The Body of a Woman: A Superintendent Mike Yeadings Mystery (Superintendent Mike Yeadings Mysteries)

by Clare Curzon

  And it was then that he walked in. My father. Clearly her lover. Their eyes locked with such indecent familiarity.

  If he felt wrongfooted at sight of me he covered it well. With practice, I suppose. He instantly picked up on the cross-purposes we’d been at and sorted us out with casual introductions. ‘My daughter Chloë,’ he explained me away. But ‘A student here who’s helping me with the paperwork,’ he offered for Beryl.

  ‘She was at my school,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh.’ He looked at her, then back at me. ‘So you know each other, good.’ He went through to his inner room and I expected him back with his briefcase, but after a few scrabbling sounds in there he called, ‘Beryl, I can’t seem to find my -’

  She swayed in with her long-legged stride and closed the door behind her. I heard their voices, mainly his, but couldn’t - didn’t want to - make out any words.

  They came out together and faced me. ‘Look,’ my father said, ‘I’ve got stuff here to clear up, so I could be another half hour. Why don’t you both trot off and have tea somewhere in town? Then later Beryl can give me a buzz, so I know where to pick you up.’ He had obviously forgotten he was to drive me home, and there was no enquiry about how the French oral had gone.

  The last thing I wanted was Beryl Ryder’s company, although at that point I chose to see her as someone who’d been through the examination mill ahead of me and might offer some lowdown on tackling the next stage. As for Beryl, she seemed almost amused, certainly recovered from the distaste she’d shown on finding me in Father’s outer office.

  She had a little car, a blue Fiat, and drove leaning back as if it were a sun lounger, both hands at the top of the wheel. I couldn’t miss the weird variety of rings she wore. She wouldn’ t have been allowed them at school; and certainly not the pearl-mounted one piercing her left eyebrow. Her style in clothes had changed too, ultra-mod, just short of punk. I thought her make-up was too harsh for a blonde, but it certainly made you see her.

  She drove out of town and pulled up in the yard of a country pub. ‘Right,’ she said, sounding no end chuffed, ‘let’s get to know each other. You can leave your school blazer in the car. And you’ll find it cooler if you pull your shirt out.’

  I don’t like anyone bossing me over my appearance, but I thought twice about arguing with an erstwhile goddess, however much she seemed to have changed. So I did as she suggested and did feel cooler.

  The pub had a little garden round at the back with a scrappy lawn and a couple of overgrown rose arches. We settled at a rough, creosoted bench which had a matching one facing us with a wooden table between. The whole set looked crude, like furniture in an illustration from Goldilocks: surfaces suited to wild bears immune to splinters.

  Beryl brought us out long glasses of something chilled with a ball of golden sorbet floating at the top. I asked what flavour it was and she said passion fruit, then laughed. To make conversation I said I’d sat the French oral that afternoon, and she stared as if I came from an alien planet.

  ‘Didn’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘Suppose I did,’ she granted. ‘A long time back. Seems so, anyway.’ Then she switched on some appearance of interest. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘All right, I think. Except when we got on to politics.’

  ‘I thought that was banned: politics, sex and religion.

  Dangerous stuff for the innocent young mind.’ She was mocking me.

  ‘It was about the European Union. I said I hadn’t much interest in the idea of a superstate and was happier with literature. So then we got on to something I knew a bit about.’

  ‘Good move; manipulate the bastards. Anyway, why work at French? I suppose you’ll turn into a scientist like your father.’

  ‘No, I shan’t.’

  She gave a scoffing laugh. ‘You can’t help it. It’s in the genes. Like your red hair.’

  ‘Actually I’m more like my mother.’

  She looked hard at me, one eyebrow stagily raised. ‘But she’s only a stepmother, isn’t she?’

  Beryl started lighting a cigarette from the butt of her previous one and didn’t catch me staring back. I couldn’t believe she’d be so undiplomatic, but that wasn’t what jarred me. Although back at the Uni she’d had no idea who I was, yet she knew about my actual relationship with Leila. How could she, unless from my father having discussed it with her?

