The Rotting Spot (A Bruce and Bennett Mystery)

by Valerie Laws

  ‘Yes, worrying, since she’s devoted to him. Taking him to his dad suggests she might have gone voluntarily, though perhaps in a distressed state.’ Or she had to see someone, do something, which wouldn’t be safe for the child, and it went wrong … Erica was beginning to feel a deep unease. ‘Lucy used to talk about someone coming for her – did the Seatons tell you about Molly?’

  Will nodded. ‘Liz was very protective of her sister, because of that. Toby’s dad, Steve Jackman, told Mrs Seaton Lucy’d mentioned you, and it was the only lead we had. Seemed worth checking out. Lucy also had something in her handbag in your handwriting.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘A poem. Something about Lucifer and hell,’ Will said,‘you seem to have had a very emotional attachment to Lucy Seaton.’

  Erica was mortified. The thought of police reading that … What could be more cringeworthy than adolescent poetry?

  ‘More emotional than could be considered normal,’ Will went on significantly.

  ‘Just a minute!’ Sod meditation, give me a gun. ‘Are you suggesting I’m the psycho whose cellar Lucy’s in? How dare you! I wrote that poem years ago. And I don’t have a cellar. Take a look.’

  ‘If Lucy went voluntarily, she’ll need money,’ pointed out Massum. ‘She’d need someone she could trust.’

  Well that wouldn’t be me. ‘What about Toby’s dad? Or another boyfriend could have helped her vanish, maybe just for a rest. Maybe they made her vanish, for some twisted reason of their own. She must have had boyfriends, she was very pretty.’

  ‘Why the past tense?’ Will was on it.

  ‘Lucy is part of my past, not my present.’ Erica looked up at Will through narrowed eyes. ‘But if I had helped Lucy disappear, I wouldn’t tell you. Or the Seatons.’

  ‘Her little boy needs his mummy,’ said Massum, fighting dirty.

  Erica said nothing. What could she say? She saw the two officers out. Last evening, the rescue helicopter had passed her as she ran along the beach. Looking for Lucy, who still carried Erica’s poem. She drank vodka and diet coke, remembering that first summer.

  Stony Point, Summer 1995

  Erica, so thin she kept impaling herself on her own hipbones, was welcomed by Mickey Spence, a rangy sundried bloke, bald as a coot isn’t, with pale eyes, and teeth too good to be real.

  That first morning, she faced ranks of fried eggs, slippery with grease, doled out next to strips of well-frazzled bacon, followed by ladles of glistening, seething baked beans in bright orange sauce. It was all she could do not to throw up.

  She went outside to get the smell of frying out of her nostrils. Short grass sprouted around the rocks, and clumps of thrift starred the blue background with pink. A steep cliff swept down to the sea on one side of the headland. A fulmar flew past, effortlessly exploiting warm updrafts. Its liquid black eye looked at her, and its tube-nostrilled beak gave it a haughty look. She watched its joyful mastery of the air.

  ‘How do we know, but every bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of delight, closed by our senses five.’

  Erica nearly fell off the cliff. She swung round, and Lucy Seaton was there. Slim and leggy, wearing denim cut-offs, and an expensive tee shirt tied up in a knot at one side to show off a flat stomach. Her hair was shoulder length, thick, and a rich conker brown, and her eyes were a greenish hazel with very distinctive slim dark brows. Her face was triangular like a cat’s. She had a golden tan and no spots. Lucky cow.

  ‘Ok? Sorry I gave you a shock. You Ricci? I’m Lucy.’

  ‘Mm. Mickey said you’d be coming over this morning.’

  ‘Yeah. Worse luck. Not many jobs when you’re under eighteen, are there, so we end up here doing bloody housework.’

  ‘Makes a change from GCSEs anyway. What you said, the Blake quote, well, it’s weird. You saying it, I mean. It’s one of my favourite lines of his.’

  ‘You like Blake? Tyger, tyger and stuff?’ She challenged Erica with her eyes.

  ‘Not just those poems – I like the prophetic books, he’s so cool. He knows so much.’

  ‘Too right.’ Erica knew she’d passed a test. ‘He could look at a bird, and think, what if it’s just the bit we can see and hear and smell of the real world. Then years later mathematicians come up with multi-dimensional universe theories.’

