Revenge on the Rye

by Alice Castle

  ‘I think you’ve forgotten to wear your Homburg with that little ensemble,’ Beth said with what she decided was admirable restraint, as she clambered into Katie’s car on Court Lane.

  ‘My what?’ Katie looked blank.

  ‘Your 1940s gangster titfer,’ Beth said, eyes going briefly skyward.

  ‘You can’t talk. What was your first job of the day?’ Katie laughed.

  ‘Um?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t just tailed Ben to school, Ms Gumshoe?’

  ‘Well, since I was meeting you anyway… And now he won’t walk to school with me, even if I’m going that way. It’s ridiculous.’ Beth crossed her arms over the seatbelt.

  ‘I’m just teasing,’ Katie said, pulling out into the stream of SUVs now heading away from the schools. ‘I’d totally be the same if Charlie was walking to school. And yes, before you ask, he will be. Next year. Just as soon as we know where he’s actually going.’

  Katie, unlike Beth, had lashed out in a big way on the school applications process. Every time you put a child into a private school exam, you had to pay. That meant Beth was only trying Wyatt’s, plus the two very good state schools in the area. Kate, on the other hand, had cast her net wide, and thrown her wallet open to the four corners of London. Charlie was going to have a very busy interview season, being chauffeured here, there, and everywhere – ironically missing a lot of school in the process.

  ‘So, boss, what exactly are we going to be doing on the Rye today?’

  Beth glanced over at Katie, but her face looked serious as she concentrated on the aggressive mummy traffic zooming up towards the Horniman Museum. Beth always felt a tiny pang when she passed the building’s curiously rounded clock tower, standing proud over the Tesco garage and the traffic snaking up to Sydenham. The Horniman, which was still exhibiting the same stuffed walrus that had simultaneously repelled and fascinated her as a child, had been the scene of her dear friend Jen’s second wedding.

  She determinedly turned her thoughts towards the present day, though once again sudden death dominated her plans. How had she got herself into this position? There’d been nothing in her thirty-something previously blameless years on the planet which had even hinted that she’d ever become some sort of investigator. Maybe just as well, or she’d probably have run screaming from her fate. But at least she now had Katie on side.

  ‘I thought we’d do a sort of reconstruction…’

  ‘You mean like in those TV shows, where they get actors to play all the parts?’ There was no mistaking Katie’s eagerness. And yes, even Beth did feel that it might be quite jolly to do a bit of role-play on the Rye. But she had to clamp down on that. This was no game.

  ‘This isn’t fun, Katie. We won’t be asking all the local actors, like James Nesbitt and Jo Brand, to make a quick sitcom, for heaven’s sake. We’re trying to jog people’s memories. I’m hoping someone will recognise Colin, remember seeing Smeaton on his last walk…’

  ‘Yes, and it’s a lovely day,’ said Katie absent-mindedly. Her mood not dented at all, she swung the big steering wheel to overtake some hapless wannabe yummy mummy in a far smaller car.

  Beth tutted a bit, but knew she was kidding herself. It was glorious to be outside; Katie was quite right. Why shouldn’t they enjoy that? It didn’t mean their investigation was any the less serious if they enjoyed the fact that the sky was an untroubled turquoise and, even though it was cold, the wind had forgotten to blow.

  Once they’d parked and started walking, their cheeks soon pinked up in the brisk, fresh air. The dogs were loving it, too. Teddy, of course, was running about like an Olympic athlete who’d escaped the dope tests, and even Colin was sniffing the air appreciatively and pulling slightly on his lead.

  ‘Look, he knows where he’s going,’ marvelled Beth, as the big dog towed her inexorably forward.

  ‘You’d better let him have his head, see where he takes us,’ said Katie, trying to untangle Teddy, who was busily wrapping his lead around her legs.

  ‘I don’t dare take him off the leash, though,’ Beth said.

  ‘Why not? I would,’ said Katie.

  ‘I know you would. That’s how we got into this mess in the first place,’ said Beth tersely.

  ‘Oh, come on, Beth. Have a heart. Look at Colin. I haven’t seen him this full of beans – well, ever.’

