Four British Mysteries

by Thomas Brown

  Neither attempted to speak above the din of the forest’s machinery and when, for a moment it ceased, came the tinkling sound of water, so pure, so calming, Jason stopped to listen. He also had the oddest sensation they were being watched and that somehow, his life, so far like a rudderless boat, was being guided to shore.

  “There’s something else I’ve not mentioned.” Jason broke the silence, needing this relative stranger’s take on things. “Helen told me Monty Flynn only advertised the writing course to get more company at Heron House. Scared of the Davieses apparently. So why hasn’t he left? Doesn’t make sense.”

  Silence.

  Puzzled, he followed Gwilym Price up on to the now familiar, sloping track, whose wet stones had become embedded in fudge-coloured pools of mud. Hard to avoid them at such a pace, as though his companion had suddenly found his second wind. A purpose.

  “This where you saw him?” Gwilym asked without looking round. Still not answering that question about Monty Flynn.

  “Robert?”

  “Who else do I mean?” Gwilym then paused, turned his glazed eyes towards Jason. “Look, son, I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that leprechaun. No-one has the faintest why he ever came here, or why he’s hung on. As for his fellow inmates...” he lifted his rifle from his shoulder and took a pot shot at something small and black flying over a copse of straggly willows.

  He missed.

  “But with Charles Pitt-Rose gone, you wait. Heron House was his after his da died. Common knowledge, and when the shit hits the fan, that’s when I’ll act.”

  Gwilym Price parked himself on one of a line of stones forming the entrance to the old workings and, lifting the front brim of his hat off his forehead, pointed towards the spoil heaps, blue-grey in the drizzle. “You take yourself over there by that adit you mentioned. If you spot anything unusual, just tilt your head to the right so I can see. Understood? They say the camera never lies.”

  Gwilym pulled out a small digital job from inside his coat pocket and fiddled with the telescopic lens while, for the second time that day, Jason walked on, the same way he’d come with Helen, until the different levels of spoil and scree now faced him, littered with disconnected walls and random blocks of crumbling buildings. The adit’s mean, black mouth still all too visible, but this time was jammed open with a length of timber. Someone else had been here and done that. But who? Why? For a moment, fear whispered to him as he repositioned himself to face the farmer.

  Click.

  “Stay there,” shouted Gwilym. “Don’t move!”

  One minute, then two, three, four, seemed more like a week in the perpetual soft soak of drizzle. And then, just as Jason was about to desert his post, noticed a movement alongside the derelict engine house’s nearest corner. A moving shadow solidifying inch by inch into what he realised was the young man in black. This time however, he carried an oar dripping dark weeds. Not only that, but he was proceeding towards Jason over the ravaged ground with that oar now raised to attack.

  No time to obey Gwilym’s instructions. He must move. Quick.

  “What’s up?” barked his companion.

  “I’m not staying to find out. Come on,” Jason said.

  But the farmer with his own agenda, held the digital camera steady as the oncoming figure came closer, closer. Two mouldy sockets instead of eyes. The mouth a bleached, puckered wound.

  “Hurry!” yelled Jason. “For Chrissake!” Yet what was his problem? How could a mere mirage present any danger? But mirages didn’t speak. Or did they?

  Yes.

  “This is my place. Lle fi,” came a surprisingly strong, young man’s voice. “You and Gwilym, are you listening?” he said. “Leave it be.”

  By now, the farmer had shifted from his perch, camera gone, rifle cocked, to face his accuser. “You’re guarding Margiad, is it?” Gwilym began in a non-threatening tone. “You can tell me, Robert. We were always close, weren’t we? You and your little nephew, Gwilym. Remember?”

  However, the spectre remained motionless and silent; that loaded oar ready to strike. Jason’s heart seemed to stop because water – brown, muddy water – was leaking from that now gaping mouth. Next came the gurgle of bubbles that were nothing to do with the nearby stream. Then a shot. And another, coming from a different direction, further away. The forestry, Jason assumed. Rooks, pigeons, whatever.

