Four British Mysteries

by Thomas Brown

  As she wrapped the neat column in cling-film to keep it fresh for Mr Flynn’s lunch when he got back from the pub, she wondered what that intense idealist would make of her now. Here in the middle of bloody nowhere, on pants pay, while her precious oils, acrylics and canvases had lain untouched for over a month. Having interviewed a girl from a nearby home for adults with learning difficulties, plus twelve other candidates, he’d offered her the job. She’d then naively flung her arms around his neck.

  That had been a February morning of blue sky and scudding clouds – the kind no artist would get away with. And now look. Beyond the kitchen’s two rattling sash windows, a gale rocked the budding crowns of oak and the dead chestnuts into a mad dance. If this storm kept on into the night, as they often did, the longest branches would reach over to knock against her wall. Bang, bang... Worse was when Mrs Davies – or ‘Gwenno’ as Mr Flynn more familiarly called her – hovered around like a stick insect, appearing from some shady corner, stroking the same old riding crop she always carried that tapered like a rodent’s tail. Why Helen’s preferred name for her was The Rat.

  Another problem was the weather. Quite different from near the sea where she could take her sketching easel outside and make a preparatory watercolour, knowing that for the finished work, the light, the colours would remain unchanged. But in her heart she knew that while she continued here at the gloomy rabbit warren called Heron House, any creativity was hypothetical. Her materials would stay unused; her ideas unexplored. If she had to explain why, she would say because of a growing feeling of entrapment. Of not fitting in.

  All at once, came the quiver of air behind her, and the sense that Mrs Davies’ small, slate-coloured eyes were passing down her body from her hastily-gathered pony tail to her scuffed trainers.

  “Mr Flynn’s on his way,” she announced, pointing her riding crop towards the door. “And the worse for wear again, by the looks of it. God help us is all I can say.”

  How she loved delivering bad news, thought Helen, not bothering to turn round. Especially the latest divorce or miscarriage. Even the vicar’s recent speeding fine, or another’s cancer. She was also first to deliver the morning post to Mr Flynn, and had probably steamed open what might be of interest. Once or twice, Helen’s own mam had sent cards that had mysteriously gone astray, but this busy little woman had sworn blind she’d never seen them. Helen ignored her by transferring the sandwiches to a plate and adding a blue-iced cup cake – one of a batch she’d made yesterday.

  “He’ll be wanting something hot, not a picnic. And as for these writing courses he’s starting...”

  Helen blinked. Turned to face her. “What writing courses?”

  She wished the woman wouldn’t smile.

  “Hasn’t Mr Flynn told you? There’s one on over Easter. Got you down here as cordon bleu trained.” From her overall pocket, Gwenno’s ringless left hand pulled out a crumpled flier, showing Heron House magically lit by rare sunlight; barely recognisable, in fact. The cleaner’s tone soured. “Plenty of girls I know down the village can do a tidy roast. I’ve only to bend Mr Flynn’s ear.”

  Cow.

  “Your reputation may not matter much to you, Miss Jenkins,” Gwenno went on, “but me and Mr Davies have worked hard here to preserve ours.” She disappeared into the scullery, leaving Helen feeling her neck begin to burn; wondering why on earth Mr Flynn hadn’t mentioned anything to her about writing courses.

  “There must be some mistake,” she told herself, needing to get to him before Gwenno did. What with a dodgy septic tank, a disused swimming pool thick with silt and the draughts regularly putting out fires in the main reception rooms.

  And then she recalled him speaking to a guy called Jason on the phone yesterday evening, while she’d been telling him about a length of down pipe blown adrift from the wall by her bedroom window. He’d not been the least bit bothered about that. Oh, no. It was Jason who’d made the big impression.

  Having slammed the kitchen door behind her to create a satisfyingly loud bang, Helen cut across the big square hall-cum-reception room hung with old photographs of mid-Wales and its long-gone farming communities. She opened the front door on to the wind, that massive, lumpy hill the other side of the valley, and there, as The Rat had predicted, was her tall, slightly stooped employer spitting on his hands to slick down his wavy, greying hair. Using the iron boot-remover in the shape of a heron’s head, he prised off his filthy Wellingtons while she bent down to pick up last year’s dead leaves that had blown in. Big, soggy and clogged with dirt.