  It was true; Colin was rejuvenated, tugging her forward, even letting out the odd husky bark. Beth struggled with the sensible side of her nature for a little longer, then gave in to the impulse and slipped the hook on his collar. ‘There you are then, boy. Off you go.’

  Colin looked round at her, his tongue dangling in what she interpreted as a sincere thank you, then off he lolloped, surprising them all with his turn of speed. His ears flapped comically on either side of his head, and his thick tail moved from side to side like a rudder in stormy waters as he galloped forwards across the scrubby grass of the Rye. Beth looked at him fondly – then realised he was going to be out of sight unless she got a major wiggle on.

  ‘Here! Hang on, Colin, wait for me!’ she said, launching herself after him and realising with a clutch of dread that this was an action replay of the other morning – except with Colin in the surprising role of runaway instead of naughty little Teddy.

  Katie stayed where she was for a second, giggling, then she was being dragged along, too, as Teddy put on a spurt of speed and started following his chum at breakneck pace.

  Beth, already out of breath and trying to brush her fringe out of her eyes with both hands, was tiring of this game very rapidly. Colin was still going, though he was slowing up. Unfortunately, it was becoming all too clear where he was headed – the little copse of trees where his master had so recently met his end. Beth realised with a sinking heart that the poor dog probably thought he was heading for a tender reunion with Smeaton. She couldn’t let him bound into those trees all on his own and face the inevitable disappointment. She put on a last, desperate turn of speed and managed to catch hold of his tail.

  It said a lot for Colin’s equable temperament that he didn’t immediately turn and snarl at Beth, as many dogs would have done. She knew that Magpie, certainly, was massively protective of her tail and would still whisk it out of Ben’s way whenever he came anywhere near her, in memory of terrible times when he was crawling and his main aim in life had been to grab it and hold on to it. Colin, luckily, was a lot less highly strung in every way. He looked around in surprise, saw his temporary carer puce in the face and puffing in a way that would have alarmed a less tranquil dog, and obligingly slowed down a little. Beth, panting heavily, managed to snap the lead onto his collar just at the moment when they entered the small stand of trees.

  Immediately, it was as though they had left central London far behind. Hard to imagine now the ring of traffic that rumbled almost continuously around the Rye, with its trundling red buses, tooting mothers in Range Rovers, and the occasional blare of a police siren as life in south London continued on its urgent way. Here, in the copse, the pace of life seemed to slow almost to a standstill. Even the light changed. Outside, the day had been as crisp as a Granny Smith apple. Here, with the tangle of branches up overhead, there were enough deciduous trees, tall yews and conifers, to filter out the brightness and make the place a glade of mysterious dappled shadow.

  Despite herself, Beth shivered in her jacket. She knew that, realistically, lightning wasn’t going to strike twice. There wouldn’t be another body in the clearing – surely there couldn’t be? Fate wouldn’t be that nuts. But she realised why she’d felt such a sense of foreboding only a few days before. This spot had an atmosphere all its own. Murky, muffled, it felt full of secrets.

  Colin snuffled the ground. Beth wasn’t sure if he was trying to pick up the scent of Smeaton, or if he was just doing normal dog stuff. As he promptly cocked his leg against a sapling, she decided it had to be the latter. He then looked questioningly up at her.

  ‘Don’t ask me, Colin. You brought me h
ere. What would you like to do next?’ She looked at him as he peered at her with what looked like doggy devotion. All of a sudden, he seemed to have run out of steam.

  Maybe he was as beset with doubts as she usually was, Beth thought. Maybe now that they were on the threshold of the murder scene, he didn’t quite want to go any further, afraid of what he might see – or not see. If Smeaton wasn’t there after all, where did that leave Colin? Bereft again, surely.

  Beth sighed and grasped his lead a bit more firmly. She was going to have to step up, be the bigger person (well, the only person; Colin was a dog, she reminded herself), and get this bit over with. If he really wanted to revisit the scene of the crime, then that’s what they would do.

