by Clare Curzon
‘There was a motor cycle,’ she suddenly recalled. ‘I wouldn’t put it past Jess to …’
‘That was Jake Railton’s. He later rode it to the hotel where they’re all staying. It’s still there.’ DS Beaumont recrossed his legs and treated her to a prolonged stare. ‘The others expressed some surprise that you chose not to join them there after visiting your son.’
‘I’d meant to phone and explain. Somehow, with all that happened, I forgot.’
That didn’t appear to satisfy the man. His stare continued.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘they can be a very daunting bunch. I couldn’t face them just then. So much had gone wrong. Overnight my brother-in-law had lost his home and everything in it. I could have lost – both my children.’
He seemed to understand then and closed the questioning. She saw him to the pub’s door, where he turned up his jacket collar against a sudden downpour of rain. ‘Too late,’ he commented. ‘We could have done with this on the blaze. Try not to worry, Mrs Dellar. Your daughter’s not answering her mobile phone, but you may find she’s at home before you are.’
But Jess didn’t live at home any more. It was five months since she moved out. He could thank the family for being behind on that item of news. Kate had chosen not to relay the fact that, after dropping out of university, Jess was living like a water gypsy on a canal boat near Denham.
Kate nodded grimly. And that, of course, was where she must go now to catch up with her, after checking on Eddie.
4
The detective sergeant left, no further forward. He had offered no suggestions on how the fire started or spread so rapidly. While Kate waited for the taxi service to answer her call she tried to clear her memory of Claudia’s stoic acceptance of their disaster; and of how she’d recently sold off so much of the valuable library. In a dark corner of her mind there remained a chilling suspicion. Could she believe Claudia had actually planned the fire and was ultimately responsible for Eddie’s injuries?
Duncan Crick made Kate cancel the cab she’d just ordered, insisting on driving her to the hospital. He apologized for the state of the car’s interior. They had only the one for pub and private use, so there were wooden boxes and cartons of food and drink in the rear, roughly covered by a plastic sheet.
After the sudden shower a brisk wind had scattered the clouds to reveal a beautiful afternoon, but she was chilled through and glad of her coat on which Lily had attempted to smother the stench of smoke with a generous spray of cheap perfume.
She dreaded what the doctors might tell her when she arrived; but it seemed that the news was good – at least to their minds.
In the tropical atmosphere of a side ward Eddie lay almost flat under a single sheet, his chest bare and sporting a line of hideous dark stitches like a beginner’s first efforts on a leathercraft course. A square of padded gauze was taped to one side of his head and his eyes looked weirdly absent. She guessed this was due to painkillers.
They hardly talked at all and, after the bleak smile he gave as she walked in, his mood was sombre and unfocused. She couldn’t be sure he knew that his sister was unaccounted for, so she didn’t dare mention her. She stayed only twelve minutes before Crick drove her to Chorleywood to pick up her own car.
There was no sign of anyone having visited the house. She threw the post – mostly junk mail – on the kitchen counter, checked that the only message on her answerphone was from the decorator due next week to repaint her spare bedroom, and drove out to Denham. She parked as near as she could to the narrowboat. The grassed track that led to the towpath was slippery after the rain and rutted by bike tracks. She avoided the puddles as best she could and stepped up on the metal box that formed the doorstep. The padlock was missing from the small double doors in the barge’s centre. Hopefully she rapped and called Jess’s name. There was no answer, so she pulled the doors open and climbed through.
It was dark inside, all the curtains having been left closed. ‘Jess,’ she called again, ‘it’s Mother.’
The three steps down inside were wide and shallow, giving directly on to the galley. As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she could make out a clutter of dishes in the sink. When she moved forward her shoes crunched on broken china.
She reached for the light switch and nothing happened. Either the bulbs had all failed or the generator wasn’t working. So, turning left, she picked her way over an assortment of obstacles to the main room and drew back the curtains. Then she saw. It wasn’t slovenly housekeeping. The place had been trashed.
