[Phoenix Court 02] - Does It Show?

by Paul Magrs

  His head was spinning. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Just over the way. We’ve got to pitch in.’

  ‘Is this to do with this woman who’s vanished?’

  ‘Aye,’ she said grimly, locking the door behind her, laces still undone.

  Vince followed her over the grass, wondering what he was getting into. He felt stupid, carrying his booze about with him.

  When Fran let them in it was to a whole roomful, adults and bairns perched on the tables, on benches, sitting on the carpet. They had to fight for a space. Coming right up behind them were the three women from the shop Vince had seen. They recognised him but he was too busy noticing Andy, sitting beside the taxidermist in the hall doorway.

  Fran shouted from the kitchen door, ‘The Inspector’s coming in again. She’s ready now.’

  ‘If you find anything — anything at all — do not, I repeat, do not touch it. Call to the nearest policeman and he will investigate. We will start at the place the locket was discovered and gradually move the search outwards. Look for anything. Anything suspicious. You all know the missing woman better than I do. Good luck!’

  No we don’t, Penny thought. We didn’t know her at all. She steals milk. What’s that to go on? All we’ve got is the ability to recognise another body when we see one. It’s pathetic. But I suppose — she looked round at everyone — we have to do our best.

  Tony was still sitting with his head in his hands next to the fridge. The locket’s chain was tangled up in his fingers.

  ‘What are we shopping for?’ Liz laughed as the great automatic doors swished open and the warm, perfumed Metro Centre air pulled them in. Music was playing, ‘Yesterday Once More’ by the Carpenters. There were mirrors everywhere, fountains with money in, glass elevators and names that were meant to look written, belligerently neon.

  ‘Holiday clothes and suitcases,’ Cliff hissed and dragged her up an escalator. ‘We are both getting out of it. Come on.

  FOURTEEN

  Go on then. Bring on the firing squad. We’re ready for you.

  Penny dangled her arms over the bridge’s railing. She looked down at the toes of her shoes poking out underneath the bars. Below her, twenty feet down, the brown stream swished and gurgled.

  We look ridiculous, in a line like this.

  She had an aerial view of a policeman, his head a black circle, a single silver point in its centre. He came out from under the bridge and gazed up at them all.

  Vince realised that both he and Penny were tapping their ash carelessly into the breeze. It was drifting down on the coppers. They would think they were doing it on purpose. Next to Penny and Vince was Jane, clutching Peter and gripping Vicki’s hand like a dog’s lead. Vicki had no interest in what was going on below, the fifteen policemen standing with their shoulders touching, ploughing through the water, turning stones over with their heavy-duty rubber gloves. Vicki was watching traffic go by, rumbling over the bridge.

  Drawn into the tragedy now, Rose stood on tiptoe to see. Ethan was there out of a sense of duty, his stump chafing from standing too long. Fran and Frank stood with their four kids and a fifth, Nesta’s baby, wrapped in blankets and Fran’s arms so that she was three times her natural size. Andy strolled up and down the footpath behind everyone, unsure of his place. He had spoken only briefly to Vince. ‘You two know each other?’ Rose exclaimed. ‘What a small world this is!’

  Vince made a start on his cans of lager. To keep me warm, he thought. It tasted of petrol. Why isn’t Andy talking to me more? he thought. He kept his eyes averted from the tattooed man who, it turned out, lived on Penny’s street. He was involved in his own intense, private debate with his mother-

  in-law, standing a little way down the kerb. There are troubles everywhere, Vince thought.

  Tony huddled into his anorak a little way apart, also watching cars.

  So we’re all here, thought Penny. The Charge of the bloody Light Brigade.

  The policeman looking up at them from the footpath below was joined by another, resigned and wiping his black gloves on his jacket. He shook his head. The line of fifteen gradually emerged from under the bridge. Everyone craned their necks to see them come out into the light, switching their torches off, cricking their backs unbent. From the spectators’ vantage they looked like an optical illusion, a thick black line through which the filthy water still flowed.

  Nothing. Nothing suspicious down there.

