High Island Blues

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘Go on. Be as long as you like.’

  They sat in a conservatory to talk. The house itself was shabby and unloved. The coffee he made was strong and good and Molly thought he would be skilled at practical things. She wondered again how he coped with teaching. She asked him if he enjoyed it. It was as good a way as any to introduce the subject of Michael Brownscombe’s death.

  ‘I hate it,’ he said passionately. ‘I survive from one holiday to the next. The sixth form aren’t too bad. They’re interested and they want to work. And the young ones are all right. When they first arrive they’re keen because it’s all new to them. The rest is a nightmare. But I have to stick at it to keep this place up. Father left us the house but no money. Mother struggled to stay on when he died. She couldn’t bear to leave and nor could I.’

  ‘Tell me about Michael Brownscombe,’ she said. ‘ Was he one of the keen ones?’

  ‘Michael was one of the angels.’ He smiled. ‘From my point of view. Quiet. Well behaved. Some of the teachers thought that was unnatural. He was in the fifth form when I arrived at the school. Sixteen. I was twenty-two. I’d just finished my post-graduate teaching certificate. This was my first job.’

  ‘You introduced him to birdwatching?’

  ‘Not exactly. He was already interested.’ It seemed not to occur to him to ask why she wanted to know these things. She thought he probably had little ordinary social contact with other adults. ‘I wanted to make a good impression at the school. It was the only way I could see of staying in this house. So I formed a natural history society. To show that I was prepared to make an effort. That although I wasn’t much good at rugby I was willing to give up my Saturday mornings. It didn’t last long. A few boys and girls came along at the start. We went out locally and I remember I took them in a mini bus to Dawlish Warren. We entered a team in the County Bird Race. Then it just petered out. I suppose I didn’t inspire them.’

  ‘But you still took Michael out?’

  ‘Yes. He was a real enthusiast.’

  ‘Was there anyone else?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He looked at her warily.

  ‘Did anyone else come birdwatching with you?’

  ‘No!’ The denial seemed too vehement. ‘Just Michael and me. And he couldn’t come every weekend. His parents were in the holiday business and he was expected to work, especially in the summer. He was young. He had his own life to lead. But I suppose we became good friends. I don’t think any of the other teachers knew. I didn’t ask him to keep it secret. There was nothing to hide. Not what you might think. I was rather ashamed that I couldn’t make friends of my own age. I suppose it seemed pathetic that I had to turn for company to one of the boys.’

  ‘You kept in touch when he went away to university?’

  ‘In the holidays, yes. And we wrote. I was pleased that he’d made friends. He told me about their birdwatching trips.’ He paused. ‘I suppose I was jealous. I had a hellish time at university. But mother started to be ill at around that time. I had plenty to keep me occupied.’

  ‘Did he tell you he was going to America?’

  ‘I heard that he was going.’ The answer seemed deliberately vague. ‘What is all this about?’ he asked. ‘Have you got a message for me from Michael? You said your husband knew him.’

  ‘Michael’s dead,’ she said. ‘He was murdered. At High Island, in Texas.’

  ‘So,’ he said calmly. ‘After all this time.’ He stood up and looked out of the smeared glass down the garden, then turned to face her. ‘I suppose I should understand it. My mother still hates my father. And he died more than forty years ago.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The rules of the bird race were simple. Each team had four members. Three of the four had to see a bird for it to count. The object was to collect as many species as possible in twenty-four hours. All birds had to be seen on or from the Bolivar peninsula.

  The I10 marked the boundary.

  When the Oaklands team arrived at the Bolivar ferry it was still dark. The lights of Galveston were reflected in the bay. The team was using Oliver’s hire car. Oliver seemed altogether more cheerful, quite boyish, as if, in revealing his involvement with Sally’s fraud, the slate was wiped clean. He thinks he’s charmed me into believing him, George thought. As he would have done in the old days.

