Weirdo

by Cathi Unsworth

  “I got to hand it to you, you are good, Miss Ryman. You in’t got none of the usual little twitches that give the weaker minded away.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively as he pushed the envelope towards her. “That’s what you’re after, in’t it?”

  * * *

  No sooner had he opened the back door to let the dogs out than Mr Pearson’s phone began to ring again. He turned on his heel, rushed back to the hallway to answer it, the dogs brushing past his legs as they ran in the other direction, out into the night.

  “Frannie?” he said, lifting the receiver.

  “Philip?” came a voice with a Midlands ring, familiar from somewhere in his past.

  “Philip, it’s Sheila Alcott, are you all right, dear?”

  “Sheila?” Mr Pearson put his hand up to his temples, closing his eyes. In a beat, a picture formed in his mind and he realised who he was talking to. “Oh, Sheila, I got you. Sorry about that, I must be having what they now call a senior moment.”

  “Well, I did wonder,” said Sheila. “After what’s just happened to me, I thought I’d better check to see if you were OK.”

  “Why?” Mr Pearson felt his knees weaken again. “What’s going on?”

  * * *

  “Where is DCI Smollet?” demanded the DCC. “I gave specific orders I would speak to him and no one else.”

  Blackburn dragged his gaze away from Kidd, who was still staring at the floor.

  “He got called away, sir,” Blackburn said. “Urgent business. Told me I had to hold the fort. Said he would be out of contact for the rest of the night. That’s all I know, sir.”

  Bowles pushed Kidd forwards.

  “Put this man in the cells,” he said. “He’s already under caution. No one is to speak to him until I return. And by no one,” the DCC’s flint-sharp eyes bored into Blackburn, “I most specifically mean you.”

  * * *

  “I caught a man trying to break into my property,” said Sheila. “But it’s all right, I was prepared for him, ever since your daughter came to see me yesterday and then that detective from London turned up, I thought something like this would happen.”

  “My daughter?” Mr Pearson’s voice sounded faint, even to himself. “A detective? Sean Ward, d’you mean?”

  “Yes, that’s right, dear, nice young man, I thought. Not like our local force at all. And that’s who it was, trying to come after me,” she said, her voice hardening. “One of them. The very same one that turned up on my doorstep all those years ago to tell me I wasn’t needed in court, would you believe? Did he get a shock when he found himself staring down the barrel of my son’s shotgun. And I’m afraid Minnie went for him too. I wasn’t able to stop her, not when I was holding a loaded weapon …”

  From outside the back door, a ferocious cacophony of barking erupted.

  “Oh my God, the dogs!” said Mr Pearson. “I’m sorry, Sheila, I’m going to have to call you back.”

  * * *

  Francesca stared at Rivett’s grinning visage.

  “Go on,” he said. “Take a look.”

  Her fingers felt too big and too clumsy as she slid them underneath the flap of the envelope and pulled out a sheaf of documents. The one on top had the name of a firm of Ernemouth solicitors on the letterhead. Her eyes ran down the typewritten page.

  THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF ERIC ARTHUR HOYLE

  I, ERIC ARTHUR HOYLE being of sound mind and memory do undertake on this day 29.3.1989 to make the following instruction. Upon my death, the business premises and trading interests of ERNEMOUTH LEISURE INDUSTRIES INC should be split equally between LEONARD HORATIO RIVETT and DALE ARMSTRONG SMOLLET, with the provision that neither party attempt to wind down, sell off or in any way discontinue the trading of the business.

  “Save you a bit of bother, don’t it?” said Rivett. “The old boss,” he put a fat finger down on Eric’s name, “and the new boss,” he moved it over to Smollet’s. “I in’t finished telling you about Dale, but there’s only really one thing left to say. I can only do business with someone after I’ve found their Achilles’ heel. I knew what Eric’s was, I know what his is, and,” he smiled his most carnivorous smile, “I know what yours is and all.”

  Rivett leaned back in his chair. “Your dad’s Philip Pearson, in’t he? Good old Phil, who gave this town the worst name that’s ever had. I see where you get them instincts of yours from.”

