by Jack Benton
Whatever the police believed, there was a killer out there, or at the very least, someone who wanted to be.
He was sure of it.
19
Early morning, with rain threatening overhead, Slim walked into Dartmouth, his hood pulled up to hide his identity. Most businesses were just opening up. The ominous clouds had kept the tourists away, so Slim made a circuit of the main shopping area, mentally noting any shops likely to be of interest, then cycled back to begin at the first one he had seen.
The shopkeeper, a middle-aged woman with her hair tied up in a flower-patterned scarf, looked up as he entered.
‘If you need anything, give me a shout,’ she called, before returning to opening a box of key rings hung with metal cutouts of Dartmouth Castle.
‘Actually,’ Slim said. ‘There is something.’
He reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a small ziplock bag. Inside was a square of fabric he had cut from the back of an old sweater, the one he had been wearing the night he had fallen off the pier to land on Irene Long’s funeral barge.
It hadn’t felt right to keep the sweater, but the patch he had cut free retained a residue of scent from one of the candles or incense burners on the boat. Slim, who considered the best form of perfume to be a shower, wasn’t able to identify it, but he hoped to track down where it had come from. As the shop assistant came over, Slim held up the square of fabric.
‘This might seem like a strange thing to ask,’ he said, ‘but I’m trying to find out what happened to my sister. You see, she recently died in mysterious circumstances, and the police aren’t giving me much information.’
‘Oh, I’m very sorry to hear that,’ the woman said. ‘I suppose that’s no surprise. Not like the police to keep things to themselves, is it? How can I help?’
‘I wondered if you had anything for sale that smells like this?’ he said, indicating the fabric. ‘This scent was on her body when she died.’
‘Oh, that’s a little morbid. I mean, I’m sorry, I don’t mean it like that, I mean—’
Slim smiled. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘We weren’t close. I just want to know what happened to her, that’s all.’
‘Well, I suppose you would, wouldn’t you?’
The woman looked a little disconcerted, but she took the material and smelled it anyway. She frowned, then shrugged.
‘We have a few scented candles over here,’ she said, indicating a sales rack near the window loaded with colourful candles and incense sticks, some of a beach design, the wax infused with sand, shells, or pretty stones, others East Asian or floral-patterned. ‘I don’t recognise that smell, though. I don’t think it’s one of ours.’
Slim humoured her for a while as she allowed him to check for himself, but in truth, to Slim one chemical fragrance smelled much like another. Confident the woman couldn’t help him, he thanked her and left, moving on to the next shop he had scoped out. He found no luck there or at the next, but at the fourth place he tried, a woman seemingly so old she could barely lift herself out of her chair behind the counter looked up at him through glasses obscuring one blind eye, and reached out a gnarled hand to receive the shred of fabric.
Afraid repeated exposures would reduce the fabric’s scent to nothing, he had little confidence, but the old woman took one sharp sniff, looked up at him and nodded.
‘Over there. Second box up, the blue ones.’
‘You’re sure?’
Slim went to look, retrieving a couple of scented candles. Lavender and rosehip. It was hard for him to notice a similarity in smell even with the candles in hand, but the old woman was nodding. ‘Your sister bought some of these, did she?’
‘I believe so, yes. I’m trying to trace her last movements. Are these only sold here?’
The old woman shrugged, then winced as though the gesture were painful. ‘How would I know? Might be sold in another shop. We did sell a couple to a girl the other week. Not big sellers, these, so it’s easy to remember.’
‘A girl?’
‘Young maid. Wouldn’t go so far as call her pretty. Had these crazy eyes, looked like she was on something. If she’d had a bag I might have thought she was fingering the goods, but she went straight to those candles like she knew what she wanted.’
‘Crazy eyes?’
‘Yeah, and long brown hair, wavy at the bottom as though it didn’t agree with the sea air.’
Slim gave a thoughtful nod. ‘Thankful for your time,’ he said, then left.
