A Night With No Stars
Page 19
‘We did go out for about three months and it was great, really great, but he didn’t seem to like me showing too much off. He once asked me to wear a polo-neck and Christ knows I hated them. Still do. And then once I didn’t wear a bra. He never said anything, but I knew. Never mind,’ she killed her second dimp. ‘He was the best of the lot. Not that we went all the way. Wish we had, though.’
She saw how Rhiannon’s cheeks had flushed, how her hands knotted together until her knuckles showed white through the skin.
‘And then,’ she went on, ‘after the business with his mam, well, I never saw him again. It was as if he’d vanished off the face of the earth.’
‘But you don’t know where?’
Rhiannon shook her head. ‘If I’d known that, I’d have followed him, wouldn’t I? At least I’d have been spared Gary with his Friday afternoon-job rubbers.’
‘Verity seems to think Richard cracked up after the tragedy.’
‘Yeah. Big time so I heard.’
‘And what about his brother Mark? Did you have much to do with him?’
Rhiannon pulled a third cigarette from the packet and simply looked at it.
‘Not much. He was three years younger. Bit of a cling-on. Usual brother stuff, you know. Always had to join in what Richard and his mates were doing. Copied everything he did. Once though, he got taught a lesson.’
‘Why?’
‘I guess Richard had had enough. One lunch hour, he stuck his compass right through Mark’s hand. He had to have a tetanus, the works. Big fuss at the time, I remember, but after Richard had said sorry and did all his detentions, it kind of faded away.’ She returned the cigarette to its box.
‘I see,’ said Lucy, mentally dwelling on that sudden act of violence. A little black cloud in an otherwise perfect sky. ‘And what about Mrs Jones? Did you ever meet her? What was she like?’
Rhiannon got up and walked over to the window, keeping her back to Lucy as she spoke.
‘I only saw her the once at the school play. It was in the February. Gulliver’s Travels, that’s it, and Richard was Gulliver. He was amazing. Our drama teacher said he should try for RADA when he’d done his A levels. But he was dead set on Art. Always drawing something or other. Oh, and writing poetry.’
‘Was Mr Jones with her at this play?’
‘Never clapped eyes on him. No.’
‘And Mrs Jones?’ She nudged her gently.
‘The spit of Marilyn Monroe, I’m not kidding. But with reddish hair, that was the only difference. Nothing like the other mums, no way. And Richard seemed so proud of her, showing her off to everyone afterwards . . .’ Rhiannon turned to look at Lucy. She was frowning. ‘Do you think I’m mad saying this, but I felt really jealous of her. God, what am I saying?’ She put her head in her hands and shook it from side to side as if to rid it of imagined demons.
‘You were young,’ said Lucy, thinking back to when she was fifteen. ‘I was the same when my Dad treated my pals like princesses. Or the times he’d go on and on about so-and-so in hospital being so brave. I actually grew to hate them. Do you know that? What a thing to admit,’ her voice tailed away and she bit her lip as if she’d said too much.
But Rhiannon looked relieved. She came and sat down again.
‘Hey, about you buying up at Ravenstone,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’d go for it.’
Lucy’s heartbeat quickened. ‘Do you really mean that?’
‘Course. I know that Mr Jones and the boys were grilled at the time but rumour was some Dagdans or other killed her. Their kind of thing, wasn’t it? Poor cow. Even my mam and da used to keep a look-out here. Why we kept guard dogs all those years. There’s all sorts of oddballs hanging around.’
‘You should have a dog now,’ said Lucy, still not entirely at ease so far from civilisation.
‘Why? I’m not stopping. I’m pissed off with fitting into everyone else’s plans. We’re going down to Swansea soon. Least I’ll have my own place and the kids’ll grow up with some company. Not like here.’
Lucy heard sounds of children waking up as she wrote down her mobile number on yet another page of her Hellebore diary and left it on the table. Then she made a move to go.
‘If you remember any more about that Jones family, please give me a ring. Or if you just want to keep in touch. It’s been good to talk to you. I feel more optimistic about things now.’
