One More Unfortunate

by Kaitlin Queen

  When he reached Stone Point, he went out along it, the sea lapping tamely against each of its rocky flanks. He passed the familiar fisherman, who glowered at him, his peace broken. He sat at the end, despite the damp, and looked out across the waters to Felixstowe, the stark shapes of the port's cranes rising up out of the dawn mist. He stayed there for a long time.

  He returned through Cliff Park to his house, and breakfast.

  Later, he went along to Dr Sanderson's surgery and was told by the practice nurse that his stitches would have to stay in for a few more days.

  At one o'clock he was waiting across the road from Merrywell and Taylor, watching the traffic go by and the people going about their business.

  When he spotted Karen he smiled and he knew then that this thing between them was right. He watched her cross the road and approach him. She was smiling too. They kissed, and went to their usual restaurant for lunch.

  "I could get used to all this," he said, as they went in through the door.

  She grinned and said, "Then that's just as well."

  They ordered and talked about nothing in particular—her morning, his walk, the weather—and Nick understood suddenly that another barrier had come down between them.

  "What do you usually do at the weekends?" he asked her. "Is there anywhere you like to go?"

  "Will you take me around Bathside?" Karen asked. "You show me your Bathside, the one you talk about. I'd like to see where you lived, where you used to go. Put some flesh on all the places I only know by name and sight. Give me some memories."

  "You don't ask a lot," said Nick, softly. He didn't know if he was ready for that kind of thing yet—she really didn't know how much she was asking of him. Maybe they could work something out. "I'll think about it," he said. "Will you give me a part of you in return? Some memories?"

  She looked away.

  He knew he had touched on a sore spot, but this time it had been deliberate, a testing of their new intimacy.

  "I'm not that interesting," she said. "I don't know. I'll think about it, all right?"

  "Okay," he said, and he knew that it would be.

  They ate for a while in silence. Then Karen said, "You enjoyed yourself last night, didn't you? The fact that you came within a hair's breadth of causing another riot. I bet you used to get into fights in the playground every day, too." She smiled. "You were showing off, weren't you?"

  That wasn't quite it, but he couldn't explain. He'd been testing, pushing the limits, and that was something very different. He shrugged. "Maybe," he said. She seemed happy enough with her own explanation. "We didn't get anywhere though, did we?"

  Karen looked at him. "Didn't you think Donna was a little strange?"

  He thought for a moment. A slight, dark-haired girl, about eighteen years old. Small glasses, long, shiny earrings, and a slightly aloof air. "She was quiet," he said, wondering what Karen meant. "Didn't say a word. But she seemed to have young Andy under her thumb. Yes, I suppose that is strange, now that you've pointed it out."

  "No," said Karen, shaking her head. "Didn't you notice how upset she was?"

  Nick shook his head. He'd been too busy with Andrew Gayle to give Donna more than passing attention.

  "I wanted to say something, but I didn't know how ... she wouldn't have spoken at that pub."

  "Spoken? You think she knows something?"

  She looked at him. "Oh, Nick," she said. "You really didn't notice? I thought last night, when you left me saying you had 'things to do'... I thought you had gone after her. I thought you wanted to talk to her on her own. Then you called and told me you'd gone after your friend instead. I think you should talk to Donna. She felt bad about something, I think she'll tell you what it is if you tackle her in the right way."

  ~

  After lunch, Nick went down to the footbridge across the railway, from where he had once spied on Ronnie Deller. He spent a long time staring out across the mud-flats, trying to organise his thinking.

  And the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that Karen had spotted something important.

  Donna had obviously known Jerry quite well. What had Andy Gayle said about Jerry? She used to come in to the Co-op where Donna works and jaw at her sometimes. As soon as Andy had said those words, Nick had been able to picture the scene and he had known it was true. It would have been just like Jerry—the Jerry he had discovered since her death, at any rate—to have such a relationship with a teenager like Donna. Another sympathetic ear, as Ronnie had been, but with Donna it would be subtly different: Ronnie was an equal, but Donna was younger, more liable to be impressed by casual references to affairs and drugs and hedonistic parties.

