by Gerald Wixey
Don’s a big man and I imagined the clear profile of four fingers running diagonally across Carol’s cheek, vicious red chevron’s throbbing like they had their own pulse.
I took my gaze back to the menu, it was easy to feel sorry for Carol, but strangely, I felt a degree of sympathy for Don too. It explained his rambling visit earlier. I imagined him as he walked away from my house, into a persistent drizzle, slow and sad – shining grey on the slate roofs and black on the tree’s bare branches. Occasional umbrellas had drifted past like spectres all morning. It all probably exaggerated his sense of loss. I took a deep breathe.
Then I remembered the young girl, something to balance any sympathy I felt for Don.
Whatever else did he think was going to happen?
Patrick, unshaven, his eyes no longer flashing like black jewels. More the industrialised, diamond variety, dull. Pushed his thick fair hair back over his head. About time he said something I thought, I waited for something profound.
Finally, he said, ‘How many Samosas… six?’
How many?
Patrick stopped chewing, a couple of popodum crumbs around his mouth. Patrick and Stuart stared at each other as they munched away. Sometimes a smile exchanged. It was as if they had suddenly claimed the moral high ground and unused as they were to the rarefied atmosphere of it all, they planned to make the most of it all with a glorious, holier than thou silence.
I decided to puncture this quiet with something profound of my own. ‘Don admitted to me that he’d slept with the girl.’
I stared at Patrick and felt both of them looking my way.
Stuart said, ‘What are you going to do about that?’
I shrugged, ‘Dunno.’ I nodded at Patrick, ‘What do you think I should do?’
Patrick slugged some lager back and said, ‘I’d tell that inspector friend of yours – get the bastard the sack.’
I needed to know how this worked. Under-age girl with much older men. What were the men thinking about? Apart from the obvious of course.
‘Why do you use a girl like that?’
‘I never used her.’
We stared at each other. Patrick was a decent poker player and nothing came back. I sighed, ‘Why do older men use a girl in that way.’
‘Why do you think?’ Stuart’s agitation apparent as he snapped this at me.
I held my hand up, ‘Not you, let Patrick tell me. He’s the expert here.’
Patrick slowly shook his head, ‘He’s right, their age isn’t a concern.’
‘Well it bloody well should be.’
‘Jack… calm down, they want to fuck them. Especially when she looks like Celia. She told me about Don and all of the others. She fell in love with them all and expected the same from them.’
‘Which never happened of course?’
He nodded, ‘Mostly. Although they told her what she wanted to hear.’
‘Even Don?’
Patrick nodded, ‘That’s what she told me.’
‘And you?’
‘I never loved her, she never fell in love with me either. Celia thought consummation equalled falling love. No sex – no love. We talked, she talked. Celia was a beautiful young woman, that needed help.’
‘You never…’
‘No.’ Snapped back at me. ‘She needed help and got nothing.’
Except men telling her they loved her.
We fell silent as the waiter took the order, Stuart’s instructions precise enough. ‘Two lamb madras’s, one lamb jalfrezi, six samosas and three of the following. Plain naans, pilau rice, Bombay potatoes and saag alloo. And three more pints of pissy lager please.’
I pointed at Patrick’s bruised features, ‘What are you planning to do about the assault?’
He shrugged, ‘What can I do? They’ll plead they were just restraining me.’ Patrick leaned across the table. ‘You know Don stirred them up. Told them I was fucking a suicidal fifteen year old.’
‘He knows about you and Carol that’s why.’
The hitherto, deadpan features reddened slightly as he said. ‘Does Carol know this?’
‘I’m unsure. Yes of course she does.’
We sat in silence as the food was shared around the table. Stuart eventually said, ‘Getting back to Daphne’s murder, that will confuse things even more, fingerprints of a dead man. What can they do? Get the Ghost Squad in?’
‘I suppose they’ll match the prints soon enough.’
‘Then the fun will really begin.’ Stuart said this with a degree of enthusiasm that I couldn’t share.