Outside, Slim took a deep breath. Crazy eyes. Long brown hair, wavy at the bottom. It wasn’t a description of Irene, but one of Eloise.
20
Totnes was less picturesque but more functional than Dartmouth with a larger shopping centre and better regional transport links. Following signs from the ferry pier, Slim found his way to the small riverside exhibition hall converted out of a former warehouse.
Renovated but retaining the vintage charm of its working days, the building was now a modern arts space and contained a small cinema listing several movies Slim had never heard of, plus a café and a number of exhibition rooms. A temporary sign announced an exhibition titled Views of the River, housed in a narrow room at the end.
Near the door was a table set up with painting equipment, where a local painter was giving tips to two young children while their mother looked on with interest.
A nametag identified the painter as Bill Sheckles. He looked up as Slim entered, smiled, and gestured towards the exhibits. Slim wandered through, only vaguely interested in the paintings, most of which were landscape views of the Dart and her estuary from a variety of hilltop angles, mixed with still-lifes of moored boats and views of Dartmouth Castle. His interest wasn’t piqued until he reached a section near the back comprised solely of views from the water itself.
An information card explained that the section was dedicated to local painter Alan McDonald. It gave a brief bio, informing Slim that Alan had been born in 1933 in Dartmouth and had worked as a fisherman most of his life before dedicating his retirement to his other passion, painting. His familiar habit of painting from a boat was favoured due to a vessel’s comforting rocking compared to the rigidity of painting on dry land. He was quoted as saying, ‘I’m a child of the river. I was born on water and will likely die on it. I’ve always been suspicious of dry land.’
Most of the paintings were hard to differentiate, multiple angles of the same picturesque views. Many were great swathes of choppy water, given form by the ripples left by a boat’s wake or the mottled colour of a passing watercraft. Others were framed by distant riverbanks, loaded with towns and hills, or of inlets with triangles of water giving way to rolling hills, clusters of houses, private jetties, the odd snaking road leading out of the valley. Slim had hoped for more views of the tumbledown house or the old woman watching the river with her arms crossed, but found none.
Aside from Bill and the family by the entrance, Slim was the only person present. There was no sign of Alan McDonald, so Slim waited until the children were done with their painting lesson and sauntered over to Bill.
‘I’m looking for Alan McDonald,’ he said. ‘Is he around? I bought one of his paintings the other day and was hoping to meet him.’
‘You and me both,’ Bill said with a look of frustration. ‘He should be here by now but he’s late. Everyone knows he was upset that his paintings were curated, but he’s been sulking about it. He didn’t show up to the prep meeting yesterday, so whether he’ll come at all is anyone’s guess.’
‘Do you have an address for him?’
Bill laughed. ‘Of course not. He’s private about that stuff. He uses his mother’s address for correspondence but he doesn’t live there. Just stops in once in a while to pick up his post.’
‘Do you have hers?’
Bill shook his head. ‘I don’t, but Len, who’s in this evening, might. If you come back about five o’clock?’
Slim grimaced. He would miss the last ferry back to Dartmouth and
he wasn’t in the mood for expensive taxi rides.
‘You say Alan should be in today?’
Bill checked his watch. ‘Half an hour ago.’
‘Thanks,’ Slim said. ‘I’ll take a wander about and check back in a while.’
‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up,’ Bill said. ‘He’s not very social.’
Slim humoured Bill with a smile and headed out. He wandered the riverside for a while, before the exhibition hall’s café inevitably reeled him in. The coffee was too bright and breezy for his liking, but it was a pleasant day, and, sitting on a picnic table on the grass outside the exhibition hall as the warm sun tickled his face, he could overlook that the water in his cup had likely only met coffee for a fleeting moment. Wincing with each sip, he stared out at the river.