  Helen was about to challenge him about Easter, but missed her chance.

  “Worse than fuckin’ Crosskelly, this,” he muttered, carrying the boots into the tiled cloakroom, leaving her marooned in the lingering smell not of the usual whisky, but of outdoors. She saw how the heels of his mismatched socks were worn into holes. Normally, she’d have offered to fetch him new ones, but not now. “And to cap it all,” he went on, “I’ve just seen some poor sheepdog mashed up below Golwg y Mwyn. Those forestry lorries drive too damn fast. One day, it’ll be a kiddie.”

  Torn between sorrow for that needless carnage and bubbling resentment towards the man who now emerged pulling his old golfing jumper over his head, Helen merely said, “lunch is ready, Mr Flynn. The usual, I’m afraid.”

  “Your usual is what I like best. And for God’s sake, stop calling me Mr Flynn. It’s been a month now.”

  Helen took a deep breath. It was now or never. “Gwenno said you were starting some writers’ courses here, with the first one happening over Easter? Is this true?”

  “It is.”

  “How will I cope, then? It can’t be sandwiches morning, noon and night, surely?” She made sure the crone wasn’t around and lowered her voice. “She never stops pointing out my limitations.”

  Monty Flynn pulled his shirt’s frayed cuffs below his jumper’s sleeves, avoiding eye contact as she stuck to her guns. “I think I’ve a right to know if what she said is correct.”

  “Indeed, you have.”

  “And yesterday you spoke to someone called Jason. Is he coming here?”

  “Indeed, he is.”

  “How many others?”

  “Three so far. Though I’ve not yet said a word to anyone locally, in case any punters pull out and it all falls flat. I have my pride.”

  “And I have mine, Mr Flynn. You know that sardines on toast and boiled eggs are about my limit, yet you’ve put ‘cordon bleu cooking’ on your flier. Gwenno showed me. And said I could lose my job if I didn’t come up to scratch.”

  He glanced towards the kitchen. “I’ll have to have serious words. I’ll also pop into Llandovery this afternoon and get you an easy-to-follow cookbook. Need to collect my sleeping pills anyway. How about that?”

  But another lie had come to mind. “You also told this Jason guy that ‘Helen says you should get yourself over here.’ In fact, I’d said no such thing.”

  He looked at her as though deciding if truth was a better investment.

  It was.

  “Sorry. But I’ve a lot on my mind at the moment. Not least that I need to make a go of these creative courses if... if I’m to hang on to Heron House.”

  “You mean the mortgage?”

  “My dear Ms Leith. That’s the least of it.”

  ***

  Ms Leith...

  She’d not laughed. Instead, found a paper napkin used only once before, folded and curved it into an empty wine glass. She then unwrapped the cling-film, screwed it up into a tight, oily ball and threw it into a specially adapted milk churn that served as a waste bin.

  She was still cross. Mr Flynn was as slippery as an eel. Probably had been since the day he was born, but that last remark of his still played on her mind. Was this perhaps why he’d not got rid of the Davies pair despite their incompetence? She’d never dared ask and now wasn’t the time either. These writers would be paying good money. More than she could afford, even if she saved for a whole year. They’d have h
igh hopes, just like she once had. They deserved a good deal. How would she like it if the boot was on the other foot?

  And then, as she spotted The Rat creeping around inside the understairs cupboard, tried to recall meals her mam had put on the table before her da had left. Before she’d lost heart. Helen began jotting them down in the margin of last week’s Western Mail. Cawl with mutton and pearl barley. Steak and kidney pie with ale and home-made puff pastry. Pork and prune casserole plus jacket spuds. She stopped writing. So far so good, but these scribes would expect at least a choice of puddings, when all she could think of was ice cream with a wafer stuck in it.

  Damn.

  Mr Flynn entered the kitchen and pulled out his usual chair at the head of the old oak table that had once belonged to some chapel or other. He seemed his usual, casual self. “Perfect,” he said, upon seeing her architectural pile of bread and corned beef. Plus the cake. “As a reward, you’re quite welcome to join my workshops, free, gratis and for nothing. Who knows, if you come up with a good, commercial story, we might be able to open doors. Get you in the best seller lists. What with your striking Celtic looks.”