Jess had neighbours moored to either side, separated by half the narrowboat’s length to allow for pulling away into the mainstream. To get here Kate had passed an odd, home-made looking craft not unlike a Noah’s Ark in shape. A trickle of smoke had been issuing from its stovepipe chimney and she’d caught the scent of burning logs. Now she went back and knocked on the door.
‘Be with yuh,’ a hoarse voice offered, so she waited. There was a deal of clumping and banging before the door swung outwards only just missing her face. The man staring up at her was like a garden gnome, red-faced and puffing round a blackened pipe clamped in the centre of tea-stained greying whiskers.
‘Ah,’ he greeted her. ‘Yor ’er Ma, ain’t yuh? You’ll be looking for our Jess. Well, she’s away. And just as well she is, so there! There’s been some nasty folk around ‘ere last day or so. Come in.’
It was kindly meant. He moved aside to make room while she climbed over the door’s ledge. Then she saw he was missing the lower half of one arm.
The boat had only one room as far as she could see. A half partition cut off the tiny galley, and she guessed the plastic curtain, figuring gulls, curlews and cormorants on an electric blue background, would hide the heads and shower. For a bed there was a low divan under the open square window on the water side. Opposite it was a small gate-leg table with two stacking chairs slotted together. Everything was neat and clean. ‘You must have been a sailor,’ Kate couldn’t help saying.
‘Was a hable seaman once,’ he boasted jokily. ‘Til I got me arm blown orf. Still, better luck than some of me mates.’ His ruddy face creased into a grin and he suddenly thought to remove the pipe, which she saw now was empty. ‘Well, sit down ma’am, do. You‘ll‘ave a cuppa, won’t yuh? Kettle’s on.’
It was starting to sing, on top of a grill-fronted stove from which the wonderful scent of burning wood issued. She sank on to the divan to which he’d waved her. ‘I’m a little worried about my daughter,’ she confessed. ‘Have you seen her around at all lately?’
‘Las’ Satdy,’ he said promptly. ‘She said she ‘ad a job to do up north, and she left me ‘er key like she allus does.’
‘I shan’t need to borrow it,’ Kate said grimly, ‘since somebody’s broken in. The place is a mess.’
He nodded, his kindly eyes serious. ‘Appened las’ night. If I’d bin ‘ere I‘da seen them off. Kids, like as not. I went to water ‘er pot plants s‘morning and gotta shock. Thort I’d better leave it all that way ‘til she’d seen it.’
‘I saw her yesterday,’ Kate began, and realized she didn’t want to admit Jess was missing. The possibilities were too appalling. Then suddenly she found she was sobbing and the old chap was leaving her to it while he warmed the teapot and spooned in the tea.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said eventually.
‘Why don’t yuh tell old Marty all about it?’ he suggested, balancing a large mug beside her on the divan.
‘I will,’ she told him. ‘Only I think I ought to let the police know about the boat as soon as possible. You see, she – there’s more besides. Do you know if there’s a phone box anywhere near?’
He sat and stared, seeming to be debating something in his mind. Then he got up and lurched to the rear of the boat, to come back, miraculously, with a mobile phone in his hand. ‘This do?’
She plunged her hands in her pockets. The detective had given her a card with his number. She hadn’t expected to use it, but it was th
ere. Why do they print the important things so small? Small isn’t beautiful for anyone over forty-five. She’d need her reading glasses.
It was a woman who answered the call. ‘Regional Crime,’ she said, and gave a Polish-sounding name.
Kate asked for Sergeant Beaumont and explained who she was. ‘It concerns the fire last night at Larchmoor Place.’
It seemed that the other sergeant was busy elsewhere, but the one speaking was his partner, and she offered to help. So Kate explained where she was and why.
‘I’ll be with you in twenty-five minutes,’ the woman detective promised. ‘Meanwhile, don’t touch anything.’
‘Good,’ said the old sailor. ‘Now drink your tea.’ He slid a plate with a buttered scone on it alongside the mug. ‘Afraid I don’t do jam. Last year was bad for wild raazbries.’