  Rob was hanging out of the car window and smoking, the murders forgotten. Nothing was as important as winning the bird race. He muttered into the darkness: ‘You’d think the storm would have brought something in. This must be the best place to start.’ Nobody answered or took any notice of him. The muttering was a nervous habit like the chain-smoking. He could not stand the tension of waiting.

  Russell sat in the back with George. Two old men together. Nothing had been said but they knew it needed someone with sharper, younger eyes to be in front to spot chance wanted species by the side of the road. Russell seemed to have lost something of the previous evening’s excitement. He’s worn out, George thought. Like me. He’s looked forward to this trip for so long, now he doesn’t have the energy to enjoy it.

  George wondered what Molly was doing. He had phoned her before leaving the hotel. In England it would have been late morning. The landlord recognized the voice before George identified himself. ‘She’s still out,’ he said. ‘Went away first thing and I’ve not seen her since.’

  George had felt let down.

  It began to get light and they got out of the car. They identified birds on call before: they could see them properly. Hundreds of laughing gulls were roosting on the old pier sheds. Then the sun shone and they could start the race properly. George took notes and counted up the running total. Adult Franklin’s gull going north. Brown pelican. And just as they had decided that they had ticked off everything they could expect to see at the ferry there was a juvenile magnificent frigate bird. Huge. A seven-foot wingspan and a forked swallow’s tail. Ferocious, like some throw-back from Jurassic times, Oliver said. It had been blown from the Caribbean by the three days of storm. No one could have predicted it.

  That set the tone of the day. It was like a dream. Wherever they went they saw all the species they expected to get, and more. George had never known a day’s birding like it. The birds Rob had staked out on his day of planning were waiting for them. The willet was still displaying on the post by the side of the road leading to the Flats. A solitary sandpiper was still in the ditch. As the day wore on and their score increased they stopped being surprised by their luck and took it for granted. When they bumped into competing teams who complained about birds they had missed they had to control their glee.

  ‘You always miss a few,’ they said. Though that day they missed nothing.

  ‘Well,’ George said to Russell, ‘it’s not much like the old Devon Wildlife Trust Bird Race.’

  ‘No.’ Russell shook his head as if he could not quite take it in. He tried to find words to explain how he was feeling but there was no time. They had to get back into the car and drive on to Anahuac. Rob was worried that they were running behind schedule.

  They reached the Anahuac Wildlife Refuge at eleven o’clock. It was airless and hot. A heat haze stretched over the marsh to the horizon. By the visitors’ centre there was a public telephone and George called Molly again.

  ‘Sorry mate,’ the landlord said. ‘She’s still out.’

  For the first time George was concerned. Perhaps he had misjudged the facts of the case and she was in danger. What information could a teacher have which would take all day to pass on?

  As he turned away from the phone to return to the car he flushed a large brown moth of a bird which had been lying horizontally along the low branch of a shrubbery tree. Its dead leaf camouflage would have made it impossible to see if it had not moved.

  ‘Chuck Will’s widow!’ he shouted.

  But there was no one to hear him. The others were in the toilet block, and he had to drag them out. Russell hopped out of the cubicle with his trousers round his ankles
like a child in a sack race. But they got it. And it fluttered away over the marsh so the carload of birders who pulled up behind them had a brief, tantalizing, untickable view.

  At Anahuac, Rob Earl organized a rail pull. He had prepared the rope in advance. It was coiled in the boot of the car, with the packs of sandwiches and the flasks of cold drink. The rope was twenty yards long, strung every six feet with an old square detergent bottle filled with sand. He gave one end to Oliver and the other to George and made them walk across the wet meadow dragging the rope between them.

  ‘It’s brilliant!’ he said. His face was red with heat and excitement. ‘There’s nothing like it for flushing out rails.’ He turned to Oliver. ‘If only we’d thought of a trick like this when we were here the first time. There wouldn’t have been so much sitting round the Oaklands Hotel, moaning and waiting for the wind to change.’

