Dead Girl Found

by Giles Ekins

  Traffic was slow getting through Malton, but for some unaccountable reason, once through the town most of the heavy traffic seemed to disappear and Grace was once again able to get the Alfa purring away at speed.

  ‘Are the family still in Kenya I mean, things aren’t so good there now with the Al Shabab, or whatever they are, those Islamic terrorists. Apart from you, obviously.’

  ‘No, they came back in about 1958, during the height of the Mau Mau troubles.’

  ‘Oh yeah, Mau Mau, I remember reading a book about that, it was about a big game hunter tracking down Mau Mau terrorists. It was called ‘Something of…something,’ can’t quite remember the title.’

  ‘I think you mean ‘Something of Value’ by Robert Ruark. It’s a classic. Because of the Kenya connection, I’ve read everything I can get my hands on about the Mau Mau. We Brits don’t come out of that one smelling of roses, you know’

  ‘Really? I thought we were the good guys?’

  ‘Neither side has got much to be proud about, if truth be known.’

  .’No, I suppose not, like all those other post-war colonial conflicts. Cyprus?’

  ‘Yea, exactly, Aden’s another, ’Grace added.

  ‘Algeria, that was a messy one for the French.’

  ‘Malaya, fall of Empire and all that.’

  ‘Empires rise, and Empires fall.’ Terry mused.

  ‘The Empire Strikes Back;’ countered Grace

  ‘Yeah? Are you into ‘Star Wars’?’

  ‘Me? No, not really, but my partner, Gary, he was.’

  ‘Cool’

  Forty-Three

  Once they’d reached Scarborough, the sat-nav directed them off the A64 and onto the A171, heading north through the North York Moors National Park.

  Just past Fylingdales, they turned off and followed sat-nav directions towards the coast and Whitburn-on-Sea. The open moor suddenly turned into a wide valley resembling a book laid open on a table, the mouth of the valley spreading out to form Whitburn Bay. A blunt headland called Whitsunday Rocks nosed out into the North Sea and the town was a surrounded by high cliffs and rolling moorlands.

  The Victorian railway magnate, Sir Edmund Vane, had envisaged Whitburn-on-Sea as a resort for the ‘nouveau riche’ of Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford. Whitburn did enjoy some initial success, but with the coming of cheap holidays in Spain and unable to compete with the more popular Scarborough, Whitby and Bridlington, the town descended into slow terminal decline.

  It was early evening by the time Grace and Terry reached Whitburn and after parking in an impressively ugly concrete multi-story car park made their way along the curving sea front towards the Pavilion Centre, close to where the headland of Whitsunday Rocks jutted out into the cold North Sea.

  Desolate seagulls whirl aimlessly against a steel grey autumnal sky. Damp and drizzly; it has been raining on and off all day, an insistent rain, not heavy but relentlessly miserable. A chill wind blows in from the dull grey sea, the colours of sea and sky so closely match it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

  The darkening iron-hewed sky presaged the oncoming evening sooner than the clocks might suggest. Daylight is fading, if the miserable grey murk could ever be considered as daylight.

  Forty-Four

  ‘I don’t often agree with Fred Burbage, but he is right, this place is a shithole,’ Terry said pulling the collar of his coat closer about his neck as they made their way along the promenade towards the Pavilion Centre where Sebastian Serrano was due to appear.

  The Pavilion Centre, located at the furthermost point of the bay, like everything else in Whitburn has seen better days. In dire need of a coat of paint, inside and out, it had the depressing atmosphere of a railway station buffet where trains no longer stop, but stale cheese and ham sandwiches are still for sale behind a dusty glass counter.

  A stage hand directed Grace and Terry to Serrano’s room. Terry gave a short knock on the door and they stepped inside, introducing themselves to the startled clairvoyant who was reading the obituary column of the local newspaper.

  His dressing room was as shabby as the rest of the building. The dirt-brown carpet was thread bare and musty, two of the light bulbs in the make-up mirror were blown, the posters on the walls advertised third and fourth rate acts that nobody had ever heard of and the furniture was cheap, well past retirement, fit only to be tossed onto a rubbish dump or a November 5th bonfire.

