The Backs (2013)

by Bruce, Alison

  The dialogue passed back to Andrew. ‘And if a student needs to study, we’ll rent them a room. If they decide to meet up with someone there, that’s their choice.’

  And finally back to Karen. She tilted her head slightly and studied Kincaide for a moment. She only slid her attention back to Marks as she began speaking. ‘You know what, I rarely visit the site, but I’d be disappointed to know that supposedly decent people are abusing their positions.’

  Kincaide’s thoughts fell back seven years again. In the same situation, he’d behave differently now. No one would ever gain that kind of hold over him again. Even now, Karen Dalton was certain that she had leverage over him. And, in truth, perhaps she did.

  Marks had been asking more questions, but Kincaide only tuned in at the end as he realized he himself was now being spoken to: ‘. . . find out whether Clark has that list ready, would you?’

  Kincaide hoped Clark would be at the furthest end of the building, with at least two shots of coffee therefore possible between being given the list and passing it back to Marks. Depressingly, DC Clark was standing outside, leaning with one shoulder against the wall. He held out a single page.

  ‘Is that it?’ Kincaide asked.

  Clark looked surprised. ‘They’re managing twenty-two properties, and they own four of them. That’s plenty for most of us, Mike.’

  ‘I meant, is that the only list he’s after?’

  ‘Oh yeah, far as I know.’

  Kincaide ran his eyes down it. One address jumped out at him. It was the first time he’d felt like smiling since before Marks had hauled him down here. He pulled a pen from his pocket and marked it, writing his note in carefully formed letters so there would be no chance that Marks wouldn’t be able to decipher it.

  He sat back down alongside his boss, and passed the sheet of paper across. From the corner of his eyes he saw the boss’s hand give the page an involuntary squeeze, and Marks sit a little taller in his chair.

  ‘You have a property in City Road?’

  ‘It’s being renovated,’ the man said.

  ‘It’s empty,’ she added.

  ‘Apart from Greg Jackson?’ Marks suggested.

  ‘Yes, well, I was about to say that,’ Drew replied.

  Karen still smiled, but her posture had turned rigid and Kincaide suspected she was gritting her teeth behind those compressed lips. Marks had struck a nerve.

  Marks picked up the phone, deliberately making the call in front of the Daltons, and watching them carefully throughout. ‘Young? Last thing for tonight, arrange for Jackson to come in for questioning. Pull him in a.s.a.p. and we’ll talk to him first thing.’

  And after that, the pair avoided answering any further questions. The rest were rebuffed with persistent responses of ‘Don’t know’ and ‘No comment’.

  ‘Were you aware that Paul Marshall met a woman through your website?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Were you an acquaintance of Mr Marshall?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Do you know any reason for his murder?’

  ‘No comment.’

  In the end they were bailed, but stopped from visiting their offices until a thorough search had been completed. Over three hours had passed by then, during which time the Daltons’ confidence barely seemed to falter.

  Kincaide then showed them to the exit. He held open the front door and stood outside, leaving just enough space for them to go through one at a time. They would not be making an easy target of him that way. Neither was Karen Dalton the only one who could smile on demand. Kincaide’s smile was discreet and cold. ‘Don’t try anything,’ he warned her.

  ‘Come on,’ Drew Dalton murmured as he passed, ‘don’t we all want the same thing?’

  ‘To be left alone.’ She answered for her husband, accompanying her words with another meaningful stare at Kincaide. Then she slid an arm through her husband’s as they walked away from the police station.

  Marks had gone back to his office, and Kincaide took a slow walk up the stairs, trying to rerun the sections of the conversation when he’d felt most at risk. Marks didn’t even look up when Kincaide arrived; that had to be a good sign. They finished up shortly afterwards, Marks debating the case, Kincaide quietly concurring with each subsequent thought put forward. Finally they headed towards the exit, side by side this time. Kincaide was just desperate to reach home and think things through.

  ‘So have you told anyone else, on the quiet?’ Marks asked suddenly.

