The Unburied Past

by Anthea Fraser

  ‘And it wasn’t only Tony who was stressed out,’ Marilyn added, handing them each a mug. ‘My brother-in-law had a stroke, that same day, as it happens, and was in hospital for weeks. Parts of his memory never came back.’

  ‘So three momentous things happened the same day,’ Adam summarized, frowning. ‘Your husband disappeared, your brother-in-law had a stroke, and our parents were murdered. That’s quite a tally for one day.’

  Kirsty said, ‘Could you go through it, that Sunday, if it’s not too upsetting? Was it a sudden decision, to go fishing?’

  ‘He brought me breakfast in bed, and told me then. I wasn’t best pleased: as you say, it was Sunday and I wanted him to spend it with me. But I knew he needed to be alone when he’d problems to sort out, and fishing always seemed to calm him. And he said we’d go out for dinner that evening, to make up for it.’

  ‘So how did you fill the day?’

  Marilyn smiled self-deprecatingly. ‘In my usual mindless way. I couldn’t top up my tan – one of my favourite occupations – because it rained off and on all day, so I did my nails and watched TV.’

  ‘You stayed home alone? No one called or phoned or anything?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘What time were you expecting him back?’

  ‘He hadn’t put a time on it, but—’ She broke off. ‘Wait a minute! Someone did phone! My God, I’ve never given it a thought from that moment to this!’

  Adam leaned forward. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Someone for Tony,’ Marilyn said slowly. ‘I don’t think he gave a name, just asked to speak to him, and I said he wasn’t in. And then he asked, as you just did, when I was expecting him back. That’s what rang a bell.’

  Kirsty’s heart had started to hammer. ‘And what did you tell him?’

  Marilyn’s hand shook suddenly and she put down her mug. ‘I said I wasn’t sure – because he’d gone fishing! Oh, God! You don’t think …?’

  Adam tried to keep his voice level. ‘The caller didn’t leave a message?’

  She was still chasing her own, suddenly frightening thoughts, but after a moment she shook herself. ‘Sorry. What did you say?’

  ‘Did he leave a message?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. God, why can’t I remember?’ Her hands gripped the sides of her head. ‘Something about trying again later, I think.’

  ‘But he didn’t? Try again later?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Then it couldn’t have been anything important,’ Adam said firmly, anxious to dispel any suspicion she could have contributed to her husband’s death. He cast around for a change of a subject, and his glance fell on a photograph on a side table, a smiling couple outside a church, the bride – Marilyn – in a suit, clutching the arm of a tall, dark man.

  ‘That’s your second husband?’

  ‘Dean, yes. It was taken after our Blessing.’ She paused. ‘People were shocked when we married so quickly, but I don’t think I could have survived those months without his help. And it was a very quiet wedding – not at all like my first.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I still have photos of that, too, upstairs in a drawer. It didn’t seem fair on Dean to leave them out, especially since he’s not too happy about my keeping Tony’s anniversary and insisting on dinner at the George. That’s where we should have gone, that evening.’

  ‘We’re staying there,’ Adam said.

  Kirsty glanced at the photograph. Dean Ferris’s face was a strong one, firm chin, challenging dark eyes, thick black hair springing back from his forehead. She wondered if Marilyn’s description of Tony – kind, funny and clever – also applied to him, and somehow doubted it.

  She said, ‘We’ve taken up quite enough of your time, Mrs Ferris. I hope it hasn’t been too upsetting for you.’

  Marilyn shrugged. ‘I’m afraid it’s not shed any light on your parents’ deaths.’

  ‘It was always an outside chance,’ Adam said, ‘but if anything should occur to you later, perhaps you could call me.’ He stood up and handed her a card. ‘Thanks for the coffee, and for going through everything with us. It was very good of you.’

  ‘It brings it all back,’ Marilyn said sadly. ‘How long are you up here for?’

  ‘Just till Friday. It’s beginning to look like a wasted journey.’

  ‘At least you tried,’ she said.

