‘I knew he’d take a shortcut back to his digs. Then you popped up. Perfect timing, Florence. Strangely enough, because of you, becoming someone else was so very much simpler. If anyone would have kicked up a fuss and dug around, it would have been you. But you were hardly going to say anything under the circumstances, were you? You just underestimated how easy I found it to swim back to the bank and carry on with the job I’d set out to do in the first place.’
‘And the police didn’t suspect anything.’
‘I became a missing person. A few weeks later, a body washes up. Similar build, similar age. I knew it might happen, but by then Gabriel was unrecognisable. None of this DNA identification nonsense in those days, the police just used their powers of deduction. Lucky for me they managed to deduce incorrectly.’
‘And no one missed Gabriel. No one thought it might be him?’
‘Of course not. He was a traveller. A nomad. People just assumed he’d moved on to the next town. Being missing generally relies on someone bothering to notice you’re not there any more.’
‘And you just took his place. You stole his ID card and became a whole new person.’
Ronnie simply smiled.
‘I’m going to tell them,’ I said. ‘I’m going to tell them everything. Right from the beginning.’
‘And do you really think they’ll listen?’
‘People have always listened to me. My whole life. No one has ever doubted anything I’ve said.’
‘Florence.’ He leaned forward and the words tiptoed into my ear. ‘When are you going to face up to it? You stopped being the person you used to be a long time ago.’
I could still feel the breath of his words on my face, even as I walked away.
When I got back to the flat, Elsie was sitting at the table, waiting for me.
‘Where did you get to?’ I knew I shouldn’t have shouted. ‘Why weren’t you there?’
‘Whatever’s happened, Flo?’ She shrank back in her seat and made herself very small. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘It’s Ronnie,’ I went over to the window and drew the curtains. ‘He pushed Gabriel Price in the water. He waited for him by the river, and he killed him. He confessed it to me, just now, when we were playing Scrabble.’
‘Scrabble?’
‘He swam to the side and got out. He was down there waiting, planning to drown Gabriel Price. He said me coming along just made it easier for him, because it meant I wouldn’t stir up trouble.’
When I turned back, she had gone.
‘Where are you now?’ I said. ‘Where have you got to?’
‘I’m in here. You’ve had a shock, I’m making you a sugary tea.’
I went into the kitchen and put the milk back in the fridge. ‘I don’t want any sugary tea. I just want you to listen to me.’
By the time I’d closed the refrigerator door, she was back at the table with a piece of paper.
I snatched it from her hands. ‘Will you just keep still and stop moving around. I can’t keep track of you.’
Elsie became very quiet, and she watched me from the corner of the room. ‘I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do,’ she said eventually. ‘Tell me what to do.’
‘I just need you to listen. He confessed it to me, now I need you to help me decide what’s best. Jack would know. If Jack was here, he’d have a plan.’
‘He isn’t, though, is he?’ she said. ‘It’s just you and me, and all those secrets. Who will ever believe us?’
‘Someone has to, surely? For Ruth Honeyman? For Beryl?’
She didn’t reply.
‘I don’t understand why you’re here,’ I said. ‘If you’re not going to help me.’
‘I’ve helped you already. I helped you to find out the truth. That’s exactly why I was here,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you been listening?’
When I looked down, I realised my hands were shaking, and I had ripped the paper into tiny pieces.
‘I think you need to lie down, Florence. Just for half an hour. Give your mind a rest.’
I didn’t remember getting into bed. But I found myself lying there somehow, in curtained light, thinking about Ronnie.
I stood on the bridge for a while after he’d fallen. Instead of finding help, I decided to find Elsie. She was the only one who would understand. The only person I could tell. Not my father, who was too forgiving. Not Gwen, who would fashion an excuse for me, but Elsie.
Elsie was my best friend.
She was the only person who would have the right words.
Because Elsie always knew the right thing to say to make me feel better.