  The question threw him, and Kincaide scratched around for an answer, feeling like he had ‘caught-out’ written all over his face. ‘Told anyone what?’ he muttered anxiously.

  Marks fished in his pocket for his keys. ‘Your promotion, of course, Michael.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry, I was still busy thinking about the case. Well, there have been a couple of cracks about me seeming unusually upbeat. People know I did the exam months ago, and I’m surprised no one guessed, but they didn’t. And I haven’t told anyone – no one at all.’

  ‘Except Jan?’

  ‘Not even Jan’. He was sure his wife would have merely found a way to sour it. So he had thought he’d enjoy it while he could, and let her know once his own excitement had abated. Now he had to tread carefully, because he felt overshadowed by the thought that it could all unravel. He couldn’t bear to tell her, then have it totally thrown back in his face if he was knocked back down to DC – or something worse.

  ‘I’ll announce it at the next appropriate meeting,’ Marks said.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘And, talking of genuine coincidence, Becca Osborne’s murder was one of the first you worked as a DC, wasn’t it? Has it occurred to you that this will be just about your last case as DC? And, if it goes on long enough, one of your first as DS. Funny thing, eh?’

  An hour later and Kincaide was still considering those words. Your last case as DC. That could go either way. He really, really needed it to go his way.

  FORTY-ONE

  Goodhew was at home and in his grandfather’s former library. The end wall had been re-emulsioned back to its original white. It had needed four coats, with evidence of the marker pen he’d previously used to write on the wall leeching back through, each time he went over it. Of course there was a special product for ‘preparing walls stained by marker pen’ which he discovered only after coat three. He’d had no more plans to draw on the walls again, feeling that he’d be able to accomplish just as much by writing on sheets of flip-chart paper and then spreading them out on the floor.

  Those sheets lay there now, but it didn’t seem the same. No matter where he stood, some pages assumed far more prominence than others. He climbed on a chair but he couldn’t recreate the same perspective as viewing the wall from the other end of the room.

  His phone rang, and Bryn’s mobile number flashed up on the screen.

  ‘What’s the deal with standing on the chair, then?’

  Goodhew turned to find himself looking down on a roof and driver’s side view of Bryn’s turquoise and white Zodiac. ‘Are you spying on me, or what?’

  ‘No, I’m keeping my eyes open in case I ever catch you at home.’

  ‘Same thing. What if I’m deliberately avoiding you?’

  ‘No chance.’ Bryn locked up the car and crossed over. ‘Put that phone down and let me in, then.’

  When Goodhew opened the front door, he found Bryn dressed in what looked like a Second World War flying jacket. ‘My dad used to have one of those,’ he remarked.

  ‘I love it. It means I’ll be able to drive in winter with the windows open.’

  ‘It’s August at the moment.’

  ‘Yes, I’m roasting, but I wanted you to see it before I took it off.’ He turned round. An air-brushed picture of Ava Gardner in a leopard swimsuit stretched across his back.

  ‘OK, it’s impressive. Is that instead of the tattoo?’

  Bryn followed Goodhew up towards the former library. ‘No, I didn�
�t use the calendar hula girl. Instead, I went for one of the vintage pictures you have. And as the tattoo’s vintage, I thought the jacket should be too.’

  ‘You really had it done?’ Goodhew had no idea which picture Bryn was referring to, but he had no doubt he’d be seeing the inked-on copy at any second.

  ‘It’s incredible, and it took Fabio four hours. I’ll show you in a minute. It took Maya just as long to do the jacket.’

  ‘Maya? This is the one with the graveyard tattoo?’

  ‘Yeah, Maya,’ he grinned. ‘I am so out of my depth . . . Oh, well.’ He noticed all the papers lying on the floor. ‘What’s this?’

  Goodhew steered him towards the settee. ‘You can’t look. It’s all confidential.’ He gathered the sheets and sat down next to Bryn. ‘It’s like one of those impossible pictures where the staircase goes upwards at every turn.’

  ‘They don’t work in real life, only on paper.’

  ‘I do know that, thanks, Bryn.’