  ‘Police from West Garside? I’ve sort of half been expecting you.’ Serrano said as he got up from his chair to face them.

  ‘And why would that be, Sebastian? May we call you Sebastian?’ Grace asked, motioning him to sit back down.

  ‘Sure, call me Sebastian if you wish, ‘cept it’s not my real name, it’s just a stage name. My real name’s Stephen Dobbs, but it doesn’t quite have the same ring as Sebastian Serrano, does it? And as this is official, best call me Stephen I suppose?’

  ‘OK, Stephen it is. Now why would you be expecting us?’ Terry asked.

  ‘Well. I mean, after all that has happened, I suppose. Look, I’m feeling a bit nervous, do you mind if I smoke, it’ll help my nerves a bit.’

  ‘They’re your lungs you’re destroying, pal, but for me, I’d rather you didn’t,’ Terry responded grumpily, as an ex-smoker, he now hated anybody smoking around him and thought the ban on smoking in pubs the greatest piece of legislation ever passed.

  ‘It’s all right, Stephen, go ahead, if you must.’ Grace said, to Terry’s obvious annoyance, but Sebastian, seeing the look on Terry’s face now declined.

  ‘Nah, it’s all right, it’s a filthy habit and I want to stop anyway. As I said, I have been sort of expecting you because of what happened, but it’s not illegal is it?’ Sebastian pleaded, looking anxiously from one to the other.

  ‘Perhaps you had better tell us what you’ve done, and we’ll decide whether it’s illegal or not.’ said Grace, leaning forward, wondering what was about to be confessed.

  ‘I mean, it’s not illegal to give somebody a message, you know, if it comes from the other side.’

  ‘And that’s all you’ve done, is it? Give Janet Jarrett a message from the other side, as you call it? So why, having done that, would you be expecting us?’ Terry asked brusquely, he had no time for fortune telling or astrology and horoscopes. Or clairvoyants and spiritualists.

  ‘S’obvious, isn’t it? You’re from West Garside, where the bloke accused of abusing his daughter had his head bashed in, and his wife got strangled. It’s been all over the telly and the papers. In fact, I saw you two on Sky News, that’s how I know she was strangled, you should have seen your face when that Kathy McWhatever dropped that on you?’

  ‘Never mind that, just tell us what happened, Stephen, because I’m beginning to think you might be in serious trouble,’ Terry said, almost wishing Serrano had lit up.

  Serrano sat back and anxiously wiped his hand across his mouth and then took a sip of water from a glass on his dressing table. ‘Right. Right. Well, I gave that message, we don’t call them messages from beyond the grave, you know, we call it ‘from the other side’. Well I received that message and the subsequent consequences have been ghastly. I can’t get it out of my head. That somehow, I’ve brought death to the Jarrett’s. How could the message I received have had such a disastrous outcome? My heads all over the fucking place thinking about it. Can’t sleep because of it.’

  ‘A message that accused Donald Jarrett of abusing his daughter Julia?’ Grace pressed him, determined to get the story as clearly as possible, there could be no margin for error or misunderstanding.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it, that’s it exactly. Only I never knew it would have that effect. I mean, who could?’

  ‘You, you’re supposed to be a clairvoyant, aren’t you?’ Terry retorted sarcastically

  ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ Serrano responded sulkily, wishing as he had never wished for anything in his life, that he had never delivered that deadly message. He had been utterly ho
rrified when he heard about the murder of Donald Jarrett, a man he had accused, albeit only as the messenger, of sexually abusing his daughter. And then to learn this morning that the distraught mother, desperately seeking reasons for her daughter’s death, had also been murdered. That was the last straw. Well almost the last straw, now there were these two coppers in his dressing room and they had not come to get his autograph.

  ‘So! Tell us how it is, then., Christ it’s like pulling teeth trying to get any sense out of you,’ said Terry in exasperation.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, not trying to be obstructive, you know, just nervous.’

  ‘Get on with it, man.’

