Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time

by M. P. Wright

  “Jesus . . .” I muttered under my breath.

  “Oh, I don’t think Jesus would have fared any better than the rest of us did out there. He did, however, give me the faith to keep going when things became intolerable. But I don’t think my faith’s what actually kept me alive.”

  “Then what did, Reverend?”

  “Luck, Joseph . . . it was pure bloody luck.”

  The old man took a lint dressing, a large crêpe bandage and small scissors from the tin. He placed the lint over the wound, which had all but stopped bleeding, and began to wrap the bandage around my arm, then took the scissors and cut down the centre of the end of the dressing, making two strips so as to tie it securely around my arm.

  “There, that should do it. You’ll need to keep it well cleaned and dressed over the next few days, but a young chap like you should heal up very quickly I should think. Now, let’s not waste any more of my Scotch. How about that drink?”

  The reverend stood, picked up the Scotch bottle and walked back into his living room, returning with a pair of cut crystal tumbler-style whisky glasses, which he sat on the kitchen table. He poured two large measures of spirit into them before handing one over to me and raising his own glass in a toast.

  “Down the hatch, Joseph.”

  “Cheers, Reverend.”

  I knocked back the amber malt in a single swig and let it tickle and burn the back of my throat; its warmth travelled through my insides and hit my belly like a slug of lead out of a fired gun. The reverend picked up the bottle and I lifted my glass towards it as the old man poured me another two fingers of Scotch. This time I took a single slow sip and savoured the flavours a little before cupping the glass in both hands, my body shuddering in the damp clothes I was still wearing, before returning the glass to my lips and sinking the rest of the malt so it could continue to warm my insides.

  “Now, let me see if I can find you something to change into . . . You don’t want to be catching your death from cold now.”

  The reverend returned a short while later with a pair of tan trousers, a plaid black and grey shirt, a brown Fair Isle jumper and a pair of brown wool socks, which he laid out on the back of one of two high-backed upholstered chairs that stood in front of the fire.

  “I’ll go and find a bag for your wet clothes while you get into those. They’re not the height of modern fashion, and judging by your height the trousers are going to be a little short in the leg, but they’ll do you for tonight and get you home dry.” He smiled at me again, then left me alone to change.

  When he returned around ten minutes later he had in his hand a Navy-style dark-blue duffle coat and army-style webbing rucksack. He threw the coat over to me, then bent down, picked up my wet clothing from the floor and stuffed it into the rucksack before placing the bag onto the kitchen table. He walked across to me, sitting in one of the armchairs in front of the fire.

  “Joseph, grab that bottle and our glasses, will you, then come and sit yourself down and have another snifter with me and, if you will, tell me a little about yourself.”

  Again, I did as I was told: collected the cut crystal and the Scotch, and joined the old fellow by the fire. I poured another two large measures into each of the glasses, handed one over to him and sat the bottle in the hearth of the fireplace before taking a hefty gulp of my drink.

  “There’s not a lot to tell, Reverend.”

  “Is that so . . . Well, I already know that you like a drink . . . Tell me, where are you from, Joseph?”

  “Barbados . . . Been over here ’bout a year.”

  “The Caribbean, very different from this green and pleasant land, I’d say. You must be finding it hard with this awful bloody weather, more used to the sun and blue skies I should think, hey?”

  “Hard is an understatement, that’s fo’ sure . . . Never seen snow until less than a month ago. I seen pictures as a kid; never thought I’d feel it soaking through the soles of my feet, though.”

  “Quite, quite . . . So what brought you to Great Britain, Joseph?”

  “I was told the streets were paved with gold . . . Thought I’d take my chances, see if I could find me a stash of it.”

  “And have you?”

  “Oh yeah . . . I got me a back bedroom full o’ the stuff.”

  “And you were panning for a little more of the glittering gilt out in the snow earlier tonight, were you?”