Kate drank the tea. So much kindliness helped. And she’d liked the sound of the young woman detective. It was the ‘five’ after the ‘twenty’ that gave her confidence. Such precision. And it must mean she knew the district, how long it would take to park and walk along here.
Kate and Marty talked, and she forgot to check by her watch if the policewoman’s estimate was exact. She told him about the family party and the fire. He spoke of his life at sea and in port, only ended by ‘a bit in the Falklands’. The fire on his ship, made nothing of, must have made last night’s outbreak seem small beer. But then, he didn’t know about Jess. Or Eddie.
He heard the woman’s approach before she did. ‘Your copper’s here,’ he announced, and opened the door before she could knock. Fortunately she handed Kate her card and pronounced the name clearly. Zyczynski. Well, she’d be used to explaining herself.
Kate took in her appearance before she seated herself alongside on the divan. She was of medium height, in her middle to late twenties, slim and erect, pretty, with dark brown hair worn in a close cap of curls. Her voice was low, with warmth in it, not in the least foreign. ‘I’ve asked one of our civilian experts to take a look at your daughter’s boat,’ she told Kate. ‘It may be some local juveniles who broke in, but it’s as well to make sure. Did you see any graffiti? Urination? Deliberate spillage from kitchen cupboards?’
Kate wasn’t sure, but then she’d not examined the boat closely. ‘Marty – her neighbour here – may be able to tell you more.’
‘Yes, thanks. I was just coming to him.’
Her questions were as precise and pointed as they had been to Kate. While she felt some confidence in having her there, Kate hadn’t missed the fact the fact that evidence of hooliganism – which Marty too denied noticing, apart from the emptied cupboards and broken china – would have set her mind more at ease. It began to sound as if the break-in had been something other than teenage vandalism. More, perhaps, like a deliberate search. Which seemed frighteningly personal.
Sergeant Zyczynski went outside to use her phone and came back to announce that a forensic examiner was already on his way. She felt she must remain on the spot until he arrived. ‘In case of further interference, since the boat is left open,’ she explained.
Marty plunged head and shoulders into a cupboard built under the galley sink. He emerged with a small toolbox tucked under his truncated arm. ‘Ere, take it,’ he told her.
While she held it he clicked it open and with his left hand produced a padlock with two linked keys attached. ‘That’ny good? The lady ‘ere can take charge of it, then you can be on yer way, girl. Got better things to do with yer time than ’ang about ‘ere on the off-chance, eh? I’ll see she comes to no ’arm.’
The sergeant smiled, showing splendid white teeth. ‘Let’s fix it then.’ They went out together and their voices faded along the towpath.
Left alone, Kate felt reluctant to leave the rough comfort Marty had offered, although by now matters here were out of her hands. Shakily she reached for the teapot and refilled her cup. The universal panacea, she thought bitterly. But what else was there?
Well, there was the family. The alien Dellars. They were all assembled and expecting her to return to Greythorpe Hotel. She assumed her overnight bag was there too, since she’d bundled it into the minibus along with Carlton’s tartan rug. As soon as the man arrived to examine Jess’s boat she would have to move on, pick things up from where she’d left them. Visit the hospital again. And the burnt-out house.
Then face them at the hotel.
The Dellars were expecting her, patently avoiding bothersome questions. They talked all through dinner, cleverly, some of them. But really said nothing.
At first, with an effort, Kate tried pretending things were normal, this no more than another challenge by the family to pull herself up to their level. She even offered the story of the small girl returning her library book who’d demanded, ‘I want some four-letter words now. I’ve done all the three-letter ones.’
The corners of Madeleine’s mouth had twitched. Robert snorted. Matthew, all donnish and pettish, had complained that libraries had mostly given up on books. ‘Cluttered up with all these wretched computers. God knows what research such people are doing, coming in off the street.’
‘We get some unlikely-looking people,’ Kate admitted, ‘but at least they show interest. Some are really IT literate.’
‘Getting their fix of porn,’ Jake suggested, grinning. ‘Little old men in dirty raincoats. Kids wary of leaving evidence on their own computers at home.’
