by Val McDermid
33
Jane turned over and checked the clock. Ten past two. Nine minutes since she’d last looked. Sleep seemed as elusive as the Wordsworth manuscript. She kept almost nodding off, but then the events of the day would combine in an uncomfortable kaleidoscope that made her start awake. She had that uneasy feeling that she had missed something crucial, something to do with Donna Blair’s visit. But it remained elusive.
At some point, the shallow dozing gave way to proper sleep. When she finally woke, she couldn’t believe she’d slept till quarter to twelve. They had work to do. Why hadn’t Dan called? Even in her sleep-fuddled state, Jane knew the answer to that one. She threw back the covers, grabbed her dressing gown and hurtled downstairs. ‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’ she demanded as she burst into the kitchen. It was empty. A note propped against a vase of late roses read, Dad and I have gone to Dalegarth to look at a litter of puppies. Toad in the hole in the fridge, just needs heating through, put it in the bottom oven while you’re having your shower We’ll be back by teatime. See you later. Love, Mum.
Tutting in exasperation and muttering curses at Dan, Jane did as she was told. Twenty minutes later, she returned to the kitchen, clean and dressed, her damp curls a corkscrew cascade over her shoulders. She took the hot dish out of the oven and divided it between two bowls. She covered them with a cloth then headed out for the slaughterhouse, apprehensive about what might await her.
This time when she opened the door, she could see Tenille sprawled on the stone bench, fully dressed inside her sleeping bag, one arm thrown back over her head. She looked absurdly young to be fending for herself. ‘Rise and shine,’ Jane called, closing the door with her hip and taking the food over to Tenille.
The girl woke up, rubbing her eyes and yawning. She said something that sounded like, ‘Wagwan?’ which Jane translated as, ‘What’s going on?’
‘Wamcha?’ Jane replied, a response she’d learned from Tenille which corresponded to, ‘What happened to you?’
‘Last night,’ Jane continued. ‘Where were you?’
‘Man, is that hot food?’ Tenille’s eyes widened and her nostrils flared. ‘Smells good.’
‘I thought we could have brunch together. Since we were both apparently awake till late last night,’ Jane said, a dark warning in her voice.
‘You stopped by?’ Tenille sounded surprised. ‘I figured you couldn’t get out. Thought you’d gone to bed.’ She stretched luxuriantly. ‘You going to share or just torture me?’
‘I’m not sure you deserve it. What the hell were you doing, going out like that? Anyone could have seen you.’
Tenille shook her head, reaching for a bowl, which Jane smartly snatched out of her reach. ‘There’s nobody out round here that time of night,’ Tenille said dismissively. ‘They all tucked up in bed. I think they turn off the electricity at midnight. And even if anybody does see me, all they’re going to see is somebody on a bike. It’s not like they’re going to clock that I’m black.’
‘A bike?’ Jane said faintly.
‘I borrow your bike. I didn’t think you’d mind. Now, are you going to give me that food or what?’
Jane handed over the dish. Tenille looked at it suspiciously. ‘What the fuck?’ she said.
‘Toad in the hole.’
‘Looks more like turd in the hole,’ Tenille said. ‘I never saw a sausage curled up like dogshit before.’
‘It’s Cumberland sausage. A local delicacy,’ Jane said. ‘Eat it, or I will. I can’t believe you took my bike out in the middle of the night. What if a cop had stopped you?’
‘Why would they? It’s not against the law to ride a bike round, even in the middle of the night.’
‘It is if you haven’t got any lights. And I know for a fact that the lights for my bike are on the shelf in the hall.’ Jane glared at her.
Tenille shrugged, her mouth full of sausage and feather-light batter. ‘I’ll take my chances,’ she mumbled when she’d finally swallowed. ‘Hey, this is good.’
‘Luckily my mother thinks I have the appetite of a small army,’ Jane said. ‘But why have you been cycling round the district in the dead of night?’
Tenille looked guilty. ‘I had to get out. Man, I was going stir crazy. You try being locked up in here twenty-four seven. See how long you can stand it.’
‘It’s more than that,’ Jane said. ‘I can tell. There’s something you’re not telling me.’
Now the girl was definitely looking shifty. ‘Don’t ask and you won’t get told no lies.’
‘I want the truth, Tenille. Stop being so bloody evasive. I’m putting myself on the line keeping you here, the least you can do is be straight with me.’ There was no pretence now; Jane was genuinely angry.
Tenille refused to meet her eyes. ‘I was trying to be helpful,’ she said.
‘Helpful how? What’s helpful about wandering around in the middle of the night?’
Tenille shuffled her feet inside her sleeping bag. ‘I been visiting the old people,’ she said.
‘What? What old people?’
