“You wouldn’t like to come up to do this scattering-thing with me anyway, would you? We could take a taxi.” I really liked her, this Miss Taylor. And I couldn’t imagine why anybody might think she was dotty, or barmy or whatever. I wanted to take her home with me.
“Sweet of you to ask me, dear, but I can’t even manage a trip to the WC these days,” she said. “I fell, you know, and there was something about a fire, and now look at me. Sitting in storage courtesy of the National Elf.” She gave me a wicked, gap-toothed grin. “Have you got him with you? Old Nephew Edward?”
“Right here,” I said, hefting my day pack. “You want to see him?”
Snortle again. “No, no. I’ve seen enough ashes to last me out, I think. But do come back after you’ve done the deed, and have another little visit, won’t you? It’s nice to have a visitor. I’ll have Henrietta turn out the blue drawing room, and we can have a proper tea.”
“I will. Do you need anything? I could bring it when I come.”
“Just a new body, dear. That would be nice. This one’s getting a bit shopworn.” She snorted again, then fell suddenly fast asleep, as if someone had turned a light off. I panicked for a moment, thinking our conversation had killed her, but Nurse Hopkins was there, right behind me.
“It’s all right,” she said, softly. “She does that. And when she wakes, you know, she’ll not remember a scrap of what you both said. I’m glad you caught her on a good day.”
“So am I,” I said, heaving myself to my feet and picking up the remains of Edward Becker Senior. “So am I.”
Twenty-Six
Remember that it is very important to discuss your plans for exercise with your health care provider. If you are experiencing any problems with your pregnancy, exercise is not advised.
-From Big Bertha’s Total Baby Guide
I wandered back down the echoing hallway of the hospital, wondering what on earth to do next. Should I go up to Beachy Head and scatter the remains of Mark Becker’s father or not? According to Edith, that would have been the last thing he would have wanted. According to the dead man’s son, it was his final and dearest wish. Now, I’m not one to set much significance on a pile of ashes. I figure that once a person has died, what’s left is just an empty shell of organic material, and it doesn’t much matter what’s done with it. Funerals, in my opinion, are for those of us who are left behind, in order to assimilate the fact that the dead person is, well, dead. However, it had seemed very important to Becker that I do this thing, and I’d given my word that I would. I may not be particularly superstitious about human remains, but I am about promises. I was feeling guilty about my indiscretion with Richard, and although I admit I was open to the possibility of repeating it later that evening, I also had a sense that it wouldn’t be so bad, wouldn’t seem like such a betrayal, if I completed my task first. Okay, I know this was unsound thinking. In retrospect, it reminds me of that long-ago relationship I’d had with the concept of the confessional, the notion that you could do a bad thing, confess it and get absolution for it, and then go out and do the bad thing all over again, because you had a clean slate, and what was the point of wasting it? I wasn’t planning to go to confession, but scattering Edward Becker’s ashes from the top of a cliff seemed like the next best thing.
I called Hassan’s taxicab number from the payphone in the hospital lobby. When I requested Hassan specifically, the dispatcher told me that they weren’t permitted to send one driver over another. It depended on which cab was closest. “Anyway,” she said, “he’s not called in for ages, and he’s probably on a break. Do you still want a taxi?”
I told her I did and gave her the name of the hospital. I guessed that my friend was probably leading the white van driver in a merry chase all over Eastbourne, and I smiled to think of it. I’d go up to Beachy Head by cab, tell him to wait, admire the view, dump Becker Senior and then come back to the hospital to say goodbye to Edith. Maybe I’d give her the nice blue velvet bag as a memento. Then I could go back to Canterbury, and the CIPF banquet with Richard (and whatever transpired afterwards), with a clear conscience. Sort of.
The cab driver was heavily bearded, with thick glasses like Maude’s and the inevitable flat cap. The driver ID hanging over the back seat identified him as Hassan—another one. I guessed that there were probably several Hassans in every cab company in England, and the dispatcher had done her best for me, and just picked the wrong one. It was too bad. I would have liked to have seen my friendly cab driver again. I told him I wanted to visit Beachy Head, and he nodded and pulled out of the hospital driveway very carefully, looking both ways, first. I don’t think I’d seen a cab driver do that since I’d landed in England, but then with glasses that thick, prudence was probably called for.