  ‘I’m going to do maths at uni, I think.’ Erica waited for the inevitable geek, dweeb, weirdo reaction.

  ‘I’m better at the biological sciences myself, though I really want to act. I bet maths is beautiful at that level.’

  Erica was so hungry for a soulmate. She felt giddy with hope. ‘It’s kind of about beauty, and absolute truth.’ Just being able to say those words out loud … ‘I mean you can actually rely on numbers not to lie to you.’

  ‘That’s how I feel about acting. I know it’s about pretending on the surface, but really it’s a different kind of truth. That’s what I really want to do.’

  All summer, they laughed about Mickey’s eccentricities, snogged boys on moony evenings, shared thoughts and dreams. Lucy was going to be an actress, a director eventually. She’d always been the star of her high school plays. She’d declaim Shakespeare to the sea, with Erica an adoring audience.

  ‘After A levels, I’m going to try and get into RADA. We have to follow our desire, don’t we? After all, you don’t know what might happen. You don’t know how much time you’ve got. Molly didn’t. Maybe she’s in the sea, with pearls for eyes. Or just bones in a ditch. Or living somewhere, married with kids even.’

  ‘Weird, isn’t it? Her never getting in touch?’

  ‘Too right. I’d never do that, never, however pissed off I was with Mum and Dad. It’s dead cruel, what it does to the whole family. My uncle George already had a dodgy heart. He didn’t live long after Molly went.’

  The sea lay in front of them like the future, unknowable, dangerous.

  Evening, 16th June

  Leaving Erica’s, Massum’s cheerful face remained relaxed, his brown eyes squinting slightly as he drove into the declining sun. Sadistic bastard, thought Bennett.

  ‘What did you think, Guv?’ Massum broke the silence.

  ‘Of Ms homeopath feng shui Bruce? I felt there was some sort of guilty reaction when we asked about her and Lucy Seaton.’

  ‘Yeah, but they were teenagers together. Teenagers are always feeling guilty about something. That’s the whole point of being a teenager, after all.’ Older than his more ambitious colleague, Massum was a family man. His wife was a teacher, and between them they earned enough to give their children a good education. He’d tried to balance earning a good salary and spending time with his two daughters and son. ‘Could have been remembering smoking weed, taking boys back, skiving off school, having a party when the Seatons were away and breaking a vase…’

  ‘What did you think of her place, then? Like the bloody Addams Family mansion.’

  ‘The skulls and stuffed birds? Bit gothic for my liking.’

  ‘Lucy’s family seem a funny lot. The mother, Liz Seaton, bit of a cool one. Good looker, though. And her sister, trying to comfort her with scones and a load of religious chitchat. A bit touched, if you ask me. Understandable, I suppose.’

  ‘You mean her daughter going missing all those years ago? Enough to unhinge anybody.’ Massum thought about his own kids. ‘I can’t imagine anything worse. No wonder they’re worried about Lucy.’

  ‘Can you really not imagine anything worse? What about having a child murdered?’

  ‘Maybe Molly has been. And if she just went off, it’s more of a rejection of the family, isn’t it? But it’s the not knowing. Apparently Molly’s father died not long after, according to Liz Seaton. She seemed to speak for Peggy, sort of protective big sister thing.’

  ‘Liz is younger though. Odd, isn’t it? Two cousins disappear. And would Lucy leave her son behind?’

  ‘Well Guv, lots of women do walk out on their kids. If Lucy was cracking up, she could hardly get peace and quiet wi
th a little lad to look after. And she’d know he was in good hands. For all we know, she’ll be back in a couple of weeks. Maybe she just can’t face telling her parents she doesn’t want to be a doctor after all. It’s a long, expensive training they’ve put her through.’

  ‘Damn it, Hassan, the woman’s twenty-four! Surely it’s up to her what she does.’

  ‘She may be twenty-four, but she could be quite immature in some ways. Only child, spoilt by well-off parents. Years of university…’

  Bennett pushed up his dark hair at the front, so it stood up in spikes. It was a habit he had, and he was aware of it, but only after he’d done it. So he also had a habit of smoothing it down again. Massum could see him out of the corner of his eye. Simultaneously he realised Will hadn’t done it in Erica’s flat. He must have been very tense in there.