  Detective Inspector Collins strode briskly out of the tunnel, looked up at the onlookers’ gallery and addressed them. I notice she didn’t get in the Burn, thought Jane, who had taken a dislike to the woman.

  ‘We’re moving the area of the search outwards. You’ve all agreed to help and as long as the rain holds off, we’ll be glad of everyone here. If the weather takes a nasty turn, or it starts to get dark, please would you take your children home? The police force will not be liable for any accidents or damages. If you come down here I will assign you your areas.’

  With Penny leading, they negotiated the gap in the wooden fence and, clutching branches and damp clumps of grass, they slithered one by one down the bank to the footpath.

  There was a place in the Metro Centre where Liz particularly wanted to eat. They took an escalator right through Marks and Spencer without even getting off, cutting right through the cloying air, smiling at the pristine fresh foods, nodding politely at the uptight dummies and store detectives.

  Imperiously Liz led the way through the Roman Emporium with its plaster statues of gods, its marble shop fronts. Eventually they came to the mock open-air restaurant which offered food from every corner of the globe, each corner having a special counter, the counters ranged like market stalls around the screwed-down tables. The place was seething and they had to fight to find a seat in the very middle.

  Above them wheeled cranelike arms flung up from the indoor funfair. Screams of joy, fear and laughter played like music. But there was no one on the big wheel, no one whizzing about in the chairs or hovering in the hot-air balloons (on wires). It was a schoolday and the screaming was recorded.

  ‘What are we having to eat?’ Cliff asked, leafing through a sheaf of menus. ‘Italian? Chinese?’

  ‘Oh, a little bit of everything, I think.’ Liz left him with her bags — she had already bought a new frock — and headed off for the queues. ‘Excuse me barging in like this —’ she charmed her way through — ‘but I don’t want an entirely Portuguese meal, just a little something… You wouldn’t mind me pushing in for a single morsel, would you?’

  And: ‘I need a few garlic mushrooms. A little wine. Thank you, dear.’

  And: ‘Nachos. With jalapeno chillis and green olives. I want the biggest plate you’ve got.’

  Mouth open and starving, Cliff watched her and shifted round in his seat, peering through the crowd as Liz made her way from corner to corner of the globe.

  The manager caught up with her at the centre of the restaurant. He was about twenty-four, wearing a suit much too big for him, his hair plastered wetly back.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Taking advantage, dear.’ She beamed.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Of the world’s every nook and cranny. That, I take it, is the point?’

  ‘I’ve watched you barge your way to the front of every —’

  ‘You must excuse me, but my food’s going cold.’

  The manager marvelled briefly at the way this woman could hold simultaneously two laden trays and an argument. ‘It isn’t the done thing,’ he glowered, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘Isn’t it? People should be more adventurous with what they eat, shouldn’t they? You make it so easy for them.’ She could see Cliff bobbing anxiously on his plastic seat, worrying about her and not wanting to leave their table.

  ‘Would you mind?’ she asked the manager and passed him a tray to carry to her table.

  As he followed he seemed to shrink even further into his suit, blushing furiously. The pens
ioners at nearby tables who were there mostly for the central heating, spinning out solitary cappuccinos, looked on with interest as Liz made him wait while she rummaged in her purse for a tip.

  Walking away with his ten-pence piece, the manager seemed smaller than ever. Small enough to crawl and hide inside Liz’s Top Shop carrier.

  I’m not scared of the Dog Man. It’s him who’s scared of me. But people won’t see that.

  He does things for me. He’s good like that. When he likes, he can be a good dog. When he likes.

  Ever since I was at school I wanted to have someone like the Dog Man. I don’t know why. At first I wanted a dog. But my stepmother wouldn’t. She never liked dogs. She and my stepdad wanted things clean. Everything was tidy. Dogs aren’t clean.

  So when I got a house and a husband, I wanted a dog. We got puppies, one after the other. People said my house wasn’t clean. They said my daughter was neglected. I got so that I felt down.