He had been sitting there no more than a couple of minutes when a short, bustling figure came hurrying past, an overlarge bag under one arm, a handkerchief in his other hand which sporadically mopped his face. His cheeks were sun-reddened and he wore a floppy cricket hat. Even if his very awkwardness coupled with a stumbling, land-weary gait hadn’t made him stand out, the flecks of paint on his trousers and shirt would have identified him. With a last reluctant glance over his shoulder at the river, the figure headed into the exhibition hall. Slim poured the rest of his coffee out on the grass, then gathered up his things and went to speak with Alan McDonald.
21
Bill had gone. In his place, Alan sat behind a desk by the entrance, his eyes darting around, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else but here. The mother and her children were gone too, and besides one middle-aged man browsing near the back of the room, pulling off spectacles to peer closely at a painting of a rowing boat sitting on a triangle of sand near a harbour wall, the exhibition room was empty.
‘Excuse me,’ Slim said. ‘Are you Alan McDonald? I’ve been hoping to meet you.’
The man ignored him for a few seconds as he mixed a couple of paints together in a small plastic pot, his hand stirring nervously.
Slim was about to repeat his request when the man looked up.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said, his voice containing a slight tremble. ‘Why don’t you take a look around?’
‘I already did,’ Slim said. ‘There’s some fine work here. The real reason I wanted to talk to you was because I bought one of your paintings the other day. It’s an excellent piece. I think I’m becoming something of a fan.’
Some of Alan’s obvious social awkwardness seemed to ease. ‘That’s kind of you to say. Which piece, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘One of the railway line below Greenway,’ Slim said. ‘Just as it crosses a bridge over an inlet.’
Alan’s smile dropped. ‘The ghost train,’ he said. ‘What made you want that one?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Slim said. ‘Your work is masterful. It really caught my eye.’
‘Well, thank you.’
‘Why did you call it a ghost train?’
Alan shrugged. ‘It was more of an imaginative piece. No trains ever ran on that section of the line. That bridge isn’t even standing now.’
‘I know. I went out there yesterday.’
Alan looked away. He fiddled with his paints, frowning at the same time. His cheeks reddened as though from exertion, and a grim smile came over his face.
‘I prefer to remember it—there, that place—as it should have looked,’ he said.
‘You mean, before someone died jumping off the end of that bridge?’
Alan looked up briefly, then looked away again, fiddling even harder with his paints. A splash of green-blue flicked across his jacket but he appeared not to notice.
‘Are you from the police?’ he asked, not looking up.
Slim shook his head. He had considered what he might say to Alan if they managed to meet, and went for the safe option, what he considered a gentle bending of the truth.
‘I was visiting Dartmouth on holiday a few weeks ago,’ he said. ‘I was part of a tour group. Sadly, another member of the same party committed suicide. I had the unfortunate distinction of being the last known person to see him alive.’
Alan looked up, narrowing his eyes, and for a moment Slim felt certain the old angler was filling in the blanks in Slim’s story.
‘The radio man,’ he said at last.
‘Max Carson was a well-known DJ,’ Slim said. ‘Many would call him infamous.’
‘I heard some rumours, but I don’t watch television or read newspapers,’ Alan said. ‘It’s all just bad news, isn’t it?’
Slim shrugged. ‘For the most part. I don’t think there’s much to report. I just wondered about it, that’s all. I saw your painting in a local shop in Dartmouth, and I liked it. What surprised me was that the assistant appeared to be taking it off sale.’
Alan waved the hand holding the paintbrush and a little more watercolour splashed over his shirt. ‘I suppose they can do what they like with their displays,’ he said.
‘Then there was another I saw in a coffee shop. It was a lovely painting of an inlet, and an old house with a woman standing outside. I could almost imagine it was the same old house that’s not far from the bridge, although there was no railway line in that one.’
‘Probably another imaginative piece. The mind tends to wander out there on the water.’
‘I don’t doubt it. What I noticed was that the woman and the house had been covered by a stack of books. I’m sure I’m chasing shadows, but I wondered why. I thought that if anyone had any ideas, it would be the person who painted both pictures.’