“Odd sort of day for sightseeing,” he said, in a strained and gravelly voice, as if he had a cold. He spoke without turning his head, keeping his eyes on the road. It had stopped raining, but there was a bitter wind coming in from the sea, and grey clouds were moving in like tanks.
“Well, at least it won’t be crowded,” I said. I saw his eyes in the rear view mirror dart a quick glance at me, as if I’d said something really strange.
“Probably not,” he said. “Wind’s strong up there, you know. You mustn’t go too near the edge, mind. The wind can snatch you off the cliff like the hand of God.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said. The passenger window was open a crack, letting in a strong scent of the sea, a fishy smell that made my nose tingle. I figured that there must be a fishing operation somewhere nearby and decided to try and find a restaurant down on the seafront before heading back—a place where I might be able to get real fish and chips, not the pub-version Richard had warned me about. Maybe I’d get an order to go and take it to Edith. Better than institutional soup, anyway.
The road up to the lookout point on Beachy Head was single-laned, paved but bumpy. At the top, there was a car-park, and signs for a walking path that led towards the cliff top. The carpark was empty, and the wind was setting up little clouds of gravel, tossing them about like miniature tornadoes. I could hear the scream of seagulls. It was a lonely, bleak but beautiful spot, and I was glad I’d come on a day when nobody else would be there. Especially since I wasn’t certain that scattering ashes was strictly legal.
“They don’t let cars beyond this point,” the cab driver said. “You’ll have to walk to the view. Do you want me to wait?”
“If you don’t mind. I won’t be long, I don’t expect.”
I got out, and immediately my breath was torn away by the wind. That morning, when buying the daypack, I’d also bought a Queen Elizabeth dog-walking scarf. I put it on and tied it under my chin, zipped up my curling sweater, hoisted the pack onto my shoulder and headed along the path, which was flanked on both sides by gorse bushes that broke the wind a bit. This was it, my “hiking in England” fantasy. I didn’t have the stout stick the traditional picture required, so I hunted about along the underbrush and found something that would do—more of a twig, really, but it helped the illusion, and carrying it added to my sense of balance. I figured that once I got beyond the bushes, the wind would be fierce, and the stick would be some added stability. If I was going to scatter the ashes properly, I’d have to get pretty near the edge, I thought. Either that, or most of Mr. Becker Senior would end up on me, flying up my nose and into my eyes.
Behind me in the distance, I heard a car door slam. Damn—more visitors, which would mean I had to do what I had to do quickly, if I wanted privacy. I picked up the pace a bit, beginning to feel breathless, although I was walking downhill, not up. I was out of the bushes, suddenly, and oddly, the wind subsided a bit, probably because the lookout point was a little bit lower down than the car park was, so I was no longer quite at the summit.
I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. The view was spectacular.
I could certainly see the beaches and town of Eastbourne, far below, but beyond that was obscured by the cloud bank, wh
ich must be fog, I realized, moving in fast. The wind, luckily, was even quieter now, replaced by an eerie silence, disturbed only by the sound of seagulls a long way off. I made my way carefully to the edge, as close as I dared, and sat down out of sight of the path, with my back to a shrub, in case the new arrivals happened to catch up and wonder what on earth I was doing. It amazed me that there was no railing or anything, just a couple of signs warning sightseers that the cliff edge was unstable, and to take care. Everything’s always so understated in England, I thought. In Canada, they would have put up a great big chain-link fence. I liked that they hadn’t done that. It was a kind of trusting, as if the authorities were prepared to treat the public like adults, and if they fell off, it was their own fault. That, I suppose, was one of the reasons Beachy Head was a prime suicide spot.
