Weirdo

by Cathi Unsworth

  Familiar faces jumped out at him.

  Marc Anthony Farman, 14, of 52 Regent’s Road, Ernemouth. Pupil of Ernemouth High School. Cautioned for truancy and underage drinking.

  The pub’s current landlord, starting out as he meant to go on.

  Shaun Terence McDonald, 18, of 23 Havelock Road, Ernemouth. Employee of Maples Poultry.

  The man with the crutch and the friendly face. Then there was his mate Bugs, or to give him a formal introduction, Harvey Matthew Bunton, 20, of 74 Scratby Road, South Town, Ernemouth. Employee of Locke & Co Transit.

  The skinhead and the punk who had been playing pool the night earlier were, respectively, Kristian Kemper and Damon Patrick Bull, then both eighteen, of a shared address at 21A St Peter’s Road and employed by the council as landscape gardeners. Which maybe explained the attention they paid to the foliage on their heads.

  So, thought Sean, keying their details into his laptop, you are the old tribe.

  Three hours into his excavation of Ernemouth’s records, he felt the first prickling of the old excitement, like a hound picking up a scent off the breeze. These faces in front of him were his first tangible leads back in time. He picked up the punk’s mugshot, heard Farman saying: “That old sign was a bit corny, so Bully done a better one …”

  The youthful Bully bore a striking resemblance to Travis Bickle that he’d done little to tone down since.

  Rivett had found all the files that matched with Sean’s list. But as hard as he stared at them, he couldn’t make out in any of their faces a suggestion of the one he had been most certain he would find – the girl with the tattooed hand. Where are you? thought Sean. Who are you?

  He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, opened up his email. One from Francesca, using a private Hotmail, rather than her work account, telling him that she had found a retired social worker who had once been Corrine’s caseworker and was about to pay her a visit.

  Sean closed the message and swivelled in his chair. Down in the basement was a different world from Smollet’s streamlined station above. Alf Brown, who looked after the records from within a steel and Plexiglass podule, was another old-timer who must have been teetering on the brink of retirement, with a balding dome and drooping moustache, the stub of a pencil stuck behind his left ear.

  The rest of the floor space was divided into cubicles with corkboards, many of them sporting vintage crime prevention posters, curled and yellowing with age. The remains of the old incident room, Sean couldn’t help but think. Boxes of unfiled paperwork crowded the desktops, but only one young PC was inputting any of it, keeping his head down, fingers tapping steadily away.

  Across from Sean, sitting at a vintage Apple Mac almost bigger than the desk it had been placed on, Rivett was clicking a keyboard, eyes running up and down his monitor. An old transistor, hidden somewhere within Alf’s chamber of filing cabinets, was tuned into Radio 3, the distant chimes of classical music adding a funereal air to the proceedings.

  Sean wondered if it was always this quiet or if an exception had been made for his visit.

  “Len,” he said.

  Rivett turned his head. “Yes, detective?”

  “You said you might be able to find me a number for Paul Gray?”

  Rivett raised an eyebrow. “That’s right, I did,” he said. “Two ticks.”

  He lifted the receiver, pressed a digit and said: “Oh, hello, Jan, it’s Len. Reckon you could find me a number for Paul Gray? That’s right. That’s the one. Thank you.” He scribbled something down on a Post-it note.

  “There you go,” Rivett offered the number without rising, so that Sean had to get to his feet and walk across to him.

  “That’s local,” said Rivett, “Sandringham Avenue. Over North Denes way.”

  “Thanks,” said Sean, sitting down to dial. He was in luck. A man answered after the third ring, sounded cheerful as he repeated the number and then said: “Hello.”

  “Hello, am I speaking to Paul Gray?” Sean kept his eyes on Rivett as he spoke. The old sweat swivelled nonchalantly in his chair.

  “Who’s calling, please?” the tone was still friendly, just a note of wariness creeping in.

  “My name’s Sean Ward, I’m a private detective looking into a case you once worked on, wondered if I might pick your brains about it.”