I started to run back to Elsie’s house, along the pavements and the cobbles and the dark streets. I’m not sure what I noticed first, but I think it was the smell. I couldn’t understand why I’d started to cough, why I found it more difficult to breathe, but as I grew closer, it was everywhere. Black smoke. Filling the streets. Twisting and winding its way through the night. Then I heard it. The crack of the flames. The whip of orange and red against the sky. I knew. I knew before I’d even turned the corner. I knew, because I remembered looking into the coals and losing my judgement in a fireplace full of thinking. I didn’t put the guard back across. I poked at the fire and left it to smoulder, and a spark must have caught the carpet. Elsie’s house was burning to the ground, and it was all my fault.
The fireman saved almost all of them. Almost a whole family.
All of them except one.
I never usually slept in the middle of the day, let alone fully dressed, and when I woke, the sheets were twisted and unhappy and there was a lacquer of sweat on my forehead. Elsie had gone. I knew straight away, because the flat felt empty of her.
‘Are you there?’ I shouted, just in case. ‘I’m going to tell everything to Miss Ambrose.’
My voice fell into the silence.
‘I need you to come with me.’
When I got out of bed, I tripped over the bedspread on the floor and I felt the pain shoot up my leg. It didn’t seem to matter, though. The only thing I could think about was finding Elsie. I went outside into the courtyard and looked at all the flats. I wanted to knock on Elsie’s door, but I couldn’t decide which one was hers. She always came to visit me. She said my window had the better view. My eyes tried to find their way inside each house, through the glass and past the curtains, but all I could see was myself reflected back, potted plants on windowsills and bottles of washing-up liquid, and other people’s empty lives. Jack would know which door to knock at, and I had to keep telling myself that he wasn’t there to ask. My mind couldn’t find its way out of sleeping, and each thought I had needed to be pulled through the slurry in my mind.
Perhaps Elsie had gone ahead. Perhaps she had thought for herself for once, and was already with Miss Ambrose, waiting for me.
HANDY SIMON
Simon had never seen anyone arrested before. It wasn’t like the television. There were no handcuffs, and he didn’t hear anyone use the word ‘nicked’. It was the same policemen from the other day, but this time, they didn’t remove their hats.
Ronald David Butler.
He didn’t look like a Ronald Butler. Although, to be fair, he didn’t really look like a Gabriel Price any more either.
‘Surely there’s been some mistake?’ said Miss Ambrose, when her jaw had recovered.
Gabriel Price (or perhaps Ronnie Butler) didn’t say anything. He almost looked as though he’d been expecting it, but of course, he couldn’t have been. No one else had. Simon and Miss Ambrose had been clearing away the funeral plates. They were all helping, to be fair. Even Cheryl. Every time he turned around, she seemed to be there, and when he was stacking all the cups and saucers, she’d come right up to him and they’d had a long conversation about how sad it was and what a shame you didn’t realise how interesting someone’s life was until the vicar read it all out from a pulpit. He was just going to move on to the side plates, when she asked him what he was doing tha
t weekend.
‘Nothing much,’ he said, because she’d caught him off guard.
‘Are you going to the cinema at all?’ she said.
He told her he hadn’t been planning to, and she just laughed and shook her head. ‘Well I’d like to,’ she said, ‘if you fancied it?’
He said he would. Very quickly, before she changed her mind.
‘You seem brighter than usual,’ he said. ‘What’s put a smile on your face?’
She thought for a moment, and then she looked at him and said, ‘It was Florence, actually.’
‘Florence?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Florence. She asked about Alice. No one ever asks about Alice.’
Simon hesitated. ‘We don’t know what to say, Cheryl. None of us. We don’t want to make you upset, we just can’t find the right words.’
‘That’s because there aren’t any,’ she said. ‘There never will be. And sometimes, even if you don’t have the right words, it’s better to use the ones you’ve already got, rather than say nothing at all. It upsets me more not to talk about her, because it pushes her further and further into the past.’
Simon wondered how someone so small could carry around so much grief all by themselves. ‘You can talk to me about Alice any time you want,’ he said. ‘I’d love to hear about her.’