  Donna would have made the perfect audience.

  The Co-op. He walked back by St Augustine's station and up Station Road past the restaurant. He came to the traffic lights and crossed the High Street at a gap in the traffic. Behind him he heard a child complain, "But the little man's not green, Mummy!"

  He smiled and went into the Co-op.

  It was as if he had stepped back twenty years in time. Nothing seemed to have changed since he was a boy; the stuffy atmosphere, the carpets worn smooth, the fussy displays. Downstairs were Men's Wear, Children's, and Shoes; upstairs were Ladies' Wear and Soft Furnishings.

  He wandered casually around the ground floor, but didn't see Donna. Upstairs, he felt a bit out of place: in such an old-fashioned store, this was almost exclusively a woman's territory.

  Eventually, as he flipped through a book of carpet samples, a young assistant asked if he needed any help.

  He smiled, thinking guiltily of Karen, because his first reaction had been pleasure that this attractive young woman had come to him, and not any of the other, older and plainer, ladies. "I'm looking for someone," he said, noticing that her eyes kept flitting between his own and the stitched-up gash across his brow. A lot of the bruising had subsided by now, but he was still far from a pretty sight. "Friend of a friend. She said she worked at the Co-op. Her name's Donna. About five-two. Shortish, dark hair. Little round glasses like the Milky Bar Kid. Doesn't say a lot. Likes her jewellery."

  The assistant was shaking her head. "I'm sorry," she said. "We don't have any Donnas here, and I don't recognise your description. Are you sure she said it was this branch? There's Co-op Hardware over the road. Or the new supermarket opposite the football ground. Or there are other supermarkets: one at the top of Bay Road—you know: by the war memorial?—and a small one in Westquay."

  Nick had expected it to be easy. A Co-op was just a Co-op, to him: someone would surely know. "I bet there are branches in Manningtree and Colchester and Clacton and Ipswich, too," he said.

  The assistant nodded. "Sorry," she said, looking at his split eyebrow again.

  "Skiing accident," he said. "Working undercover in Siberia."

  She nodded seriously, and said, "And I'm Madonna. But don't tell anyone, okay?"

  Nick crossed Station Road and went in to Co-op Hardware. This branch sold everything from paper napkins to satellite dishes. In one corner there was a pharmacy, in another a travel agency. Nick asked in each department, but although two Donnas worked here, neither was the one he sought.

  He walked along High Street, past the last of the shops, the old cinema which he remembered closing down, the lane which led down to the town end of the Hangings where the old cement works were. Time was passing quickly—it was already after four and the overcast sky was falling prematurely dark.

  He came to the football ground, where Bathside would be playing Lowestoft on Saturday in the Premier division of the Jewsons Eastern League. He'd once seen an Ipswich Town team play here in a testimonial, and Alan Brazil had smashed a dressing room window with a wild free kick.

  He crossed the Main Road and went down into the car park of the new Co-op supermarket. He still pictured this plot of land as a playing field where he'd occasionally played football as a boy.

  Automatic doors opened ahead of him and he went inside.
>
  He spotted Donna immediately, seated at a check-out, passing a jar of Gold Blend, a packet of Dixcel toilet rolls, a slab of shrink-wrapped meat, over the bar-code scanner, weighing a bag of chestnut mushrooms on the scales. A colleague stood at her shoulder, chatting away. Nick could easily picture Jerry here, standing by as Donna did her work, telling her of her life.

  He picked up a packet of crisps and joined the short queue.

  Donna recognised him immediately. She took his crisps and waved them over the reader.

  "Twenty-one, please."

  "Can we talk?"

  Donna glanced back at her colleague, who was taking everything in, no doubt to be recounted later at another check-out. "We've nothing to discuss," said Donna. "You spoke to Andy."

  "And now I want to speak to you."