  The pastor took a sip of his liquor and sat back in his chair, waiting for me to answer him. I remained tight-lipped, unsure if the conversation might take me into areas I didn’t want to go. But the old man wanted to continue with his questioning . . . only this time he was a little more to the point.

  “So where are you living now and what are brings you out to Cricket Malherbie on a cold winter’s night?”

  “St Pauls . . . I travelled down from Bristol earlier this evening . . . I was told I may find someting I was looking for in your village.”

  “And did you find what you sought?”

  “No . . . only a big dog with a bad temper.”

  “Out at the Blanchard estate?”

  “It coulda been . . . but I think that dog was most probably a stray. Maybe I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Does that happen to you a lot, Joseph?”

  “Does what happen to me a lot, Reverend?”

  “That you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

  “That seems to have been the case this last week or so.”

  The padre changed tack, throwing a fast ball and knocking me off kilter with his new line of questioning.

  “What did you do for a living back home . . . on Barbados?”

  “I was a policeman.”

  The reverend was still for a moment, thinking carefully about what I had just told him. He took another short sip of whisky before carrying on.

  “A police officer . . . And did you retire from the force?”

  “Not really . . . more pushed out.”

  The whisky was starting to loosen my tongue.

  “And you miss the force?”

  “No . . . I miss the sun on my back and hearing the song of the Aruban birds early in the morning, but not being a copper.”

  I suddenly fired a question back at the old man to get the spotlight off of me.

  “Tell me, who lives up at this Blanchard estate you keep taking about?”

  “Terrence Blanchard . . . He’s a silk, I believe.”

  “Silk . . . What the hell’s a silk?”

  “Queen’s Counsel, my dear fellow. Blanchard is a barrister. A very successful and expensive one, so I’m reliably informed.”

  “That so . . . It would explain the big house and the even bigger dog,” I laughed to myself.

  “And your difficulty in being able to enter it without an invite, I would imagine.”

  I looked at the old man, I was puzzled by and anxious about the way our conversation was going. I watched as he put his glass down at his feet before he turned back to question me yet again, and this time his enquiry hit hard at the core of my heart.

  “Are you married, Joseph?”

  “No . . . I came to Britain alone.”

  “And have you always been alone?”

  “No . . . not always.”

  “Family, loved ones?” the reverend persisted.

  “Wife . . . I had a wife . . . She’s been dead nearly eighteen months.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Joseph, never easy to lose a loved one. You must miss her greatly. I know a little of loss and how grief can eat at the insides of a man. I’ve seen how it can burrow into the soul and take the unkindest grip at a person’s very being. You know, I believe God doesn’t want us to feel that grief forever. He wants us to believe in the truth of the everlasting spirit and that our salvation is found in the all-encompassing truth of his word. He wants us to redeem ourselves in seeking out his love. What are we without faith, without redemption? It’s not part of his great plan for us to be a
lone, to be unredeemed, you see.”

  “I don’t think God has any further plans fo’ me, Reverend, and if he has I suggest he keeps ’em to himself. I think it’s time I was on my way. I wanna thank you fo’ your kindness, Philip. I’m gonna bid you a good night.”

  I stood up and took a final draught of the Scotch, then placed it onto the white cloth-covered table in front of me, picked up the duffle coat and pulled it on, then grabbed the rucksack filled with my wet clothes, slung it over my shoulder and made my way quietly out of the kitchen towards the front door.

  “Whatever darkness you left back on that island is still eating at your heart, Joseph. I saw it in your eyes earlier, just like I saw it in the eyes of those poor souls dying of cholera and dysentery in Changi. Don’t allow anger and hate to destroy the decent man inside. You need to forg . . .”

  I shut the front door and let his final words fall away silently, unheard to me as I dropped the latch into its holder and walked back along the path towards my car. But in truth, his last warning to my barren, faithless spirit had already begun to etch itself deep within my being and the old vicar’s closing sermon to me echoed inside my head like the final toll of a death knell.

