by Oliver Tidy
I walked with him to the trolley bed. In the rain and the wind and the chill of the miserable English spring morning the bag was unzipped to show the cadaver’s face and I stood staring down at my aunt. I was numbed. Her eyes were closed. She had always worn make-up whenever I had ever seen her: rouge, lipstick, eyeshadow. She had allowed her hair to grey naturally but always kept it neat and tidy. She had always made an effort.
Now she was a bluish white: ghostly. Her hair lay lank, soaking and plastered to her scalp. Where the make-up hadn’t washed off it had run and smeared. Her lips were thin and her skin was mottled with her immersion in the salt water. Life was clearly extinct, but I still stood there half-expecting her to open her eyes.
‘Is it your aunt, sir?’
I confirmed it was with an economical nod. If I’d tried to speak I think I would have been physically sick.
I was dimly aware of the bag being zipped back up and the trolley bed with my aunt strapped to it being loaded into the ambulance. The professionals started packing away and the man who was dressed like a policeman was encouraging a small cluster of people – drawn to the scene and inclined to form a huddle – to disperse.
The policeman asked if I was all right. I thought I might still puke. I breathed hard in and out a couple of times and he waited. I willed my recently consumed meal to settle down.
‘I think so.’
‘You mentioned an uncle?’
I nodded.
He asked me to wait where I was. He moved away and spoke into his radio. He was back in a couple of minutes. ‘Would you mind coming with us to the police station?’
I didn’t see I had much choice.
***
5
I looked at the clock again. I’d just entered my thirteenth minute of sitting alone in a drab, depressing and foul smelling interview room. I wanted to smoke.
The stench of sick – not mine – was thick, despite the damp stain of detergent that showed where the floor had been recently cleaned.
The whole room needed a jet wash and then a lick of paint.
The door had been left open by the officer who had dumped me there. I idly wondered whether protocol allowed me to be left alone, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone else.
The sounds of men and women going about their duties, the odd loud voice and a couple of laughs, echoed down the lino corridor.
I sat and waited.
The uniforms who’d driven me to the station to help the police with their enquiries were all right. They seemed sensitive enough to my loss and they didn’t bother me with stupid questions. They even let me drop in at home for a quick change of dry clothes.
I identified a pair of rubber-soled shoes squeaking their way purposefully in my direction and then coming to a stop at the doorway. I looked up at the face of a thirty-something woman not in uniform.
Over a crisp-looking white shirt she wore a matching black skirt and jacket. She could have been anything from a hotel receptionist to a CEO. She introduced herself as Detective Constable Cash and treated me to her stock unfriendly smile. She wasn’t tall, wasn’t big, wasn’t ugly. She was all business.
‘Mr Booker?’
I nodded.
‘I’m sorry about your aunt.’ She came into the room and sat down opposite me. I caught a whiff of fragrance that reminded me of someone I couldn’t place. ‘Sorry about the wait, too.’ They had probably been checking what they could of my story. It wouldn’t have been much. ‘No doubts it was your aunt this morning? None at all?’
‘None.’
‘Tell me what you told my uniform colleague, would you? I need to hear it from you.’
‘From where?’
‘From the beginning.’
Where was the beginning?
I told about my arrival the previous evening, what I’d done about finding neither of my relatives at home. I repeated the events of the morning. She nodded her way through it all, concentrating hard on my words and how I delivered them.
‘Why didn’t you phone the police this morning?’
‘I did. I spoke to someone here. A woman. I told her some of what I’ve just told you. She said I should phone back when twenty-four hours had elapsed. I couldn’t report them missing before then.’
She nodded and scribbled a note to herself.
‘Did you get her name?’
‘No.’
‘Why are you back in Dymchurch?’ It didn’t sound like a casual enquiry.
I explained.
She asked for a description of my uncle and jotted that down too.
‘I’ll try the hospitals.’
‘I called the Harvey and the Victoria this morning.’
‘They might try a bit harder for me.’
She tapped her pencil a couple of times on the tabletop. ‘Apart from the death of your aunt, I’m more than a little concerned at what you’ve told me about the whole thing. They couldn’t have just forgotten you were coming?’
‘No chance.’ I explained about the calendar, the conversation with the woman in the baker’s, the beer in the fridge and finding the receipt for it.
She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘What is it you do in Istanbul?’
‘I’m an English teacher.’
She looked disappointed. ‘I’ll circulate the details of your uncle to uniform.’ She might have been about to say something more, to explore something of her professional concern at where things were, how they looked, but she changed her mind. She tapped the pencil again. ‘So you’re staying in their flat above the bookshop?’
‘Yes.’
‘How about I give you a lift home and come in for a look. You might have missed something I won’t.’
I doubted it, but I needed a lift, so I agreed.
She told me to wait there for her while she sorted a couple of things out. I spent another six minutes breathing in sick fumes and staring at the painted blockwork of the opposite wall. But I wasn’t really looking at it. I was back to asking myself the questions the police were going to be considering: how did my aunt end up dead in the English Channel? And where was my uncle?