  My husband wasn’t anything really. He wasn’t like a dog; I couldn’t boss him about, lead him around by his collar. Not because he was big and tough. He wasn’t big and tough. He wasn’t weak, either. He wasn’t anything. He wouldn’t do as I said, he wouldn’t tell me what to do. He wouldn’t do anything. The only good times we had was getting the giro, buying Woodpecker on a Thursday night. Give the kids Coke. We’d buy three great big bottles the same time as the Woodpecker. Coke makes kids pissed like cider does grownups, makes them dizzy, their eyes shine. We used to laugh.

  But my husband wasn’t anything. I couldn’t do anything with him.

  And the puppies died. We couldn’t afford the injections. I’d get impatient to take them out for walks. They told me little germs got into the soft pads of the puppies’ feet when I took them out when they were too little. And they died. But in the olden days we didn’t have dog injections, did we? And the dogs didn’t die from walking then. We didn’t even have injections for people. And they tell me if the baby doesn’t have all her injections, then she will die as well. But I forget what she’s had. I forget about her sometimes, too. Some days she comes as a shock, when I go upstairs for a lie-down and I see her on the bed. She’s asleep a lot of the time.

  What difference is there? I’m still stuck in the house. I can’t really go out, can I? But the Dog Man brings me what I need. He’s going to bring me a disguise so we can go out together. That’ll be fun.

  I’ll go back to see the women, dressed up in my disguise. And they won’t know me. I’ll be like Meg off Crossroads, Elsie off Coronation Street, going back to where they used to live. Looking around and then going back to where they are now. Somewhere better. In disguise.

  I love the Dog Man. He has no one else to love now and so he loves me. He says I’m strong. Strong like Meg and strong like Elsie. His own wife, he said, wasn’t very strong. And so he loves me.

  I’m waiting for him now. He’s at work. He says he has a surprise for me. I hope it has something to do with my disguise. That would make everything perfect.

  They had been given the thickest part of the forest. The closely packed soil of the natural paths had been sliced and cross-hatched into slush by rain and bicycle wheels. Penny trod heedlessly through puddles brown as coffee. She led Vince and Andy through the trees, pushing against bark and kicking through the undergrowth, her jeans soaked to the knees already. They were looking for a suitable starting point for their search. Vince had the feeling they had left it behind, left stones unturned. They were already failing in their mission. They were simply fannying about in a forest. And it was getting dark.

  ‘Aren’t you talking to me?’ he snapped at Andy, who was content to lag along behind. He hadn’t said anything since mildly remarking on the coincidence of their both being on the same body-hunt. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘I’m a bit freaked by all this. It’s morbid, isn’t it?’ Andy hugged himself inside his leather jacket. ‘We might find anything.’

  ‘It’s a body-hunt. What do you want to find?’

  Some distance ahead Penny had stopped short. She was at the mouth of a great natural bowl in the earth. She called them to come and see.

  The last, gentle, well-laundered light of the day was playing through a canopy of leaves. Cloud shapes of brightness shivered on damp earth. The ash tree in the dell’s dead centre shone a resonant blue, ringed by grasses and cramped roots, looking like a traffic island, hemmed in by BMX tracks. Everything else was turning black.

  ‘What?’ Vince asked.

  ‘When I was little, I always had places like this,’ Penny began. ‘I think this is a magical place.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Vince said.

  ‘I always thought certain bits of countryside were like magic,’ she whispered. ‘I must have been mad. There’s nothing special here. It smells like shite.’

  ‘No.’ Andy nudged forwards and started to trip down the slope into the bowl, finding the footholds that tree roots had woven into the soil. ‘There is something about this place.’ He padded down the incline and stood in one of the patches of blue light. ‘I think we should start the search here. Good vibes.’ Vince muttered, ‘It still smells like shite,’ as he went slipping on dead leaves.

  Rose and Ethan had taken the gravel path at the side of the stream. They walked very slowly, talking all the while. Ethan had found himself a long branch, stripped it of twigs and leaves, and was trailing it through tbe dark water. Rose thought he looked like a dodgem car, crackling along on static electricity. She wasn’t sure what good that branch would do. If there was a body in the stream, he said, the branch would snag. But every few feet the branch snagged on rocks or weeds and each time he pulled it unstuck without a single glance. He wouldn’t know a body if one fell on him, she thought. Still, they were doing their bit.

