“For Christ’s sake, man.”
“Anyway, that were the deal. Ten pounds. No going back now. Any road, it’s already spent. Where is she?”
“Up on the hill. Near the quarry. We went for a walk. I thought…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“Aye, well, I reckon she’ll come down in her own time. I’ll have a word. Make her see sense. You can fix up to take her out later, if you like.”
Her father didn’t reply. He didn’t mention the money again, though money was always tight in their house. It was one of the things her parents fought about. He wound up the window and drove off. She wondered where he went. Not to the union meeting. He wouldn’t have had time to get to Leeds and back. Later, though, when it was dark outside and they were watching the television, he talked about the resolutions they’d discussed at the meeting and the men he’d met. Susan would have been entirely taken in if she hadn’t known he was lying. She wondered how many times he’d lied to them before. It was as if everything was a game and nothing was real anymore.
Heather didn’t go home that night. That was the day she disappeared.
Susan thought she couldn’t have been the only person in the village to know about Heather’s men friends and how Alec organised it all. They must have seen the strangers’ cars, realised there were nights when the gamekeeper had cash to spend in the pub. But nobody spoke. When the police asked questions the villagers talked about shy Eddie Black. Otherwise they kept their mouths firmly shut. Alec’s dog had a mad eye and Alec had a fierce temper, even when he was smiling. They didn’t want to know what had really happened to Heather.
Susan knew. When her father had driven off and Alec had sauntered back to the village, towards the house he shared with Heather’s mum, she’d scrambled down from the wall, pulling away the ivy in her haste. Despite the heat she’d gone to the hill, running all the way. She hadn’t opened the gate into the quarry field that day, she’d climbed it. Then, she’d been young and strong. From halfway up the hill, she’d seen Heather lying flat on her back at the edge of the old workings. At first she’d thought she was asleep, but as she approached, scattering the sheep in her path, she’d realised that the girl’s eyes were open and there were tears on her cheeks.
Heather heard her coming. She must have done. By then Susan was out of breath, panting, and there’d be the sound of her footsteps and the sheep loping off. But she didn’t sit up until the very last minute.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”
“Who were you expecting?” Susan demanded. “Alec? My dad?”
“Your father? He’s pathetic.”
That was what they always called her. It was the jeer that followed her around the playground. You’re pathetic, you are. Shouted in turn by Marilyn, Diane, and Heather. It was the word that made her fight back.
“Not as pathetic as your dad. Moving out and letting Alec take up with your mam. Not as pathetic as you, going off with all those men, just because he tells you.”
She was shocked by her own courage. She’d never stood up to one of them before. Heather was stunned too. She got to her feet but didn’t say anything. Susan thought she might run down the hill and home. But she didn’t. She just stared.
At last Heather spoke. “If you say anything at school, I’ll tell them about your father. I’ll tell them he made me go off with him.”
“I wouldn’t tell them!” Susan moved forward. “I never would.” In her head she had a picture of the two of them, sitting on the pavement outside the council houses, friends brought together by the shared secret. Besides, who would she tell?
Heather must have seen the step towards her as a threat. She backed away, lost her footing, slipped. Susan might have been able to save her. She was strong. And there was a moment when she almost did it. When she almost reached out and grabbed the girl’s arm. If she saved Heather’s life, wouldn’t she have to be her friend? But she decided not to. She wanted to see what it would look like. What Heather would look like rolling down the steep bank until she reached the overhang and fell into nothing. What sound she would make when she hit the stones below. It was as if all the watching had been leading up to this moment. And it was all very satisfactory, very satisfying. There was the expression of panic when Heather scrabbled to save herself and realised it was useless, the moment of flight, the dull thud. And then her undignified resting place amongst the rubble of quarry waste, her skirt around her waist, her legs spread out. Susan would have liked to leave her there for everyone to see.
But that wouldn’t do. Someone might have seen Susan get over the gate into the field. Then there’d be questions she didn’t want to answer. And Susan wanted to get closer to the body. She was curious now to see what it looked like. She peered down over the lip of the cliff to the face of the quarry where the stone had been hacked away. It was a difficult climb, but not impossible for her, not so very different from scrambling down from the churchyard wall. Only in scale. At the bottom she took a minute to catch her breath. She stood over Heather, who didn’t really look like Heather at all now. Then she rolled her close into the cliff face and piled her body with the loose rocks which lined the quarry bottom. That was more exhausting than the climb back. When she reached the top the sun was very low. She took one last look down the cliff. Because of the angle it was hard to see where Heather was lying and even if you could see the place it would look as if there’d been a small rock fall.
When she got in her mother told her off for being so filthy. When are you going to start acting like a girl? Her father talked about the union meeting. They watched television. There was shepherd’s pie for tea.
The policeman came into school to ask his questions and later she wished she’d told him what had happened. She could have explained that it was an accident. She could have said she’d panicked. They’d have had to accept that. They’d have given her help. But perhaps by then it was already too late. The trouble was, she’d enjoyed it. The moment when Heather fell had been so exciting. It had the thrill and the power of running across the field on Sports Day, of crossing the line first. It had caused sparks in her brain. She’d wanted to recreate that buzzing sensation. She’d thought of nothing else. That was why she’d killed Eddie’s birds. But birds aren’t like people. It wasn’t the same.