  “C’mon!” Jason yelled again, then began to run, faster than he’d done in months, stumbling, slithering away from the eerie past. The farmer could take care of himself, he reasoned. At least he was armed. He’d given him every chance to leave, and then, just as Jason finally reached Heron House’s open iron gates, saw a mud-lined, beaten-up dark blue Ford Escort parked on the drive.

  Immediately, something about it felt wrong and with an ever-increasing sense of danger, he quickened his pace.

  32.

  Sunday 5th April 2009 – 4.15 p.m.

  As soon as they’d left Hurst Crescent, Helen’s latest enemy made a short phone call to someone she couldn’t quite hear, then led her by the arm back to the car.

  “You humiliated me back there,” Mr Flynn snarled. “Any more of that and you’ll regret it. Understood? That Jew must be laughing all the way to the bank. I’m still three hundred quid worse off and Llyr Pitt-Rose could be ruling the fucking roost.”

  So that’s what it’s all about?

  Helen forgot to close her mouth as they swung into Parkway heading east for Islington, going way too fast. She’d never heard him swear so much. Her driver had been left a derisory amount while Llyr Pitt-Rose could legally lay claim to a fortune. Could this cuckoo, with prior knowledge of this will and his status as a Pitt-Rose, have killed the chief beneficiary rather than wait his turn?

  “Surely it’s more than a coincidence Aunty Betsan being dead too,” she ventured. “’Specially as Foundation Face had just glossed over it and why she’d benefited.”

  “You’ve poked your nose in enough. Just leave it to the cops.”

  And then, with another lurch of her aching stomach, Helen realised that hadn’t he too, been hoping for the big windfall? Why else set off for London pretty sharpish yesterday morning before she and Jason had found the poor woman? Why so gutted in Dee Salomon’s office?

  More traffic lights, office blocks and the revamped Kings Cross giving way to residential streets and chestnut trees too severely pruned. Perhaps like those at Heron House, they’d also been diseased.

  And then, like a sly, cold breeze, came the thought that if the angry man next to her had killed Charles Pitt-Rose, the thug might be next. Even herself...

  “To be honest, Mr Flynn, I’m more bothered about what you’re still not telling me.”

  His pale eyes swivelled her way. “What?”

  “Surely you don’t need me to spell it out. For a start, why did you behave so oddly when I mentioned Marky, then Judge Markham?”

  ***

  After that, another silence grew like a solid mountain between them.

  Every few seconds, she glanced in both the nearest wing mirror and her vanity mirror to check her injured assailant wasn’t around. Disguises were easy. He could be anybody out there, she thought, until she recalled his bloodstained legs. The noticeable limp.

  “And you were quite out of order to announce the theft from my study in front of the woman,” the Irishman snapped, as he found an empty parking space for one hour at the end of Thornhill Avenue and hauled up the handbrake. “I was trying to stick to the will issue, which God knows is bad enough news.”

  “Had there been important material stored there that you couldn’t tell anyone about?” She scrutinised his every move. The snatching down of his visor. Screwing up his eyes then closing them. “Did you have a computer?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And Internet access?”

  “That’s my business. More to the point, how about the courtesy of telling me when the theft occurred.”

  “Last night some time,” Helen said. />
  “You might have said. That was Sergeant Rees’ first question when I phoned him back there.”

  How did did he know? Neither she nor Jason had mentioned it.

  She added, “I’d noticed from outside that your sash window was broken. Perhaps, if Gwenno Davies locked your study door after you’d gone, that’s how her son got in. Or she gave him a key.”

  “Shut up about him, will you? And no-one can climb that ivy any more than the Matterhorn. I’d been in too much of a rush to get away to lock everything up properly.” He sighed like someone auditioning for Hamlet. “What a gift. What a fucking gift. Now, I just want out.”

  She tried to ignore the noticeable drop in temperature that seemed to be surrounding them; the solid menstrual gush leaving her body. The kind that might have bled into that old carpet in Jason’s top bedroom where God only knew what had happened. “So why bother with Sandhurst Mansion when we could both be getting back and on our way?”

  Now he was gripping her thigh. Too tight, pinning her to the seat.

