by S M Hardy
I pressed the button and could hear the strident ring of the bell echoing around the house as though it was an empty tomb, and the thought made me shiver.
‘Come on, come on.’ I rang the bell again, stabbing at the button once, twice, then a third time.
Then, through the bevelled glass panel down the centre of the door, I saw a figure approaching.
‘Thank God,’ I muttered to myself, the tension relaxing a bit.
The door began to open, and I forced my lips into a smile, which instantly fell away when I saw the expression of the young woman who had opened it.
Her blue eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, her nose a shiny pink. She started to speak, but before she could utter more than a couple of words her tears overflowed, and she raised her hand to her face to dab at it with a scrunched-up tissue.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked. ‘Where’s Emma?’
‘Mrs Mortimer …’ She stopped to gulp back tears. ‘Mrs Mortimer,’ she gallantly tried again, but her voice broke. She took a deep breath. ‘Mrs Mortimer’s had an accident. They’ve taken her to Torquay Hospital.’
‘Do you know where Jed is?’
‘There. He’s gone there.’ It made sense of why he’d not been answering his phone; you often had to turn off your mobile in most hospitals.
‘Thank you,’ I said and turned to leave.
‘Mr Hawkes,’ she said, and I looked back. ‘Are you going there? To the hospital, I mean?’
I nodded. ‘Jed might need – you know.’
‘Tell him we’re all praying for her.’
I nodded again as I had no words. This was more than a small household accident. This was serious.
I ran back to the cottage and jumped straight into my car. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got to the hospital, but I had to go.
As I drove, all sorts of scenarios were running through my head as to what had happened to Emma. I should have asked her maid, but I hadn’t had the wherewithal. I’d been too shocked. Now my imagination was working overtime. The girl had said an accident – but what the fuck did that mean? From her tear-stained face, I didn’t need to be psychic to know it was more than a cut finger or grazed knee.
I followed the signs and did an illegal right turn at the traffic lights leading up into the entrance to the hospital and realised I couldn’t actually remember any of the rest of the journey; it had passed in a complete blur. I managed to find a car park with a few empty spaces and enough change to feed into the meter. Then I went in search of the accident and emergency department. Fortunately, there was a board with a diagram of the hospital and where all the departments were, in relation to where I was parked. Even so, it was a maze.
When I eventually found the waiting room it was almost full with people. Some, I assumed, waiting for loved ones while others clutched crudely bandaged arms or injured hands wrapped in towels to their chests. There were a couple of young women with grizzling children huddled on their laps, and several old folk in wheelchairs parked at the end of rows. Jed was nowhere to be seen.
I made my way to the reception desk in a daze. Had Jed left already? I hadn’t seen his car in the car park, but then the place was littered with them. Anyway, he could have gone in the ambulance with Emma. It would probably take the bravest of paramedics to convince him otherwise.
Shit. I’d been poncing about screwing up windows and cleaning the kitchen all morning when I should have been here. I should have been here.
One receptionist was on the phone while the other was in earnest conversation with a man I assumed was a doctor from his white coat and stethoscope slung around his neck. I must have looked distraught as the lady on the phone looked up at me and with a sympathetic smile held up one finger and mouthed, ‘One moment.’
The moment appeared to go on for ever. I glanced down at my wrist, but I no longer wore a watch. I pulled my mobile from my back pocket – twelve fifty-six. I put it away and stood there fidgeting until the receptionist put down the phone.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Mrs Emma Mortimer. She was brought in earlier, she’s had some kind of accident.’
‘Are you family?’
‘No, I’m … I’m her partner’s nephew. I think he’s probably with her. Jed Cummins is his name.’
‘One moment,’ she repeated and started looking at her computer screen. ‘All right Mr …?’
‘Hawkes, Jim Hawkes.’
‘Right, Mr Hawkes, if you take the lift over there to level two and turn right, you’ll find seating at the end of the corridor. You can wait there.’
I nodded my thanks and made straight for the lift.
I’ve never been particularly fond of hospitals. The last time I’d been in one was when … My throat closed up. There was no point thinking about then, this was now, and I prayed to God that this visit was going to have a better outcome.
Jed was sitting in the corner, arms resting on thighs, head in hands. I hesitated and for a moment considered returning to the lift. He might not want me here: he might think I’m intruding; he might even blame me.
He must have felt my eyes upon him as he looked up and stared at me with bloodshot eyes. I took a step towards him and he stood. I couldn’t read his expression. I carried on walking and he started towards me. We both stopped when there was about a yard between us.
I had to swallow a couple of times before I could bring myself to speak. ‘How is she?’
His brow bunched and his cheeks kind of twitched like he too was having trouble finding his voice, or was it that he was trying to keep it together?
Then he took that one last step and pulled me into a bear hug that was tight enough my ribcage screamed for mercy. I didn’t care, I was too frightened to care. My big strong friend was clearly a mess and my fear for Emma shot through the roof.
‘Jed,’ I said when he abruptly let me go, finally remembering himself. ‘What happened? Is Emma OK?’
He pinched at the bridge of his nose, surreptitiously wiping his eyes. Then his hand ran down his face to finally rub at his beard.