Tom wasn’t much more fit than she was and it took them longer than she’d expected to walk up the hill to the disused quarry. Since her time they’d put up a fence and a couple of notices saying it was unsafe. It wasn’t as deep as she’d remembered.
“That’s where she is,” she said. “Under that pile of rubble at the bottom of the cliff. That’s where you’ll find Heather Mather.”
“So,” he said. “The scene of your first crime.”
“Oh no.” She was offended. “Heather was an accident. Not like the others.”
She liked Tom. He was her named officer at the prison. She’d refused to speak to the detectives and the psychiatrists who’d tried to persuade her to tell them where Heather Mather was. Her first victim, as they called her. The first of four before she was caught. All pretty girls who simpered and pouted and made up to older men.
Tom spoke into his radio and she could already see the police officers who’d been waiting in the van coming through the gate. She let him take her arm and steer her down the hill. He’d be ready for his dinner.
Blog Bytes
by Ed Gorman
Copyright © 2007 Ed Gorman
From the cozy to the hardboiled:
The following Agatha Christie site is one of the best organized and laid out I’ve seen. Christie’s output was so prodigious it requires skill to present it in a simple coherent fashion. The types of mysteries and suspense novels she chose to write, her various triumphs as a playwright, her characters, her familiar themes — it’s all here. Her history and her output are presented with such vitality that you think Dame Agatha may still be with us — hiding behind the curtain and sneaking a peek at us now and then. This site d
emonstrates the kind of important and impressive scholarship one can do on the Internet. www.twbooks.co.uk/ authors/achristie.html
The Gumshoe Site, written and edited by Jiro Kimura, is filled with current news about the field in virtually every aspect, from awards to conventions to notable obituaries. Jiro also writes a column called “What’s Cool” that points us to books and stories we might otherwise miss. Great information and a fun tour through the mystery world. www.nsknet.or.jp/~jkimura
Black Mask Magazine. “The namesake of this site, Black Mask Magazine is the pulp magazine that launched a thousand pulp-fiction dreams. This site will also incorporate Dime Detective, Dime Mystery, Strange Detective Mysteries, Terror Tales, Horror Stories, Adventure, and Famous Fantastic Mysteries, but great as they all were, Black Mask Magazine still reigns supeme, holding a unique place in our hearts and in American popular culture.” Publisher-editor Keith Alan Deutsch has created a site not just for noir lovers but also for fans of pulp fiction in general. Interviews with the men and women who wrote for the pulps, stories from the era itself, and Deutch’s enthusiastic promotion of Black Mask make this essential reading for pulp fans. www.black maskmagazine.com/blackmask.html
Ed Gorman’s own blogs appear on www.mysteryfile.com.
Brothers
by Ed Gorman
Copyright © 2007 by Ed Gorman
Ed Gorman is not only one of the mystery field’s foremost authors, he’s also one of its premier critics and publishers. Co-founder of Mystery Scene magazine and for many years its editor and publisher, he’s been involved with many other publishing ventures, including Five Star Press. Currently he’s contributing a new column, Blog Bytes, to EQMM. A new novel in his Sam McCain series, Fools Rush In, has just been released (Pegasus Books).
1.
When I rolled into the precinct just before eleven that humid August night, I saw my brother Michael walking out the west door.
I’d been able to get him on the force seven years ago, despite a still-ongoing hiring freeze, and he was generally doing well. It didn’t hurt that at the time I’d just received an award for stopping a man who’d just killed three people in a convenience store. I’d chased him in my car, warning him in the dark alley to stop running. He had turned around and put three bullets in my windshield. I ran him over and killed him.
I’d asked the commander a few times before about hiring Michael. He knew about Michael’s past and problems. He’d always said, “Let me think about it.”
Since joining the department, Michael had become a dutiful cop. On other matters, which he insisted weren’t my business, he wasn’t doing well at all.
He worked the same shift I did but he was already in civvies: a crisp white short-sleeved shirt, dark slacks, and a brisk, slightly wood-scented cologne.
He must have been lost in his own thoughts, because he didn’t see me until I almost walked into him.
“Hey,” he said, looking up. “Didn’t see you.”
“I wanted to apologize for the other night.”
He grinned the grin that had won him a hundred hearts. My little brother got the family’s blond good looks. I got the family’s work ethic. Or, as our mother always put it, “Little Mike got the looks, but Chet got the maturity.” In her maternal way, she tried to pretend that both attributes were equal. Maturity, in case you hadn’t noticed, has yet to get even one female into a bed.
He clapped me on the arm. “Hell, Chet, we’re brothers. You were just looking out for me the way you have since Mom died.”
When I was sixteen and Michael was twelve, Mom drowned in the YMCA pool after suffering a stroke. Freak accident. The news reports called it that, the Y called it that, the coroner called it that, the priest at the burial site called it that, everybody at the wake called it that. Even seventeen years later I wince when I hear that term.