And that was true. Not only that, but she’d got a date for Thursday and money soon to spend. However, there was just one unasked question. She took a deep breath. ‘This may sound odd,’ she began, ‘but would you have said Mark Jones was capable of killing anyone?’
Rhiannon whitened, visibly shocked. Her hand gripped her cigarette lighter so tight Lucy thought her knuckles would burst through their skin.
‘And I thought I was mad?’
She didn’t pursue it. The maggot had surely, finally been driven from the apple. Namely, her head. Although Rhiannon George hadn’t seen Mark for fourteen years, her reaction had to count for something, surely? Then, as they both left the kitchen for the noise of children, she noticed a rifle leaning inside the doorway to the understairs cupboard.
‘Is that loaded?’ she asked.
‘You bet. It’s my da’s. I must remember to take it upstairs with me next time.’
But Lucy wasn’t happy. Gun or no gun, this little family was still vulnerable.
‘Look, I’ve got an idea,’ she said. ‘I’m renting a room at Ravenstone Hall till things are sorted. Why don’t you let me phone there to see if you three could come too? Just to tide you over?’
‘No thanks. We’ll be OK.’
Had she said that too quickly? she wondered, but just then, a child’s scream filled the bungalow. She froze as Rhiannon skidded back down the passage grabbed the rifle and ran towards the front room. Two small boys sat tight together on the bottom mattress of their bunk bed, their eyes wide with terror. They were both wore identical red Welsh Rugby shirts and neither looked as if their curly hair had been combed for days.
‘Mam, mam,’ yelled the bigger lad pointing at the net curtain in the window. ‘There’s a bogey man out there. I saw him. I saw him.’
‘And me,’ chipped in the other. ‘I’m scared.’
Rhiannon lifted a corner of the net and peered out. The sun in her eyes. ‘Which way did he go?’
‘Dunno,’ they cried in unison, but he was there. Honest to God.’
Rhiannon glanced back at her, her face white again.
‘Is the back door locked?’ Lucy asked.
‘No.’
‘Come on.’
‘Right. In the van you two. Now.’
‘Where we goin’?’
‘Never mind. Just hold hands with Lucy here. She’s my friend. Not a word, mind. Shssh.’
Lucy felt their hot little fists tighten in hers as they crept out on to a weedy yard surrounded by empty barns and calf stalls, where yet another clapped-out white van stood amongst empty oil cans and discarded farm machinery.
‘What about your shoes?’ she reminded her.
‘Fuck. Forgot.’ Rhiannon threw the van keys at her. ‘Get in you lot.’ And while she settled the lads on one of the two grimy vinyl benches in the back, trying to ignore pleas for their toys, Lucy glimpsed something moving beyond the van’s rear window. It was the top half of a figure hurrying away beyond the brow of the hill.
Whether a man or not she couldn’t tell, but the fact that seatbelts were missing or the van was probably unroadworthy were nothing compared to the tangible danger she now felt.
‘What are your names?’ she asked the two little passengers.
‘Not telling.’
‘Not a whisper, then. Promise?
‘Promise.’
She then slipped round to the right hand side of the bungalow to take another look. To make sure she hadn’t been hallucinating, but there was nothing to see. Just the same car engine noise as she’d noticed earlier, but fading fast into the heat.
&
nbsp; ‘What the hell’s going on?’ she muttered to herself then told Rhiannon her news. The woman shoved the rifle next to the driver’s seat then threw coats and a shabby holdall into the back with the kids. She slammed the van doors shut then looked at her.
‘Where’s your car?’
‘By the main road.’
‘God, I wish we were.’
‘Have you got enough money?’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’
After five hair-raising minutes in which the boys could be heard rolling back and forth on their bench, and the van nearly came to a stop half way up the steep gradient, she was deposited by her car. There were no waves, no goodbyes, just the roar of tyres on earth as Rhiannon George slewed her vehicle towards the tarmac and was soon speeding south, out of sight.