Cheryl reached up and kissed his cheek. ‘There’s so much more to you than first meets the eye, Simon.’
Simon was clearing away the last of the plates, and thinking about Cheryl, and trying to hold on to the feeling of kindness on his face, when Gloria looked out of the window and said, ‘The Old Bill are here,’ because she watched too many television dramas. Simon tried to head for the kitchens with an armful of crockery, but he was intercepted by Gloria and forced to sweep crumbs from a tablecloth instead. He decided the best course of action was to focus the whole of his attention on the crumbs, but when the police asked for Gabriel Price, he turned around and stared. He couldn’t help himself.
‘Gabriel Price?’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘Our Gabriel Price?’ As though there was an entire squadron of them somewhere, waiting to be called upon.
The policeman nodded.
Miss Ambrose sent Gloria to go and get him, and everyone looked at each other. Simon resorted to hand-picking the crumbs from the carpet, and Miss Ambrose read a notice she’d written herself only ten minutes earlier. The policemen just waited. They were obviously used to silence, and didn’t feel the need to fill it up with polystyrene words.
When Gabriel Price (or perhaps Ronnie Butler) finally appeared, the police said they were charging him with an arson attack.
‘The ironing board in Miss Claybourne’s front room?’ said Miss Ambrose, which led to a ten-minute conversation with the policemen and a lot of confusion about health and safety.
No, no, they said. This was an incident dating from 1953. A house fire. Someone was killed.
Simon’s mouth opened very slightly.
Ronnie Butler didn’t even skip a beat. He simply straightened his trilby and smiled. He was just about to leave when Miss Claybourne burst through the double doors, spilling over with shouting and hysteria, and carrying what looked like pieces of torn sheet music.
‘Finally,’ she said. ‘Finally someone listened.’
‘Miss Claybourne. Florence …’ Miss Ambrose’s words did nothing to alter the situation, and the first policeman shepherded Ronnie Butler out of the room and into the car park, because it looked as though Florence might launch herself towards him at any moment.
‘He pushed him in,’ she shouted after them. ‘HE PUSHED HIM IN.’
‘No one pushed anyone anywhere.’ Miss Ambrose lowered Florence into a seat and crouched beside her. ‘This is to do with a fire, although I don’t know any more details.’
‘A fire?’ Florence became very still. ‘Which fire?’
Miss Ambrose looked up at the second policeman, who looked at his colleague disappearing from the room and coughed.
‘From a long time ago, from the 1950s. The fire brigade got everybody out, except one.’
Simon started to say something, but changed his mind.
‘How can you possibly connect someone with it after all this time?’ said Miss Ambrose.
‘Oh, Ronnie Butler was a suspect back then. The accelerant was found at his property.’
‘Accelerant?’ said Miss Ambrose.
‘Petrol.’ Simon shuffled his feet. ‘That’s what people usually use. Although it would have still been rationed in 1953.’
The policeman looked over at him. He didn’t look away for quite a long time.
‘I do a lot of reading,’ said Simon. ‘It’s one of my hobbies.’
‘Witnesses also placed Ronnie Butler at the scene.’
Simon watched Florence. She looked as though someone had pressed a pause button. The hysteria was still there, it just seemed to be held in the moment, somewhere behind her eyes and in the lines that gathered around her mouth.
‘Ronnie started the fire?’ she said. ‘It was Ronnie, not me?’
The policeman frowned at her.
‘So why on earth wasn’t he arrested sixty years ago?’ said Miss Ambrose.
The policeman coughed again and looked at his notebook. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘for all intents and purposes, he was dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Drowned,’ said the policeman. ‘Or at least, that’s what we were led to believe.’
‘Washed up on Langley Beach,’ Florence whispered. ‘The fish ate most of him. My Fred would have been so proud.’
Miss Ambrose glanced at Florence and looked back at the policeman. ‘So how did you trace him here, and why is he calling himself Gabriel Price?’