Dad took over. Or tried. But he’d always been a better cop than a father. It was from his side of the family that the blond good looks came. For twenty-one years of marriage, Mom had been able to pretend that all the nights Dad spent carousing with other cops were spent bowling and playing nickel-dime poker. The only time I’d ever heard them argue about those nights was when a drunk lady called at two A.M. and demanded to talk to my dad.
Other cops, male and female, walked around us now, good-nights and goodbyes on the air thick as the fireflies.
“I’m not mad, Chet. I just want to run my own life. You don’t need to play Dad anymore.”
And I had been his dad all the way through high school. Made sure he got a B average, made sure he wasn’t into drugs or alcohol, made sure he wasn’t hanging around with the wrong boys, made sure he honored the curfew hours I set for him.
Dad spent more and more time away from the house. He got himself what he called a “woman friend” and half-ass moved in with her. One night when he was home and puke-drunk, I heard him sobbing — literally, sobbing — in the bedroom he’d shared with Mom all those years. I went in and dragged him to the bathroom and got him cleaned up and then ripped the covers with the vomit on them off and got him settled in. He grabbed my hand and gripped it hard, the way he used to. He didn’t seem to realize that these days my grip was a lot harder than his. Before he passed out, he said: “You gotta watch Michael. He’s gonna turn out just like me. And I was such a shitty husband to your poor mother, Chet.” He started sobbing again. He wouldn’t let go of my hand. “I’m goin’ to hell, Chet, the way I treated that woman, always sneakin’ off for some strange broad. You got to know that I loved her. She was the only woman I ever truly loved. Those bitches I ran around with didn’t mean nothing to me. They really didn’t.”
Michael said, “It’s just this little thing I’m having on the side, is all. It’ll wear itself out.”
“That’s what you said four months ago.”
His face hardened. His taint was to be amiable, kid you away from serious talk. But since that hadn’t worked, he coasted for a while on irritation that would soon become real anger if he wasn’t careful. “Look, I admit I screwed up my life back there when I first left home. I gambled, I did some drugs, I married the wrong woman, I couldn’t hold a job — and I let you take over my life the same way you did when I was a kid. And that really helped, Chet. And I’m really grateful for it. I mean, how could I not be? You found my second wife for me, you got me on the force, and you managed to find a bank that would give me a mortgage even with my credit rating.” He put both of his hands on my shoulders. He was three inches taller than I was. “I owe you everything, Chet. Everything. But this time—” He shook his head. Then he shot me the Michael grin again. “This time it isn’t any of your business. All right? I know what I’m doing. I’m not going to hurt Laura or the kids. That I promise. But I’m in this thing and I just have to play it out is all.” His hands shook my shoulders with mock fondness — mock because he was sick of me trying to drag him away from the affair he was having. The affair that had put him right back into gambling, drinking too much, even getting into a few fights. Fights can get you kicked off the force.
He took his hands down. “So can we leave it like that, Chet? Please? I’ll handle it, everything’ll be cool, and we’ll get together at Jen’s birthday party a couple weeks from now and everything’ll be fine. All right?”
He walked away before I could say anything, got in his car, and drove off. I hadn’t known until that moment that he’d bought himself a new Pontiac GTO. I didn’t know another uniformed officer who could afford a new GTO and have any money left over for the wife and kids.
The call came a few months later. Laura, Michael’s wife.
“I’m sure you’re watching the football game,” she said. I’d met her years ago at a grade school. I had been there to tell the kids about being a policeman. Laura was a slender, dark-haired young woman with a very pretty face spoiled only by a quick, nervous smile that revealed the stress she always seemed to feel. This was at the time when Michael had neared the height of his problems — no job, int
o some gamblers for several thousand dollars, and drinking way more than he should have been. Laura herself was just getting through a divorce, a husband who’d run around on her. Neither of them wanted to meet the other, but I stage-mothered the relationship until it found its own way.
“Actually, no. Jen’s volunteering at the hospital tonight, so I’m here with the kids. I just cattle-prodded them into bed, in fact.”
A strained laugh. “They’re just like ours. They hate going to bed.” Then: “Could we talk a little, Chet?”
“Sure. That’s what brothers-in-law are for.”
So this was to be the night. I knew that it would happen and that when it did a whole lot of things would change. I thought of what Dad had told me the night he’d drunkenly admitted he’d been such a terrible husband: that I was to keep Michael from repeating his mistakes. I wondered how much Laura knew. I was about to find out.
“I don’t think Michael loves me anymore.”
“Oh, come on. You know better than that.”
“He used to come straight home after work. He’d only hang out at that cop bar once a week. But now — three or four nights a week he doesn’t get home until three in the morning. And he hasn’t had much to drink. That’s what makes me suspicious.”
“I guess I’m not following you there.”
“Well, he always tells me he’s just at the bar with the boys. Well, first of all, the bar closes at two, and it’s only about a mile away. It sure doesn’t take him that long to drive home. But even worse than that — he’s never drunk.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it, that he’s cut back on his drinking?” I tried to put a smile into it.
“But I know him well enough to know that if he was at that bar, he’d be drunk when he came home.” Cop wives always say “that bar” when referring to the Golden Chalice. They hate it because they know all about the cop groupies who hang out there.
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007 Page 2