She didn’t hang around either. There wasn’t time to wonder if they’d be alright, nor her, for that matter. She pulled open her door to be met by a wall of boiling air. Then something on the windscreen caught her eye. At first she assumed it was a scrap of litter blown by the wind. Except there was no wind and this wasn’t litter. But the carefully torn half of a plain white postcard. She could tell by the fine blue lined square for a stamp on the reverse. However, it was the other side which stopped her breath and turned her stomach over. Two words. That was all.
YOU’RE NEXT
Chapter Twenty-Three
Is the well still there and the chestnut trees?
The river’s spray, the heron’s lair?
Those hungry lips, that mane of hair?
Once mine, become a fresh nightmare.
Six o’clock and the temperature in the box room situated at the top of Manor House had already reached thirty degrees. Elizabeth Benn, incarcerated there since Guy Roper’s call, removed her damp brassiere whose straps had left deep red weals above each of her shoulders, and wiped under each armpit with a fresh travel-wipe reached from on top of the nearby sideboard. The walnut veneer specimen, too big for her parents’ retirement bungalow, now seemed gargantuan, leaving her just enough space in the damp and shabby Lloyd Loom chair to stick out her legs and keep her feet moving. There were those same ornate brass handles, the hideous whorls of woodgrain, part of her childhood and adolescence in Oxford. If she was blind she’d know exactly where this veneer had blistered, and be able to trace with her finger the light-coloured scar on the second drawer where James had first thrown a knife at her and missed.
Just one of his many lapses into sudden rage, that one, but this time, she resolved to herself, there’d be no more. After that Friday evening call from Roper and the recorded scream he’d told her to get ready, James had smashed the little CD player to bits and flung the Horror disc at her as if it was a quoit on a beach somewhere. Its sharp edge had caught her left shoulder and the wound was still ripe. Still hurting.
Her breasts stuck to her body, empty and useless. Not that she’d ever fed Katherine herself but in younger days she had conscientiously tried the Bardot uplift technique of interlocking fingers and pressing both palms together – now look at them, she thought. Literally, a waste of skin. Elizabeth slipped on her cotton blouse fastened its dainty buttons then reached for her old wooden sewing box and relic from her grandmother, which lay on the sideboard.
She opened its two lids and peered into the chaos of cotton reels and rusted scissors. A left-over section of name tape bearing KATHERINE LILY HEWITT eight times along its length, some rolls of ribbon she’d never worn and a ball of tired grey elastic, for what use, she wasn’t sure. But not so the bodkin which she withdrew from the packet. It was the thickest, longest and sharpest of them all. Excellent in fact.
She pressed its point into the pad of her thumb and flinched, yet the smile which followed as she slipped it under the insole of her left bedroom slipper, more than made up for the past hellish twenty four hours.
Next, and ignoring the pain which followed, she hunted inside her wet knickers for her mobile. Not exactly her lifeline, because she had other more private plans to save herself, but certainly crucial to her purpose. Now that the Dyson girl had got her act together, it was time for the other one to make a decision. Sweat made her fingers slide over the phone’s pads and after three wrong numbers she finally made contact and listened as the young woman answered.
‘Yes? What d’you want?’ Her tone made Elizabeth wonder if now was the right moment to approach her. However, she continued.
‘Lucy Mitchell?’
‘Who are you?’
More nervy than aggressive, she decided.
‘Never mind that. Just listen carefully and you’ll see that my proposal will be to your advantage.’
‘Look, I’ve had enough for one bloody day. OK? Just get off my case.’
‘I’m offering you two thousand pounds if you’re prepared to make your James Benn interlude public . . .’
‘Interlude? Public?’
She listened to the stunned silence which followed. Some compensation at least for being holed up without food or water with only dead men’s chattels for company. Her velour school hat, her confirmation bible encased in smooth ivory plastic. A corpse colour, she’d always thought. But never would James’s blood leave his flesh to that extent. He’d always be the Red Ox, with too many red corpuscles. Too much testosterone. At least Manda Jeffery had introduced the first bandillera. Black too, for the coward that he was.