  “I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”

  ***

  As arranged, Mrs Pachela was waiting inside the porch of Sandhurst Mansion, obviously keen to get away. Her anxious eyes roamed up and down Thornhill Road as she extracted not only the required set of keys, but two pairs of surgical gloves from her handbag. “You don’t want to leave prints here, do you?” she said to Mr Flynn. “The police can’t keep away from here at the moment.”

  “Clever idea.” Mr Flynn took the items and handed over the bundle of notes.

  “I meant to tell you I had a message on my phone at home, warning me not to get involved with you. He mentioned you by name. I was quite frightened,” said Mrs Pachela.

  “He?”

  A panicky shrug. “I don’t know. No number either.”

  “Look, London’s full of oddballs. Is there a concierge around?”

  “Used to be till Mr Pitt-Rose complained about his radio being too loud. A new one’s starting tomorrow.”

  Now the chameleon was checking for evidence of CCTV cameras and whatever else might spoil his plan, and Helen noticed small red veins turning the whites of his eyes pink.

  “Good. Now is there anything else I need to know about Charles before you go. Confidential of course. Any boyfriend, girlfriend? Other cars in his garage’s visitor slot?” Mr Flynn asked.

  “Not that I can think of. But you ought to know the police and men in white space suits took away much things. His computer, books, notebooks, old, brown photographs... I hated dusting them. They made me shiver,” said Mrs Pachela.

  “What photographs?” Flynn said.

  She paused, biting her lip. “Of somewhere he called Hades. This big house it was. Dark, covered in ivy, with people in fancy dress by the front door, and a strange iron bird stuck next to one of the chimneys. Oh, and there was a picture of a swimming pool, but you wouldn’t want to swim in that.”

  “Why Hades?” asked Helen, scanning her surroundings for her stalker’s bald head and black duffle coat.

  “Missy, if only the dead could speak,” said Mrs Pachela.

  ***

  Mr Flynn led the way into the galley-style kitchen, lined by bright orange-laquered units and a smart Range-style cooker complete with an industrial-sized hood. A cork-backed notice board was bare save for several ragged holes, suggesting whatever had been on there had been hurriedly removed.

  She sniffed. Something and nothing...

  Llyr Pitt-Rose?

  “You start this end. I’ll go the other,” Mr Flynn, butted into her thoughts. “Five minutes max.”

  “What are we looking for? You said you’d tell me.”

  “Proof Charles Pitt-Rose was of unsound mind. Remember his solicitor’s observations? How agitated he’d seemed?”

  Bastard.

  Judging by the lack of booze and suitable glasses, the apartment’s dead owner must have been teetotal. Anorexic as well, given the almost empty store cupboards. As Helen trawled each shelf, as instructed, she wondered again why exactly their owner’s Inquest might be held in secret.

  A sense of that same danger made her stop and listen for the slightest sound. Her skin prickling with anxiety. This was someone’s private stuff and the tight gloves she wore made sure the embarrassing flush stayed on her face. As for their smell – they belonged to a hospital, not here.

  She replaced half a packet of rock-hard penne next to a shrivelled tomato purée tube sporting a green fur collar under its cap. Dented tins of this and that; a slice of birthday cake complete with a blackened candle. Whose? She wondered. And how come such a well-off businessman had existed like this? By comparison, the pantry at Heron House was well-stocked.

  “Eaten out, most likely.” Mr Flynn had found more drawers to rifle through. His long fingers raking amongst replacement light bulbs, batteries, boxes of screws, rawlplugs and other man stuff. “That’s what they do, isn’t it? Busy city types with dough to spare?”

  Was that a small resentment in his voice? After all, if his books had stayed published with more commissioned, he’d surely be up in London too, not holed up in the back of beyond?

  “But no restaurant receipts so far.” Helen now examined a packet soup dated November 2003. “I’m not so sure about your theory.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He may have been the life and soul of the party in public but back here...”

  “Spare me the psychobabble,” Mr Flynn said. “Perhaps he was just a tight old git saving up for some last-minute dream.”

  “Paid you well enough, though,” she retorted. “Only guessing.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  ***

  While Helen’d just discovered a small, windowless bathroom, her ex-boss was striding from the kitchen into another room which seemed to double as a lounge and study. The noise of more drawers being opened and shut collided with the sudden peal of nearby church bells.