  ‘She took nothing. Abduction, then?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Maybe Lucy’s cut loose, wants to show she can make it alone.’

  ‘I don’t trust Erica Bruce. These so-called ‘alternative therapists’…’

  ‘Got the impression you weren’t keen.’

  ‘No, well one of them conned my sister out of a lot of dosh she couldn’t afford to lose. I’m not letting that cloud my judgment, though.’

  ‘Course not, guv.’ Bennett was a good bloke, but he could be very uptight, almost puritanical sometimes. Like all that exercise. A police officer needed to be fit, yes, but not like a professional athlete. Significant, Massum thought, that the guv had mentioned Liz Seaton’s looks, but not Erica’s. Time Will had a steady girlfriend. Most of the WPC’s agreed, but to no avail.

  ‘Bad influence, Liz Seaton said, don’t forget. I can imagine Ms Bruce would be quite a handful as a teenager.’

  ‘I imagine she’d be quite a handful now,’ Massum said innocently. Bennett shot him a look. ‘My wife says,’ continued Massum, ‘if there’s trouble at school, parents blame somebody else’s kid’s influence. They just don’t want to think their child could be less than perfect. Good looker, though, isn’t she, Erica Bruce I mean?’

  ‘Suppose so, if you like small, fit blondes.’

  ‘You know her though, don’t you Guv? If she usually sees you without your clothes?’

  Bennett sighed. ‘I see her on the beach. We both run. End of story.’

  ‘I see.’

  Bennett’s thin face suddenly opened into a smile. He looked a lot younger. Had he ever been a weed-smoking, vase-breaking teenager, Hassan wondered. ‘Yeah, she did put me in my place.’

  ‘Nice little blue-eyed Goldilocks, just what you need, Guv.’ Thank god Bennett had relaxed a bit.

  ‘They’re green.’ He’d said it before he could stop himself.

  ‘What are?’

  ‘Her eyes. Not blue, green.’

  Massum grinned. Bennett was defensive. ‘How can we expect witnesses to describe suspects accurately, if we can’t do it ourselves?’

  ‘Absolutely, Guv.’ His strong brown hands gripped the wheel as firmly as before, but he might as well be punching the air, saying, ‘Gotcha!’

  The car pulled into the car park of the station. The two officers got out and walked to the doors.

  ‘If Lucy was abducted, it’s more likely to be a present boyfriend than a past possibly semi-lesbian girlfriend, let’s face it.’

  ‘But Liz Seaton said Lucy didn’t have a bloke.’

  ‘Yes but judging by her photo, Lucy’s a looker. They’re always at it in those hospital soaps. She probably wouldn’t tell her mum about her sex life.’

  ‘Specially if the boyfriend was a waster; Liz Seaton strikes me as very ambitious for Lucy. And we both know, when women disappear, it often turns out they had some secret boyfriend. We can’t assume it though, unless some evidence turns up. I’ll talk to the boss, see if he wants us to do any more.’

  ‘Do you want me to look up the Molly Westfield case, Guv? Just in case there’s a link?’

  ‘Good idea. Do that, Hassan.’ A feeling of unfinished business was bothering Will.

  In the rotting spot, the skull waits patiently. The pounding sea below sounds in its cranium, a subtle vibration. Only one person knows it is there. It is their secret, hugged in the dark. Very soon it will see light again.

  10

  Wednesday 18th June 2003

  Ivy Lodge

  After swimming, Erica was wielding her nth set of ceramic straighteners, making as much impression on her unruly fringe as the steam from her morning tea.

  ‘So,’ Rina clutched her usual vat of coffee. ‘Wolfman! Who’s a lucky girl?’

  ‘Me, if being fingered by the fuzz is lucky.’ Erica tugged a brush through, brows knit in pain.

  ‘Yer filthy cow!’ Rina couldn’t resist a double entendre. After a few conversations with her, you couldn’t say anything without sounding like a Carry On movie.

  ‘I hate men in uniform,’ Erica said pugnaciously.

  ‘I thought you said he was a detective.’

  ‘Detective! What’s that, but a policeman who wears his uniform on the inside?’

  ‘Deep, very deep! Still, it’s weird. I mean, Lucy disappearing, after her cousin did.’