I watched them both, little conversation as they raced through the card. Both mopping their plates with some of my naan bread. They were a handful, Stuart had two cases of assault on his record – nasty one of them, lucky not to go down. The first was just typical Saturday night stuff, you know how it is, ten women in the dance hall and two hundred blokes. The second was in here and it was spiteful. Late night and four noisy drunks were throwing their weight around. Pissed squaddies, calling the waiters Gunga Din, or worse – one waiter was called a dirty, little fucking wog – nasty bigoted drunks. I thought about that night. Stuart and Patrick were eating – quiet and no trouble. You had to give them their due, they knew how to behave when they were in here and they were in here a lot.
Patrick was with Mably’s daughter. She was quite a girl by all accounts, I don’t know if she had wound them both up. Anyway, as the three of them left Patrick pushed the noisiest of the louts face straight down onto the hot plate. Fortunately, no smoke, or the smell of burning flesh. Stuart hit two of them out spark out and one of the waiters hit the other with a cast iron ladle. Pilau rice went everywhere.
Stuart and Patrick, they were always fighting, but rarely started any of it – finished plenty mind. In the restaurant that night, they only did what ninety per cent of the customers wanted to do, I heard that they even got a cheer as they left.
Patrick stood and made his way to the toilet, I asked Stuart a quick question, ‘How long has it been going on?’
‘A few months, she’s quite keen on him. Or perhaps she just hates Don.’
I shook my head, ‘Didn’t it bother her, being involved with a man who was tangled up with a fifteen year old girl?’
Stuart leant over the table and grabbed my wrist, ‘Listen, he wasn’t fucking her. Patrick’s not like that, anyway, he had enough on his plate with Carol.’
I shook my head, Shirley always said it, Stuart had a fire burning within. A bit like walking past a cottage with the wood burner going, you could smell something burning deep inside. She should have recognised the signs, after all, Stuart did run off with her daughter-in-law.
Stuart said. ‘I never had chance to tell you earlier, Teddy’s not been home for a few days, his wife’s worried.’
Before I could ask him he was in possession of that fact, he told me. ‘She rang me just after you left the office. I think she wants to talk. She knows that we’re not policemen by the way.’
‘What.’
He showed me the palms of his hands, ‘It’s OK, police are the last people she wants to talk, tomorrow.’
******
I felt uneasy about it, most of all meeting at her house. Teddy’s house, even if he had disappeared from the face of the earth. My chest tightened as Stuart drove up the sweeping gravel drive. She’d had her hair recently touched up. One button too many of her blouse unbuttoned, tight skirt, too short. Did she look disappointed to see me alongside Stuart?
‘Two of you, a case of over-manning don’t you think?’
She came up close to me, as if to get a closer look. Squinting, frustration or maybe she had just left her glasses off.
Then the glance at Stuart.
I thought you said you’d be on your own.
I offered her my hand, the briefest of contact, as I had a piece of rotten fish in it.
She never said anything, sat there watching her cigarette burn down. Sleepless nights has turned her eye sockets cavernous. She s
tared at Stuart, just the occasional sneaky peep my way. The silence became heavy, the evenings inevitable march into darkness. Mrs Schwartz was just about past the age of reckless ardour. Unlike Shirley, I always felt that she could be passionate without being out of control. Curled up on the sofa now, legs underneath, skirt way up her nice looking thighs. Only the clock made any noise, the minute hand masticated the minutes on its familiar circular route, until the irate mechanical chime jolted her back from somewhere nice.
Four o’clock and she broke down. Great big hiccupping sobs convulsed up from her diaphragm and moved like waves across her shoulders. She punched her cigarette into the porcelain ashtray, mascara running and fanning out from each eye, symmetrical like two black opera fans. Her mouth turned down rather like a petulant child who had just been refused a sweet. I passed my handkerchief and another cigarette. She grabbed my hand instead, soft fingers, a touch sticky. Expensive watch glinting up at me.
‘I read it in the evening paper.’ Mrs Schwartz held onto my hand, but stared at Stuart. Her sobs receding like tide on a gently sloping beach. ‘I never heard him come in, but I saw the blood all over the shirt and jacket. He said he was going to Oxford and he hasn’t been home since.’