  Either the police or another visitor had made sure nothing useful had been left. Here, a hard facecloth, there, a selection of Superdrug shower gels and a half-finished bottle of cough mixture. The plug hole stuffed with grey hairs.

  She suddenly needed a window, anything for some air; and back in the kitchen, stared out over the communal garden hemmed in by high yellow-bricked walls. She wanted to run – bad period or not – to the nearest tube station and from there to Paddington. There were paintings to do. At least one to start with for her mam by Thursday. Then for the Coleridge Gallery. As for Jason, yes, she’d have to see him first.

  “There’ll be no hiding place. So don’t get cocky. And if you squeal to anyone else, you’ll end up in bin bags where no-one’ll find you. Got it, bitch?”

  With a cold sweat clinging to her skin, she realised that access to that garden was via a door in an adjoining lower storage area that Mr Flynn had overlooked.

  Locked, but no sign of any key nor of a forced entry.

  Meanwhile, still more banging sounds were coming from the lounge. He was in a strop. Excellent. She’d help make it worse in whatever way she could.

  ***

  The bedroom, just the one, was a complete surprise. More like a vice den, all done out in purple wallpaper with blood-coloured devoré curtains drawn close, blotting out most of the daylight beyond. The faint smell lingering in the stale air reminded her of something she couldn’t quite place and, with so little light, had to use her instinct and sense of touch to explore. In each corner, she could make out life-size bronze casts of lithe, naked athletes – all men – in the style of popular ancient Greek sculptors, while smaller contemporary figurines in shining steel, demonstrating the usual and not so usual homosexual positions with no detail spared, lined a shelf along the far wall. All this a world away from Betsan’s pretty, porcelain collection.

  Candles, too, from whose thick, twisted columns hung bulbous encrustations of surplus wax. She sniffed them and realised where she’d smelt incense before. On the top landing at Heron House by the Dav
ieses’ bedroom.

  To her left, taking up most of the wall space, stood the biggest bed she’d ever seen. She ran her hand over its black leather headboard and matching bedspread, smooth and glossy as a wet runway, then moved towards a wide glass-fronted wardrobe reflecting her furtive form. Its parade of velvet jackets, silky suits and Ralph Lauren underwear, that had clearly been rifled through, hid nothing of interest.

  Hurry.

  A commode. Yes, but cleverly disguised as a normal chair. She lifted its black leather lid and caught her breath.

  Stale pee. An inch of it.

  Yuk.

  Yet something intrigued her enough to make her lift up the inner polyurethane container by its handle and let her free hand roam the remaining space.

  Yes…

  Her fingers touched something lying at the bottom. She withdrew the intriguingly thin oblong, and soon realised it was some kind of book.

  Quick.

  Mr Flynn was shouting for her. Where could she hide whatever had been so enterprisingly hidden?

  Her pants. They’d do, and within a few seconds she was back in the dead man’s kitchen and making the right noises.

  ***

  Helen joined the ratty Irishman in the lounge-cum-study, but stayed on the opposite side to him. Her discovery dug into her flesh. She thought he might at least ask if she’d found anything on the Davieses. But no. He was punishing her. Big surprise, especially after she’d suggested Jason get his money back tomorrow.

  Now, in the Arctic silence and even more curious about the dead man’s life, she clicked open an antique desk tucked inside a deep, arched alcove. Surely if its owner had killed himself, he’d have locked everything up beforehand?

  There was even a key that worked. Normally, she’d have asked permission to use it, but nothing would ever be normal again. She was only being seen to co-operate so they could be on the M4 before dark then back at Heron House to pack her things for the next morning. That word ‘encumbrances’ if true, could well include her.

  The room was losing light so Mr Flynn switched on an Art Deco desk lamp – its subdued glow casting him in ominous shadow as he pulled open drawer after drawer with renewed urgency. “Plenty of old rubbish about Oracle Services and cruises for gays.” He slammed the latest one shut. “Someone must have been here already. And I don’t just mean the police.”