  ‘I remember her saying, she’d never go off without telling anyone. Doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Veruccas and persistent headaches. This morning’s caseload. Oh, and here’s the arnica for your stiff shoulder.’

  She handed Rina a tiny envelope. ‘And remember, for optimum results, half an hour before or after eating, no drinking, especially coffee!’

  ‘Not sure I’ve got a coffee-free window that big. See you!’ Rina sailed out, gathered up a woman sitting outside her room, and vanished with her into her fragrant domain.

  Erica checked her work address emails. An unknown name, S. Jackman. Subject, Query.’ New patient? She opened it.

  DEAR RICCI,

  She froze, her heart pounding. Ricci was Lucy’s name for her.

  DEAR RICCI,

  Lucy mentioned you just before she went missing. I told Liz Seaton this when she rang, but I didn’t tell her everything Lucy said. She said would I look after Toby, something had come up that changed everything, it was all because of Molly. I assumed she meant some mate of hers at the time, a change of plans for the evening, that’s why she was leaving Toby with me. Then she said something like ‘sooner murder an infant,’ I must have looked startled, because she said, ‘Ricci Bruce would understand.’ I didn’t tell the police all this, it makes Lucy sound bad, and I don’t want to upset the Seatons, but if it means anything to you, please contact me. We could meet up, say, in the park, where I take Toby at weekends.

  Steve Jackman (Toby’s dad)

  Erica scanned the message repeatedly as if to soak up all the meaning it might carry. The Blake quote. The reference to Molly; was there some connection? Was it something about Molly that made Lucy drive back to Stonehead, where something unconnected happened to her? A jealous boyfriend following her, a stray nutjob spotting her in the momentarily deserted lane …

  She’d kind of assumed Lucy had gone off while having some kind of breakdown, so distressed she’d leave her son behind. This assumption she’d struggled to hold on to, despite her memory of Lucy saying she’d never run away. That was a different Lucy, young and sheltered. Now the Blake quote and the Molly reference made Erica feel much more concerned for Lucy’s safety. She was about to reply to the email, had in fact hit reply and was poised over the keys when she paused.

  A jealous boyfriend. Read the papers, watch the news, if something bad happened to a woman, especially a young one, it was usually some guy she’d had a thing with. Who was this Steve Jackman? Toby’s dad, therefore an ex- boyfriend. Maybe this stuff about Blake and Molly was all a blind, for all Erica knew, Lucy’d talked about those subjects to Steve before. Maybe he was behind Lucy’s disappearance, and trying to make a connection with Stonehead to draw attention away from himself. Or a connection with her, Erica, fo
r the same reason.

  Steve Jackman could be possessive of Lucy and their son. Maybe Lucy’d talked of moving away when she qualified, maybe she’d fallen for some other bloke who would become Toby’s stepdad, who knew? Now he had the boy to himself. Erica felt cold to think of a man killing his child’s mother, but it happened. And fair enough, the infant murder quote sounded bad, but why not tell Bennett Lucy’s remark about Molly?

  Erica didn’t particularly trust Will Bennett, but she didn’t think he was a psycho. Not quite, anyway. It would be safer, as an insurance policy, to let the police know about the email first, before she went trotting off to meet up with the unknown Steve in some sex-maniac-ridden park. As if! She had no intention of disappearing.

  She replied, briefly, saying she’d mail again to arrange a meeting, and that she’d told Inspector Bennett about the Blake quote and Lucy’s mention of Molly. She’d seen too many films where the victim was just about to tell when wham! So it went into the past tense. As the email rolled out in hard copy, her disquiet about what lay behind it began to similarly unspool. Better alert Bennett to the possible ramifications, supposing he was not bright or literary enough to work them out for himself.

  She called the number on the card Bennett left. She insisted on seeing Inspector Bennett in person, not wanting to be fobbed off over the phone. She wanted to explain the Blake quote as well as her own concerns. Probably the Proverbs of Hell weren’t covered in basic police training along with use of nightstick and mace spray. She was relieved when it was arranged that Will would come to Ivy Lodge straight away before her appointments.

  Inspector Will Bennett walked in exactly on time. Erica, congenitally early, had been already tensing up in advance that he’d be late, so that it was difficult to welcome him politely. He sat down in the patient’s chair, his long legs trying not to sprawl, his eyes going to the horse’s skull.