I reached into the bottom of my pack and pulled out Edward Becker Senior in his blue velvet bag. I put my hand into the bag and touched plastic—a package, wrapped up in tape. I pulled it out and hefted it in my hand for a moment. Just the shell of a mortal.
Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread. The lines from the old nursery story popped into my mind—ground bones. Yum. I sat there, trying to decide the best method for a reverent and mindful disposal of Becker’s dad. Should I toss the package over all in one piece? Nope—that would seem too much like littering—as there was the plastic involved. Anyway, I’d been asked to scatter, and scatter I would. Should I open the bag, grab handfuls and throw them over, one by one? That would mean getting my hands all covered in human-bits, but it wouldn’t really matter. I decided to toss out one handful, with a little word spoken into the wind—something about ashes to ashes and dust to dust—and then I’d crouch down and empty the rest over the edge—or as near the edge as I could stomach, being a little leery of heights, myself. I undid the tape, unrolled the bag and peered in. The crematorium guys had obviously done a great job of pulverizing the remains. I’d expected a gravelly sort of stuff, like kitty litter. This was a fine white powder. At the very back of my mind (finally! you’re saying to yourself, aren’t you?), a little alarm went off. I licked a finger, reached in and brought it out with a bit of powder on it and tasted it.
I heard footsteps on the path behind me, then, and without turning around, I knew it was the cab driver. The fishy smell—that hadn’t been the sea coming in the cab window, it had been coming from him—the same fishy smell that the tattooed thug from Eastbridge had carried about with him. The guy in the train, too, according to Maude. A white van man, delivering fish to that Meat and Fish Shop in Canterbury. The thug who for some reason knew that I was carrying around about four pounds of pure cocaine. His beard and glasses—I couldn’t believe I’d fallen for it. What a maroon, as Bugs Bunny would say. The hand-off? Yep, I could suddenly see why “his people” had been so upset when I missed (apparently) the rendezvous at the airport and toddled away with the booty. And four pounds of cocaine would be worth killing Alma for, if they thought she was me, right? And that much coke would fit very nicely in a puppet baby, wouldn’t it? They must have been really teed off to find it empty. My mind refused to go any further. The question of how the cocaine had come into my possession—there was really only one answer to that, and it was so outrageous, I couldn’t stand to think of it.
And now I was on a deserted clifftop (530 feet, the guidebook had said) with a guy who had maybe killed once already to get the stuff I now held in my hands. The fog was rolling in for certain, now, and my best bet, I decided, was to stay huddled up right where I was. Maybe the cab driver would fall off the edge by accident, another one to chalk up to the chalk cliffs of the Sussex coast. Beachy dead head. I was panicking. My hands were shaking, the Sprog was squirming like a worm in my belly, and I tasted copper in my mouth. There was no cavalry on its way to save me, nobody to protect me. I was on my own, again. Just like always. I remembered the first time I’d felt like this. I went back there, then. Just for fun. Because I didn’t have any choice.
It is a bright, golden day, a high-summer day from early childhood, with a deep blue sky, the world in crayon colours, clean and uncomplicated. The Kuskawa craft fair spreads its glory out upon what in England would be called the village green. In downtown Laingford, it is called Memorial Park.
My mother is very busy. I am six, and the morning is mine.
Over by the band shell is the weaver lady’s stand. The year before, she let kids sit at a loom as big as a tree fort and weave a bookmark by themselves. She sent mine in the mail to me in the fall, my first ever letter with my own name on it. My mother told me that the weaver lady would probably be happy to see me again.
Before I make another bookmark, though, there is the rest of the fair to see. The fair is a paradise for kids.
I sit on the steps of the war memorial to have my can of pop and revel in the luxury of a plastic straw, which I will keep to make a little doll with later. The man who comes to sit beside me is old, with white hair but wearing a smart suit.
He thinks I am pretty and tells me so. I smile at him because I know I am. What is odd is that I feel a sudden tightness at the back of my throat.
The white-haired man looks like an important person you mustn’t be rude to, and so this wary moment is already complex.