‘He came to our attention after he was mugged, and we noticed the name Gabriel Price was still on the Missing Persons Register. We questioned him, and something just didn’t feel right.’
‘No,’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘It didn’t feel right here either.’
‘We’ve had a number of phone calls, including one from a retired detective. Perhaps individually they wouldn’t have meant much, but put together … plus, there was some interesting information put forward by North Yorkshire Police. He had a motive, too. He’s still a suspect in a hit and run.’
‘A hit and run?’ Miss Ambrose saucered her eyes.
The policeman looked at his notes again. ‘Also from the 1950s. A young woman was killed by a car, and no one was ever charged. Big investigation. Lots of hearsay, but unfortunately nothing could be proved.’
‘But you think Gabri— Ronnie Butler is responsible?’
‘Almost certainly,’ said the policeman. ‘That’s why he made the arson attack a short while afterwards. He believed there were witnesses in the house.’
‘Belt and braces,’ said Florence. ‘He knew I always stayed over at Elsie’s after the dance. It was me he was trying to get rid of, just in case they eventually caught up with him after all.’
The policeman frowned again, but he didn’t say anything and returned to Miss Ambrose’s questions. ‘We thought we could prove that one.’
‘But he wasn’t charged, because you presumed he’d drowned?’
‘Exactly. A body we believed was him washed up a few weeks later. No formal identification of course, not in those days, but the height, build and age matched, and when we traced back along the estuary, we found Ronnie’s ID card on the river bank. With no one else reported missing, we assumed the body was his and the case against him drifted into nothing.’
‘Did no one think the body might be Gabriel Price’s?’ said Miss Ambrose.
‘Gabriel’s wife didn’t go to the police for some months, because she just assumed her husband was still on the road. When she finally did try to file a report, up in Yorkshire, there was no reason to connect him with a body washed up all the way down here.’
‘Until Ronnie was mugged,’ said Florence. ‘And a small act of kindness put Gabriel Price’s name on the front page
of all the newspapers.’
‘Which is why he came looking for anyone who might be able to identify him. He wanted to frighten them off. Discredit them.’ The policeman closed his notebook.
‘But you can prove it’s him now?’ said Miss Ambrose.
‘We think we’ve got a good chance. Especially with the dental records.’
‘Dental records?’ said Miss Ambrose.
The policeman nodded at the filing cabinet. ‘He had a set taken in his twenties as well. Got into a fight.’ He did a little policeman laugh. ‘Fortunately for us.’
‘He needs an X-ray and stitches. My father will take him,’ Florence said, although Simon wasn’t sure who she was talking to.
He looked at Miss Ambrose. She had her hand to her mouth.
Everyone watched from the door as Ronnie walked across the car park. At first, it was strange to think of him as Ronnie and not Gabriel, but it was amazing how quickly you got used to it. Perhaps a name didn’t really mean much at all, Simon thought. Perhaps it was just another thing to carry around, like your date of birth and your national insurance number. Perhaps what really made you you, was where you were now, where you wanted to be, and how you decided to get there.
It was whisper-quiet as Ronnie got into the car. He didn’t seem to be bothered about being arrested, which Simon found very strange. Ronnie even started whistling, although it wasn’t a tune that Simon recognised.
‘Ronnie started the fire. Ronnie.’
It was all Florence had said since the police drove away. She couldn’t be tempted on to any other subject, no matter how much everyone tried. Miss Ambrose got her a glass of water, and then a small sherry, but none of it made any difference.
‘He was worried I’d change my mind, and tell the police,’ she said. ‘He knew I stayed over at Elsie’s every Saturday night, and he wanted me gone.’
‘She’s making no sense,’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘What does she mean, “tell the police”?’
Simon shrugged and knelt on the floor. ‘That’s a nasty bruise you’ve got on your ankle, Florence. Did you have a bit of a stumble? It needs a compress, that does.’
He nodded at Gloria, who disappeared into the kitchens.
Three Things About Elsie Page 30