  Horror seeped through Francesca’s bones as she stared at him, trying to work out how he could possibly have known.

  “Pat,” was the best she could do.

  Rivett shook his head. “Nope. That was actually Paul Bowman who helped me out with that little detail. The other person you inherited from Sid that had a cast-iron contract you couldn’t get rid of. And there you was, thinking he was just the clapped-out, Viagra-popping old pisshead he appear to be.”

  Francesca’s throat tightened. Rivett was right. Her aging Lothario of an ad manager was the last person she would ever have suspected of having such guile. Rivett’s smile deepened. “Yes, Miss Ryman, Bowman done a bit of digging for me this afternoon and you’d be surprised what he’s capable of. When you worked for that paper up in London, you were married to the business editor – Ross, in’t it? But they say you left the job for family reasons. Well, what family could that be, then? That lanky frame of yours, that streak of Bubble you’ve got running through you …” Rivett nodded. “Philp Pearson’s wife died not six months after you got here. The second Greek tragedy of his life.”

  “Bastard!” Rage enlarged Francesca’s pupils.

  Rivett tapped his finger back down on Eric’s will.

  “That’s your motive,” he said calmly. “Eric’s too. Family is at the heart of all this tragedy, Miss Ryman. You’ve come this far. Don’t you want to know how it finally all connects?”

  * * *

  Outside in the night, Mr Pearson heard a car reverse on the gravel of his drive and then career away at high speed. By the time he had run round to the front of the house, he could only make out the taillights disappearing in the direction of Brydon Bridge. The dogs’ feet skittered on the loose stones as they ran back towards him, tails thrashing. Digby had something in his mouth that he pushed into his master’s hand.

  “What’s this, boy?” Mr Pearson felt something limp and soggy. “My godfathers,” he said.

  * * *

  “That’s very commendable research,” Francesca said, summoning from deep within what her mother used to call her Gorgon stare. “But aren’t you forgetting one thing? Sean Ward. He knows all about this too.”

  “Oh yeah. He’s a good boy, that Ward,” said Rivett, his expression softening. “I could have made use of a brave soldier like him, if we’d met in another time.” He shook his head regretfully. “But that in’t his town, is it, and anyway, I should think he’ll be off by now. He’s got what he come here for.”

  Francesca did a double take. “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “That DNA sample he was after,” said Rivett. “I was able to help him out with that, lead him to the person he need. You were both on the right track, you see, you just didn’t have the missing element. See this?”

  Rivett took something else out of the desk and handed it across to her. An old, fading photograph of a woman wearing a psychedelic kaftan, her blonde hair tumbling out of a matching headscarf, holding in her arms the tiny bundle of a newborn child.

  “Eric’s family,” said Rivett. “His daughter Amanda and her little girl Samantha. That baby is the reason why all of this happened, the reason Smollet’s about to come here now to try and stop you from breaking in and finding out the rest of it. Only, I don’t reckon he’s going to get here on time. Ward’s probably had that DNA verified right now, while you were busy ransacking this office. No, that in’t looking good for poor old Dale right now. Just like you, he din’t know what he was really getting into.”

  Rivett reached inside his jacket pocket and withdrew a pair of white magician’s g
loves.

  “Still,” he said, putting them on, “tomorrow’s headlines should be a scoop. Shame you won’t be around to write them.”

  Francesca watched, as if in slow motion, as his gloved right hand went back inside his pocket and drew out a small, flat handgun.

  “Sorry,” he said, aiming it towards her, “but I reckon we’ve just about run out of time.”

  The phone on the desk began to ring.

  “This’ll be the DCI for you,” Rivett said. “And then that’ll all be over.”

  38

  Premature Burial

  June 1984

  Monday 18 June dawned warm, the sun rising through a clear blue sky by the time Gray arrived at the station at 6 a.m. He felt sweat under his arms as he closed the car door and locked it, and made his way indoors to the canteen.