  “Oh?” the voice sounded surprised. “What would that be, then?”

  “I’m sure you won’t have forgotten it,” said Sean, watching Rivett turn back to his screen and give the impression of resuming his searches. “Corrine Woodrow, summer of 1984.”

  There was a moment’s silence at the end of the phone. Rivett narrowed his eyes like he was reading something interesting.

  “Cor, dear,” Paul Gray finally said. “What you diggin’ round that for?”

  Sean explained, as he had to Rivett, about Janice Mathers and the new DNA test.

  “I see,” Gray said. There was another lengthy pause. “Len Rivett know, do he?”

  He spoke as if Rivett was still in charge of the station.

  “He gave me your number,” said Sean.

  Gray made a sound like a sigh. “Right,” he said. “I see.” All the traces of humour had faded from his voice.

  “Well, like I say, I wouldn’t mind a chat with you about it,” said Sean. “I’m in town for a while, wondered if you might be able to spare me an hour or so, tomorrow morning?”

  “Don’t suppose I can refuse, can I?” said Gray.

  Sean ignored the weary note of sarcasm. “What would suit you?” he asked.

  Gray sighed again. “You can come here, I suppose. Number 48, Sandringham Avenue. Make it ten o’clock, if you don’t mind. The missus’ll be at work by then. I don’t want to bother her with this.”

  “Right you are,” Sean tapped the details into his mobile, along with Gray’s number. “I appreciate it, Mr Gray. I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

  “Right,” said Gray, “see you then.”

  Rivett had moved off to stand over the printer while it disgorged the information he had been downloading from the computer. He strolled back with a sheaf of paper in his hand. “Here’s what’s left of the biker gang Old Ma Woodrow used to knock about with. The ones that didn’t end up under a lorry down the Acle Straight, although they might be a few limbs short of what they were. They do tend to get that way.”

  He placed the print-outs down beside Sean’s laptop. “Anything else you require?”

  “Well,” Sean looked at the clock on his computer that was inching towards 6 p.m., “I think I’ve probably kept you long enough for one day, Len.”

  Rivett wrinkled his nose. Sean had an inkling he had wanted to spin this one out into the night, make it feel like the old days, polish off the session with a few more jars at his office. The former DCI’s company was the last thing Sean needed where he was heading, but he didn’t want to put Rivett’s nose out of joint needlessly either.

  “Tell you the truth,” he said, “my bloody legs are killing me. If I don’t get to lie down for half an hour, a couple of times a day, I stop being able to function properly. It’s embarrassing to admit it. But I’ve just about reached that point now.”

  Rivett’s expression changed. “Course,” he said. “I never even thought. You go on, I’ll let Alf lock this little lot up for the night and we can start again tomorrow.”

  “Thanks,” said Sean. “You’re a good man.”

  “That has been rumoured,” said Rivett, winking.

  * * *

  Rivett watched Sean limp through the door of The Ship Hotel, thinking of bullet holes in flesh. The man carried himself with dignity, didn’t let the pain show on his face. Rivett admired that about him. He weren’t like most of the flash bastards he had encountered from Met Lands in his time. Ward was a thinker, not a blagger, Rivett could tell.

  He had got to the hotel before Ward did, thanks to his knowledge of the notoriously tricky Ernemouth one-way system, parked up his own car well out of sig
ht. Rivett just wanted to be certain that Ward wasn’t spinning him a line about this leg of his, wanting to be rid of him so early of an evening.

  He lingered on the corner a while, took his mobile out of his pocket while he watched, glancing down every few seconds to check his messages. When Sean didn’t re-emerge after fifteen minutes, Rivett put his phone away, went back to the Rover and headed out to the seafront. Past the flashing lights, the scaffold-covered remains of the Trafalgar Pier and the beckoning windows of the Lodge, on to the Leisure Beach.

  It was an eerie sight, off-season. The street lights casting shadows against the dark hump of the rollercoaster and the skeletal frames of the wheels and loops, the silent turrets and towers. Rivett showed his pass to the security guard who manned the gate to the staff car park and the man nodded him through.