“I’d like to take a picture of you,” the white-haired man says. “Is that all right?” He has not offered me any candy—I know I’m not allowed to accept sweets from strangers. Although my throat feels funny still, I nod and smile and stand and pose for him. Afterwards, he asks me my name and my age, and he writes it down in a little notebook. He pats my knee, lightly, as if it’s a small animal that might startle and make a run for it. Then his grip tightens. I can feel his sweat making my knee wet. “Yes, you’re a very pretty girl. Would you like to come for a ride with me in my car?”
“No, thank you,” I say. I cannot move. “I have to see the weaver lady.”
“Well, some other time, maybe,” the white-haired man says, and his hand releases my knee. He has left a mark there.
It has all taken a minute or so. My can of soda pop is still quite cold and heavy in my hand. I stand and head for the bandshell and the loom, walking a little bit outside myself. I turn around and see that he is following me, smiling. Then I run. I run very fast, the word Mother thumping through my blood like a prayer. And when I find her, sitting placidly behind a display of muffins, I tell her everything, including how afraid I was.
“Don’t be silly,” Mother says. “You’re always imagining things. Don’t be so vain, Polly.”
I learned that day that when I am frightened, I am alone. And on a clifftop in Eastbourne, I remembered. I was on my own. I stood up slowly, the fog swirling around my feet like dry ice in a Broadway show. There was no point in scattering the ashes of Becker’s dad. That’s not what was in the blue velvet bag. The problem was, I had completely lost my sense of direction. The fog silenced everything like a big quilt thrown over the world, and I couldn’t even hear the sea, couldn’t tell which way the precipice was, and which was the path. I sensed, rather than saw or heard, a presence to my right. My breath came in short spurts, as if I’d been running, and I tried to control it in case he heard. Why hadn’t he held me up in the cab? Why had he waited to drive me up here? And I knew the reason for that, of course. So he could grab the drugs and toss me off the edge. CANADIAN WOMAN FALLS TO DEATH. MATERNAL DEPRESSION CITED. My knees were like rubber. Where was the damned path?
I dropped down again and started to crawl as quietly as I could along the line of shrubs which I hoped delineated the path I’d been on. I had the stick in my hand, still, and I’d stuffed the plastic bag back into my pack. I’d left Richard’s tin of pepper spray back in the B&B. If I’d had a mobile phone, I could have called 911 (Did they have 911 in England?) But all I had was my stupid Pez-phone, which could make a nice phone-like noise, but wouldn’t help me now. I also had my spare socks, but they wouldn’t be much use against a murderous cabbie. Had the
fish thug caught up with the real Hassan and stolen his cab? It seemed likely, though how he knew I was here in the first place completely baffled me. Anyway, it was irrelevant.
I pushed through a thicket, realizing as I did that it could very well have been on the cliff-side, in which case I’d come out right at the edge, the earth would crumble away, and I’d have a quick trip down to the everlasting bonfire. On the other hand, it might be on the path-side, in which case, I’d have somewhere to go. Maybe the thug had left the keys in his cab. Maybe I could get there before he did and escape. I found myself reciting a prayer—the simplest one in the world—“please, please, please”—over and over again. My hands touched gravel. Miracle. I scrambled to my feet and started running. There was a shout behind me—a grunt, really, awfully close, as if he’d been waiting only a few feet away, and then we were racing for the car park. I tossed the stick behind me, hoping he would trip on it. The fog had cleared a bit, and as we neared the top, the wind came back. That’s when I saw the other figures coming down the path. I cannoned straight into the arms of the biggest one, grabbed him, squeaked out a “help” and fainted.
Twenty-Seven
The more mature your baby is at birth, the more likely it is that she will not have any problems, so that babies born at 26-29 weeks have a much better chance of surviving and growing up either normal or with mild or moderate problems.
-From Big Bertha’s Total Baby Guide
Here she comes,” somebody said. “Welcome back, Polly.” I figured I must still be off in la-la land, because it was Morrison’s big, friendly face that swam into view. I blinked a couple of times, and my vision cleared a bit, and it was still Morrison.
Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle Page 98