  So far as Terry was concerned, the actions of Serrano had indirectly resulted in the brutal death of two people and he was not prepared to give the spiritualist an easy ride. ‘As a direct consequence of your actions, two people have died. Think about that!’ Terry added.

  ‘I think about nothing else. Nothing, it’s on my mind all the time. I wish I could take it back, never got involved but I can’t, can I? But there is something, something else. I’ve never told a living soul, but I was abused myself, my Uncle Alan, my mother’s brother used to interfere with me. So, when I received the message, it all came flooding back and I can understand exactly how Julia must have felt. Like the most worthless piece of shit. Now, Uncle Alan is dead, and I hope he rots in hell. And if Donald Jarrett did abuse Julia then I hope he rots in hell too.’

  You’ve never discussed that with anybody? Grace asked sympathetically, ‘

  ‘No, nobody.’

  ‘Not a wife, or girlfriend. Or boyfriend?’ asked Terry, speaking rather more harshly than he intended but he didn’t believe Serrano, thinking he claimed abuse to try and justify his actions.

  ‘No, no wife, not any more. No current girlfriends, either, I’m on the road too much to form a stable relationship. Besides I do well enough without the need for a girlfriend.’

  ‘Meaning what exactly?’ Terry demanded.

  ‘Well, believe it or not I’m a sort of celebrity, a very minor celebrity I agree, but I do attract what I suppose you might call groupies. Mostly middle-aged ladies, it’s true, but there’s many a good tune played on an old fiddle, if you get my meaning. I get requests for ‘private consultations’ from lonely widows, they’re the predatory ones believe me, and I get more sex than I ever did when I was married, so why go through the bother of a girlfriend, eh?’

  ‘Charming!’ retorted Terry, but Serrano did not look in the least bit abashed.

  ‘Look, you’ve seen the sort of shitty venues I get to play in,’ he said, waving an arm around the dressing room to make his point. ‘Some nights I barely cover my costs, what with petrol, the hire of the hall, grubby B & B’s and my agent taking ten percent, so why shouldn’t I enjoy any perks that come along, eh? Although it was to be said that the takings have been up the last couple of dates, what with the publicity and all that, got almost a full house here tonight.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re doing so well out of this tragedy, others have not been so lucky, for instance the Jarrett’s,’ snapped Terry, who really did not like Serrano and wished he could find some offence to charge him with.

  ’I didn’t mean it that way, just saying, is all.’

  There was a knock on the door, ‘Mr Serrano, you’re on, should have been out there five minutes ago.’

  ‘OK, I’ll be out in a minute. Look I’ve got to go, if there’s nothing else? I’ve told you all I can, honest, except I didn’t get paid for that gig in West Garfield, because of the early cancellation, so I was well out of pocket.’

  ‘Bummer, eh?’ Terry said sarcastically.

  ‘That’s all for now Stephen,’ Grace said, ‘We’ll know how to contact you if we need you further, say to give evidence at a trial.’

  ‘Evidence, At a trial? I don’t think I want to do that.’

  ‘You won’t have a choice unless you want to be held in contempt of court. Now, off you go and do your bit for the randy widows.’ Terry said and waved him away,

  ‘Bit harsh on him., weren’t you,’ Grace said after Serrano had left.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose, but I think he’s a sham, he should realise that all actions have a reaction. In this case, two deaths.’

  OK, we’re done here, what do you say we go and test Fred’s opinion of the fish and chips here.’

  ‘Sounds good to me. I googled best fish and chips restaurants, and the name ‘Blue Oyster Fish Restaurant’ came up, not the ‘Blue Onion’ as Fred thought.’.

  ‘Blue Oyster Fish Restaurant? Odd name?’

  ‘Maybe the owner’s a fan of the ‘Blue Oyster Cult’

  ‘Blue Oyster Cult?’

  ‘You’ve never heard of the band Blue Oyster Cult?

  Never?

  ‘You must have heard their most famous song, ‘Don’t fear the Reaper?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I can see you need some serious musical education, Grace. Never heard of the Blue Oyster Cult, what is the world coming to?’