  He took a bite of the topmost sandwich. A huge bite, in fact.

  “You mean my red hair and freckles?”

  “Very fetching indeed. I can see your cover photo already.”

  Helen excused herself. He was too full of the blarney. Perhaps why she’d accepted his job offer. But as for writing from imagination, she’d never been good at making things up. No, she thought, hefting her old, waxed coat over her shoulders. Her ideas came from what was there. Visible and real. Why she was going to see the one known as Aunty Betsan who lived in a small bungalow beneath the Nantymwyn lead mine’s redundant workings. She couldn’t rely upon Mr Flynn to deliver that promised cook book, so the elderly woman, well-known for her traditional Welsh cooking, was sure to help her out.

  ***

  Helen glanced back at Heron House through the veil of rain, but didn’t let its backdrop of rocking trees distract her from checking each of the windows in turn, including the three dormers nestling deep in the rampant ivy. And sure enough, there she was. The Rat and her cap of fine white hair, which when viewed from behind, revealed a pinkly glowing skull.

  Two bullet-like eyes seemed to fix on her heart, to follow her out of the drive, along the rutted, muddy lane that soon gave way to spongy, mossy grass. Upwards then, towards Pen Cerrigmwyn with the wind on her back, Helen wondered how come she was so important to the woman, and when would Mr Flynn sort her out. She wondered too how long it would be before karting and 4X4 rallies would carve up this land the way both coal and lead mines once had. There’d been enough of that wanton vandalism near Aberystwyth. She stopped to survey an old ore hopper’s rusted skeleton and other sad remains abandoned some seventy years before. Composing a possible painting in her mind.

  Suddenly, in this wild, sullen world of the red kite and other airborne predators. She spotted something odd, out of place, just beneath the tallest spoil heap. Was it some large dog or wild creature escaped from the forestry? Hard to tell with rain now lashing her face. And then, using both hands as blinkers, she could see that whatever it was, had straightened up and now stood still as a post. But why there of all places? In such foul unforgiving weather?

  4.

  Friday 3rd April 2009 – 6.30 a.m.

  Jason’s bribe to his brother hadn’t worked, so here he was, upstairs in the borrowed bedroom, getting ready to leave. He folded the last of his boxer shorts and added them to his dad’s ancient suitcase. Alongside this, on his now stripped single bed, lay leftovers of a Woolworth life he never wanted to see again; takeover or no takeover. Four ballpoint pens, a red file crammed with hassling memos from his store manager, and a matching cap that had made him look like the village idiot. So there’d been an ex-employee in Dorchester who’d reopened the defunct shop as Wellworth’s, but no way was he schlepping down there on the off-chance of a job. In fact, with that Easter week’s course looming, job hunting was, for the time being, on the back burner. And God only knew when Monty Flynn would be getting his first chapter from him, never mind a mug shot.

  He looked around what had been home for the past two months. His brother could have these crap souvenirs and the wonky swivel chair bought with the first bonus back in 1999; plus his framed Frith print of Bradwell-on-Sea where he and Colin had been brought up, and where their mum still lived in the clapperboard cottage within sight of the power station. He hoped both his brother’s and The Girlfriend’s consciences would ping when they saw them, but knew they wouldn’t.

  OK, he’d done well to find a bed after his landlady had defaulted on a buy-to-let mortgage. But he’d paid Colin the going rate, no favours asked. The mean sod could have let him stay on just one more week. Bribe or no bribe.

  He closed the suitcase, giving each rusty lock a shove. Then, having checked in the mirror that his new, dark stubble was giving him the desired Max Byers look, lifted his leather jacket from the hook on the door and slotted Evil Eyes into his inside pocket. Combined with the drone of jets flying in and out of Heathrow, its story had kept him awake at night. But how could he return it to the library before reaching the end? He couldn’t.

  “Ciao,” he muttered to himself as he crept along the thickly carpeted landing and left his brother’s keys outside his bedroom door. Just to hear his and The Girlfriend’s separate snores and to imagine their warm closeness, delivered a sudden and bottomless sense of loss. His dad, Archie, everything had gone.