  How much intimate family information had been passed on as gossip? Would she even know how I’d persuaded Leila to henna her hair, so we’d look like real mother and daughter? I’d meant my father to know that, to hurt him, but I hadn’ thought he’d noticed.

  There followed a silence which had to be filled. ‘Have you met my brother?’ I asked.

  She was sucking in smoke, her eyes lazily half-closed. ‘No idea. What’s he called?’

  ‘Edward.’

  ‘I know three Edwards. The name’s common enough. How did he get into the conversation?’

  I wasn’t quite sure myself. The lowering sun shone full in my eyes and seemed to leave swirling disks in the dark when I closed them. ‘He’s going to be a scientist,’ I said.

  ‘How frantically exciting.’ Her drawling tone said the opposite.

  I considered. She was right: as conversation it was pretty limp. But then so would be any topic I had to offer. She’d apparently forgotten her suggestion that we get to know each other.

  We had sat there quite a lot longer than the half hour my father had mentioned. Beryl had twice renewed our drinks. A number of cars had driven into the inn’s yard, and the saloon bar behind us was noisily beginning to fill up for the evening. Others came outside with their drinks and I hoped no one would think to question my age. Beryl had been wise to make me leave my blazer in the car. There was nothing specifically schoolish about my plain white shirt and grey skirt.

  I must have been dozing when her mobile phone started warbling. She pulled it out of her shoulder-bag and murmured into it, ‘About time too.’ And then, ‘Oh no! Shit! I’m not sure I can.’ Her voice had turned sulky. ‘Well, all right then, but it’s a bloody bore all the same. You’d better make it worth my while.’

  She snapped the phone off and stuffed it back in her bag. ‘He wants me to see you home.’

  I supposed she meant my father, but it made no difference one way or the other. I was already past caring who said what, where I went, what I did. It would be good, I thought, to find somewhere soft to lie down and sleep.

  I vaguely remember getting to the car, being helped in and its stored heat hitting me. For security she had left all its windows tightly closed and it was facing into the sun. My head lolled forward on the fascia which bobbled disagreeably as she started the car and we lurched out on to the road. At some more distant moment she was shaking me, demanding something, then shouting again into her phone.

  The last I was conscious of was her exasperated swearing. ‘Now he’s shut the fucking thing off! How can I get the little cow home if I don’t know where she lives?’

  At some time after that the nightmare must have begun to build, but I had no recollection of it when I awoke at last in my own bed. Early light was beginning to show at the edges of the curtains.

  I knew I’d been in the pub garden and that I’d unknowingly drunk something strongly alcoholic. In the past I’d had wine in small quantities at home with special meals, and it had never affected me. This was different. I hoped I hadn’t been sick or objectionable to anyone.

  I remembered Eddie coming home drunk once, back at Caversham. Father had been away, and Leila helped the cabbie get Eddie indoors and upstairs to his room. Disturbed by the shouted abuse and horrible retchings I had lain sweating in my bed, until a flaming dawn was breaking over the Chilterns, and I was convinced that something horrendous had changed our lives forever.

  But Eddie had recovered; Leila had put me right. ‘We all make mistakes,’ she said. ‘It’s best not to dwell on them. I’m sure Eddie will have a word with you about it.’

&nb
sp; And he had. He apologized. ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you,’ he said. ‘I never knew the state I was in.’

  I’d told him it was just the noise that woke me: a bit of banging and crashing on the stairs.

  He made a lemon-sucking face. ‘Well, there’s one thng I do know now,’ he said. ‘Drink’s something I can’t take. Perhaps it’s just as well.’

  What he’d said then, about not being able to take it, stayed in my mind. So I guess I’m the same with alcohol and it’s a family thing.