‘Me?’ Alan said, as though about to deny any knowledge of them. ‘I’m just a painter, that’s all.’
‘You’re also a local person, and, without meaning to be rude, you’ve been around a long time. You must have an opinion on it all.’
‘On what?’
‘On what it is about that railway bridge, that old house, maybe even that woman. I mean, Max Carson is supposed to have killed himself, yet that location is remote. He’d have been better off jumping in front of a train or throwing himself off the cliffs around Dartmouth Castle. Why there?’
Alan shifted uncomfortably. ‘This is not a conversation I want to have,’ he said. Three middle-aged women wearing matching yachting club t-shirts came through the door and Alan practically jumped out of his seat to greet them, leaving Slim standing awkwardly by the painting table. He waited, but Alan looked intent on giving them an impromptu tour of the gallery.
Frustrated, Slim headed out, aware that the café had a view of the exhibition room’s entrance. He took a seat near a window into the lobby area and got to work going through the profiles Don had sent him, no longer looking for connections but turning his attention back to another unsolved mystery among many: who might have attempted to kill him by pushing him over the edge of the pier.
At a shade under six feet and a dead hundred kilograms on the last occasion he had checked, it would have taken a brave person to attempt to push him over the edge, had he not done most of the work for his assailant by leaning over to look into the water directly below. Now he looked at it logically, the attempt on his life had been opportunistic. His assailant couldn’t have known his plans, but must have been following close behind and pounced on the opportunity when Slim let his guard down.
At a flicker of movement at the edge of his vision, Slim looked up. Outside the café window, Bill Sheckles was waving at him. Slim jumped up, aware that Alan would be due to finish his shift, but by the time he made it out of the café and around to the exhibition’s welcome desk, Bill was standing with his hands on his hips and a look of annoyance on his face.
‘He skipped out early,’ he said. ‘The lazy sod. I should have known better than to trust him to keep an eye on things.’
22
Alan’s motorboat was gone by the time Slim reached the riverside. Frustrated at fluffing his chance, he took a ferry back to Dartmouth. By the time he stepped off the boat onto the tourist pier, a
cold breeze was blowing in off the English Channel. Even though daylight would last a few more hours, the few people on the streets looked keen to find shelter.
Pulling his jacket right around him, Slim bought a bag of chips and sat shivering beneath a bus shelter as the grey clouds that had rolled in during his journey back began to dispense their load, the rain clattering on the concrete around him.
To his dismay he had missed the last bus which would take him up to the main road and his hotel, leaving him with an expensive taxi journey or a tough uphill walk. He stared straight ahead as he ate, ignoring the rain as his thoughts drifted back to the night his life had been saved by Irene Long’s dead body.
It was impossible that there couldn’t be a connection between the three events, and he kept returning with reluctance to another face on the periphery of everything, one that made him uncomfortable to think about.
Eloise.
Finishing his chips, he pulled out the file of character profiles, flicking through until he found the girl’s.
Eloise Tiffany Trebuchet, a family name which had come from French and was pronounced with an accent. None of what the girl had claimed was backed up by a social media presence which was painfully brief. Slim had hoped for dirt on a girl who had claimed to have left a man for dead, but if Don couldn’t get it, it likely didn’t exist. Could it really be possible that the girl was some kind of outpatient from a psychiatric institution? If she was, there had to be a record, unless she was using an assumed name.
Slim stared at the print in front of him. He had caught her following him and she matched the description of the woman seen buying the candles which had later shown up on Irene’s funeral barge. But there was little else. She had an address in Exeter, a job at a local telecoms company. No listed family or friends, and a handwritten comment from Don said he’d had no luck tracking any down. Her online contacts were work colleagues or randoms, friends of friends or perhaps even people she’d never met. Her profile picture had been touched up by a photo editor, Don claimed. The high percentage of male associates suggested a girl looking for a partner, yet Don had searched through what online matchmaking sites he knew and hadn’t found her.