‘Some, but they’re not usually like that,’ she defended. ‘And we’ve an automatic cut-off system which diverts them to children’s programmes. You get to recognize the frustration. Some furtive hulk, usually a man, complains he keeps getting the Teletubbies.’
Claudia made a sharp grunt of disapproval.
‘That sometimes happens to innocents too,’ Kate rushed on. ‘We had a middle-aged couple who were keen gardeners. They’d been looking up Fuchsias, but they dropped a typo in.’
She’d thought it mildly funny, but it sank without a ripple. Perhaps they didn’t understand, restricted to a nice vocabulary, even to be poisonous with.
Having tried, she gave up and subsided into silence. The talk went on as though her unconsidered efforts had never interrupted more weighty matters. All talking; none listening.
Blankly she watched their faces, inventing inner conversations at variance with their words. Gus, choosing a peach, stroked its downy buttocks, smiling dreamily. His mind spoke through his fingers.
Claudia’s great, mourner’s eyes surveyed them eating, still her guests although transported to alien territory. ‘The venison was from Chalberry’s,’ she announced, and behind the words were calculations of cost and a warning they shouldn’t stay on too long running up bills she might be expected to pay.
Matthew, his womanish lips drawn tight like purse strings, ceased bemoaning the lowering standards of the public examination system and turned his attention to a bunch of white grapes which looked suitably sour.
Kate rebuked herself for lack of mental charity, sighed, resolved to abandon her own apartness. Let it all happen. What did it matter what any of them thought of her; how disagreeable as a group she found them? Even as a diversion from present worries they had failed her. She laid her dessert knife tidily alongside the discarded core and peel of her apple, leaning back to allow their words to stream past, meaningless and unaffecting.
The room they’d been given to dine in was small and claustrophobic. Despite the partly opened window there was no air. Outside, the dusk had a sense of heavy permanence. She felt herself drifting, had to reach out for something to hang on to, and there were only voices rolling over her, snatches of words from one side or the other, unrelated like dream sequences.
‘ …so he resigned, of course. Nothing else he could …’
‘And then I told him straight, it just won’t …’
‘ …unless they offered me a more serious bonus. So …’
‘But then, the fellow was a queer.’
‘ … whether Coriolanus had intended it or not.
’ This in Carlton’s high-pitched bleet.
‘ …hit oil and skidded across my path, the sod.’
‘I’m not sure that they do.’
That last was Eddie, cautious, doubtful.
No, how could it be? Eddie wasn’t here. She’d drifted off, imagined his voice. Starting awake, she looked around at the others. No one had noticed her momentary absence; why should they? – each so self-sufficient, so insulated.
Across the table someone leaned towards her. ‘Kate? Kate, are you all right?’
The face thrust at her was out of focus for a second, then settled into Marion Paige’s straight, leathery features. Ah, the other outsider.
‘Oh, fine,’ she managed to get out. ‘Just that it’s rather stuffy, don’t you think?’
‘So we’ll get out of here. Come along.’
As Marion rose, Gus, next to Kate, came suddenly aware of her need, pushed back his own chair and reached for hers. She steadied herself against its back as she stood, then lurched forward towards the door. Marion met her there, put a firm hand under her elbow and steered her out. They reached the hotel’s garden exit and Kate drew a long, cooler breath.
‘Thank you,’ she said, like a polite child. ‘Of course, you’re a doctor.’
‘Not a medical one. My subject’s Geophysics.’
An academic, like the others. An achiever. So maybe not an outsider at all. Just a newcomer, tailor-made to become one of them. ‘As a librarian,’ Kate said, ‘I rank with them alongside a supermarket stacker.’ A sour little smile tugged at her mouth. ‘Not that I’d have balked at that if it allowed me to stay solvent.’
‘You were a historian. Robert told me.’
‘To make me sound respectable. I didn’t get far with it. A second-year dropout.’ Kate had no idea why she bothered to explain herself. Perhaps because just then the other woman seemed the only living thing on the planet.