  At that, Terry took out his iPhone, googled Blue Oyster Cult and found a You Tube recording of ‘(Don’t Fear) the Reaper’ and played air guitar to the famous opening riff and sang the first line almost in tune and half a second behind the vocalist, not the band’s regular lead singer, Eric Bloom, but guitarist Buck Dharma.

  ‘OK, I surrender, I have heard it or at least that guitar bit.’

  ‘I first heard that when I was a kid, about 12, 13, something like that and it wasn’t a new song even then, but that opening riff just blew me away and so I plagued my Dad to buy me a guitar.

  I wanted to become a rock star, see, and play like that. I did get a guitar a couple of years later and soon discovered I had no talent whatsoever, could barely play a chord let alone anything else. But I still rate that riff as one of the best ever and just hope the fish and chips are half as good. Blue Oyster Cult, here we come.’

  As they walked along the promenade towards the restaurant, Terry was still humming the riff and playing air guitar, much to the amusement of passers-by.

  Forty-Five

  ‘Hard day, love? Wendy Endcliffe asked her husband Brian, DC Brian Endcliffe, kissing him on the cheek. It was gone 7.30 by the time he got home, wet, hungry, tired and weary after a long and frustrating day.

  His frustrations had been exacerbated when he was unable to find a parking spot within a hundred yards of his house. The rain had been lashing down and although he had a raincoat, he had forgotten to put his umbrella in the boot of the green Ford Focus and was soaked by the time he arrived home.

  When his house on Adelaide Street, an Edwardian mid-terrace, had been built just prior to WW1, the idea that occupants of those houses might one day all have cars, or even more than one car was a distant fantasy and no provision had been given for garages or off street parking. So, although Brian and Wendy loved the house, parking was a constant nightmare, especially difficult for Wendy trying to manage the shopping and twin boys in their double pushchair. And the number of times passing vehicles bumped and scraped parked cars on the street was a constant (and expensive) annoyance.

  But Brian and Wendy would have it no other way. Their daughter Hayley was able to attend one of the most popular junior schools in the town, a fact which kept the house prices rising, and their house, although narrow fronted, was, like the Tardis, seemingly much larger on the inside.

  Once they had converted the attic into a large master bedroom with an en-suite shower, they had five bedrooms, Hayley had her own room, the twins Noah and Daniel currently shared a room but would have their own rooms in due course and the fifth room served as an office for Brian and a sewing room for Wendy. With an off-shot kitchen extension, the house was more than adequate to cater for their growing family.

  Mostly furnished from Ikea, (all they could afford when setting up the home although Wendy had been eyeing up a mustard coloured velvet sofa and footstool in Pearson’s’ furniture showroom) the house was a comfortable hom
e for Brian to return to after the stresses of his day.

  All day he had been butting up against intransigent bureaucracy, trying to establish whether her school or the Social Services department had expressed concerns about possible abuse of Julia by her father.

  He made an appointment with Mr Arnold Raybone, the headmaster at Grange Manor Comprehensive, the school attended by Julia Jarrett (and Chloe Macbeth).

  Grange Manor Grammar School had once been in the top three grammar schools in West Garside, with a solid reputation for the sciences and had sent many bright pupils from all backgrounds, including the High Green sink estate, to Oxford and Cambridge as well as universities such as Sheffield. Leeds and Durham. One ex pupil rose to be a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government whilst another became a senior professor at the London School of Economics. Manor Grange Grammar School had been a solid, well respected, high achieving school with constantly high ratings,

  Then in the 60’s when the political ideology of non-selective education came into force, Manor Grange Grammar became Manor Grange Comprehensive and things changed, and not for the better.

  Overcrowded classrooms of mixed abilities became the norm, the brightest kids held back by the needs to accommodate the less able, teachers encumbered by rigid adherence to statistics and tables and educational excellence became a thing of the past.

  Concurrent with the switch to comprehensive, a number of additions were built, clinging to the skirts of the old buildings like unwanted bastards, the epitome of the ugliest excrescences of 1960’s brutalist architecture.