. I really do hope you’re listening, Valerie, because if you don’t tell him I am going to contest the arrangement and get them with me at least half the time. Do you understand? Oh, and that was another great job you did, not telling me he wants to be called Daniel. Only he’s the one it hurt.’