  ‘That might well be our epitaph,’ Adam remarked, when they were back in the car. ‘At least they tried.’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ Kirsty protested. ‘It’s still only Monday!’

  ‘Actually, something she said made me wonder: when I was going through the Gazette archives there was an article about a local firm in difficulties. I skipped it at the time, but I’d like to check back and see if by any chance it was Ferrises.’

  ‘Does it matter? We know they were.’

  ‘True, and since I only researched those few months, there’d be nothing on how and when they began to climb out of it.’

  ‘Again, does it matter?’

  ‘It might; after all, they’re part of our research now, with the Vine/Ferris tie-up.’

  ‘A very nebulous part, I’d have thought.’

  Back at the hotel, he took out his tablet and checked through the notes he’d made prior to their visit.

  ‘Yes, here it is – and it was Ferrises.’ They read the article together and it made dismal reading – falling sales figures, lost contracts, trouble in the work force.

  ‘They must have had an enormous stroke of luck,’ Adam commented, ‘to be able to turn things round after being that low.’ He looked up, staring unseeingly across the room. ‘I wonder …’

  ‘What?’

  He grinned, his face suddenly boyish. ‘A sudden inspiration! If we’re to find out how they did it, an oblique approach is called for. But it will be a strictly men-only exercise.’

  ‘What exactly are you planning?’ Kirsty asked suspiciously.

  ‘A wooden horse strategy, tomorrow evening sometime.’

  ‘Why can’t I come?’

  ‘Because you’d stick out like a sore thumb.’ He raised a hand as she would have questioned him further. ‘You’ll have a blow-by-blow account in due course.’

  And with that, she had to be content.

  Marilyn stood just inside the front door till she heard their car drive away. Then she went up to her bedroom, opened a drawer in her tallboy and took out the topmost of a stack of photograph albums – not their wedding one, but that containing the last snaps she had of Tony. She sat back on her heels and slowly turned the pages, tears trickling down her face as she revisited happy days now long past. It was he who usually took the photos so there weren’t many of him, and she lingered over the few she had – posing in a paper hat in front of the turkey that last Christmas; leaning against the rail on a boat trip on Loch Lomond; falling asleep in the garden over the Sunday papers.

  Seven years they’d had together, that was all. She’d already been married to Dean over three times as long.

  She started as the cleaner’s voice reached her from downstairs. ‘I go now, Mrs Ferris.’

  ‘Thank you, Heidi. Your money’s on the hall table.’

  ‘I have it. I see you Wednesday.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The front door closed. She was alone – and she didn’t want to be. She replaced the album with an affectionate pat and, going to the bedroom extension, called her sister-in-law’s mobile.

  ‘Viv, I know it’s short notice, but are you free for lunch? I’m … in need of company.’

  ‘Are you all right, Marilyn? You sound odd.’

  ‘I’ve had a rather unsettling experience and I’d like to tell you about it.’

  ‘How intriguing! I can spare an hour if we meet near my office. The Bistro at twelve thirty?’

  ‘Perfect. Thanks. See you there.’

  ‘How very strange,’ Vivien commented when Marilyn had related her visitors’ story. ‘And how rotten for you, to have it all brought back again. D
aphne said there’d been an ad in the Gazette asking for information. I suppose they must have put it in.’

  ‘Do you remember those people being murdered?’

  ‘I can’t say I do. But at the time, remember, I was distracted too, with Barry being in hospital. I didn’t hear the news or see a paper for weeks.’

  Marilyn sipped her spritzer. ‘It is extraordinary, though, that everything should have happened on the same day – Tony drowning, Barry’s stroke, their parents’ murders, and no explanation for any of it. I could never get my head around Tony falling overboard; a cousin of his had drowned as a child, and he’d always been obsessively careful around boats.’

  ‘These things happen, and tragic though they were, they were three quite separate events. You’re surely not wondering if there’s a link?’

  Marilyn sighed. ‘I don’t see how there can be. It’s just strange, that’s all.’ She smiled at her sister-in-law. ‘Sorry to have dragged you into this, but I had to talk to someone and Dean’s in Germany all week negotiating a contract.’