  Strangely, though, she felt Colin’s resistance as she tugged on the lead. It seemed he didn’t want to go into the clearing, but started to pull slightly to the left, off the beaten track. Beth, of course, had taken all the warnings in Red Riding Hood very much to heart, but despite a lifetime of anxiety, she was having more and more trouble lately staying on the straight and narrow. Now she plunged off the cinder path with the dog, her pixie boots crashing through the scrubby undergrowth of weeds tough enough to survive a London winter.

  They wound through the trees for a few minutes, with Beth reminding herself desperately that, even though it felt like the deepest countryside, in fact they were still in Peckham, and the path, south Circular, Katie and Teddy, and the Rye, were all within a large stone’s throw. Finally, Colin brought her up to a thick old tree and sat down with a flump on a patch of flattened grass. Beth looked around her quickly. They were still invisible from the Rye – in the thickest part of the copse now, she would say at a guess. From the condition of the ground, it looked as though this place was well-used, which was odd in itself.

  Colin was now looking expectantly up at the tree, then back to Beth, then back to the tree. She stared at him, perplexed. The odds seemed very slim indeed that he’d turn into Lassie and bark three times to tell her what the hell was going on. ‘What’s that you say, Lassie? The children are stuck down the mineshaft?’ On the other hand, he definitely did seem to be trying to communicate.

  ‘Is it something to do with the tree?’ she asked him, feeling ridiculous at even voicing the question. But Colin immediately thumped his tail and looked at her, apparently more expectantly than ever. She sighed and stepped forward to inspect it.

  As a native south Londoner, she couldn’t have taken even the wildest guess at what type of tree it was. It was just a biggish, brownish one, with a lot of branches. Probably great for squirrels at some times of the year, but looking a bit naked now with denuded twigs poking upwards into the wintry sky. She raised an eyebrow at Colin, but he just stuck out his tongue at her and panted in that way that made him look as though he was smiling at a secret joke. A joke that seemed to be on her, at the moment. Beth put her hands on her hips and thought hard.

  There were no convenient messages tied to the tree with ribbon saying, ‘Read me.’ There was no obvious sign of disturbance that led her eye anywhere in particular. There were no graffitis, for instance, which might have suggested Smeaton had a special interest in this place.

  She still found it quite hard to believe that anyone so posh-looking could have really been much of a whizz with a spray can. Surely it was only teenage boys who did that sort of thing, the type of lads that hung out at railway stations after dark, daring each other to tag in more and more dangerous places? She’d read recently of a heart-breaking case where some boys had been killed on a railway line at night, doing exactly that. Her eyes had filled with tears as she’d scanned the paper over breakfast, then wished she hadn’t seen the story when Ben had actually noticed for once and asked her if she was all right. She’d had to insist that she was, though the lump of pain in her chest for the families involved gave her a tiny foretaste of how she’d feel if anything like that ever happened closer to home. She’d been surprised at the raw jaggedness of her reaction – until she remembered there’d been a similar case, when her brother Josh had been at Wyatt’s, years before, idling away his time before more or less running away with his camera. Maybe this modern story had reminded her of that tragedy?

  Hadn’t some kids in Josh’s class been mixed up in something up at Loughborough Junction? The hugely busy interchange in the south eastern rail network, not far from Dulwich, had trains whizzing through it at all hours of the day and night. There were rumours – always denied by those in authority – that nuclear waste was carried through this part of the system in the small hours, on its way to be treated somewhere or other. It was the kind of thing that had the inhabitants of SE21 grinding their expensive dental inlays in annoyance. Somehow, their side of the river was considered fine for such dangerous operations, while north London, where property prices tended to be even higher and where people enjoyed the inestimable boon of the Underground as well, was kept sacrosanct. This rankled far more in aspirational Dulwich than it did in places like Catford, which had long ago accepted their lot in life.

  While the nuclear trains might be an urban myth, it was definitely true that freight and passenger lines used the junction constantly. For Beth, this made it the perfect place to avoid. But for teenage boys, intent on making their presence known, desperate for the thrill that comes with breaking the law and getting away with it, the place must have been a magnet. Getting a tag on one of those suspicious engines chugging through the night, or marking a signal box or a more commonplace commuter train, would be quite a buzz, Beth could see that.