*
I was surprised it was just Detective Cash and me driving back to Dymchurch and a few minutes into the journey I said so.
‘What did you expect?’
‘I thought the police went everywhere in twos.’
‘We do if we have cause. How long have you lived in Turkey?’
‘It’s my third year.’
‘Like it?’
‘I prefer it to home. At the moment.’
‘How long has your uncle been in business?’
‘Since before I was born.’
‘I’ve driven past the shop a few times. Never been in though.’ Something occurred to her. ‘Have you been in the shop since you returned?’
I said I hadn’t. I nearly added, why? But we both knew why she had asked the question.
We drove in silence along the Sandgate seafront and then she avoided Hythe town centre by continuing up alongside the Hotel Imperial golf course, hugging the sea wall.
‘So, he’s retiring?’ She was still talking about him in the present tense.
‘Yes. I’m home to help him for a week to pack up his stock. He’s selling it abroad.’
‘What were their plans for retirement?’
‘I don’t know.’ I wasn’t lying. ‘I expected to find out about that this week.’
‘Can I be straight with you about something?’
It seemed a strange thing for her to say to me. ‘Please do.’
‘From what you’ve told me, I’m concerned for your uncle’s well-being.’
She didn’t elaborate on her reasons for that, so to fill the void I said, ‘So am I.’
We passed the community football pitches, the municipal swimming pool and the tennis courts. She navigated the vehicle confidently through the quiet narrow back roads until we were once again on the A259 heading out of Hythe.
‘When was the last time you wer
e home?’
‘Christmas.’
‘And the last time you spoke to either of them?’
‘We Skyped last week. Most of our communication is done by email.’
She was thinking a lot and I didn’t like to interrupt her.
Her mobile rang. She answered it. So much for setting an example.
After a brief conversation she terminated the call. ‘No one of your uncle’s description has been admitted to either of the nearest hospitals.’
We drove alongside the Army ranges towards Redoubt.
‘Were your relatives in the habit of going for walks on the beach and the sea wall?’
‘Yes. It’s one of the things they cherished most about living where they did.’
‘What was your aunt wearing this morning?’
I thought about it. I thought hard. The zip had only been lowered enough for me to see her face. I tried to remember if there had been a suggestion of a coat or scarf. I explained to Cash why I couldn’t answer that and she accepted that I couldn’t say.
She made a phone call and asked for that information to be quickly found out and advised. She dropped her speed to match the signs as we came up on the New Beach holiday park.
‘You should prepare yourself for the worst.’
She didn’t say what the worst was, but it didn’t take much guessing.
***
6
I directed her through the Dymchurch Parish Council car park where my relatives had a vehicular right of way to the rear of their premises. We bounced and jolted the length of it as she made a poor fist of negotiating a course through the potholes. It was not nicely and expensively surfaced like the Shepway Council car park opposite.
We pulled up in the pea beach behind my uncle’s car.
‘Whose is that?’
I told her. She grunted. We got out and I fished under the flowerpot for the key.
Detective Cash tutted. ‘Not very original and not very secure.’
I let us in and led the way upstairs to the flat. I didn’t expect to see my uncle materialise but I more than half hoped he would. The longer I went without word of him now the bleaker it would look. Apart from us two, the place was empty and quiet as a deep thought.
‘Where do you want to look?’
‘Mind if I just poke about a bit on my own for a minute?’
‘Help yourself. You’ll need more than a minute though if you’re going to look the whole place over. It’s a confusing warren, I’ll warn you.’
‘If I get lost, I’ll give you a shout.’
‘I’m going to make tea, would you like one?’
She smiled nicely. ‘Go on then. No sugar, just a dash of milk.’
*
The kettle had boiled, I’d immersed the tea bags, added milk, taken the tea bags out and was leaning against the kitchen counter sipping mine and wondering what the hell was going on before she reappeared.
‘I see what you mean. What a place. And the books.’
She accepted the tea with a thank you and a nod. We sipped in quiet contemplation.
‘What were you looking for?’
‘Something that didn’t look right.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing stands out. Mind me asking where you slept last night?’
‘The sofa.’
She looked out of the window at the builder’s yard. ‘What’s that place?’
I told her. She asked who owned it. I told her that too.
‘Have you got the keys to the shop downstairs?’
I hooked them off the wall.
‘Let’s take a look then, shall we?’
Before we got to the top of the stairs her phone rang again. After a brief conversation she put it back in her pocket.
‘Your aunt wasn’t wearing a coat or a jacket when they pulled her out of the sea. Just a pullover. It’s possible it could have come off in the water, I suppose, if she had been wearing one. She had nothing on her feet either, which I find strange.’
‘She wouldn’t have gone out in yesterday evening’s weather without a coat. No one of her age would. And she wouldn’t have gone out in a coat without doing it up first. It was raining when I arrived. What was the weather like during the day?’