  Oliver did not reply.

  ‘Isn’t it cheating?’ George resisted the euphoria. There was the nagging worry about Molly, the unfinished business, the dilemma of what to tell Benson.

  ‘Nothing against it in the rules.’

  ‘All the same.’

  ‘Oh, come on George. Don’t be boring. Not today. Today we’re making history!’

  And that was how he saw it. It was as important to him as that.

  They walked slowly, tugging the rope through the marsh grass. George suddenly found the situation ridiculous. What was he doing here, up to his ankles in mud? These were boy’s games and he should have grown out of them. He watched the Sora rails which had been skulking in the vegetation fly out into the open. They had short wings and an ungainly, awkward flight which took them only a few yards before they scuttled back into the marsh again. Then he saw a flash of white which made him forget his ethical misgivings. It was the wing of a tiny yellow rail, the bird which Rob must have been after all the time. George felt a rush of adrenaline and yelled with the rest of them. He was still just as much a boy as they were.

  Rob was triumphant. ‘There you are George. What did I tell you? Wasn’t that worth it?’

  And George admitted that he supposed it was.

  In the afternoon they returned to High Island, to the Audubon sanctuaries. Again Rob had left nothing to chance. He had briefed one of his party, the retired doctor from Inverness, to go round the reserves in the morning and the man was at Boy Scout waiting for them, eager to report what had been seen.

  They sat at Purkey’s Pond to eat lunch, adding species to the list all the time, feeling like celebrities as people from the Oaklands Hotel turned up to cheer them on.

  Connie May was with them. She had been at the sanctuary entrance when they arrived. Perhaps she had been there all morning looking out for the hire car. She beamed.

  ‘I hear you’ve been doing ever so well,’ she said. She sat next to her husband, unwrapped his sandwiches, poured him a drink. Like a mother flushed with pleasure at her child’s achievements.

  Even Julia Adamson came to Boy Scout Wood. Her face was hidden by large round sun-glasses so George could not tell what she made of them all or why she was there. Perhaps she had come to pass on information because he overheard her say to Oliver:

  ‘The merry widow’s arrived at Oaklands. They’re making a fuss of her of course. You can tell she’s loving every minute. She can hardly be grieving for Michael, can she?’

  Oliver said: ‘And I suppose you’d grieve for me?’

  The thought of Laurie at Oaklands made George more anxious. He was taking a risk. He should have passed on his suspicions, however tenuous, to Benson. There would at least be a shared responsibility then. He was desperate to talk to Molly but it seemed that the day had a momentum of its own. He could not control it. There was no time to get to a phone.

  Rob moved them on. To Smith Oaks. To the Oilfield Ponds. And as night began to fall, back to the coast, to the town of Gilchrist, close to where they had started. In the dusk, black crowned night heron drifted over their heads. As they drove back to the hotel they completed their list with a barn owl which they saw in the headlights hunting along the roadside.

  George, who had spent the day expecting a disaster, was relieved. It was over. He could take charge of events again.

  ‘This is it then,’ Rob said. ‘Glory awaits us.’

  They knew they had won. Even cautious George was sure of that.

  The others walked ahead of him into the house, their arms round each other’s shoulders, swaying like drunken football fans after an away win.

  Rob turned back. ‘Come on, George! We did it! Don’t be such a cold fish!’

  George shook his head. The day had been an escape. Nothing had been resolved. With a sudden panic he pushed past them into the hotel.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Molly must have been waiting for his call because the phone was lifted after the first ring.

  She spoke. He listened in silence.

  ‘Well,’ she said at last. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘It’s not proof.’

  ‘You could get proof. If you wanted to.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Do you want to?’ she demanded.

  He was still thinking about that when she said, ‘I’m going to bed. And in the morning I’m driving home.’

  ‘I’ll come home tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens.’