‘I don’t know. They’ve taken her for scans. She’s got head injuries, you see.’ He jerked his head towards the seats and we both went back along the corridor to sit down.
‘What happened?’
His shoulders slumped. ‘I don’t know. I arrived at Emms’ the same time as the girls this morning. We found her at the bottom of the stairs.’ His eyes filled up and he pulled a huge white hanky from his pocket. ‘She was so cold. So very cold. At first, we thought … I thought she was – you know.’
‘Had she been there all night, do you think?’
Jed gave a bob of the head. ‘That’s why they’re so worried. If she’s been unconscious all night …’ He didn’t have to say any more − I got the picture.
We sat there in silence for a bit. What was there to say? Well, probably a lot, but not much of it mattered at the moment.
‘Jed?’ He looked up at me. ‘What do you think happened? I mean, was it an accident?’
His eyes widened and he stared at me. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you think she fell?’
Jed carried on staring at me, but he wasn’t really, his mind was far away and from the tightening of the lines around his eyes I guessed it wasn’t in a very good place.
‘Has something else happened?’ he asked at last. ‘Something I’m not aware of?’
So I told him. I told him about the chance comments made by Rose and her father, seeing the Garvin girls and their expressions as they passed me and Lucy on the road, the foul word scrawled in over-red lipstick on my bedroom wall, and the sabotaged window lock leaving the cottage open to someone so they could come and go as they pleased.
‘We need to get those windows locked up tight,’ Jed said. ‘I’ll come over later, when I know … you know?’
I put my hand on his arm. ‘All taken care of. I did it this morning before I tried ringing you.’ I ran a hand through my hair. ‘Wish I
’d tried phoning you first now.’
‘Jim, there was nothing you could have done. There was nothing either of us could have done.’
I guessed he was right, but it didn’t stop me from feeling shitty about it all.
‘I’ve never liked those two old hags,’ Jed said out of the blue.
‘It’s all conjecture,’ I told him, like I had told myself a hundred times or more. ‘I mean, why would either of them try to kill me? Or Emma, for that matter? There’s no good reason for it.’
He shook his head. ‘None of it makes sense. But you’ve been seeing these things for a reason. The dead have been giving you clues for a reason.’
‘Well, I wish they’d give me more than clues. I’m not Miss Fucking Marple,’ I said, which did raise a glimmer of a smile from Jed.
I went and got some coffee for the pair of us, more for something to do than anything else. I also picked up a couple of sandwiches. I suspected they’d end up in a bin somewhere, but they were there if either of us wanted them.
When I returned, Jed was talking to a doctor. They were both standing, which I took as possibly a good sign. Didn’t they usually ask you to sit when they were about to give you bad news?
I heard Jed ask, ‘Can I see her?’ I didn’t hear what the doctor said, but as Jed started along the corridor beside him, I assumed the answer was yes.
Jed gave me a shaky smile as we passed. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes,’ he told me and then was gone.
I sank down onto the seat I’d occupied before and, putting the sandwiches and Jed’s coffee on the floor between our chairs, began to sip mine. The coffee was hot and wet, the best that could be said of it. So, I sat and waited and, having nothing better to do, began to mull on the chain of events from my arrival in Slyford St James until this morning.
Jed was gone more like twenty minutes, but when he returned the smile on his face as he approached me eased away some of the tension.
‘Well?’ I asked, standing.
‘She’s sleeping now. They’re going to keep her in overnight and do a few more tests when she wakes up, but the doctors are pretty confident that the worst she has is a concussion.’
‘Thank God.’
‘I’ve always said she was a tough old boot,’ his voice cracked, and he had to look away.
‘Did she regain consciousness?’
Jed nodded. I guessed still finding it difficult to speak.
‘Did she say what’d happened?’
‘No. She was still a little confused. She couldn’t remember anything after getting ready for bed.’
‘Is that normal?’ I asked in alarm. ‘Memory loss, I mean?’
‘Apparently,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll come back this evening.’
‘When’s visiting hours?’
‘Six-thirty they told me.’
It was only when we’d reached the ground floor that I remembered the sandwiches I’d bought. I kept on going. The sooner we were out of there the better.
It was as I thought. Jed had gone with Emma in the ambulance, so I drove him back to the village and, on the way, we returned to the subject of the Garvin girls.
‘So, if I’ve got this right, Darcy and Miriam have a cousin and it’s him that’s in Goldsmere.’
‘That was the gist of what Lucy’s friend and her father said.’
‘I’ve never heard of them having a cousin.’
‘But as you and Emma said, neither of you really know them that well,’ I said as I slowed down to let an old boy with a Zimmer frame cross the road.
‘Did they tell you anything else? Like his name?’
I frowned at the windscreen, trying to recall exactly what they had said. Then I remembered Rose had mentioned Jed, not by name, but it was him she was talking about all right. That made me smile, but I thought it best not to mention it. I doubted, somehow, he’d be thrilled as being known as ‘that fellow that talks to dead people’.
‘She called Darcy and Miriam the “batty sisters” and said they gave her the creeps, though when I asked her why, she did go on to say it wasn’t so much them as their cousin.’