  Tasting salt on his tongue, Rivett walked through the deserted kingdom towards the tower in the middle where one lonely light, right at the top, cast a pale yellow glow against the blackness of the sky. Took the lift up and knocked at the office door.

  * * *

  Sean walked a circuit down the quay and then back towards the town centre, getting a feel for the layout. He wanted to try and see it through the eyes of the locals and he’d always found it was easier to work out how everything fitted together by walking.

  He hadn’t been that economical with the truth when he told Rivett his legs had been playing him up. But after half an hour’s kip to chase his medication down and a read of Mr Farrer’s book, he felt better than he had done since he’d got here. He knew it was partly psychological – he had something to get to grips with now, an adrenalin rush that buoyed him down King Street.

  Coming up it the other way from the night before, he took in a nightclub and three pubs clustered together, special promotions posters in every window, bouncers on the door of each. These shaven-headed guardians looked bored, blinking ahead into the street as vocodered chart music blared through their half-empty premises. Through the door of one, Sean caught sight of Francesca’s ad manager with his two protégées standing up at a tall table in the middle of the floor, drinking pints of lager. Modern drink-up fittings only served to emphasise the paucity of trade.

  He looked up as he passed the Mercury office. The lights were still on up there. He wondered if it was Francesca, back from her meet with the social worker. Wondered again what it was she was trying to prove in a place like this. Or what she had been running away from. Half of him was tempted to press the buzzer and ask her.

  But he ambled on, taking a different route, past the market place. Apart from the grand, ’30s-built department store, which the car park in front of Swing’s belonged to, every shop appeared to be either a charity or cut-price outlet. He thought back to what Bugs had said about North Sea oil. All that money gone and nothing to show for it.

  Sean turned left into Market Row. Down here was the pub where, Rivett had informed him, the bikers liked to hang out. The Back Room it was called, a red sign over a slim passageway between two half-timbered buildings. The music that pulsed from these walls marked its difference from the King Street boozers: Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”. He should pay it a visit too, he thought as he passed, maybe tomorrow night. But he hadn’t finished with the drinkers in Swing’s yet.

  Sean saw in his head the green eye tattooed on the goth girl’s hand. She had been playing on his mind all day. It was her, he realised, as he turned left at the bottom of the row and on to his destination, that he most wanted to bump into tonight.

  As he walked through the door, Shaun and Bugs were sat exactly where they had been the night before, a paper spread before them on the bar.

  A song was playing that he had never heard before. Dramatic, slightly operatic: strings and crashing piano, a man singing in a baritone about skies, stars and moons.

  “I said he’d be back,” Shaun, whose barstool faced the door, nudged Bugs, whose back was towards him. “All right, mate?”

  “Evening, Mr Ward,” Bugs greeted him, putting down an empty pint on the bar and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Sean, please,” he replied. “I owe you guys a drink,” he said. “Farrer’s bookshop did have something on Captain Swing. Interesting old fella, ain’t he, Mr Farrer?”

  “You could say that,” a sliver of a smile played across Bugs’s mouth.

  “Sorted you out, did he?” Shaun grinned.

  “He certainly did,” Sean nodded, watching out of the corner of his eye the landlord further down the bar talking to the biker he’d seen talking to the tattooed girl the night before. He did a quick strafe of the pool table area. She wasn’t there. No Bully or Kris either. Instead, the younger emos clustered around that end of the bar. Business was definitely better in here than any of the other pubs he had passed.

  “So, what you having?” he asked.

  “Pint of Adnams, please,” said Shaun.

  “I’ll have the same,” Bugs nodded at the pump. Farman caught his eye and broke off his conversation with the biker, walked towards them, rubbing his fists against his chest.

  “Couldn’t keep away?” he said to Sean. “Nice to see you again, Mr Ward. What’ll it be?”

  “Two pints of Adnams and one of the Foster’s,” Sean replied.

  “You got a book then,” said Shaun. “Any pictures of the Captain in it?”