  He loaded his tray with eggs, bacon and a strong cup of tea, needing more fuel to get going on these early mornings. Gray had always preferred nights, but staff levels were strained just now by the fact that half of them were up north, policing the miners’ strike. A fresh busload had shipped out yesterday, relishing all that overtime pay.

  Gray grimaced as he sipped his tea. Unlike most everyone else they knew, he and Sandra never voted for Margaret Thatcher.

  “Penny for ’em,” came a voice behind him.

  “Len?” Gray looked round.

  The DCI winked. “Thought I’d find you here,” he said. “Come to my office when you’ve finished? Something I could use your expertise on.”

  Gray raised his eyebrows. “All right,” he said.

  “Good boy,” Rivett squeezed his shoulder and moved off.

  Gray sat for a few moments more, feeling the imprint of the DCI’s fingers. He took another sip of his tea and looked down at his half-eaten breakfast. Though he tried not to think of it, a blip of memory flashed through his mind and suddenly the eggs and bacon looked a whole lot less appetising. He picked up his tray, disposed of the half-eaten meal, and jogged downstairs to Rivett’s office.

  The DCI did not get up from his desk, just motioned for Gray to sit.

  “You know all about them weirdos, don’t you, Paul?” he said, offering a school photograph in a brown cardboard frame across the table.

  Gray took in the smiling, freckled face of a teenage boy, blue eyes peering through a corrugated black fringe. He was wearing a black V-neck sweater, white shirt and skinny black tie, a badge on his chest that read Echo and the Bunnymen.

  “Darren Moorcock,” said Rivett, “lives at 89 Northgate Street, pupil at Ernemouth High. Didn’t come home on Saturday night, but his parents didn’t realise ’til the morning. He normally let himself in after they’ve gone to bed, they trust him that way.” Rivett raised his eyebrows. “Only, when he din’t come back last night either, they started to get worried that he weren’t just being some randy stop-out. They went round all the places he normally hang out and couldn’t find him, rang round all his friends, and no one’s seen him since he called on his girlfriend Saturday afternoon. Deborah Carver, her name is, she live up South Town, only she’s been in bed sick all weekend, so he couldn’t have been having it away there.”

  Rivett saw a flicker cross Gray’s features as he said this, then the detective looked down, swallowing, studying the photo.

  “Course, we’ll be waiting to see if he turns up for school,” Rivett went on. “But in the meantime, I wondered if you had any bright ideas.”

  There was something familiar about the boy, Gray thought, although not from any of his usual late-night reconnoitres. His mind travelled back to the party he’d broken up on May Day, the pillbox on the North Denes with the old sofa inside it. Darren Moorcock looked like he belonged to that gang, even if he couldn’t directly place his face. Corrine Woodrow had definitely been amongst them and this struck Gray as strange – Rivett had taken a sudden interest in her only a couple of weeks ago. Those seizures she suffered from and the rumours he’d heard about black magic; the Aleister Crowley book he seemed to know all about – from the Duty Sergeant Roy Mobbs, Gray could only deduce.

  He looked back up at his boss. Rivett sat in his seat, a smile playing on his lips, an intensity in his eyes that caused the knot in Gray’s stomach to grow tighter.

  “There is somewhere,” he said, “I reckon they use as their hide-out.” He stood up, the urge to get away from Rivett stronger than his conviction that this was where the boy would be. “I’ll go take a look, shall I?”

  * * *

  Rivett waited five minutes, then picked up the phone, dialled the familiar number.

  “Get home all right?” he asked the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Len,” Eric sounded sore, hung over. Rivett knew he hated being roused early, given the amount of whisky he would no doubt have sunk the night before. But Eric deserved everything that was now coming his way – for what Rivett was about to do, there was going to have to be one long, carefully executed game of payback.

  “You know what time it is?” said Eric, and Rivett could just picture his crumpled face against Edna’s freshly laundered pillows.

  “Time you told me what you got sorted out yesterday,” said Rivett. “I already got my men moving, we in’t got a lot of room for manoeuvre, you want this to go off straight.”

  Eric groaned and there was a shuffling of sheets. “Sammy’s back in London,” he said, no doubt mindful of Edna rousing next to him. “We got her in a clinic where they’ll take care of her proper. One benefit of Malcolm being a degenerate alcoholic, I s’pose. He know all about them sort of places.”