  ‘That’s OK. Not sure I’ve been any help, though.’

  ‘You were a sounding board, which was what I needed. Now I’ll try to put it out of my mind.’

  But if Marilyn succeeded in forgetting the episode, Vivien did not. Nor did she hurry back to her office, but went to sit in the municipal gardens, endlessly replaying the story she’d heard – a story that had resurrected half-formed, unacknowledged suspicions she’d been ignoring for more than twenty years.

  All on the same day. It had never struck her as starkly as that, but she still couldn’t see the relevance of that couple’s murder. Where in the name of heaven did they fit in? There couldn’t be a connection – of course there couldn’t. And yet … She’d never got to the bottom of where Barry and Dean had been that afternoon, why they hadn’t, as usual, returned home after their game of golf. Where, exactly, had Barry suffered his stroke? That had never been clear, and had some specific trauma instigated it, rather than a build-up of stress over the business? At the fête the previous day, she remembered suddenly, there’d been that curious atmosphere between the brothers, and Dean’s uncharacteristic snapping at Pauline.

  That had been the first instance of his unusual behaviour, but he’d acted even more oddly in the days that followed, paranoid about being at Barry’s bedside when he emerged from his coma. Why? Brotherly love, or fear of what he might say as he came round?

  She shook herself, but this time the doubts wouldn’t go away. It seemed that while, all those years ago, these questions had been worrying her, Marilyn in turn had found it difficult to accept that Tony drowned accidentally. Could she be right? And if so, what other explanation could there be? She’d a horrible, creeping fear that everything came back to Tony. There was no denying it had been his invention that miraculously turned the fortunes of the firm, just when it seemed there’d been no option but bankruptcy. But Tony was a staff member; surely it would have come to them anyway, under the terms of his contract? His death couldn’t profit anyone.

  And to add to all that there were Barry’s nightmares, which had grown more rather than less frequent over the years. Sometimes she wondered if that hidden part of his memory was using them to force itself to his attention, a fear that had rocketed when, last week, she’d returned home unexpectedly from a shopping trip to find him with his head on the kitchen table, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Over to her left, the town hall clock gave its whirring cough and launched into its full peal, followed by two sonorous chimes. Two o’clock! She’d an appointment in fifteen minutes! Once more burying what could not be faced, Vivien hurried back to the office.

  That afternoon, Adam and Kirsty drove out to the Glendale Industrial Estate to see for themselves the factory that had suddenly assumed importance in their investigation. But a high wall surrounded the site, and all they could glimpse through the tall iron gates was a multi-storey office block and a few sheds.

  ‘What were you saying about a wasted journey?’ Kirsty murmured, but Adam, who’d been surveying the surrounding area, shook his head.

  ‘No, I’ve seen all that I need to.’

  She turned to look at him in surprise. ‘Is this by any chance reconnaissance for your wooden horse?’

  ‘It is indeed.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re planning a raid?’

  He laughed. ‘Hardly! Patience, little sister. All will be revealed.’

  ‘I hope it’s not going to take the whole evening, this plot of yours?’

  ‘Hell, no. I’ll be back in time for dinner.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s something,’ she said.

  At five thirty, when the iron gates opened and the work force began to stream through them, Adam was back again, leaning against a bollard on the opposite pavement. The younger members, joking and pushing each other playfully, he ignored, biding his time, but he straightened when the older men appeared, walking more slowly, patting their pockets for a pipe or cigarettes. Two in particular fitted the profile he was looking for, both nearing retirement, deep in conversation – conversation that was surely destined not to end with a parting at the factory gates.

  Unobtrusively he fell into step behind them, playing his hunch that they’d be making for the pub down the road and breathing a sigh of relief when they turned in its doorway. He followed them, thankful that, unwilling to abandon their discussion for more general chat, they’d taken their glasses to the only vacant table. Having acquired a glass of his own, Adam walked over.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked. ‘This is the only free seat, and I’ve been on my feet all day.’