  ‘No, I mean the illusion works because it’s flat. You can stare at it for ages and it’s impossible to see which bit is the trick. But if you could touch it, you’d know straight away.’

  ‘That’s deep.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Either that or you were stating the obvious. I’m actually too tired right now to know. Are you going to show me this tattoo, then?’

  ‘When you offer me a drink.’

  ‘I’ll go and get something in a minute,’ Gary promised, but neither of them moved. They both stared at the blank wall in front of them. Gary’s eyelids began to droop. Bryn gave his arm a light nudge, ‘D’you want me to leave you to it?’

  Goodhew didn’t open his eyes, but shook his head. ‘Can you wake me in an hour?’

  Bryn checked his watch. ‘OK, and then I’ll get the car home.’

  However elusive Goodhew found sleep, there were moments when it also knocked him sideways and gave him little choice but to succumb. The impossible staircase had done it. The one he imagined ran along each side of a square parapet. He shut his eyes and ascended at each corner.

  Then, in his sleep, he’d got down on his hands and knees, closed his eyes and felt the risers, making sure each one climbed to meet the tread above. He counted back and thought he’d completed seven right-angled turns without rejoining the start. Then, when he’d proved the illusion one way, he traced the steps back down.

  Goodhew opened his eyes, now awake enough to think.

  Maybe some theorist who could think beyond his own abilities would say differently, but the only way it made sense to him was for the stairs to follow a long square spiral. The illusion was the appearance of the stairs ever returning to the same point. How could they?

  You can’t go back.

  The words arose from deep in his memory. He thought maybe his father had said them when his mother had left. Goodhew ran his fingers through his hair, untidying it further, and pushed away thoughts of anything but waking up.

  He checked his watch and realized that he’d been asleep now for four hours.

  Bryn slouched at a crazy angle across the settee, quietly snoring. Goodhew climbed to his feet and wandered upstairs to the kitchen in his flat. He made two mugs of coffee and watched the element in the toaster glowing as the bread turned brown. He gave a start when the slices popped out, realizing he wasn’t entirely sure where his thoughts had just taken him – but he’d been somewhere.

  He put Bryn’s coffee and toast on the side table at his end of the sofa, but then decided against waking him. Instead he stood in front of the blank wall, pen poised, waiting for the first words to come. For no real reason he reached out and wrote ‘LESLEY BOUGH’ in fat black marker-pen strokes. Then he drew. He drew names, arrows, circles, dates and places – anything that reached the pen. Sometimes his hands moved almost without conscious direction. He included everything he could remember writing down on the sheets of flip-chart paper, but now, on the solid wall space, they found their proper place.

  Partway through, he stopped and drank Bryn’s cold coffee. From across the room he could now detect the first signs of order. It didn’t look at all like a staircase – no risers or treads. There was information missing, but in his mind’s eye its shape was forming. There were two strands in there, twisting and inseparable, like a double helix of facts.

  He returned to the wall, finally checking against the flip-chart sheets to ensure nothing had been missed out, and satisfied that now he’d found one solid place to start.

  He checked his watch: it was almost 6 a.m. and he remembered Bryn’s Zodiac outside. He checked it from the window, relieved to see that the car, although damp from morning dew, remained in one piece. He wouldn’t want to be the one to tell his friend if anything bad had happened to it. He looked back at Bryn whose hanging-out-the-window arm was draped over one side of the settee, lying at an unnatural angle, so that the very bottom of his new tattoo protruded from the shirtsleeve. Goodhew leant closer and tilted one arm over so that he could see the full image. His brow puckered at first, then his eyes widened and gradually his expression changed. Bryn had been right: as tattoos went, it was stunning.

  He grinned to himself, then grabbed a clean sheet of paper and wrote Bryn a note, leaving it under the sleeping man’s car keys. He then slipped out of the front door and headed across to Park-side, phoning Bryn as he went.