I raised my hand towards Stuart.
Say nothing.
Let the analyst’s angry silence do the talking for us. We listened as the minute hand munched the minutes away, perhaps she only spoke every fifteen minutes, on the chime, four times an hour.
‘You know don’t you?’ Abruptly, she stood up, threw her unlit cigarette at me. ‘Oh for fucks sake say something.’
‘He’s in trouble, that’s all I know.’
Mrs Schwartz stared at me, ‘He’s been in trouble all of his life. There was an assault ten years ago. He got away with it.’ She sat down again and wrapped two cushions around her, as if they were a toga. ‘He knew that I knew. I was too frightened I suppose. A child I couldn’t cope with.’ She shrugged and glanced across at Stuart. ‘A woman a lot older than him, he beat her up.’
I offered her a cigarette, my eyebrows raised in warning.
Don’t throw this one my way.
She nodded and smiled, turned towards Stuart and said, ‘Put the light on and get us all a drink while you’re up.’
She talked, calmly and freely. ‘I met him in Alicante, he had a small photographic business. Snapping the tourists, you know that sort of thing. He was good, a natural talent. I had a modelling agency by now, up until then I used cameramen on a sub-contract basis. A few months later and I had a photo shoot in the sun, contacted Bernard and it… well we hit it off.’
Two glasses of red and the flow had become unstoppable. ‘I knew that he must have been in trouble, a cockney boy who had lived out there for fifteen years. Never been home in all of that time. I never asked any questions, he always treated me well enough. He was nearly forty five when we met, a good looking man with secrets in his life. A hint of mystery’s a powerful attraction for a lonely woman. Plus the fact that he was inexperienced, the way a young man is – around women I mean.’ She looked for Stuart’s eyes now. ‘He’d not been with many women.’ She smiled, ‘It was like he was making up for lost time, I wasn’t complaining mind you. He moved over here a year later, we worked well together. Bought this place just before Celia was born. That’s when it started to go wrong really.’
Mrs Schwartz poured herself another glass, took a deep breath and carried on. ‘He couldn’t cope with her, adored her, but couldn’t cope. I was anything for the quiet life, agreed with him, did what he wanted all of the time. Celia was the opposite, we thought a good boarding school would help. But it didn’t – made things worse in fact.’ She drank half the contents of the large wine glass, ‘Celia got into bed with him, just before she went back to school. The day after he caught her in bed with… she needed help, it freaked him. I wanted her to see someone, Bernard wouldn’t entertain the idea.’ Mrs Schwartz gestured my way for another cigarette, she spoke and punched the smoke my way at the same time. ‘She didn’t just get into bed with him, she wanted him to…’
Her head dropped, an image so awful had presented itself to her that she crumpled again under its weight.
I watched as her sobs gently filtered into the room. I’d heard enough, ‘Has he got a dark room?’
She nodded, ‘I’d let you in, but he’s got the only key.’
Stuart said, ‘Don’t worry, my colleague’s got a key to any lock.’
She frowned, ‘I’ll show you, I’ve never been in there. It was his, his to use for the photographs.’
The lock didn’t take long and I pushed the loft door open and it was as dark as a crypt, just a hint of wind in the eaves. I stood and waited for my eyes to adjust, finally seeing a light cord hanging in front of my nose then a blinding, naked bulb casting stark shadows around the strangest of scenes.
A camp bed close to the door and snug under the roof trusses. A small cabinet alongside, on top a pile of A4 box files. Running the length of the attic, again snug under the trusses and close to the opposite wall, two trestle tables. Photographic equipment covered them, large trays, cameras, enlargers, lenses, chemicals, funnels, roll after roll of film. Underneath the tables three piles of old newspapers and magazines, there must have been over a hundred. Someone obviously spent a considerable amount of time up here I thought and I glanced down at the floor. Heavy duty marine ply made walkways, areas around the three light sockets kept clear. A cold water tank an island in the middle.