  They nodded a little reluctantly and continued talking in low voices – something about the new Works Manager and the changes he was introducing.

  ‘Sorry to butt in,’ Adam said, ‘but you work at Ferrises, don’t you?’

  They turned to him, annoyed at being interrupted but prepared to be civil to a stranger. ‘Aye, that’s right.’

  ‘No worries about your jobs, then! I hear the firm’s going from strength to strength.’

  The bald man weighed him up. ‘Yank, are you?’

  ‘British, actually, but I grew up in Canada.’

  ‘So what brings you to our neck o’woods?’ asked the other. ‘Industrial estates don’t usually figure on tourist maps.’

  ‘I’m interested in the architecture,’ Adam improvised smoothly. ‘Not that I could see much, over that high wall of yours! It must be a great place to work, though, with all that job security. Family owned, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  The words ‘blood’ and ‘stone’ came into Adam’s mind. Seeing their glasses were empty, he stood. ‘Let me get you a refill. Same again?’

  They hesitated, glanced at each other, then nodded, and he shouldered his way to the bar. Somehow he must get them to open up; perhaps this round would loosen their tongues.

  ‘Name’s Adam,’ he volunteered, putting their drinks down on the table.

  The bald man extended a hand. ‘Joe,’ he offered. ‘And this ’ere’s Bill.’

  Adam nodded at each in turn and took a long draught of beer for much-needed Dutch courage. ‘Another reason I’m interested in Ferrises,’ he began conversationally, ‘is that my family comes from these parts, and my dad used to know someone who worked there. Guy called Tony Vine. Is he still around?’

  He hadn’t the proverbial pin to hand, but was willing to bet that its dropping would have resounded like a gun shot. Innocently, he looked from one startled face to the other.

  ‘Be in his late fifties by now, I guess,’ he added into the growing silence. ‘Do you know him?’

  Joe cleared his throat. ‘We knew Mr Vine, aye.’

  ‘Knew?’

  ‘He died, mate. Years ago.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  He waited expectantly, and sure enough Bill added in explanation, ‘Drowned, like. In one o’local lakes.’

  ‘Dad will be sorry t
o hear that. They lost touch when we emigrated in the eighties.’

  Joe took a drink and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘’T’were in eighties it happened,’ he said. ‘Missing for weeks afore he were found. Firm were in a bad way then, and there were some as thought he’d done hisself in.’

  ‘That’s too bad. Quite a bright guy, I gather?’

  ‘Aye, bright enough. It’s thanks to him as firm pulled itself back from t’brink.’

  Geronoimo! ‘How was that, then?’

  ‘Invented a new machine, didn’t he?’ Bill said. ‘Leastways, modified an existing one that turned production on its head. Too bad he didn’t live long enough to reap benefits.’

  ‘So it wasn’t in use when he died?’

  ‘No. Rumour has it governor found it in his garden shed. Any road, patent was applied for and we never looked back.’

  Adam caught a quick warning frown from Joe, and pounced. ‘In his shed? You mean he wasn’t working on it at the factory?’

  ‘Seems not.’ They were avoiding each other’s eyes.

  ‘But surely he’d have had everything to hand there?’

  Bill shrugged. Apparently they’d said as much as they were prepared to, but they’d given him plenty to think about.

  He finished his drink. ‘I’m sure he’d have been glad to know he helped save the firm. Thanks for letting me join you; I won’t impose any longer. Good to meet you both.’

  ‘Ta for t’drinks,’ Joe said.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ And with a vague smile at them both, Adam made his way out of the pub.

  ‘So it was more a question of the horse’s mouth than the wooden horse,’ Kirsty commented.

  She and Adam were sitting over dinner at the George.

  ‘Yes, but you do see what it means?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘That Vine didn’t want the owners to know what he was up. That’s the only explanation for his developing it at home.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I’m not well-versed in business contracts, but it seems likely that anything invented by one of its employees during working hours would legally be owned by the firm.’