  Having hefted the remainder of his worldly goods downstairs and left two twenty-pound notes on the kitchen table, he hesitated for a few seconds, wondering where on earth could he go now?

  ***

  He pulled up his jacket collar against the thickening drizzle, feeling the hardback’s solid weight against his breastbone. He’d cheated and turned to its bleak ending which left open the possibility of a sequel. After that brief panic attack in Colin’s hallway, this gave him some hope. His life too would go on. And just then, as an Eddie Stobart truck drew up alongside him at the lights and its driver gave him a thumbs up sign, he had an idea.

  Never mind that the one public phone in Ali’s Café was slimy with grease and the small booth itself was stickered with mug shots of various ‘masseuses.’ Until he topped up his mobile, this would have to do. He pushed in a one pound coin and punched the number he now knew off by heart. Nothing ventured, he told himself as the ringing continued.

  Don’t sound too desperate...

  “Yes?”

  He took a punt. “Mrs, Davies?”

  “Who is it?”

  “Mr Robbins. I spoke to you on Tuesday, remember? And Monty Flynn. I’m due to start the writing course on the 9th and was just wondering if…”

  “Best you speak to him. Here he is now. Light sleeper he is, despite them pills. Drinks far too much of the whatjecallit; see, but will he listen?”

  Jason hesitated, not only because of her lack of discretion. Maybe he should wait until later. He heard the Welsh woman pass on his name. Noticed a black guy in overalls come into the café and browse through the copy of Metro he himself had found on the table.

  “Up with the lark, eh?” said the Irishman now on the line. Despite the woman’s unflattering comments, he seemed as fresh as a daisy. “Is it about your first chapter?”

  “No. And I’m sorry to call so early...” Jason’s voice was almost lost to the espresso machine spitting out steam. “But I’ve a problem.”

  “A writer’s prerequisite. The more the merrier. What problem?”

  For a moment he wondered if the man was now on his own. His news wasn’t public property. Not yet. He heard Mrs Davies being asked to start the washing machine and, having heard the faint slam of a nearby door, began his real-life story.

  ***

  He should have been feeling relieved that thanks to the Irishman’s empathy, he’d be spared flat hunting as a Department of Social Security case in the scummiest
parts of London for the next week, but he wasn’t. Scabbers were other people.

  “There’s always mum,” a small voice persisted inside his head as he sat with a third mug of tea, watching the rain slew against the café’s window and those people still with jobs to go to, leaning into it as if crossing the Mongolian plains. No way. Bad enough he’d had to rely on Colin for so long. Besides, Shirley Robbins had found herself another bed mate – not the first since his dad died after falling off scaffolding in Dalston. An ex-boxer, this one, wanting her all to himself.

  Jason picked up the freebie rag for yet more sound bites on the recession and case studies of some of those affected, including a graduate in Media Studies who’d been one of hundreds queuing for one vacancy at KFC in Balham, to a pensioner whose nest egg had slipped down the pan. And then, on page 4 between news of a knife attack in Clapham and lane closures on the South Circular, was a paragraph headed:

  WEALTHY EX-BUSINESSMAN FOUND DEAD

  A seventy-two-year-old man, iden-tified as Charles Pitt-Rose, was found by police last night, hanged in an underground garage beneath his mansion block apartment in Islington. Anyone with information should contact the Metropolitan Police at their Tolpuddle St. station

  But why, with the café filling up and the busy din increasing all around him, did Jason feel as if someone had slipped an ice cube down his back?

  “You done with that?” The same black guy was eyeing the paper.

  “Not yet.”

  The stranger moved away, but not the sense of a dank, dark space and a lonely man maybe driven to the brink and beyond. Jason extracted Evil Eyes from his jacket. The victim, whom Vasilich had thrown in the water and shot, had been a Moscow gang member. Perhaps Charles Pitt-Rose had also been in deep trouble. Perhaps his death wasn’t suicide after all. Whatever, stuff like this could be useful in his novel. Corruption and betrayal, ending with a car chase along Beachy Head.