‘The ones you’ve been talking to about this manuscript. I figured you’re too soft, Jane. Anybody could lie to you and you wouldn’t know they were doing it if you trusted them. So I figured they might be lying when they said they didn’t have no papers.’
Jane looked aghast. ‘You’ve been breaking into their houses?’
‘I never broke nothing,’ Tenille protested. ‘I just found a way in. Then I took a look round.’
A horrible suspicion bubbled up in Jane’s head in spite of her knowledge of the girl. ‘You didn’t scare them, did you?’
Tenille looked contemptuous. ‘Course I didn’t. When I went to that Edith woman’s house, she was already dead and gone, the house was empty. And so was the house in Grasmere. If anybody’s been doing the scaring, it’s been them. Man, I nearly crapped myself last night. I went to that guy Edward Fairfield’s house in Keswick. Soon as I walked in the door, I thought there was something hinky going on. It smelled funny. Like shit. Anyways, I walked into the living room and there he was, sitting in his chair, dead as a fucking dodo.’ She shook her head. ‘I tell you, I’ve seen enough dead people lately to last me a lifetime.’
Jane finally recovered the power of speech. ‘He was dead?’ she yelped. ‘Eddie Fairfield was dead?’
Tenille nodded. ‘I touched his hand, just to make sure. He was freezing cold, Jane. It wasn’t nice. His mouth was hanging open and I could see his false teeth and everything. And he’d shat himself. That’s what the smell was.’
‘What did you do?’
Tenille shovelled more food into her mouth. ‘Wasn’t anything I could do, was there? He was long gone. So I just did what I went for and searched the place.’ She glanced up at Jane. ‘Don’t look at me like that. Fuck’s sake, what was I supposed to do? He was already dead, Jane. Old people die all the time, it’s what they do. I went there with something in mind and I did it. It didn’t hurt nobody and I never found anything, so it’s like I was never there.’
Jane put her head in her hands. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘I was trying to help,’ Tenille whined.
‘I mean, I can’t believe another one of these old people has died. That’s three, all in Dorcas’s family line. Three in the space of four days. That’s not natural.’ Her words were muffled by her hands, but Tenille heard them clearly enough.
‘It’s how it goes, Jane. They get to where they feel like they’ve nothing to live for, somebody else close to them passes and it’s like they lose the will to live. It happened to my gran’s cousin. When my gran passed, her cousin died two days later. And it’s not like they were big buddies, just family, you know?’
Jane shook her head, like a swimmer emerging from water. ‘It’s just too weird, that’s all.’ She pushed her bowl away, suddenly lost for appetite.
‘You done with that? Can I have it?’
‘Help yourself.’ Jane waited till Tenille had finished eating
, then took her bowl from her. ‘Promise me you’re going to stay put. Otherwise I’m going to take the key off you.’
Tenille grinned. ‘You’d have to find it first.’ She held her hands up, palms outward. ‘OK, I submit. I’ll stay home. But you got to figure something out because I am going to die if I stay here much longer.’
‘That I doubt,’ Jane said drily. ‘I’ll see you later.’
She walked back to the kitchen, shocked and bemused. She couldn’t take it in. Eddie Fairfield had been frail, but he’d been full of beans. Jane couldn’t believe he’d just slipped out of life so easily. She picked up her mobile, considering whether to alert someone to Eddie’s death, when she noticed there was a voice-mail message. She dialled the service and heard Dan’s voice. Her relief turned swiftly to dismay as his words sank in.
‘Hi, Jane. It’s Dan. Jimmy just called me.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. Eddie Fairfield–the guy you went to see yesterday–Jimmy just heard that he passed away last night. Jimmy had been planning to go round there and ask him about the manuscript. He reckoned if the papers had ended up on that side of the family, Eddie’s the one who would have known. So we’re fucked on that score. Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know. Phone me when you can.’
Jane ended the call and dropped her head into her hands. She might be off the hook as far as letting anyone know about Eddie’s tragic end. But she was starting to feel like the Angel of Death and it was scary. Her expression troubled, she dialled Dan. He picked up right away.
‘You get my message?’ he said abruptly.
‘Yes. I can’t believe it. That’s the third person on our list who’s died. It’s too much of a coincidence, Dan.’
‘Why? Old people are frail, they die–it happens all the time. The death certificate’s usually signed by their own doctor, isn’t it? Well, if there’d been anything suspicious, the doctor would pick up on it right away and order a post mortem. If those three hadn’t died of natural causes, you’d have heard. For a start, they wouldn’t be allowing the funerals to go ahead.’
‘You think?’
‘I think.’
‘It makes me feel funny, that’s all. They were on my list, and they died in the same order.’ She let out a sigh, pushing her hair back from her troubled face. ‘So did you have a nice time with Jimmy?’
‘You don’t want to know how nice,’ Dan said smugly. ‘Let’s just say it was very late when he headed back to Alice’s.’
