Butterfly Grave (Murder Notebooks)

by Anne Cassidy

  Everyone she cared about had gone.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs stirred Rose from her thoughts. Joshua was coming up. She went back into the box room and continued unpacking. She glanced out of the window again. The van that had been double-parked was moving away. Behind it was a silver SUV, a woman sitting in the driving seat. She peered at it. It was too far away to see the woman’s features but the sight of the car made her feel anxious. There were thousands of silver SUVs around but weeks before she and Joshua had been hurt and threatened by a man driving one. She stared at it for a few moments before going back to unpacking. The door opened.

  ‘You all right?’ Joshua said.

  She nodded.

  ‘What about you? Did Susie upset you?’

  ‘No. But I feel a bit angry with myself. I should have come back for a visit. Then I might have known what was going on. I don’t know why I didn’t. I just got sucked into college and all the stuff about Dad and Kathy. It seems like I forgot about Stu. Four months. I could have come home for a weekend and I didn’t.’

  Rose didn’t know what to say. Joshua was right but she didn’t want to make him feel any worse. He should have come home to visit his uncle.

  ‘What time did Skeggsie say to come?’ he said.

  ‘About sevenish?’

  ‘I’m going to go to the hospital.’

  ‘Do you want me to come?’

  ‘No, I need to see what’s happening. Have a talk with Stu if he’s able.’

  Rose listened to his footsteps as he went downstairs and out of the front door. She watched him walking along the street. Looking back she saw that the silver SUV was still sitting there. Looking harder she thought she could see a dog on the passenger seat next to the woman, its front legs up on the dashboard. At that moment the offside indicator blinked on and off and the car pulled away from the pavement and drove off. She felt instantly stupid. It was just someone stopping for a phone call or to look at a map or just to take a ten-minute break from driving.

  A woman and her dog.

  She mustn’t get suspicious of everything. Not like Joshua.

  FOUR

  They had shepherd’s pie at Skeggsie’s house. Skeggsie’s dad, Bob, carried it in from the kitchen with a flourish. He was a big man with a mop of silver hair. He was wearing blue jeans and a check shirt with a suede waistcoat over the top and looked, Rose thought, as though he was going to a barn dance. He was nothing like Skeggsie.

  ‘Stu was still groggy after the operation,’ Joshua said, answering Bob’s question. ‘They had to put pins in his knee so he’s in a bit of pain. They’re doing an MRI scan of his brain in a few days because they think there might have been a bleed. He’s not in ICU so they don’t think he’s in danger but it’s all pretty unsettling. Seeing him like that.’

  ‘Awful. Does he remember what happened?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. He was drifting in and out of sleep so I came away. I’ll go again tomorrow.’

  ‘He looks bad now but he’ll be up and about soon. Probably not in time for Christmas.’

  Joshua shook his head and they ate their meal. Rose looked around the room. There was a sideboard along one of the walls. The top was covered in photographs of a woman and a child, probably Skeggsie. The others showed the woman next to Bob, in his police uniform, both of them smiling brightly into the camera.

  After eating Bob carried the dishes into the kitchen. Skeggsie spoke in a loud whisper.

  ‘Do you mind if we get out? Make some excuse. There’s some stuff we need to talk about.’

  Bob came back into the room, smiling.

  ‘Can we help you wash up?’ Joshua said.

  ‘Not at all, lad, you sit down.’

  ‘Actually, Dad, we thought we might go to the Lighthouse for a drink.’

  ‘You’re welcome to join us?’ Joshua said, ignoring Skeggsie’s shocked look.

  ‘No, no. Music not to my taste there. No, you kids go off. You’ll have your key, Darren, so I won’t wait up for you?’

  ‘Yep,’ Skeggsie said.

  He strode out into the hallway and put his coat on. Rose was slightly embarrassed by his haste. She smiled at Bob and followed.

  ‘You’ll eat here on Christmas Day? I absolutely insist,’ Bob said.

  ‘That’d be good, thank you,’ Joshua said.

  Then the three of them were outside the front door, doing up their coats. Without a word Skeggsie strode off and they followed him.

  They headed towards the seafront and within minutes were walking along the Promenade. On one side of them were the lights of the town, some garish Christmas decorations and others that looked as though they were left over from the summer illuminations. On the other side was thick blackness, the sound of water slurping heavily from side to side. There was no wind but it was bitterly cold. Rose tucked her hands up into her sleeves and pulled the edges of her hood closer to her face.

  The Lighthouse was halfway along the Promenade. It was old-fashioned and a little tatty. Inside it was hot and dark. There was music on and a few people dotted around.

  ‘We used to come here all the time,’ Joshua said, raising his voice.

  ‘We’ll sit in the back. It’s quieter there,’ Skeggsie said.

  Rose followed Joshua as Skeggsie went to the bar to get drinks. They headed through some doors to another room that was well lit. It had a high ceiling and sofas and low tables. The walls were covered with old photographs of fishermen. They sat in a corner far away from the main bar. Across the way a couple of men were playing darts. One of them was young, wearing a suit but no tie. The other was older, in baggy jeans with big turn-ups over heavy duty boots. They looked like father and son.