  Rivett picked up a pencil, twirling it between his index and middle fingers. “Good,” he said, “now you’ve got that all sorted out, I reckon you ought to be on your way up Edith Cavell’s,” he referred to the hospital where Amanda was recuperating from her miscarriage. “Make sure you’re seen to be looking after all your family at a time like this. That’s been hard for Sammy to deal with, of course,” the pencil snapped in Rivett’s hand, “but I expect that’s a whole lot worse for Mandy, now, in’t it?”

  * * *

  Gray parked up at the Iron Duke, slung his jacket over his shoulders as he set off down the steps and across the North Denes. The horizon shimmered in front of him. He noticed trails of footprints in the soft sand of the dunes sloping down towards the pillbox, heard a faint humming in the distance, sounded like one of them 50cc scooters, vaguely aware that, as he neared the old fortification, the sound was getting louder.

  Gray blinked as he entered the pillbox, his pupils rapidly dilating to adjust from the bright sunshine to the gloom within. The sound was really loud now, but that was not the first thing that hit him. It was the smell, the unmistakable iron-and-bowels stench of death – death which seemed at that moment to hover in front of him, taking a tangible form, a black cloud, rippling and undulating in front of his eyes. For one second, Gray thought that he had walked into another dimension, that he was part of some surreal animation.

  He took a step nearer and the cloud rose and rushed straight at him. All of a sudden he knew what they were – flies, airborne legions of them, tiny insect bullets hitting his face, his mouth, his nose, his eyes. He staggered backwards, choking, trying not to lose his balance, still thinking at the back of his mind that he mustn’t mess up a crime scene – before instinct overcame training and the contents of his stomach roiled and rose straight up his throat. Gray staggered back out and hurled his guts out, kicking sand back over the mess he had made and then staggering dizzily, scratching his hands against the rough concrete exterior of the pillbox as he righted himself.

  He took a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket, wiped his mouth and then his sweating forehead. Took long deep breaths, telling himself it was all right. “Easy now,” he told himself, going back in. “Easy.”

  That was when he saw her. Pressed up against the wall with blood on her face, her mouth open and her eyes all glazed. Like she’d been freeze-framed in the middle of a scream.

&nbs
p; Gray put his own hands up to the sides of his head, his mind racing. Had there been some sort of massacre? Lying on the floor in front of him, where the flies had been, were the remains of one of them. Whether it was Darren Moorcock or not, he couldn’t tell – just that it once had a load of dark hair and white skin but now most of it was red.

  He stepped around the body, fighting down the pounding noise in his ears that he knew was his own heart, knelt down in front of Corrine. She looked straight through him. Though her face was smeared with blood, he couldn’t see any sign of actual injuries. Trying to remember what the social worker had done that time before, he put a hand down on her shoulder, shook her gently, spoke calmly and clearly. “Corrine, wake up. It’s all right, Corrine, they’ve gone.”

  He saw her eyelids flicker and then she exhaled a great breath, falling forwards like a rag doll into his arms.

  * * *

  When Rivett arrived at the Iron Duke with a van load of constables and the head of forensics, Alf Brown, at his side, he was annoyed to see an ambulance was already parked up there. “Get the whole area sealed off,” he barked at his men as they descended the steps from the sea wall. “Tourists’ll be out in a few hours and I don’t want them getting a whiff of it.”

  As the constables fanned out around him, Rivett honed in on Gray, who was helping a paramedic lift Corrine Woodrow onto a stretcher.

  “Hold you hard,” he said, his eyes skimming over her bloodied face, turning towards Gray. “Din’t you say you got a body in there, officer?”

  Gray’s eyes flashed with a ferocity Rivett had seldom witnessed before. “Yes, sir,” the detective sergeant said, “but I’m more concerned with the living right now.”

  Rivett’s eyes darted across at the paramedic, then back at Gray. “You both stay where you are,” he told them. “No one’s going anywhere until I seen this myself.”