‘I’ll ring again for your answer in fifteen minutes’ time, at seven o’clock exactly,’ she went on, aware of a hurting hunger beginning to bite her insides. ‘This is no hoax, I can assure you, Miss Mitchell. I’ve never been more serious in my life.’
Elizabeth waited, knowing her patience would pay off. Hadn’t Lance Hewitt taught her that one and a good deal more besides? Except how to deal with grief.
‘It’s none of your bloody business.’
‘But it is. Very much, I’m afraid.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw you and him together at the Chandos Hotel last June. The eleventh, to be precise. He didn’t just want a shoulder to cry on or a pretty knee to pat, did he?’
‘You’re not Manda Jeffery, are you?’ the shaken voice accused.
‘It doesn’t matter who I am. This creature must be brought down to the depths where he belongs.’ She nearly said “gutter” but didn’t.
She pressed END and stuffed the phone back into her knickers, imagining what the recipient was thinking now. Would she have the courage to call her back? And what of herself?
After Jeffery’s revenge and Guy Roper’s imminent interview, James wouldn’t be doing her too many favours. But she must stay controlled, vigilant, and do whatever she could to stop her body seizing up altogether.
She turned to the sagging bookshelves which filled the wall opposite the sideboard. On top lay a violin case with a stack of sheet music alongside. In those days there’d been music at the Manor House. The regular piano practice, mainly Mozart and Haydn. Before fiction and Sounds of Horror had ruled the roost. Her eyes began to glaze over because here were all Katherine’s much-loved books. After her death she’d arranged them in chronological order, beginning with Anne of Green Gables and ending with The Wind in the Willows. The little boxed sets of Beatrix Potter and the Flower Fairies, of Roald Dahl and Raymond Briggs. Yet another part of her daughter’s world which would inevitably end up in some job lot.
She then found herself wondering about Miss Mitchell and her life. Where she was now. Had a condom had been used? Because he’d never bothered with her, his wife, nor worried about any possible infection she might have picked up.
‘I like to feel a woman properly,’ he’d opined once during the usual minimal foreplay, when their honeymoon was just a memory. Before her fall. ‘Anyhow, what’s wrong with the pill?’ Plenty, because her doctor had warned her of a thrombosis risk. Nevertheless, in all the years of unprotected sex in the missionary position, she’d never fallen pregnant again.
Ah, Flower Fairies of the Autumn. Her favourite.
She then found page eighteen where the green and purple Dogwood fairy still stood and in a softer voice than the one she’d used for Miss Mitchell, began to read.
‘I was a warrior,
When, long ago,
Arrows of Dogwood
Flew from the bow.
Passers-by, nowadays,
Go up and down,
Not one remembering
My old renown.
Yet when the Autumn sun
Colours the trees,
Should you come searching me,
Know me by these:
Bronze leaves and crimson leaves,
Soon to be shed:
Dark little berries
On stalks turning red.’
Only five minutes to go before her expected call back, and now here she was, with her other weapon snug under her foot. As ready as she could be, in the circumstances, for whatever might happen next.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Like those silver warriors who wait for the fire
Yet who fear not the fire of the burning cauldron,
I will mark my time, mark my time because
Mark is my name. My name . . .
Having told The Larches Hotel of her sudden change of plan, Lucy left for Rhayader with four unresolved problems hogging her mind. Firstly, she felt guilty at not having returned to the waterfall to check it out again. Secondly, was that same person she’d spotted at Gellionnen now following her? If so, why?
Thirdly, YOU’RE NEXT was still in her jeans pocket burning through to her skin like a disease which she didn’t know how to treat. She’d thought of telling the police, but decided that was too knee-jerk and too early. Maybe it was a mistake, meant for someone else. Maybe some kind of joke. Hector could see it when she was ready. And that, she promised herself, would be sooner rather than later.