  ‘I think Skeggs wants to talk about the notebooks,’ Joshua said.

  Rose didn’t answer. The Notebooks. It was a kind of shorthand for talking about the search for their missing parents, something that Joshua was passionate about. The police had always had their own version of events. Kathy and Brendan, both police officers, working on cold cases, had been killed because of an investigation they were involved in. Their disappearance and death was in all certainty at the hands of organised crime. They had, no doubt, come close to uncovering the guilt of someone in a high place and it had cost them their lives.

  But Rose and Joshua now knew that the police had not always told the truth. They, with the help of Skeggsie, had established that their parents were not dead. All they had to do now was to actually find them. The last firm sighting of them had been eight months before in Cromer.

  But Stuart’s accident had put everything on hold.

  Skeggsie was walking towards them with the drinks. He placed a tray on the table. He handed a bottle of beer to each of them. Rose took hers and sipped it.

  ‘Thank you, Skeggsie,’ Skeggsie said under his breath, half joking.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ Joshua said.

  Rose mumbled, ‘Thanks,’ her mouth full of fizz.

  ‘We ought to clarify where we are with the notebooks,’ Skeggsie said.

  ‘I can’t really get my head around this right now . . .’ Joshua said.

  ‘I know that,’ Skeggsie continued. ‘But we need to be clear about some stuff. Since meeting James Munroe things are different. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page.’

  James Munroe.

  Rose remembered the ex-Chief Inspector from a few weeks before when he’d turned up at the flat in Camden with information for them. She’d first met him when she was a grieving twelve-year-old. He now no longer worked for the police force, he’d said, but was a civil servant and had information about where their dead parents’ bodies were. There’d even been a memorial service for her mother, which James Munroe attended wearing a dark Crombie coat and looking suitably pained at the event.

  But it had all been a lie. A fabrication.

  ‘Skeggsie’s right,’ Joshua said, sighing. ‘There are things we need to sort out.’

  ‘OK, since meeting James Munr
oe everything has changed. Because of what he told us it has to appear that we’re shutting down our search for Kathy and Brendan. It has to seem as though we believe his story.’

  The darts game had finished and the older man was cheering his own victory. The young man was shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe the result. ‘Best of three?’ the older man said and the young man nodded in a resigned way.

  ‘From now on we have to do things differently,’ Skeggsie said, lowering his voice as though he suspected that someone was listening in on their conversation. ‘So no email or text messages on each other’s mobiles.’

  Joshua grunted.

  ‘We’ve closed our websites down. We don’t discuss your parents in blogs, tweets, Facebook or any other place on the web. These things can be accessed by other people. The only way we three should connect up is by word of mouth or phone call.’

  This meant that Rose could no longer use her personal blog Morpho.

  ‘Then there’s the physical stuff. I didn’t want to leave it in the flat so I’ve brought it with us.’

  ‘The physical stuff?’ Rose said, confused.

  ‘He means the butterfly book and Dad’s things, his maps and all the stuff to do with the cottage, the Cromer photographs.’

  Rose had a mental image of the old hardback book called The Butterfly Project. It looked as though it had sat on the shelf of some library for years before anyone had taken it out.

  ‘And the notebooks,’ Skeggsie said.

  The two notebooks were the size of exercise books. Each held a photograph and pages of coded writing. Each book was concerned with a murder. Of all the things they had discovered these books had proved the most mysterious.

  ‘All the stuff’s in a suitcase in my room. My dad’s house has very up-to-date alarms. When we get back to London we should invest in a safety deposit box. It may be months before we can decipher the notebooks and if they were to get stolen or anything . . .’

  ‘You’re right. We’ll do that when we get back.’

  ‘Just as long as we all know that that job still has to be done and until the notebooks are decoded we can never really be sure of what all this is about.’

  ‘I get that. I totally do.’

  There was quiet for a moment and it looked as though Skeggsie might have something more to say. Across the room the door opened and a young man and woman came in from the other bar. Snatches of music came with them. The young man called out.

  ‘Darren!’

  Skeggsie looked round. Joshua sat up stiffly, a frown on his face. Rose felt the tension rise and looked again at the young man. He was walking towards them with the girl. He was wearing a parka, his stomach sticking out at the front. His hair was cropped and he looked a little drunk. The girl was wearing drainpipe jeans and a tight V-neck jumper. Her hair was dark and hung down each side of her face. At the V of the jumper Rose could see the dusky line of her cleavage.

  ‘All right, Rory?’ Skeggsie said, tight-lipped.

  ‘Darren, my old mate, you’ve come back to see us.’

  ‘He’s not your old mate, Rory,’ Joshua said.

  ‘Still got your bodyguard. No need now, though. That’s all in the past. No need to be enemies any more.’

  ‘Anyone want to say hello to me?’ the girl said, her hands on her hips in a petulant way.

  ‘Hi, Michelle,’ Joshua said, looking down at his knee.

  Another face appeared at the door. A young black man in a denim shirt. He was carrying a pint of beer and headed straight for them, smiling.