  Bryn’s mobile buzzed in his jeans pocket and, when he finally woke enough to retrieve it, he discovered one arm too numb to even move. The display announced ‘Gary’.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I overslept.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Just after six. Your car’s fine. Help yourself to breakfast. Can we catch up for a proper drink in a few days?’

  ‘Sure, Gary. I’m knackered, can I crash here a bit longer?’

  ‘No worries. Great tattoo, by the way.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Got to go, but there’s a note by your keys. See you later.’

  Bryn dozed again, then made his own toast and coffee before he remembered the note. He slid it out from under the keys, even though they weren’t actually obscuring the words. ‘Have a look at the leather-bound photo album. It’s in the bookcase where you found the hula girl.’

  He located it immediately, about three inches thick with a sand-coloured cover and a palm tree painted on the spine. The first page showed a beach and a pink hotel behind it. Then Gary’s grandparents’ wedding . . . Then the honeymoon . . . Then . . . oh, fuck.

  I’ve got a tattoo of Gary’s grandmother.

  FORTY-TWO

  When Goodhew had left home, the air had been fresher than on previous mornings, and the short path between his front steps and the pavement glistened. Bryn’s Zodiac wasn’t the only car that sparkled in the pale sunshine and, between them, they cast a row of dank shadows on to the tarmac. Autumn wouldn’t be long now, and he didn’t feel ready for it.

  But, even as he crossed the very centre of Parker’s Piece, he noticed that the sheen of dew on the grass had begun to dry. The day would be at a perfect temperature by ten but unbearable by eleven, and he didn’t want that either. No doubt there’d come a point in winter when he’d be wishing for this moment to return, but right now he felt unusually discontented. Unsettled even.

  After phoning Bryn, he tried to contact Jane Osborne three times, and felt rising irritation when she failed to pick up. Arriving at the station, he went straight to his desk, throwing his jacket across one end of it and dropping into his chair before powering up his PC. His home screen appeared just as Gully entered the room.

  ‘You’ve just stormed straight past me, Gary. What’s up?’

  Goodhew held up his hands in a don’t-panic gesture. ‘I’m sorry. Maybe I was distracted. I’ve tried phoning Jane Osborne three times this morning: the first two times it rang out, then the third time it went straight to voicemail. She’s avoiding me.’

  ‘Maybe you woke her up and she finally
switched it off.’

  ‘She would have seen my number.’

  ‘You called her when, six a.m.? If that was me, I’d have gone for the off switch without even opening my eyes.’

  Perhaps Gully had a point. ‘I’ll give her half an hour and try again.’ He then continued, speaking to himself as much as to Gully. ‘I need her to get hold of her ex-boyfriend, in any case. And I need to email Marks.’

  ‘He’s been in already.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He wanted Jackson in for questioning last night, but he wasn’t home. There’s still no sign of him this morning and, because it’s Jackson, Marks is getting agitated.’

  Goodhew reached for the spare chair and rolled it towards her. ‘Why does he want to question Jackson now?’

  She pushed the chair back to him. ‘It’s not that complicated . . . just strange. It turns out he works for Karen and Andrew Dalton.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you smiling?’

  He opened up the gallery on his phone, then passed it to Gully. ‘I photographed my wall, look.’

  ‘I can’t believe you wrote over it again, Gary.’ She picked on the centre of the shot and enlarged it. ‘Is this what you were about to email Marks?’

  ‘Yes, but now I’ll print it instead, and add a line connecting Jackson to the Daltons.’

  ‘It looks like a mess of spaghetti to me.’ She offered the phone back to him but, instead of taking it, he pointed to the screen.

  ‘Look, two main strands here: the Osborne family and Marshall’s murder, running on a timeline. The lines crossing them are the connections, and somewhere back here . . .’

  ‘. . . Is the mystery single starting point. Yes, I get that.’ Gully looked unimpressed. ‘I’m not thick, Gary, but I still don’t understand what that proves.’

  ‘Unless all these links are just coincidence – which is highly unlikely – there has to be a logical way of fitting them together. So therefore they’re in a sequence apart from merely chronological, and they’ve triggered each other.’