  He replaced the phone. Somewhere there was an answering click. A door being shut. Or opened. He was in Mary Ann’s flat. He had asked to use the phone there. The rest of the hotel was a madhouse. Even from here he could make out the strains of the country band Mary Ann had hired for the night, cheers, singing. And footsteps. He could hear footsteps on the polished wood floor. He had not locked the door behind him. He turned round, startled, although he had been half expecting her. In her hand was a kitchen knife.

  ‘Not a chisel then, this time,’ he said.

  ‘I want to talk to you.’ Her voice was urgent. She waved the knife in front of him.

  ‘Of course not,’ he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘The chisel was only meant for him, wasn’t it? It was special. Why was that?’ He knew already.

  ‘Because of Helen,’ she said. ‘ He killed our Helen.’

  ‘Little Nell.’

  ‘That was his name for her,’ she spat back angrily. ‘We never called her that.’

  ‘She was an artist,’ he said.

  ‘She was brilliant! She could have gone to Art School and made a living at it. All the teachers said that.’

  ‘It was her chisel? She used it to make her carvings?’

  Connie May nodded.

  ‘When did you find out?’ she said.

  ‘About Helen? Just now. My wife’s been talking to Paul Butterworth. I should have guessed, shouldn’t I, when I saw you at the High School watching the girls.’

  ‘She was their age when she died.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ she cried. ‘Not to hurt you. To tell you. I had to make you listen. Too many people have walked away while I’ve tried to explain.’

  She sat next to him on the sofa with the point of the knife against his chest so he could feel it pricking him through the thin material of his shirt. She had been a school cook. She was confident with knives. He supposed he would be able to overpower her if he had to but he hoped he wouldn’t have to try.

  ‘Helen was a school-friend of Mick Brownscombe’s wasn’t she?’ he prompted.

  She nodded. ‘We were pleased as punch when she got to the Grammar. She was never what you’d call brainy. But a worker. A tryer. And good with her hands.’

  ‘Younger than Mick?’

  She nodded again. ‘She met him at that club Mr Butterworth started for the kiddies. She’d always been fond of animals. We didn’t think there’d be any harm in it.’

  ‘The school entered a team in the County Trust Bird Race,’ George said.

  ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘I fou
nd a winner’s certificate among Mick Brownscombe’s belongings. He’d kept it. Their friendship must have meant a lot to him.’

  And that was how I first knew it was you, he thought. That among other things. Russell organized the bird races for the Devon Trust. He must have known Michael, must have recognized him as Wilf Brownscombe’s son but he claimed never to have met him. He could have told me today. I gave him the chance. But still he said nothing.

  ‘It meant a lot to Helen,’ Connie May said. ‘She waited for him all the time he was at college.’

  ‘He kept one of her wood carvings,’ George said. ‘ He brought it with him when he left Britain.’

  ‘When he ran away!’ she said.

  They sat for a moment without speaking. Outside in the garden fireworks were being let off. There were shouts and screams.

  ‘What happened that night?’ George asked.

  ‘He’d been drinking,’ she said. ‘Working in some bar his father owned.’

  And you’ve never had a drink since, George thought.

  ‘Helen spent the evening there. It was the only way she could get to see him. Wilf never gave him time off. The last bus home was at ten-thirty. She left the bar and walked into the village. It was raining, cold, the end of the season. He told her to wait and he’d drive her home when the bar closed but she was a sensible girl and she said she’d get the bus. He didn’t like that. He followed her. In his father’s car.’

  George imagined the narrow Devon lane with its overgrown hedgerows, the boy driving frantically after the girl, hoping to make his peace with her before the bus took her away.

  ‘He skidded,’ Connie said. ‘Crashed into her.’ She turned her head away but the point of the knife was still at his chest.

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Left her. Went back to the bar. Phoned an ambulance. And phoned his father Wilf Brownscombe. Just the man to fix anything. By the time the police arrived to find out what had happened there were half a dozen witnesses to swear that Mick Brownscombe had never left the bar all evening.’

  ‘Why are you so sure that he had?’