  I slept in late that Saturday after my meeting with Beryl Ryder, only waking properly in mid-afternoon feeling headachy, sick and confused. Over the next couple of days tender red patches on my flesh gradually went purple and later greenish yellow. They felt like bruises. On my upper arms dark fingermarks showed, so I guessed I’d been unsteady on my feet and needed firm holding; but the patches of bruising on my inner thighs were bigger and quite painful. They frightened me, because I couldn’t account for them. When Leila came home and suggested we went swimming I had to cry off. I didn’t dare let her see, for fear of what they might signify. I don’t think Father had mentioned the episode to her, and I was too ashamed to.

  The effects weren’t only physical. My mind was affected. I guess it was like one of those ancient cinema films Granny called ‘the flicks’. From almost total darkness a shutter kept opening on slits of light and fragments of images. These terrible flashes came when I least expected and were gone before I could account for them. And there were alarming sensations following certain movements. I felt vertigo as I tried to rise from a chair or walk across a stretch of floor.

  Often after sleep I’ve been conscious of having dreamed but can’t remember specifically what happened, yet the certainty is there because the dream’s atmosphere hangs on. I know I’ve been to a frightening place, or been worried, or experiencing delight or been warmly comforted: the glow or the unease remains as I come awake. And sometimes I know exactly who I’ve been with, yet have no idea of any incident we were involved in. It was the same now: the sensation that came back in waves was one of absolute terror.

  Now I tried to explain away these flashes of confused dream as a chemical effect, the action of alcohol on my hormones. I’m adolescent, so surely my body chemistry is still dodgy. But that doesn’t excuse, doesn’t account for, everything that disturbed me. As well as the physical evidence of bruising, there were strangers’ faces, or part-faces, that flashed up without warning.

  The most terrible and recurrent was of eyes pressing so close over me that they had merged into a single black beetle-shape. And then they would reappear less close, separate, with pinpoint dark irises set in a strangely mottled pale blue, which made me think of tie-dye jeans with the colour washed out.

  Off and on came a partial face which was familiar. My father’s, livid with fury, hanging over me, mouthing, but his words never reached me. I supposed he must have fetched me home and been disgusted at the state I was in. But home from where, I had no idea.

  By the time I felt well enough to show my face that Saturday evening my father had left the house, so there was to be no explanation required from either of us. Before Leila went north she had left a number of pre-cooked dishes in the freezer to be heated up, and Mrs Chadwick was coming in over the weekend to look after us. Not that I felt much like eating.

  Since Father was out there was little for her to do. I told her I would clear away and load the dishwasher, to prevent her staying to see me empty my plate into the trash bin.

  From then until Leila got back from Yorkshire on Sunday evening I spent much of the time on the garden swing or face down in the overlong grass making a pretence of reading. I slept a little, but that was no more restful than my wakeful unease. It seemed more and more likely that there was something wrong with me, in my brain.

  Unexpectedly my father returned that Sunday about a quarter to eight. For some reason I had thought he wouldn’t be back. I suppose it was because of seeing him with Beryl. Although they’d both tried to give the impression she worked at the Uni, I wasn’t fooled. Quite when I’d first known about his ‘little friends’ I’m not certain, but I knew there was always someone there in the background, important to him but outside the family. A mistress, but only of sorts, because he’d always have to be the master. She would be something less.

  How Leila felt about this was unclear. I suppose she accepted it, expecting nothing better from him. I couldn’t be like that, not with anyone I’d ever loved. She was always so calm. She should have shouted at him or thrown things, like deceived wives in televison plays. It would do him good to feel afraid of someone.

  He arrived as I was helping unload goods from the boot of Leila’s car: boxes of fancy stationery, novelties and heavy albums containing samples of new greetings cards. She was tired from long hours of driving and he made the most of grumbling that she took on so much. Not that he was concerned for her, just for himself, because he had always to be in control.

  That’s how it would have been on Friday night too. He was furious with me for stepping out of line, but he wouldn’t care at all how I was feeling now. As they went indoors he was still quibbling over some detail of the route she’d taken.

  Leila had passed me her key-ring. Since we’d come to this house she’d been letting me put her car away in the garage. It would be eighteen months before I could appply for a licence, but I took every chance I could get of practice off public roads. I was specially proud of my skill in reversing, to park exactly level with the BMW and dead centre in the allotted space.