  ‘All right, Skeggs? Don’t take no notice of Rory. He’s a teddy bear now. Well, he’s as fat as a teddy bear,’ he said, patting Rory’s stomach.

  ‘Martin,’ Joshua said, relaxing, moving out from behind the table.

  Martin put his glass down and then took up a boxer’s position as if he were in the ring ready for the bell to go. Joshua smiled and gave him a playful slap on the head.

  ‘What’s going on? I heard about your uncle. Terrible!’

  Rory was standing still. Michelle had threaded her arm through his and was saying something in his ear. Skeggsie hadn’t moved an inch. They were looking straight at each other. Rose felt the animosity between them. Martin noticed it as well.

  ‘Lighten up. We’re all mates now. School days are gone.’

  Rory nodded, a half-smile on his face.

  ‘Come on!’ Michelle said.

  She pulled him by the arm so that he was walking across the room. In moments they were gone.

  ‘Rory doesn’t do that stuff no more. He goes to my boxing club. Trying to work off some weight. He’s a changed man.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Joshua said.

  Martin continued to talk to Joshua. Rose could hear Stuart’s name being mentioned over and over again.

  ‘You all right?’ she said to Skeggsie.

  ‘Yeah. I knew he’d be around but I wasn’t expecting him to turn up just then.’

  The two men who had been playing darts had finished.

  ‘You want to play?’ he said to her.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I’ll play with you, mate,’ Joshua said. ‘Martin, meet Rose, my stepsister . . . sort of . . .’

  ‘I thought she was your girlfriend!’

  Rose managed a smile but felt her cheeks heating up with embarrassment. Skeggsie had gone off to the dartboard and Joshua had followed him. Martin was staring at her.

  ‘You don’t say much, do you?’

  ‘When someone asks me something sensible I’ll answer.’

  Martin went to speak but stopped himself. He looked curious. He stepped across to the sofa and sat beside her where Joshua had been.

  ‘You at uni?’ he said.

  ‘Sixth form.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘English, Law, History . . .’

  ‘I’m at York. Computer Science and Engineering. Me and Josh. We’re going to build bridges.’

  ‘That’s all Josh ever talks about. Engineers must build other things.’

  ‘Yeah, but think where society would be without bridges. Think about how long it would take to get from here to South Shields. Days! Did you know that there are twenty-two bridges across the Tyne?’

  ‘Twenty-two!’ Rose said, picking up her beer.

  ‘You know you’re quite nice-looking. Has anyone ever told you that? Maybe a little bit of make-up might improve . . .’

  Rose spluttered in outrage into her drink.

  ‘I’m not interested in what you think about how I look. I look the way I like to look.’

  ‘Sorry. I speak without thinking.’

  Rose huffed. Then she softened. It was something she did a lot. Saying things before thinking them through. She changed the subject.

  ‘What was all that about with that boy, Rory?’

  ‘Ah! Past history. Rory Spenser used to be a very bad boy. In school he had a way of relieving other people of their money. He’d go up to younger kids and say, Don’t you owe me some money? And they’d say How much? And he’d say, How much you got in your pocket? And that way Rory built up a bit of a reputation. Now he’s a changed man.’

  ‘He did this with Skeggsie?’

  ‘That and more. Although Skeggsie never did himself any favours in school.’

  ‘That doesn’t excuse people taking advantage of him.’

  ‘I know. Rory was nasty. But believe me, he has changed.’

  ‘What changed him?’

  ‘He got beaten up a few times. He began to know what it felt like to be on the receiving end.’

  ‘Who by?’ Rose said, as Martin’s eyes slid towards Joshua.

  ‘A few of us. He’s got an older brother and we had to explain it all to him as well. We saw it as a kind of community service. Now Rory’s more careful what he does.’

  Rose frowned. ‘But doesn’t that make you just as bad?’

  ‘No, it stops the problem. I got no regrets about helping Rory improve his interpersonal skills.’<
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  Rose felt there was something else to say but didn’t know what.

  ‘But enough of this,’ Martin said. ‘How long are you up for?’

  ‘Till New Year.’

  ‘Great. I’ll no doubt see you around with Josh.’

  Martin stood up, went across to Joshua and said something, patting him on the back, before going back into the other bar. Not long after, Joshua and Skeggsie came back to the table, the game of darts over.

  ‘Let’s drink up and go,’ Joshua said.

  On the way out of the pub they passed Rory Spenser, who was on his own, standing by the bar holding a pint of beer. His eyes followed them all the way through. Rose looked round and saw Skeggsie staring down at the floor.

  Outside the cold bit into them and Rose did her coat up and hugged herself. She looked into the darkness and felt the sea out there, huge and silent.

  ‘I’m going home,’ Skeggsie said, backing away. ‘I’ll be round in the morning about ten?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He walked off. Rose turned to go in the opposite direction but Joshua pulled at her sleeve.

  ‘Wait a sec.’

  A few moments later the pub door opened and Rory walked out, looking round, his eyes following Skeggsie as he walked up the Promenade and then turned down a side street.

  ‘Where you off to?’ Joshua called.

  ‘What’s it to you?’