  ‘Andrew is who I had in mind for best man.’ He was still thinking about the wedding. Good.

  ‘He seems a nice enough lad. Remind me to catch up with our Jane before we go home tonight. Don’t let me forget. I could really see him in her spare room. And she could do with some rent money, helping her along.’

  ‘I think she’s got other things on her mind at the moment, Rose.’

  ‘Yes.’ Rose considered. ‘Don’t you think that Andrew is… well, about having Andrew as best man…’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘What I’m thinking is that — don’t take offence or anything, dear — but perhaps he isn’t… well, impressive enough to be best man.’

  ‘Impressive?’

  ‘He’s a bit soft, isn’t he? I mean, let’s face it. If he wasn’t an orphan I’m sure he’d be a mummy’s boy.’

  ‘He’s a queer, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  Rose stopped in her tracks. Ethan’s branch tangled itself up in water weeds. ‘He’s a what?’

  ‘That lad I was telling you about, the one with the poems in Germany, he was one too, as I remember.’

  Rose stared. ‘And you stood there and let me make plans to have him move in with our Jane? And our Peter? You let me ramble on like an old fool when you knew it was impossible? What were you thinking of?’

  Ethan considered. ‘Actually, I was thinking about dead bodies. The one we’re looking for. All the animals back at my shop in Darlington. I have to get rid of them. I think I’ve decided what to do.’

  ‘What have your bloody animals got to do with anything? With anything at all, Ethan Nesbit?’ Rose was furious. She abandoned her part in the search and started stomping off the way they had come. ‘I’m talking about perversion and all you can think about is your bloody stuffing.’

  ‘It isn’t really feasible, you know.’ Liz smiled fondly at him, not wanting to disappoint. It was late in the afternoon and they were in an empty bar. It was done up to seem as if it was in Manhattan, leather, glass, faked seaminess, the Carpenters:

  ‘On Top of the World’.

  ‘It isn’t?’ He was making cow eyes across the table’s shiny surface. She suddenly felt like kicki
ng him.

  ‘No.’

  All afternoon Cliff had been flashing his credit cards around. Their plastic bags littered the floor in their corner of the bar, like things that didn’t really belong to them. Nicely patterned shirts for Cliff, fabulous frocks for Liz, lingerie for both (he had succumbed; the pair of them ensconced in a cubicle in Ms Selfridge’s, Liz in a giggling fit, Cliff in apricot), all of it spilling from the bags on to the carpet.

  And then, in the Body Shop, he had confessed his shopaholicism. It was true, he was different here. Garrulous and almost feverish. ‘It’s my feminine side coming out,’ he tried to explain. Liz was about to take issue with that when he went on to say that he was alone because he couldn’t stop spending. But, he reckoned, he had disposable income and he didn’t give a fuck. He was glad he had Liz to spend on. He suggested something that would cost a lot of money. A big trip away for the two of them. Liz looked uncomfortable. It wasn’t on.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked. He looked like a child whose game had been thus far indulged by a fond aunt or uncle. There comes the point when the adult puts their foot down. Liz’s stiletto heel was ground into the hood of his new heavy-weather anorak.

  ‘I can’t just leave. I can’t just up and off. It’s avoiding the issue. I’ve only just moved into a new house and a new life.’

  ‘Exactly.’ His eyes were as glassy as the table. ‘New lives. They aren’t set yet. They can still be what we want.’

  ‘Reinvention.’ Liz smiled sadly. ‘But there’s no point in reinvention if you don’t stop for a bit to take stock. Handle your responsibilities. Enjoy what you’ve become.’

  He gave a short, barking laugh. ‘So you won’t run away with me?’ She had let him buy suitcases, even urged him to buy ones to match whichever outfit she would travel in.

  ‘I’m not ready to leave yet. I have to see Penny gone first.’

  ‘Couldn’t we take her with us?’