  “No,” Sean smiled, “and there ain’t likely to be. That was the genius of it. The Captain was everyone and no one. A phantom. He didn’t really exist, so he couldn’t be caught. Whoever in the community could read and write would pretend to be him, and those people were usually involved in the printing game, so they could make pamphlets and spread the word. That picture you have on the sign is as good as any.”

  “Cor,” said Bugs, raising the pint Farman had passed across to him. “Make you feel proud, don’t it?”

  “Don’t it just,” said Farman, pulling the final pint.

  “That’s why he was such a threat,” Sean recalled more details from the book. “And you know how he got his name? People would make effigies of the landowners, then hang them from the scaffold outside their front doors.”

  Bugs gave a great guffaw of approval.

  “I should put up some information about that,” said Farman. “People like to know these things. Especially our customers.”

  “I saw one of yours in there, actually,” Sean glanced across at the biker, who had remained at the bar but moved closer towards Shaun. “The girl with a tattoo on her hand, she was in here last night.”

  Farman’s brow furrowed. “A girl?” he said.

  “With black hair and a fur coat,” said Sean.

  The biker was staring at him now, slate-grey eyes behind wire-rimmed granny glasses. Not a very welcoming expression. He had a gold stud beneath his bottom lip, glinting in the brown curls of his beard. Sean knew he hadn’t seen that face amongst the mugshots they’d gone through today. He looked about ten years younger than the others so he couldn’t have been part of the original crew. Those that were continued to look bemused.

  “You got me,” said Farman, handing Sean’s pint across. “That’ll be £8.25, please.”

  Sean shook his head as he handed a tenner across. “Still can’t get used to these prices. Cheers,” he raised his glass to the others. Shaun did likewise. Bugs already had his to his lips and mumbled a salutation across the surface of his beer.

  “He told me something else interesting, Mr Farrer,” Sean went on.

  “Oh,” said Shaun, “what’s that?”

  “About this pub,” said Sean, loud enough that the biker could hear. “He said it’s been called Captain Swing’s for at least a hundred years, but the reason it changed its name in the ’80s was because of a murder. Someone who drank in here, he said.”

  The record came to an end, and in the silence before the next one started, the only sound was the thwack of the pool cue against the ball. Twinges ran up and down Sean’s legs, but the adrenalin pumped
harder.

  “Anyone remember that? Shaun, you said you had your first pint in here in 1981, didn’t you?”

  Shaun’s gaze dropped into his drink as the colour rose in his cheeks. He shook his head.

  “That’s funny,” Sean went on, shifting his gaze to Bugs in time to see he and Farman break eye contact. “’Cos he also said there was something of a witch hunt. Surely you’d remember that?”

  “Why,” the biker cut in, speaking in a Belfast accent, “did Mr Farrer not tell you about the Witchfinder General?”

  “No,” Sean said, “he never got the chance. Like I say, he had another customer. Your friend …” He stared at the biker.

  The Ulsterman laughed. “Then maybe you should look him up some time,” he said, raising his glass in Sean’s direction. “Anyways,” he nodded towards the others, “cheers, gentlemen, I’ll leave you to your history lesson.”

  Sean stared after him, trying not to let his agitation show. As he did, he felt a hand on his arm. He looked down to see the green eye resting there, on the hand of the girl who stared up at him through her black fringe, with her matching emerald pupils.

  “Are you looking for me?” she said.

  16

  Crystal Days

  December 1983

  “Oh go on,” said Debbie. “You in’t been out for ages, Reenie. And it is New Year’s Eve …”

  Corrine stared at her reflection in Chelsea Girl’s window. Her hair finally looked good again, though it was still much shorter than she would have liked.

  “It’s really cool,” Debbie said, as if reading her thoughts. “That black really suit you.”

  Corrine touched the back, which had been cut into a short, layered bob. The front was spiked up, the sides razored short. Once the broken blonde streaks had been cut out, it had been safe to dye it again – and she’d had a proper job this time.

  “Lizzy done it,” she informed Debbie. “She’s the top stylist at Oliver John’s.”