  She shook her head. The couple in the queue behind Nick were muttering to each other and Nick turned and smiled. They took one look at his battered face and went to another check-out. "Now can we talk?" he asked. Karen had been right. He could see that now. Donna was bottling something up. "It's important. You know that, don't you?"

  Donna's colleague leaned towards her and whispered something Nick couldn't hear. She'd have a good piece of gossip out of this, he thought, and she would certainly get it all wrong: he would be the other man, a rival who Andy had beaten up. All for the love of Donna.

  "Okay," she said. "I'll be off at five. By the pond?"

  He waited outside, leaning against a brick wall which separated the car park from a wild corner left by the developers. Most of this patch was occupied by a large pond, and he watched the moorhens stepping through the fringe of reeds with their enormous, spidery feet.

  She joined him at a little after five, although he had half-expected her to slip away through a side exit, or even to have 'phoned Andy Gayle for protection.

  "What was it you wanted?" she asked, staring across the water.

  "Andy said Jerry would talk to you sometimes. What sort of things did she tell you?"

  She glanced at him, then stared out at the water again. "All sorts of things," she said, hesitantly. "She had a busy life. You don't get much choice if someone wants to talk to you when you're working at the check-out. She must have thought I was a good listener. She used to talk to me at other times, too. At Andy's parents' home, usually."

  "What about?"

  "Oh, you know," Donna said, vaguely. "This and that. Women's talk."

  "Did she talk much about her affairs?"

  Donna looked at him, and then turned away again. After a few seconds, she said, "Sometimes. It was no big secret."

  "This is important," said Nick. "Whoever killed her has killed again. That means he'll probably do it again, and again, until he's stopped. Did Jerry say anything to you in the days before she was killed? Was anything bothering her? People said she was behaving oddly that week. She must have said something."

  Now, Donna looked down at her hands, clasped together on top of the wall. "She was upset," she said. "But..."

  "Come on," pressed Nick. "Will you tell me? It really is important."

  Slowly, Donna nodded. "On Thursday evening," she said. "She told me she'd seen something. She seemed to be joking at the time, but afterwards ... afterwards I realised she probably wasn't. Afterwards I realised that she'd been really upset and she'd been hiding it as she always did."

  "What was it, Donna? What did Jerry see that upset her so much?"

  Chapter 21

  "I know who did it. I know where he is. And I'm going down to talk to him."

  Nick was in a phone box he'd spotted at the village of Crooked Elms. His car was outside with the engine still running.

  "Hold on," said Detective Inspector Langley. "Don't do anything foolish, all right? Now will you just tell me exactly what the Hell is happening?"

  "I know who killed Jerry Wyse, and the Carter woman. He's at the Strand right now—I've just come from the top car park where I made sure of that. I'd say I have a ten minute start on you. I'm going to hang up right now and go back and make him talk. Are you going to come out here?"

  "Now be reasonable Ni—"

  He hung up and returned to his car.

  He was being stupid and impulsive. He knew that. He was taking an unnecessary risk.

  He smiled. It felt good.

  He started to drive, following the convoluted turns of the road until he came to the almost-hidden junction at the top of the Strand Lane. He crossed the railway and drove carefully down the uneven track, headlights picking out the grass growing from the central strip, the trees and hedges reaching up from either side.

  He stopped at one point. Through a gap in the trees he could see part of the row of chalets fringing the foreshore. There was a car down there, pulled up behind one of the chalets. A red BMW. Down on the beach there was a blazing fire, in just about the same place as the fire had been exactly two weeks earlier.

  It was the fire that made Nick shiver, briefly, in his seat: it was as if Ronnie was trying to recreate that awful night.

  He drove on, down the Lane.

  Just as he had always thought, all he had needed was one piece of information which would act as a key to the whole thing.

  And Donna had given him that key.

  "What was it, Donna?" he had asked her. "What did Jerry see that upset her so much?

  Donna was still staring at her hands, clasped together on top of the wall. Then she looked at him. "Ronnie Deller," she said. "And Matthew. She'd been in town. Come back early. She interrupted them."