  19

  The drive back to Bristol in the dead of night took forever. The roads were treacherous with fresh snow and black ice, my arm throbbed, and I had been left unsettled by the well-meaning reverend. He had touched upon locked-away feelings I didn’t even want to acknowledge, let alone discuss, and tonight I’d done as I always had since I was a young boy: I’d simply clammed up and walked away. My dead wife, Ellie, only ever came to me in my dreams and nightmares. I denied her memory entry to my waking world and refused my inner need to openly grieve her death. To function on a daily basis I shut her out, wiped the past out of my mind and never spoke openly of her past existence or the wonderful life we had once shared together.

  But tonight in the reverend’s home, comforted by the smouldering warmth of his fire, with whisky masking some of the pain and driving its calming influence through my bloodstream, I had permitted myself a brief moment of remembrance and thought again of what I had lost and how much I missed her. By the time I pulled up outside of my digs on Gwyn Street it was after 5 a.m. and I was beat. I walked into the brittle chill of my rooms inside the terraced house, dropped the rucksack with my wet clothing by the door to my bedroom and walked in without turning the light on. I kicked off my sodden brogues and undressed out of the mismatched clothes I been given, leaving them in a heap on the floor, and crawled into a cold bed, lying on my side and pulling the sheet and blankets across my bare shoulders. I closed my eyes and felt the angry sting of fatigue burn into them beneath my heavy lids, then reached out my arm underneath the bedclothes in the futile hope that for once I would find Ellie there again waiting to draw me close into the safe warmth of her body. My palm skimmed the icy material that covered the hard mattress and found nothing. I whispered her name, withdrew my hand and placed it against my chest, and let the release of sleep finally guide me into the darkness towards the shadowy places I only inhabited during my nocturnal respite.

  *

  It was after 2 p.m. on Sunday afternoon by the time I woke and I cursed myself for wasting the better part of a day by sleeping in for as long as I had. I hauled myself out of bed and pulled back the curtains. Outside, the gentle afternoon sun shone and a slow thaw had set to turning the pavement and gutters in the street into a thick, grey slush.

  After making myself a black coffee, I let the immersion heater warm up and drew myself a hot bath, had a shave and dressed. My arm was not as bad as I had first thought, Reverend Southerington had been right. The swelling around the puncture holes of the bite had reduced a little, and a heavy blue-yellow bruise was starting to take shape and was about to join the other shades of the many contusions that covered the various parts of my now-battered body.

  I sat on one of the rickety dining chairs in my kitchen, thinking and going over in my mind what I’d achieved in the last twenty-four hours. I still knew so little about the disappearance of Stella Hopkins and why she had gone missing in the first place. It seemed I was only any good at scrambling around in the dark and getting nowhere. Somebody out there had the answers; I just needed to find that somebody. And from where I was sitting at the minute, that was turning out to be no mean feat. The St Pauls community was as tight as a drum: either they knew nothing or didn’t want to talk to me. If Stella had been involved with the pimp Papa Anansi and was turning tricks for him then how come none of the local call girls recognised her as being on the game?

  The murdered prostitute Jocelyn Charles had seen her at a party, so Stella had been with Papa that night at the shebeen then walked out with a white guy . . . But where had she gone next: to his house or had she gone all the way out to the Blanchard Estate? If so, what was a young black girl, deaf and mute, doing with a bunch of country toffs in the small hours of the morning in the middle of the Somerset countryside? What connected her to the girl I had followed last night? The one new thing that I’d come away with was the name Terrence Blanchard, an apparent mover and shaker in the world of British law, well known and respected in his field. And from the look of his home and the motors parked at the rear of his house, he and his associates were well heeled too.

  I’d known men like Blanchard all my life, whether they were running local businesses back home on Barbados or the political affairs of state from the High Commission building in Bridgetown, or my superiors when I was a sergeant on the force. They had one thing in common: power and a deep desire to keep it close to them.