‘Same. It rained all afternoon in Folkestone.’
‘I can’t see how a fastened coat could come off anyone in the water, can you?’
She looked to be giving this some thought. ‘Where do they keep their coats normally?’
I showed her the cupboard. There were several coats and jackets for each of them. Impossible to tell if one was missing. Or two.
We went downstairs.
The smell hit me like a spell, stimulating memories like only a scent can. Pungent old books. Despite my uncle’s preference for modern first editions he had also accumulated, through bulk purchases, hundreds of older books over the years. It was their mustiness, their tooled leather bindings, their ancient paper and ink that overpowered all other competing odours. It was a smell I relished and a look he’d liked. I noticed Detective Constable Cash inhale it and I liked her for it.
The shop was a decent size for an independent bookshop. It spread over the whole of the ground floor. There were walls of order and islands of chaos, shelves of hardbacks and piles of paperbacks. Colourful dust-jacketed spines stood uniformly together generating stretches of intrigue. Along one long wall oak bookcases had been made to measure and match a long time ago, locally, when that kind of thing wouldn’t need a remortgage, and these had aged to a distinctive rich brown.
Floor to ceiling was higher down here, perhaps ten feet. The books went all the way to the top. There was a ladder that ran on a rail just like in the old-fashioned libraries of aristocrats in the movies. It was my uncle’s indulgence, although at his age he didn’t glide up and down on it like he used to when he was younger and showing it off.
A good solid counter made out of matching timber stood between the shop floor area and a couple of smaller rooms off to one side: a toilet and a small kitchen.
My uncle and aunt spent years working out of this space, often six days a week, and in those years they had made it more like a browsing library than a retail establishment; more of a home than a workplace. There were a couple of good leather sofas and matching wingback chairs, and dotted around a few little matching leather footstools for people to sit on while they perhaps sampled a chapter or two of a potential purchase.
In truth there were fewer and fewer physical callers in later years; the vast majority of the business was Internet and mail order, but those that did come, and it was mostly by appointment only, were always welcomed and pleased to be there. It was a shot of nostalgia for most of them as much as anything else; a reminder of the good old days.
I noticed Detective Cash give the room a long appreciative look. ‘This place would make a fantastic boutique coffee shop, if you thinned the stock out and tidied up a bit.’
I gave her some good advice. ‘I wouldn’t mention that to my uncle when you see him.’
We explored independently and probably for different reasons. The shop looked much like it always had. There were maybe fewer books as my uncle and aunt had stopped buying and concentrated on selling. I wandered around the shelves and the alcoves renewing some old acquaintances, prompting some memories.
I felt better in the shop than in the flat and it was with a start and a pang I remembered that only a couple of hours before I’d seen my dead aunt pulled out of the English Channel.
When my uncle showed up nothing was ever going to be the same again for either of us. He’d need me and I experienced a jolt of what I had to recognise honestly as guilty relief that I would now have to delay my return to my home, my work and my domestic troubles in Istanbul.
Detective Cash came out from where she’d been poking about in the rooms behind the counter. ‘There’s nothing back there to interest me professionally.’ She sounded pleased about it. ‘So the idea is you’re to help him pack all thes
e up?’ She took in the stock with a careless sweep of her arm.
‘Yes,’ I said, openly acknowledging the obvious enormity of the task and misreading what she was thinking.
‘So where are all the boxes and packing materials?’ And she was looking at me with something approaching professional interest again.
***
7
It hadn’t occurred to me and so I had no answer for her other than the blank stupid stare and shrug I managed. She didn’t go on about it.
She left her card and a promise she’d be in touch if she heard anything. It was understood I would do the same.
It seemed polite to see her off the premises and watch her drive away. I wanted a cigarette anyway. I stood out the back of the building, listened to the breeze in the trees at the back of the builder’s yard and smoked. Something metal scraped against something metal the other side of the concrete panel fence for a while, putting me in mind of fingernails and blackboards. It got so that I couldn’t think and then I went back inside.
I see myself as a realist, not much of an optimist. I hope for the best but fear and expect the worst. Life and marriage has made me like that. I was the same with my uncle’s continued absence. And the longer it went on the greater and heavier my fears grew. A selfish wedge of me wanted him to be dead too, waiting his turn for the tide to wash him ashore.
That’s terrible, I know, but worrying over how he would react to the loss of my aunt, his partner in all aspects of his life for over forty years, froze my guts. I didn’t want to have to be there for him as he tumbled into the emotional abyss; knowing he’d probably never be able to claw his way out of it.
I wanted their deaths to be the result of some terrible freak accident where they had fallen into the sea during a last walk, got into difficulties and perished together. But I knew this for a stupid fantasy. Dymchurch beach was part of the Children’s Paradise and it was part of the Children’s Paradise because the beach was so safe. It didn’t shelve. Even at high tide you could fall into the sea off the wall and stand up and it wouldn’t come much above your knees. It was conceivable one person could slip, bang their head and go on to drown – but two?