‘Well, I’m glad one of us is having a good time,’ she said tartly.
‘What’s the plan for today?’ Dan asked.
‘I don’t know. I’m feeling pretty shaken. I’ll call you later when my head’s straight. You could always ring Jimmy, see if he wants to help you pass the time.’
‘I might just do that. Catch you later.’
Jane tried to tell herself Tenille and Dan were probably right. Edith, Tillie and Eddie were all in their eighties. Old people did die, and sometimes they just threw in the towel when the aches and pains and frailty got too much for them. But she wanted to mark their passing in some way. Her experience with Alice Clewlow had made it clear to her that she’d better steer clear of wakes and funerals lest she be tarred with the graverobber tag again. But she could still pay her respects. Families tended to stick to the same undertaker. She wouldn’t mind betting that Tillie Swain and Eddie Fairfield would be at Gibson’s in Keswick.
A little later, Jane walked into the large Victorian pile that had been a funeral home for as long as anyone locally could remember. A depressingly unctuous young man in a black suit met her in the hall. She couldn’t escape thoughts of Uriah Heep as she explained the purpose of her visit. ‘Mrs Swain is in Derwent, just down the hall,’ he told her. ‘But I’m afraid we’re still preparing Mr Fairfield for viewing. You’ll have to come back tomorrow to see him. If you’d like to follow me?’
Jane let him lead her down the panelled hall and usher her in through a door marked ‘Derwent’ in Gothic script. The room held a dozen chairs upholstered in red velvet and, set on polished oak trestles, a simple pine coffin. Uriah closed the door behind her and Jane walked slowly across to the coffin. She’d had little experience of the dead and was surprised by how mundane Tillie Swain’s corpse appeared. She was expertly made up, but her pallor was hard to hide. She wore a dress with a mandarin collar in peacock blue silk with matching necklace and earrings. She looked like a rather unappetising mannequin.
Jane tried to empty her mind and find something meaningful to focus on. But her brain refused to offer her anything but cliché and, after a few minutes, somehow disappointed in herself, she decided to leave. As she walked back towards the front door, a tiny young woman came bounding in the door in a most unfunereal manner. Long dark hair cascaded round her face and she grinned at the young attendant as she passed. ‘Hi, Chris,’ she said cheerily.
‘Good afternoon, Dr Wilde,’ he said, his grave tone a reproach to her energy.
Startled, Jane stopped short. As the woman drew level with her, she said, ‘Excuse me? Are you Dr Wilde, the forensic anthropologist?’
River paused. ‘That’s right, yes.’
‘You’re dealing with the bog body?’
River gestured towards a flight of stairs leading downwards. ‘He’s right here on the premises.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’
River smiled. She was always happy to share her expertise. ‘Of course.’
‘The tattoos. Are they typical of the South Sea islands? Tahiti in particular?’
‘They are, as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?’
‘I’ve a theory that your bog body is Fletcher Christian.’ Seeing River’s frown of curiosity, she added, ‘You know? Mutiny on the Bounty. Mr Christian–’
‘Here we go again,’ River said impatiently. ‘Yes, I know who Fletcher Christian is. You’re not the first person to mention that very possibility to me. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something in the water that has everybody wondering if my Pirate Peat was Fletcher Christian.’
‘Pirate Peat?’
‘My nickname for the bog body. We’re making a TV programme, they like something catchy. So what’s your interest?’
‘I’m a Wordsworth scholar. I’m exploring the possibility that Fletcher came back to his native land and told his story to William.’
‘Sounds pretty vague to me.’ River glanced at her watch. ‘Look–’
‘I’ve got a lot of circumstantial evidence. And a couple of letters that back it up. I don’t think there’s anyone around here who knows more about Fletcher Christian than me. If you want accurate historical detail for your TV programme, I could help.’
River grinned. ‘But actually, what you want is to know if this is your man?’
Jane nodded. ‘Yes, but the offer still stands. Any chance of it being him?’
River made a decision. ‘Come on down and I’ll show you what I’ve got so far,’ she said, heading for the stairs. ‘What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Jane Gresham.’
River turned and they exchanged a clumsy handshake on the stairs. ‘Did you come here to see me?’
‘No, I came to pay my respects to someone I interviewed a couple of days ago. Not anyone close, but I just wanted to…oh, I don’t know. Everybody seems to be dying.’
‘Everybody?’
‘Well, only the ones I interview for my research project.’
‘What? The Wordsworth thing?’ River swung round at the foot of the stairs to face Jane, a vaguely incredulous look on her face.
Jane paused on the bottom step and sighed. ‘Yeah, the Wordsworth thing. I drew up a list of people to interview–descendants of the last person to have had the manuscript. And all these old dears on the list seem to be slipping away. It’s a bit spooky, that’s all.’