  As far as I was concerned they were all cut from the same cloth: they were egotistical and cash motivated with a generally pretty low regard for the black workers who toiled for them. I didn’t trust any of ’em and saw no reason to think Blanchard would be any different, and I’d as yet never even set eyes on him, let alone met the man.

  Despite finding out where the girl who got into the car outside of the shebeen last night had been taken, I still had no idea who she was or why she’d been driven all those miles out to that big house. I could have hung around and hoped to have tailed her and the white guys back to Bristol, but I knew I’d have been spotted by the occupiers of the car I’d been following, especially if they were cops. I had been lucky tailing the car to Blanchard’s; now I needed to locate the girl in the car, and quickly. She could tell me what the hell was going on down there, which could possibly lead me to Stella. There was only one person I knew who could point me towards her . . . the bulky paedophilic doorman at the shebeen on Richmond Road: Clarence Maynard.

  I also needed Vic. He was sure to know of Maynard’s address and, if not, a man who did or could easily put his feelers out to his contacts on the streets to find it quickly. I certainly didn’t fancy going toe to toe with the bouncer on the street, my business with him needed to be out of the public eye, but none of that mattered for now.

  My hardest task at the moment was finding my itinerant cousin on a Sunday. At best he was likely to be still shacked up in the bed of any one of a number of the countless floozies he hung around with or at worst he may be sleeping off a night of hard drinking and weed smoking at one of his many business associates’ joints in either St Pauls, Montpelier or further across town. I decided to take a ride over to Carnell Harris’s house and see if he could point me in the right direction before I started going door to door around the area in search of Vic. If anybody could pinpoint Vic for me quickly, it was sure to be Carnell.

  As I pulled up outside of Carnell and Loretta’s basement flat on Brunswick Street I could hear the dull thumping of music outside through the closed windows of the Cortina. By the time I’d gotten outta my car and was walking towards the front door of their home, I had no doubt where the sound of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” was coming from. I stood and hammered repeatedly at Carnell’s door with my fist in the hope that somebody would hear me inside and come and open up. Finally, after ar
ound two or three minutes of continual heavy knocking, Carnell’s wife, Loretta, opened up.

  “Hey . . . if it isn’t Joseph Tremaine Ellington hanging on my gate door . . . What you doin’ here, baby?” she shouted at me over James’s frantic wailing.

  “Is Carnell in, Loretta?” I shouted back.

  “Sure is, honey . . . Step on inside.”

  I stamped the wet snow off of my feet on the hessian mat and walked in, kissing Loretta on the cheek as she closed the door behind me. She moved in closer towards me, raising her voice over the heavy volume of the music

  “Is that little peck on the cheek the best you got fo’ your old friend, lover boy?”

  As she spoke, she ran her fingers teasingly along the inside of my left thigh and groin. I drew my arm around her curvy ass and snatched her closer towards me, taking her by surprise, seeing a look of sudden shock on her face as I did so and smelling the scent of marijuana in her hair and clothes, which would explained the reason for her teasingly cavalier behaviour towards me.

  I took her chin in my hand and drew the side of her head towards my lips, gently kissed her ear and spoke into it.

  “Now you’re too much woman fo’ me, baby . . . I’ll leave keeping you sweet to that man o’ yours.”

  I let go, then winked at her playfully.

  “So where is the old fool?” I bellowed over the music.

  Loretta straightened her dress, then smiled back and called for me to follow her with the silent curling motion of her index finger down the hall towards where the music was coming from in her living room. She threw open the door and strode in, and I followed. Loretta stood staring across the room at Carnell, who was fast asleep, lying outstretched on the sofa in front of the electric fire, which was knocking out all three bars of heavy heat. The room reeked of the heady whiff of dope and Carnell’s sweaty feet. He lay dead to the world, hands rested on top of his enormous belly, head flopped to one side perched on a red cord cushion, his chin covered in a thin layer of dribble that was leaking from his partially opened mouth, from which his slightly bucked, yellowing teeth protruded.