The smell of chemicals accompanied me as I walked over to the bed, I picked the stack of hard backed, box files up and sat on the bed with them. I soon became involved in an engrossing, macabre voyeurism. I opened the first one, hundreds of photos, some with women carefully posed, all with beautiful backdrops. Then a couple, arms linked together and stood in front of the gates of Trinity College. Plenty of this couple, I stared at one, the location probably Oxford again, maybe Abbey Meadows on a hot summer’s afternoon. Lying on the grass, the distances involved made it difficult to make out, but the man’s right hand appeared to be inside the woman’s long flowing, summery skirt.
‘Who’s this man?’
I held the picture and Stuart squinted away. He laughed, ‘The geography teacher – that’s him. Bloody hell, he’s got his hand up her skirt.’
I glanced at a close up of the young woman’s face; the exquisite jaw line caught my eye. His daughter, no doubt about it. I gazed on at the pictures of this beautiful, young women. They all looked relaxed and happy and stunning. Smiling naturally at the camera, I picked one, glanced quickly around the room, just to make sure that being engrossed in my own little world and no one could see me kiss the photo and put it carefully into my jacket pocket. Evidence, but I couldn’t be sure how it would help.
I forced myself back to the photos and it was obvious that they had all been beautifully shot. A professional at work. His daughter in soft focus, intense and frowning. I sighed at this intrusion into someone else’s compulsion. A chronology began to manifest. Styles from the seventies, sixties, fifties new look. Finally from way back. Shirley, lots of her and I couldn’t take my eyes away. It took me back to the most beautiful women I’d ever known. Barely twenty and I stared at the head scarf highlighting her cheekbones, white framed sunglasses and sat in a garden somewhere with a cigarette in one hand and a gin in the other. She looked so gorgeous, the few of her wearing sunglasses could have been comfortably mistaken for Monroe.
One of her in just a pair of French knickers, hard, dark nipples pointing towards different corners of the room. Eyes locked at the camera, expression severe though. A mole under her left breast, I sighed. This was as physically close as I had ever been to her and as close as I was ever likely to get.
I shook my head and replaced the photos, closed the file and carefully placed it back in its original position. I lifted the lid on the second box, to begin with they were mostly of birds, birds of all sizes and types. As I worked his way quickly through
them, tucked away in the bottom right hand corner – loads of old men sat in Spanish bars. Broken toothed grins, cigarettes welded to their bottom lips.
Lovely pictures though.
Pictures of couples on the beach, all taken with a zoom lens. Unsuspecting couples caught in tender moments. A touch, a kiss, a smile, oblivious to the lone sniper stalking them. I puffed some air out, this was so strange, obsessively so. I picked another pile up, a woman naked and asleep on top of the bed in an apartment room, then one of the same woman stood in front of a mirror, wearing just a pair of knickers and it looked like she was touching her nipples and smiling at the same time.
What did I expect to see?
Pictures of couples making love?
Hoped maybe.
‘Have a look at this.’
I took the picture from Stuart. A young Teddy on top of a large, dark skinned woman, much older than him. I sighed, a couple making love, it was true. But it didn’t excite in any way, instead I shivered and glanced across to the last pile. A black girl on her hands and knees. Bra-less, full breasts hanging down. Her thick lips pouting at the camera. Then her knickers in one hand and a finger of the other hand touching her lips. Eyebrows raised in an expression that said, what do we do next? A close up soon gave me the answer.
Tight pubic hair – semen all over it.
A professional cameraman and young models. Some might say it was just a perk of the job. Still, it was better than putting a razor across their sculptured cheekbones.
I wanted to lay them all out and gaze, it would have been easy to become wrapped up in all of this. Despite the feeling of desecration, I had become morbidly involved.
Voyeurism as I well knew, was an addictive hobby.
Stuart’s voice crashed into the silence like a jackhammer during midnight mass. ‘Is this what we’re looking for?’
He held the picture out, I squinted, Shirley wrapped around… Don. I leant in closer, they were all over each other. The strap on her slip had fallen, her left nipple clearly exposed. Don had his hand up the hem of her slip. Bold as brass – framed in the window.