  "Drugs?" said Nick. He remembered Matthew Wyse mentioning this incident, dismissing it as trivial. "Was it something to do with Ronnie's drug dealing?"

  Donna looked genuinely puzzled. "What do you mean?" she said. Then she looked away again, shaking her head. "No," she continued. "Nothing like that. They were in Matthew's office suite, over the garage. They were having it off."

  "With each other?"

  She nodded.

  It took a little time for Nick to get his thoughts together. Eventually, he said, "Why haven't you told anyone about this before?"

  She rubbed at her eyes, but he could see that she wasn't one to cry. "When she told me I thought it was just one of her jokes. She didn't treat it as if it was so important and I thought she was just getting at Matthew, or Ronnie, or both of them. Later I realised she'd been hiding how upset she'd really been and then..."

  "Then?"

  "I was scared," said Donna. "And confused. I didn't really see what it meant. I still don't."

  "Scared?"

  She nodded. "Nobody crosses Ronnie Deller," she told him. "They just don't."

  ~

  He'd left her in the car park and gone into town to prepare himself for the encounter to come. Later, he went to Ronnie's place and checked it out, but there was no sign of life. As he was nosing about he spotted a neighbour watching him. He approached her and said, "Hello."

  She nodded warily.

  "Do you know Ronnie?" he asked her. "Lives at number twenty-eight. Drives a red BMW. Do you know when he'll be in?"

  She shook her head. "Been and gone already," she said. "Gone fishing for the weekend."

  "At his place at the Strand?" But the neighbour hadn't known.

  So he drove out on the old Ipswich road to check it out. It was the only idea he had.

  As he drove, he felt the first doubts. Being outed wasn't such a big thing these days, he thought. And the simple fact of being gay or bisexual didn't mean that you were also a psychopath or a cynical murderer. But then, it didn't mean that you weren't, either.

  What if Jerry had threatened to tell others about what she had found? Nick thought back to his talk with Matthew, his little attempts to shock Nick with his open, licentious lifestyle. Matthew would probably enjoy the extra layer of notoriety that would be added to his reputation if Jerry spread word. He would probably even encourage her.

  But not Ronnie.

  Ronnie had always been one of the boys. He'd al
ways prided himself on his reputation, too: always boastful, always the fighter, never letting himself be beaten. A bit of a hard man. Nobody ever crossed Ronnie Deller, Donna had said.

  And most people would never dare to expose him to the world as a homosexual.

  But Jerry had never been included in 'most people'. Jerry had always been out on her own.

  She must have been shocked—Donna's story was proof of that. But in the end she would just have dismissed it as another of Matthew's affairs. They always ended up forgiving each other, Matthew had said. They always returned to each other in the end.

  So she had got over it. The fact that she actually went to Ronnie's party was proof enough of that: she would never have gone if she was still angry and upset with the two of them.

  And when Jerry had got over the shock, she would, Nick was certain, be ready to stir.

  She had been winding Ronnie up all evening. Maybe she'd threatened to expose him to the others, or even to his colleagues at work. Maybe she'd pushed him a little bit too far, until he had seen only one way out.

  The second killing bothered Nick, at first. But Ronnie knew that he had been asking questions about him, and the police could easily have spoken to Ronnie again, during the week. Just enough to make him feel vulnerable. By the time of the second press conference he must have been terrified that he had missed something in covering his tracks. He must have been desperate enough to lay a false trail by driving up to Martlesham and trying to make it look as if a serial killer was on the loose.

  Nick thought back to the Ronnie he had known at school. The one who had once beaten him up. He saw him differently now. He remembered signs that he had missed before: the lack of concern for his own pain, or that of others; the little fantasy world of boasts and tall tales he had constructed around himself simply to boost his own fragile ego.

  ~

  Nick Redpath's old VW came to a halt by the long, narrow pond at the back of the main parking area. Beyond the line of cabins he could see the orange glow of the fire, and beyond, the dark sweep of the estuary.

  Ronnie would know he was here by now. He would have heard the car. Nick had passed the stage where he could turn back and leave it all to the police.