‘Did she say why?’
‘Not really,’ I told him, ‘only that he was “a total whack-job” and that’s when her father butted in telling her to show more respect as “the poor chap was as good as dead”.’
‘I wonder what she meant by “total whack-job”?’
‘I didn’t get a chance to ask.’
I drove on while Jed sat silently, I assumed mulling on what I’d told him. ‘Oh shit!’ Jed said, though it was more like an exhalation of breath. ‘They were there. Don’t you remember? They were there – they heard you, they saw you. You changed, Jim, maybe only a bit, but you changed. Neither Emma or I recognised him, but Darcy and Miriam would have, if he was their cousin.’
I glanced across at him and he was rubbing at his beard, his eyebrows knotted together as he stared straight ahead.
‘Take me back to Emms’,’ he said. ‘I want to listen to that tape again.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
We drove the rest of the way in silence. I’d always thought the Garvin girls to be a bit odd, but surely neither of them was a potential murderer?
But you saw one of them push the man off the cliff.
I saw someone push the man off the cliff. It could have been anyone, he didn’t show me a face, though it was definitely a woman – he called her a bitch.
I drove the car up Emma’s drive and parked right out front. The same girl as before answered the door and let us in without question.
‘Can I get you anything to take in to Mrs Mortimer?’ she asked.
‘Maybe some wash things, hairbrush, you know that sort of thing.’
‘I’ll go and pack her overnight bag,’ she said and left us to it.
The tape machine was on the sideboard in the lounge. Jed fiddled about with it a bit, running the tape back and then forward until we got to the section recorded the night of Emma’s party. I really didn’t want to hear it again, but Jed appeared to think it was important.
‘… hide. He found me. Had to run. Make him stop. Make him go away.’
‘Oh my God.’
Jed stopped the tape for a moment. ‘That was Darcy,’ he said, ‘and Miriam telling her to be quiet.’ He clicked the tape back on.
‘He’s coming. He’s coming.’
‘Do you think that’s it?’
‘I don’t think so; look at him,’ Emma’s voice and then several gasps.
‘Oh, dear Lord,’ Darcy again.
Then the man’s voice. ‘Where are you? Little brat. Think I’m stupid, do you? When I find you I’ll show you who’s stupid. I’ll show you. When I find you I’m going to make you sorry. I’m going to make you very sorry indeed. Little bitch.’
‘You have to make him stop,’ another voice, Peter Davies. ‘He’s going to hurt more children. You have to find him and make him stop.’
‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ the woman’s voice I’d heard when I came to my senses, then another low, barely distinguishable voice snapping at her to shut up.
Jed clicked off the tape.
‘At the time I thought their reaction was odd,’ Jed said, stroking his beard. ‘I mean, they were always begging me to hold seances.’
‘It fucking scared me,’ I said, gesturing with my head to the tape machine. ‘I still can’t believe all that stuff came out of my mouth.’
Jed ignored me. ‘I’d’ve thought they would’ve been delighted, but they both looked scared – and now I know why. They recognised him. Miriam wasn’t telling Darcy to shut up so she could hear, she was telling her to shut up before she gave something away she really shouldn’t.’
‘Okaaay,’ I said, ‘so they recognised the man as being their cousin and it scared them, I get that, but later they were asking Emma whether I held seances.’
‘And Emma told them no. Don’t you see? They were checking to find out whether you were likely to
give the game away while holding another seance or having a psychic turn.’
‘But nobody but them recognised him.’
‘But if there was to be a next time someone else might. Just because neither Emma nor I have met their cousin it doesn’t mean no one else has. It’s a small community.’
‘But you’ve lived here all your life.’
Jed gave a small and bitter laugh. ‘I was sent away to school and then went straight into the army. Apart from a few holidays, I never came back until about twenty years ago.’
And that made me wonder, but his expression brooked no questions. He’d once told me that not everything was a mystery – maybe not, but I could tell when a person was keeping secrets. But then it was Jed’s secret when all was said and done, and if he wanted to keep it to himself it was up to him.
‘So, how do we find out more about this cousin? He’s the key to all this.’
‘How can a man who’s half-dead be so dangerous?’ Jed said, though from the way he said it he knew it was true.
This mystery man was dangerous – dangerous, nasty and malevolent. I’d felt it. He’d been inside my head and I’d been inside his, and a very dark and deeply unpleasant place it had been.
The maid, who Jed called Tilly, returned with an overnight bag for him to take into Emma.
‘I’ve put in enough bits and bobs to last her a couple of days, just in case,’ she said with a smile, though her eyes still looked red and puffy.
‘I should be bringing her home tomorrow,’ Jed told her.
‘Let’s hope so,’ Tilly said and was about to leave, then hesitated. ‘By the way, Miss Garvin rang just before lunch. She was very upset when she heard what’d happened to Mrs Mortimer.’
‘What did she want?’ Jed asked.
‘She didn’t say. When I told her Mrs Mortimer was in hospital, it sort of knocked the wind out of her sails.’
‘Which Miss Garvin was it, Tilly?’ I asked.