  Tonight, however, the BMW wasn’t there. Either my father had taken a cab home or someone had dropped him off. With my head bent over the Volvo’s boot I hadn’t noticed his arrival. Perhaps it had been in Beryl’s little Fiat. So had Leila picked up on it? It all seemed tedious and unnecessary. I would leave them to the routine exchanges, he bickering, she silently shock-absorbing.

  My old Raleigh bicycle was leaning against the garage’s inner wall where I’d left it after the nextdoor boy fixed the chain for me. I wheeled it out and stood astride it facing the roadway. The lamp was a bit dodgy but it came on after I hit it once or twice. Perhaps by now indoors they’d reached the subject of my misdemeanours and Leila was getting the flak off it. Better I shouldn’t be there. They might even think I’d slunk off to bed. It seemed a good time not to be around.

  Chapter 15

  All day the oppressive heat had been building. Evening brought no relief. Dark bands of cloud were closing over the yellowed skyline and the sultry air was disturbed by quirky little gusts of wind. One moment all was totally still, and then dust eddies were swirling across the surface of the road. I stood on my pedals and looking up saw the early stars blacking out in twos and threes overhead around a half-moon in tatters of smoky cloud.

  Our house stands high on a thickly wooded ridge that falls steeply towards open farmland. At the drive’s end I turned left to freewheel downhill towards where the Chess snakes out to the Thames. There was no sound but the soft whirring of the bike’s spokes and once the faint two-note hoot of a distant turbo train with its tantalizing hint of travel. I would have given anything then to get right away.

  Halfway through the tunnel of arched beeches my headlamp flickered three times and went out. Now the darkness was total until, between sparser trees, lit windows became visible pricked out like stars. Then to either side were sloping fields that gleamed dully under fleeting moonlight, with hedgerows black and flat as stage scenery.

  Between me and Mardham Village in the hollow straggled a few small cottages showing yellow, uncurtained windows. Then came the halogen glare of a farm’s floodlit stockyard. A diffused orange glow over the distant town was reflected on the underside of felty overcast clouds, and strung out towards the horizon a receding double strand of sodium lights marked out the curving motorway, diminishing with distance like an exercise in perspective.

  Ahead, occasional white scuts of rabbits flickered as they caught
the whirr of my bike, and instantly, like juggled balls, they were bouncing away, behind invisible bodies. The road began to flatten. I braked towards level ground and then, before the river’s hump-backed bridge, the first fat raindrops spattered my bare arms. Lightning instantly lit the sky from behind. There were a hundred new scents released by the rain.

  The storm came on fast with a sheeting downpour and heavy thunder. There was no shelter but the occasional tree and I’d sense enough not to go for that. If I returned by the route I’d come the steep gradient would force me to dismount and push uphill for most of the way. The alternative was to pedal fast through Mardham and take the more gently rising loop back to the far end of our road. A further half-mile, but in the long run it must be quicker.

  Already my cotton shirt clung like a second skin to my back. Water was trickling down my forehead. I’d been a fool not to take account of the weather; but at least this was a normal kind of disaster, one I’d be capable of handling. No challenge to my sanity.

  There was no let-up. If anything the deluge increased. Thunder doesn’t worry me, but the vivid flashes set my heart racing. Fork lightning flashed against the blackness like gigantic incandescent roots, violet-white. One strike was close, exploding with a violent hissing, and the air was filled with an acrid tang like cordite after a gun’s been fired. Somewhere not far off a tree flared like a beacon.

  With my head down, I pedalled on through a cowed village where all windows were close-curtained and the street lamps’ale globes had little effect.

  Beyond it, for even the gentler climb, I should have dismounted because the lane fast became a gulley with storm-water gushing down between raised banks. My front wheel went suddenly from under me and I was pitched into the flow, an elbow grazing on invisible flints.

  I sat up in the lane which had turned into a stream and I shouted with anger.