  She was pretty sure that there’d been a death, and a bit of a scandal way back then, but the details escaped her.

  She’d have to check up with Josh when he was next within reach of a phone signal. She wasn’t even sure where he was at the moment, but since it was a chilly January in Dulwich, the chances were that he’d be somewhere warm, with a photogenic totalitarian regime to bring to justice. She often made light of his job and always disparaged his attitude to the women in his life, but it suddenly struck her that in some ways, perhaps they weren’t so different after all. Both trying to right wrongs when they could, in their own haphazard ways.

  She batted such thoughts away, bringing herself back to the here and now, with some difficulty. She looked up at the smooth, unhelpful bark in front of her, and wondered what on earth the tree could tell her. And if it remained silent and uncooperative – which was highly likely, this side of Narnia – what glimmers of ideas could she dredge up from her silt-filled memory which might help her now?

  Something was calling to her – a vague echo from her ill-fated stint moonlighting for the solicitor, Paul Potter, in Herne Hill. She’d been doing her bouncy friend, Nina, a favour – a very big favour, as it turned out. The office had been a sea of beige, except for her friend’s desk. That had been crammed with lurid tombstone-sized paperbacks, bulging out of most of the drawers.

  Beth hadn’t had much time on her hands, as Potter had turned out to be a demon dictator of bogus reports, but in between bouts of furious typing she had to admit she’d dipped her toes into the murky world of trash espionage, written by Nina’s favourite author, L.A. Teen. It was highly addictive stuff, and all the more so as it came with that delicious frisson of naughtiness. She shouldn’t have been wasting her time at the job, and she definitely shouldn’t have been wasting it with this stuff. That, of course, made it utterly irresistible. Teen’s hero, Jim Grasper, was always correctly interpreting signs and symbols in seconds flat, which made Beth feel a bit lacking. All the investigations she’d been involved in had required tons of careful thought and, if she were totally honest with herself, a lot of luck in there with the judgement. The fact that Grasper was fictional did make it all a bit easier for him, she reasoned.

  What would he make of this tree? Could she channel Jim Grasper’s amazing deductive powers just when she needed them most? She looked up at the trunk, wrapping her jacket more tightly around her. Now that they’d stopped walking, the chill wa
s really starting to sink in. She shook her head. Grasper was proving no inspiration. But she had read enough John Le Carré in her youth to know that dead letter drops were a definite spy thing.

  She started to edge round the tree, looking closely at its bark. Colin signalled his approval with a short yap, and somewhere close at hand Beth heard Teddy yodelling back excitedly. Good, that meant that Katie was nearby now and might be able to help.

  Sure enough, there was a sudden crashing sound and Teddy exploded into sight, tail and both ears flying in his own slipstream. He was a spectacularly gorgeous doggie, thought Beth fondly, as he hurtled towards her. Then he crashed right into her and her thoughts became much less friendly.

  ‘Ooof! Honestly, Teddy,’ she remonstrated when she’d got her breath back. Teddy took that as massive encouragement and jumped up to lick her face, which wasn’t that far away from him, unfortunately for Beth. She was holding him off with both hands and a leg, while Colin looked on in mild interest, when Katie finally caught him up.

  ‘God, I’m sorry, Beth,’ she said, ineffectually calling Teddy to heel, then giving up and simply manhandling him off her friend. ‘But what are you doing here? I thought you’d make for that clearing where, you know…’ she trailed off.

  ‘I did too, but Colin had other ideas. He seems fixated on this tree. I haven’t a clue what it’s about, but I was just having a look around it when you came. Can’t see anything out of the ordinary.’

  Katie started to pace round the chunky trunk herself, carefully scrutinising its markings and knot-holes. Suddenly she stopped. ‘Look. There’s a sort of dip up there.’ She pointed to a spot several feet above Beth’s head.

  ‘Where? I can’t even see,’ Beth wailed. Once she’d made sure she wasn’t going to land on any doggies’ tails, she started jumping up and down to see if that got her a better view. But it was no good. Within seconds, she was scarlet in the face and she still couldn’t even see what Katie was talking about, let alone get a proper look.